Following Up: Hate Crimes, Trump, and New FBI Data

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African Americans, anti-semitism, FBI, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Following Up, hate crimes, Hispanics, illegal aliens, Islamic terrorism, Jews, Latinos, Muslims, neo-Nazis, Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, racism, Trump, white nationalists, xenophobia

Right after last month’s Pittsburgh synagogue murders, I wrote a post that used FBI hate crimes data to cast doubt on President Trump’s direct or indirect culpability – but closed by noting that the Bureau would soon be issuing numbers that bring the story up to 2017.

“Soon” arrived this week, and the new statistics do provide evidence for a “Trump effect” on hate crimes overall, and on the incidence of anti-semitic hate crimes in particular. At the same time (and I know Never Trump-ers won’t want to see this), much of the evidence is considerably mixed, especially when it comes to the charge that, as presidential candidate and chief executive, Mr. Trump has “activated” violent anti-Semites and other bigots – i.e., he’s emboldened all of them to turn their hatred into attacks on their target groups.

To base my analysis on more data than used in that previous post, I’ve gone back to each of the 2000-2005 years, and continued examining the numbers for each year through 2017. I’ve also looked at two different categories of data that logically shed the most light on these issues – the number of total known incidents for each of these years, and the number of total known offenders. (I also counted up the numbers of victims, but believe that, even though they track well with the other two data sets, they tell us a good deal less about the activation charge. So for brevity’s sake, I’ve left them out.)

The annual figures on total hate crimes incidents typify most of the patterns. The strongest evidence for the Trump effect consists of the changes in the number of incidents and offenders for 2015-2016, and 2016-2017. Recall the Mr. Trump declared his candidacy for president in June, 2015.

Between 2015 and 2016, the incidents figure rose by 4.63 percent, and then jumped by 17.22 percent the following year. The 2016-17 increase was the biggest in percentage terms since that between 2000 and 2001 (a 20.67 percent surge that partly consisted of reactions to the September 11 terror attacks in 2001).

Here, however, is where the activation narrative starts to lose some force. Principally, the 2015-2016 increase was much smaller than that recorded between 2005 and 2006 (7.80 percent). Was then-President George W. Bush unwittingly or not encouraging extremists? Were they becoming activated in opposition to some of his policies, like the Iraq War? The overall hate crimes numbers don’t yield any obvious answers, but clearly among some groups, national tempers were flaring back then.

Another complication: The absolute 2017 number of hate crimes – like the 2016 number – was the biggest in several years. Indeed, 2017’s 7,175 total hate crimes was the highest figure since 2008’s 7,783. But think about that for a moment. It means that the 2008 number was (significantly) higher. So were its counterparts for each year since 2000. Were those years of greater Presidential activation?

It’s tempting to blame a “September 11” effect during those years. Yet the figure for 2000 – the year before the terror strikes – was much higher (8,063) than 2017’s as well.

The offender numbers are even more puzzling from the activation standpoint – since presumably they’re the individuals being activated. They did rise by 14.46 percent between 2014 and 2015 – which covers the first six months of the Trump presidential campaign. But between 2015 and 2016 – when he was running all year and clearly was much more prominent in the national consciousness – the number of offenders actually declined by 2.91 percent.

The following year, Mr. Trump’s first in the Oval Office, offender numbers shot up again – by 10.40 percent. That increase, however, wasn’t that much larger in percentage terms than the rise during the Barack Obama year 2012-2013 (9.06 percent).

Further, looking at the makeup of these numbers (in terms of the target groups) produces even bigger mysteries. Specifically, that big 17.22 percent increase in the total number of hate crimes between 2016 and 2017 was keyed largely by a 37.13 percent jump in incidents targeting Jews. Consequently, the 2017 total reached 938 – the highest figure since, again, 2008 (another George W. Bush year). But as with overall incidents, this means that the 2008 figure (1,013) topped that for 2017 by an impressive margin. In addition, the 2017 total was exceeded no less than six times in all between 2000 and 2008.

More puzzles emerge from the offenders figures. The number targeting Jews increased 8.79 percent between 2015 and 2016, and by 24.23 percent between 2016 and 2017. The absolute numbers for those years (421 and 523, respectively) are also the two highest during the 2000-2017 period. So these figures also seem to bear out the accusation that President Trump has coddled neo-Nazi/”white nationalist” types in various ways and bears some responsibility for their crimes.

