https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/12/anti-semitism-hate-crimes-real-threat-from-leftist-politics/It’s not as simple as blaming Trump.
This column makes spurious accusations against Donald Trump: “Further, Trump has consistently voiced animus towards Muslims, so if his rhetoric were responsible for hate crimes, Muslim victimization should have increased.” He also claims the President is anti-Latino. Check your facts which are otherwise correct Robert Cherry! The president has absolutely not consistently voiced animus to Moslems- or Latinos only to Islamic terrorists and violent illegal immigrants…..rsk
In the wake of the Pittsburgh shootings, the Anti-Defamation League reported a 57 percent spike in anti-Semitic acts between 2016 and 2017. Shortly thereafter, the FBI reported a 17 percent increase in anti-Semitic hate crimes. Many commentators linked this uptick to President Trump’s rhetoric. When commenting on the ADL report, Julie Ioffe claimed that Trump “has radicalized so many more people than ISIS ever did.”
A closer look at the statistics, however, indicates that linking anti-Semitic acts to Trump’s rhetoric is problematic and much too one-sided. The ADL report found an almost doubling of campus incidents of bullying and harassment, for example, which are most likely associated with left-wing anti-Zionist forces. And while its intimidation measure doubled, this was mainly because it includes a spree of bomb threats made by a disturbed Israeli youth. In addition, the ADL relies on reports it receives from a variety of institutions, and at least a portion of the increase in anti-Semitic acts reflected “more people . . . reporting incidents than ever before.”
Similarly, the FBI relies on reporting from law-enforcement agencies, and an additional 1,000 agencies reported for the first time in 2017. In addition, the increase was driven entirely by a substantial rise in vandalism of property, as there was a drop in assaults and incidents of intimidation. And as others have pointed out, all three categories were lower in 2017 than they had been a decade earlier.
Further, Trump has consistently voiced animus towards Muslims, so if his rhetoric were responsible for hate crimes, Muslim victimization should have increased. There was, however, an 18 percent decline in anti-Muslim hate crimes, reflecting reductions in all three categories. By contrast, during the Obama years, anti-Muslim hate crimes more than tripled.
Latinos were another group that was subject to Trump’s animus, and the hate crimes they experienced rose by 17 percent. However, anti-Latino assaults — the most serious category — were virtually unchanged, as the overall increase reflected primarily increases in incidents of intimidation and property vandalism.