Anti-Muslim Violence & Deep State Quackery

Finsbury Park van driver Darren Osborne

The popular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took to Twitter this morning to issue a strong condemnation of the van attack that took place early Monday morning; reaffirming Canadian support for London and the UK.

But while Donald Trump was quick to condemn the London Bridge attack, there's been relative radio silence from America's most obnoxious famous Twitter user about the Finsbury Park attack.

Which, given the fact that Trump's outrage is entirely conditional on the ethnicity of the victims and the terrorist, isn't surprising.

According to the BBC, 47-year-old Darren Osborne, a father of four from Cardiff, Wales, has been tentatively identified as the man who intentionally drove a white van into a group of innocent people standing in front of a building in the Finsbury Park section of north London.

His target? A group of Muslims who'd just left evening Ramadan prayers at their local mosque, who, according to some reports, were helping an elderly man who'd fallen when Osborne plowed into them.

Lately it seems like the people of poor old London just can't catch a break from the dark reach of hate-filled terrorism that has claimed so many innocent lives and left so many injured in recent weeks.

Osborne (a neighbor described him as "a complete C***") added to that gruesome tally by killing one and injuring at least 11 before he was hauled out of the van by stunned onlookers who held him and fended off a mob of outraged bystanders who were trying to tear him apart while he reportedly yelled, "I'm going to kill all Muslims!"

Did Osborne think his decision to attack innocent Muslims, would somehow "even the scales" or bring some measure of righteous retribution for the victims of the recent terrorist attacks in London and Manchester?

17 YO Nabra Hassanen & Darwin Martinez Torres

If he did he apparently wasn't alone.

On Sunday, just a day before Osborne's van attack in London, the body of a young girl tentatively identified as 17-year-old Nabra Hassanen, was discovered in a pond in Fairfax County, Virginia.  

According to an NBC.com article by Kalhan Rosenblatt, Hassnen had been reported missing after she was attacked by 22-year-old Darwin Martinez Torres.

After breaking the ritual fast of Ramandan, Hassanen and a group of friends were walking to an all-night prayer vigil when some kind of confrontation ensued that prompted Torres to jump out of his vehicle, assault Hassanen with a baseball bat, then throw her in the car and drive off.

While Loudon County Sheriff Michael Chapman expressed shock over the killing at a press conference, police investigators are not yet confirming that the incident was motivated by Hassanen's race or religion - but I'm not buying that.

This was a teenager with her friends observing one of the most scared religious holidays of the year on her way to a prayer wearing the traditional Hijab (head covering).

Frankly the idea that Torres stopped his car, jumped out, assaulted her with a bat and threw her into the car with a group of witnesses watching because it was some random assault is ludicrous.

Particularly given the current anti-Muslim rhetoric in this country being peddled by the Trump administration, many Republican politicians and right-wing media.

Lately the conservative talking heads who pump content into the bowels of right wing media have been far more obsessed with the mythical entity they've christened the "Deep State" than they are with the hate-based killings of Muslims and people of color both here and abroad that have dominated headlines recently.

Fox host & conservative quack Sean Hannity

As MediaMatters.org reported today, on Fox & Friends this morning, Fox's David Bossie is just the latest conservative figure to try and float the fringe-theory that the investigation into Russian interference with U.S. elections and Russia's ties to the no less than 11 members of the Trump administration, are all part of a Deep State plot.

Which is starting to have a rather unpleasantly familiar stench to it.

Increasingly this Deep State nonsense is sounding suspiciously like Senator Joe McCarthy's paranoid fear-mongering about communist infiltration of the U.S. government in the 1950's.

Last Friday the Hill.com reported that increasingly-unhinged Fox host Sean Hannity did a whole monologue about how left-leaning figures within various department of the U.S. government are somehow plotting to leak information to media outlets that's damaging to Trump in order to promote a Russia investigation that some right-wing conservatives dismiss as "fake news".

Hannity further prodded his conspiracy-friendly audience by warning them that the Deep State isn't just a danger to Trump, "These people have now become a clear and present danger to this country and to you."

(Seriously, ya gotta love the "These people" coded-reference and the Tom Clancy reference all in one easy-to-digest soundbite - no wonder this delusional wind-bag is bleeding advertisers.)

Personally I think all this Deep State drivel is nothing more than a bunch of unsubstantiated bunk being promoted by right-wing media as a desperate attempt to undermine the multiple investigations into Russian interference and ties to the Trump administration.

Aaron Zebley

Investigations being conducted by both Republican and Democratic members of the House and Senate in addition to the FBI and special independent counsel Robert Mueller.

As Mueller, a seasoned federal investigator with impeccable credentials, assembles what Wired.com's Garret Graff described last week as an "Investigatory Dream Team", the right-wing rhetoric about the Deep State gets more desperate and loony.

If you get a chance, check out Graff's Wired.com piece on crack investigator and former FBI agent Aaron Zebley - those rumors about panicky Trump officials looking into ways to fire Mueller start to make more sense.

The deaths of innocent Muslims here and in England are clearly far from the radar of the Trump administration these days.

Lately he seems far more interested in yelling at his TV, tweeting nonsensical fakery about how his poll numbers are better than President Obama's were, and acting almost clinically detached from the deaths of seven U.S. sailors on the U.S.S. Fitzpatrick.

No, the right-wing apparently has bigger fish to fry than at least having the decency to even acknowledge the deaths of innocent Muslims - unspeakable tragedies that simply don't fit into the current conservative narrative.