But leave aside the objections that Mr. Trump has welcomed Jews into his family, has worked with them in numerous ways during his business career, and has been a staunch supporter of Israel (all of which has enraged some of those neo-Nazis). Why did the numbers of anti-semitic perps skyrocket by 69.40 percent between 2012 and 2013?

Something else that doesn’t dovetail with the activation charges: Although candidate and President Trump have been accused of stoking racism and xenophobia along with anti-Semitism, the data indicate that any Trump effect in regard to African-Americans and Muslims has been much more muted.

The number of incidents figures show that reported hate crimes targeting Muslims nearly doubled between 2014 and 2015 (from 154 to 294), and then climbed by another 21.77 percent the following year. Maybe candidate Trump’s calls for a ban on Muslim immigration into the United States and for registering Muslims in a national data base deserve lots of blame? Possibly. But then why would anti-Muslim hate crimes have dropped by 7.54 percent in the President’s first year in office – when the Muslim ban effort was a top priority, and front-page news, for months.

Moreover, despite the belief that Mr. Trump’s support of “birther” claims against former President Obama, and a 7.65 percent increase in hate crimes against blacks between 2014 and 2015, these numbers have stayed virtually flat over the course of the President’s main campaigning year and his first year in office.

Evidence for Trump-ian activation that’s more compelling comes from the data on anti-Hispanic hate crimes. The numbers of incidents and offenders both rose strongly – by a record 42.73 percent for the former and by 29.21 percent for the latter between 2016 and 2017, when the President kept immigration issues front and center. As with so many of the other statistics, however, the latest absolute Trump Era numbers for both categories remains way below many pre-Trump annual levels.

That’s why it seems reasonably clear to me that the main driver of the hate crimes data isn’t presidential activation, and that it may not be a major influence at all. What are some possible alternative causes? In many cases, real world events. Two examples: First, the numbers of anti-Muslim hate crimes and violent haters arguably rose so robustly from 2014 on because that period has been marked by a shocking number of fatal terrorism strikes launched by Islamic extremists in both the United States and in Europe.

Second, the anti-Hispanic counterparts of these figures were so much higher during the previous decade than they are today because those years featured mounting efforts by the Open Borders lobby – including an unprecedented wage of protest and other forms of activism by illegal immigrants themselves – to demand more rights and government benefits for this illicit population.

This explanation doesn’t seem to apply to the levels and growth rates of anti-semitic hate crimes. But then again, this form of bigotry isn’t often called “the oldest hatred” for nothing. (Racism of course has been an historical constant as well in America and elsewhere.) 

It should go without saying (but maybe not in these highly charged and polarized times) that none of the events and developments cited immediately above can ever justify hate crimes or similar bigoted actions and beliefs. Nor does it signal a belief that the President has handled these incidents on his watch acceptably. As I’ve written repeatedly, he hasn’t. But what should be clear is that anyone seeking to understand anti-semitic and other hate crimes needs to look far beyond the White House.

Im-Politic: Antisemitism by Any Other Name

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academia, antisemitism, Im-Politic, Lila Corwin Berman, Mainstream Media, Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, The Washington Post, Trump, Trump Derangement Syndrome

Leave it to American academia today to produce an article that simultaneously claims that anti-semitism in the United States is and has always been much worse than commonly believed, and suggests that “the opportunities and privileges [American Jews] gained came not because America held particular promise for Jews, but rather because it withheld that promise in so many ways to so many other people.”

And leave it to the Mainstream Media to publish such simultaneously incoherent and offensive garbage – perhaps in part because author Lila Corwin Berman managed to inject into her diatribe major swipes at President Trump.

I’ve read and re-read the sentence quoted above, which appeared in this morning’s Washington Post, numerous times for fear of misinterpreting it. But I can’t understand how it can mean anything other than that throughout their history in this country, Jews in general have at the very least selfishly “seen no evil” as they’ve basked in America’s tolerance – and at the most bear significant responsibility for the oppression of other minorities, either actively, or passively, through their determination to keep affixed their self-serving blinder.

