In the wake of the Chapel Hill shooting that took the lives of three Muslim students, “The Nightly Show” host Larry Wilmore dedicated Tuesday’s show to the phenomenon of Islamophobia.
Wilmore was curious for more details on the shooter, Craig Stephen Hicks, to determine whether or not the Feb. 10 shooting was a hate crime or, as police have said, a “parking dispute” gone wrong.
After learning more about Hicks’ alleged anti-Muslim and anti-religious obsessions, the host played a clip of MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough asking whether Hicks was simply a version of George Zimmerman, the volunteer neighborhood watchman who shot dead black 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in 2012.
“Seriously, what’s going on with all these racist Elmer Fudds?” Wilmore asked. “Be very quiet, I’m hunting Muslims.”
Watch the clip:
I’d pair this Nightly Show with the previous night’s show, which was about Giuliani’s remark about Obama. The connection: Obama’s policy ideas, like health insurance reform, immigration reform, banking reform, and marriage law reform, are very popular. The GOP recognized back in 2009 that they couldn’t win arguing the issues. So, they invented distractions. One such distraction was accusing Obama of being a Muslim. Wilmore’s Republican guest brought that up during Monday’s show! Wilmore had to work hard to keep the discussion on track, even as the guest ate up the other panelists’ time. This is typical of how GOP distraction works to hinder public discussion. A tragic side-effect of this distraction strategy – I emphasize that it is a strategy – has been to foster hatred of Muslims, and thereby encourage violent acts against them.
The wingnuts must always have a big scary enemy to demonize, while they beat their chests and wet their pants.
Soviets, Chinese, Muslims; Blacks; it doesn’t really seem to matter. And of course there is always the big, bad, black helicopter gubbmint coming for your guns to fall back on if those lose traction.