Exactly. This is the thing that angers me the most about everything that is happening. Here are several things that Trump supporters and some conservatives I personally know believe to be gospel truth:
America lets any immigrant who reaches our shores simply come on in. We have no strict vetting and “people are pouring into this country”, including thousands of criminals and terrorists.
Millions of illegal aliens voted in the election. Of course they all voted for Hillary. In Texas a Democratic GOTV group was bussing immigrants around to a dozen polling stations so they could vote illegally over and over again!
Crime in cities is rampant, and there are more murders/rapes/shootings in America than ever before. The police are outmanned and outgunned, and are all valiant heroes who have only the best interests of citizen in mind as they go about their job to serve and protect.
Drugs are a huge problem, and blacks and Latinos are at the root of it. Every young black or Latino boy idolizes drug lords and wants to grow up to be a rap mogul, drug kingpin or gang enforcer.
Immigrants, especially Muslims, don’t want to come to America to become Americans. They want to come here and take our jobs and our stuff, and build a new homeland in our country. European immigrants from the 19th and 20th centuries came here to work hard, assimilate into the populace and become productive Americans. 21st century immigrants just want free stuff and welfare, and have no interest in getting jobs, education, learning English or contributing to society.
Every single one of these things is DEAD WRONG. And yet when people like Donald Trump recite them as truth, and then places like Fox News, Brietbart, Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones and every Facebook conservative everywhere begin repeating them over and over they become a mantra of unassailable fact.
How do you fight that? How do you prove to people that everything they’ve built their worldview on is a boldface outright LIE when they won’t believe actual facts anymore? Short answer : You can’t.
I am really dreading my next get-together with extended family. Crazy Uncle Elmer was already going on about the smoking wasteland that was Sweden, what with the marauding bands of Muslim rapists and all. Now I’m going to have to listen to an “I TOLD YOU SO” about the “terrorist attack” in Sweden last weekend and somehow not resort to Armando’s face-punching solution.
For some reason, the idea that Sweden is being taken over by muslims is a thing that the fringe of conservatives actually believe. I do not know where they got this idea.
Do we have folks here from Sweden? This isn’t true, right? Like, I’m assuming that there isn’t really some secret muslim takeover in Sweden, that only the nutjob news outlets are covering?
But buried in the memos is a separate provision that is worthy of attention on its own. That provision, immigration lawyers tell me, raises the possibility that under Trump, enforcement officers will have an easier time than under President Obama of arresting undocumented immigrants who are in schools or hospitals or are seeking sanctuary in churches.
[…]
The worry arises from a line in one of the newly leaked memos stating that “all existing” Homeland Security “memoranda or field guidance” regarding enforcement “are hereby immediately rescinded,” with a few exceptions. What this means is that the Obama DHS memos implementing his enforcement priorities — in which longtime residents and low-level offenders were deprioritized for removal, focusing enforcement resources on criminals and recent border-crossers — are getting scrapped. This is in keeping with Trump’s recently released executive order doing the same and is the basis for the belief that a much bigger pool of undocumented immigrants will now be targeted for removal, meaning mass deportations are coming.
But this line could also mean something else: If all previous Obama DHS memos are rescinded, this would theoretically include another Obama-era memo, one that protects undocumented immigrants in places such as schools and churches. That memo is known as the “sensitive locations memo,” and it establishes that enforcement actions will not take place in “sensitive locations” such as schools, hospitals and places of worship, without express consent from agency supervisors, and must be exercised with excessive care. It was most recently affirmed under Obama in a 2016 version, and advocates say this is necessary to ensure a fundamental humanitarian commitment: that undocumented immigrants can attend school or places of worship or seek needed medical care.
I can debunk it; it’s a far-right fringe fantasy. It’s the same kind of shit you see in other countries in Europe as well, and all throughout history.
Unfortunately it’s sometimes fed by non-right-wing parties as well, based on the perception that Islam is particularly hostile to women. Since sexism and inequality is officially Frowned Upon in Sweden, this makes these kind of stories about muslims in particular to have a greater spread than if you were talking about some other group of immigrants. But it doesn’t make it any more true.
All I know is Paradox must be hosting their convention in the last island of civilization in the country. Do you think convention goers have to supply their own armored convoy to arrive in, or is a helicopter airlift into the fortified compound included in the ticket?
I had a similar conversation with an in-law. Apparently, all Italian immigrants were hard workers and honest. They were nothing like the filthy people coming to American now.
There was a rash of sexual assaults in Germany last winter during the holidays that seemed to correlate to immigrants preying on natives and may have even been coordinated. There was also some evidence a year or two ago - thought tbh I haven’t read this closely and could be wrong - that Sweden was “supressing” some of its sexual assault statistics by reclassifying them, somehow. That might be bunk I didn’t look into it too closely, I remember reading about it from a couple reputable places that indicated it might have had a grain of truth.
I think echos of this half remembered stuff is where the current paranoia is coming from.
Seriously WTF is with this shit.
When I was a kid, she personally explained to me how chain letters are garbage scams. Now, every day it’s like, “FREEDOM DOT EAGLE SAYS THE MUSLIMS ARE GOING TO STEAL OUR BABIES”
For whatever reason, this group doesn’t equate the electronic version of the same phenomenon as still a chain letter. Chain letters were annoying things some of my aunts and lady cousins would send to my parents. Now I see a bunch of men (and women) passing these things on on Facebook like it’s somehow… different.