Not that anyone, including me, should rule any of these possibilities out of hand. But the author – a Temple University historian of American Judaism – offers no serious evidence or even detailed argumentation to support the charges. And absent any grounding in fact, how are the allegations not simple antisemitic slurs? Alternatively, to employ some terms widely used these days to link the President to atrocities like the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, how does their simple voicing not “activate” or “encourage” or “release” or “embolden” such prejudice?

Further, how does Berman square these contentions with her belief – strengthened by the Pittsburgh murders – that the United States has not been “an exceptional place for Jews,” and that they have been wrong to “see an exceptional future for themselves and their children in the United States”? Spoiler alert: She can’t. Worse, she doesn’t even try. And her editors at the Washington Post somehow missed this whopping contradiction.

What could possibly explain such evident incompetence? How about Berman’s decision to make sure to blast President Trump for displaying:

“how easily [American] exceptionalism can become a weapon for exclusion; this is the very purpose of ‘Make America Great Again.’ The president legitimizes white supremacy as one of ‘both sides’ of American life. He declares himself to be a nationalist without bothering to distinguish between his nationalism and the dark history of xenophobic and genocidal nationalism. He routinely gives cover to those who abuse vulnerable populations — trans people, refugees, immigrants, Muslims, people of color, children and women — by telling his followers that they are the victims. In all cases, what he calls the ‘greatness’ of this country is its ability to exclude whole classes of people as unfit and undesirable for its blessings.”

In other words, Trump Derangement Syndrome has reached new lows. As the Washington Post has just made clear, a newspaper’s flagship opinion section will publish in the same article claims that American Jews have had no reason to be grateful for the haven the United States has provided them, and insinuations that these Jews have been complicit in the nation’s failures to treat other groups justly. Just be sure to depict the President as an enabler of every form of bigotry under the sun.

Following Up: No, Trump’s Guards vs Guns Idea Isn’t Crazy

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anti-semitism, armed guards, Associated Press, Following Up, guns, Kansas City Star, Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, political violence, TIME, Trump, Twitter, Washington Post

President Trump’s claim after the Pittsburgh synagogue shootings that the presence of armed guards would have reduced the fatalities had all the earmarkings of one of those face-palming (for various reasons) comments he too often makes. I mean, everyone knows this belief is bonkers, right? Twitter has apparently “melted down” over them. Late-night TV comics were in full snark mode. More seriously, public officials in Pittsburgh threw cold water on the suggestion.

Apparently, all these critics missed these highly conspicuous exceptions: many prominent Jews themselves. Their views of course aren’t dispositive. But given all the dismissive and/or indignant harrumphing generated by the idea that any houses of worship need such security, or should need such security, the points they’ve made certainly deserve more attention than they’ve gotten so far – and they’re worth presenting in some detail.

In particular, according to this Associated Press report:

“[B]efore those incidents, many synagogues and Jewish organizations in the U.S. had been ramping up security measures.

“Fifteen years ago, the Anti-Defamation League issued a 132-page guidebook titled, ‘Protecting Your Jewish Institution: Security Strategies for Today’s Dangerous World.’

“It includes detailed advice on controlling access to the premises, and also urged leaders of institutions to think carefully about whether or not they wanted to hire armed guards.”

In addition:

“A rabbi-emeritus at the Tree of Life Synagogue that was the site of the Pittsburgh attack, Alvin Berkun, “said guards — while used during the major Jewish holy days — were not on duty Saturday.”

And it’s not just Pittsburgh:

“In Kansas City’s synagogues, armed security has been a presence for years — particularly on major holidays such as Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Some synagogues hire guards every Friday night and Saturday morning for Shabbat (sabbath) services. At others, armed security protects children as they come and go for preschool.”

One big reason? As RealityChek regulars know, Kansas City’s Jewish community was attacked by a neo-Nazi gunman in 2014.

In fact:

“Many U.S. synagogues do employ armed guards; others have taken alternative measures to tighten security.

“‘I doubt there’s a synagogue in the US that doesn’t think seriously about security,’ said [Heidi] Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center [from the AP story linked above].”

Further, in the wake of the latest shootings, the Washington Post has reported that:

“[P]olitical and Jewish leaders across the country are grappling with whether [Mr. Trump’s] suggestion makes sense.”

And in Pittsburgh itself, at least one Jewish congregation has settled on an answer: “Pittsburgh Synagogue Hires Armed Guards to Open for Sunday School After Shooting.”

At this point, I’m far from sold on armed guards as the idea way to prevent shootings at synagogues and other religious institutions – or any other public places. And I hate the fatalism implied. But we don’t live in an ideal world. And we certainly don’t live in a world that permits us to safely dump all over a recommendation just because we don’t happen to care for the source. At least that’s the message being sent by those who need to take on this challenge in the here and now, as opposed to posturing from afar.

 

Following Up: Trump and Hate Crimes: What the Data Say

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African Americans, anti-semitism, bigotry, Following Up, hate crimes, Hispanics, Jews, Muslims, Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, political violence, racism, Trump, whites

If you’re one of those who believe that hate crimes against Jews and other religious or racial or ethnic minorities in America have reached unprecedented levels, and that President Trump’s too often offensive rhetoric is solely or even mainly responsible, here are some numbers to consider:

5,938

5,446

4,869

4,563

4,461

4,200

4,150

4,862

These numbers represent the FBI’s figures on the annual number of reported religiously, racially, and ethnically motivated hate crimes in the United States in the year 2005, and then annually from 2010 through 2016. The FBI won’t be reporting its 2017 results for at least a few more weeks, but these statistics indicate that the incidence of such transgressions has been falling recently, not rising. (I chose these years assuming that, by 2005, much post-September 11 anti-Muslim and anti-Middle Easterner sentiment had cooled, and then listed annual numbers in 2010 because that’s our last beginning of a decade.)

It’s true that there’s been a major rebound between 2015 and 2016, and that Mr. Trump declared his presidential candidacy in June, 2015. So maybe that accounts for the increase? Possibly. But then how to explain the considerably higher numbers in 2005 and 2010 – and the slightly higher number in 2011? Were dog whistlers occupying the Oval Office then?

Blame-Trump efforts look even weaker when the makeup of the 2015-16 increase is examined. Here are those data, by reporting/victim group, along with the statistics for the previous year’s change, to provide some context:

percentage changes                         2014-15                   2015-16

blacks                                                -0.09                          0.86

whites                                                 7.64                        15.21

Jews                                                    6.87                       17.92

Muslims                                          107.43                       26.38

Hispanics                                           -9.26                       23.21

In other words, a case can be made that Trump rhetoric played some role in prompting a significant number of hate crimes against Jews, Muslims, and Hispanics. But the President is widely accused of being a racist, too. Why, then, was there virtually no change in the incidence of hate crimes against African Americans? The rate of increase in hate crimes against whites, moreover, nearly doubled. What’s up with that? And although the numbers of such offenses against Muslims rose strongly between 2015 and 2016, they rose at more than four times faster the previous year – in fact, more than doubling. Did more extremist bigots decide to tune in to Mr. Trump on Hispanics between 2015 and 2016, as opposed to his Muslim remarks? And if so, what could explain that development?

Saturday’s Pittsburgh synagogue shooting justifies a special focus nowadays on hate crimes committed against Jews, so here are the FBI figures for reports of such incidents for 2005, and annually between 2010 and 2016:

976

1,040

935

836

737

684

731

862

These results provide some support for claims that Mr. Trump’s emergence on the political scene inspired some of the nation’s worst anti-semites to crawl out from under their rocks. But they also show that the Jewish-focused alt-right/neo-Nazis etc were significantly less activated in 2015 and 2016 than they were in 2005 or 2010. And of course, the overall U.S. population grew during that period.

Further, it’s easy to reach similar conclusions from this list of years, starting in the twentieth century, that have seen acts of actual violence on American Jews themselves (as opposed to, e.g., synagogue vandalism or verbal harassment):

1915

1958

1960

1977

1984

1985

1986

1991

1994

1999

2000

2009

2014

2018

The source is The Atlantic Monthly; I’ve added the 2000 Pittsburgh murder that I described in yesterday’s post which the magazine for some reason omitted. Although numbers like this per se can’t convey casualty counts and other qualitative measures of lives lost or individuals wounded or fear induced, there’s no support here for the idea that American Jews should feel less safe now than ever before. In fact, the worst decades look like the 1980s and 1990s. (Keep in mind that actual casualty levels don’t necessarily reveal the virulence of an attack.)

It’s certainly possible that the FBI’s upcoming 2017 data could show a big jump in various types of reported hate crimes, and that a Trump effect will be lot clearer (depending, again, on the makeup of the increase). Until then, however, the charges that Trump-ian dog whistles are the big reason for record (at least in modern times) threats to American minorities of all or even many kinds will be sounding an awful lot like dog whistles themselves.

Im-Politic: Before You Blame Trump for Pittsburgh….

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alt-right, anti-semitism, bigotry, FBI, Gab, Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, HIAS, Im-Politic, Immigration, Jews, letter bombs, Open Borders, Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, political violence, refugees, Robert Bowers, Trump, xenophobia

Yesterday morning’s Pittsburgh synagogue shooting hit home especially hard for me – and not just because many of the victims, and the clear targets, were fellow Jews. I also attended college with numerous students from the Squirrel Hill neighborhood where the atrocity took place, and recently learned that a professional friend hales from there as well. I’m no longer in touch with the folks from college, but for all I know some of the victims were their friends or loved ones. And although I’ve never visited the neighborhood itself, the descriptions I’ve heard suggest that other than being a little more urbanized, it’s not so different from the one I’m from on the north shore of Long Island.

Then there are the political and public policy angles: Apparent murderer Robert Bowers was an active participant on the alt-right and highly xenophobic social media platform Gab, and was especially infuriated by the activities of HIAS, (the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) a Jewish group that seeks to assist immigrants, refugees, and other newcomers to the United States. I’m a strong supporter of President Trump’s efforts to reduce illegal immigration and control more tightly some forms of illegal immigration. But as I’ve written before, his words on immigration and other issues have too often been unnecessarily inflammatory or insensitive or simply clueless.

(I’m much less ambivalent about claims that Mr. Trump has singlehandedly pushed American politics in general into a more violent phase with his often harsh attacks on Democratic party and other political opponents. Yes, the accused sender of his week’s letter bombs sent to some of these figures over the last week is a Trump supporter. But it’s time for the Trump critics to start recognizing how their own over-the-top and often even harsher language has played a role in generating acts like the attempted mass shooting of Republican members of Congress in the Washington, D.C. area in June, 2017.)

But before anyone starts viewing the Pittsburgh shooting as a reason for fully embracing an Open Borders agenda for the Western Hemisphere, and for refugees from the Middle East, and making even louder calls demonize Mr. Trump as a Hitler-in-waiting, or white supremacist apologist, or dog-whistler to racists and fascists, and/or to impeach him for this supposed record, they should consider this newspaper paragraph:

“Stunned congregants rallied in prayer to a bullet-pocked, swastika-smeared synagogue today as police pursued a hate-crime motive in the [Pittsburgh-area] shooting rampage that left five people dead.”

No, this isn’t an early report of yesterday’s murders. It’s the lead from a newspaper account of a spree of anti-semitic (and racist and xenophobic) killings and vandalism in the Pittsburgh suburbs in April, 2000. That’s a decade-and-a-half before President Trump’s inauguration, and almost as long before he announced his White House run. To refresh your memory, the chief executive then was Bill Clinton. And the list of presidential primary candidates for Democrats and Republicans alike wasn’t exactly dominated by extremists, and those considered outside the mainstream of either party (like Patrick J. Buchanan) didn’t get very far. Yet according to FBI data, that year was actually tied for the highest number of annual anti-semitic hate crimes for the 1996-2016 period. (The Bureau’s 2017 data will probably be coming out a bit later this year.)

In other words, anti-semitism in the United States is nothing new, violent anti-semitism in the United States is nothing new (remember the attack at the Overland Park, Kansas Jewish Community Center of 2014 – also well before the Age of Trump – although none of the white supremacist’s victims was Jewish), and even violent anti-semitism in the Pittsburgh area is nothing new.

It’s completely appropriate to voice outrage at the killer and the mail-bomb sender, about anti-semitism, and about bigotry and unreasoning hatred, about politically motivated violence of all kinds (nothing new in American history, either – as presidential assassinations alone should make all too clear), and about incendiary speech from all manner of U.S. leaders. But those insisting that the nation would be free of such problems if only Mr. Trump had never run for president may have some unreasoning hatred issues of their own.