Don't Let Them Get Away with This

[Content Note: Queerphobia; racism; guns.]

I've got a new piece at BNR about conservatives who are trying to invisibilize the identities of the Pulse shooting victims, and why they are doing this ugly thing:

There's a particular cruelty in refusing to acknowledge this, while simultaneously asserting that it was "an attack on our people" — when the Republican Party has been busy pushing anti-LGBT legislation in such forms as: "religious freedom" bills, which confer the right to discriminate against LGBT people; and "bathroom bills," which confer the right to discriminate against trans people in a way that puts their safety at risk; and anti-immigrant legislation, using rhetoric that demonizes Latinx people.

The Republican Party's legislative approach to the LGBT and Latinx communities has specifically used an othering "Us v. Them" frame. So when [Florida Governor Rick Scott] uses phrases like "our people" and "all of us" — while refusing to acknowledge the identities of the people who were targeted because of those identities — he's playing a very contemptible game.

It's a deeply cynical ploy, and one which serves dual purposes.

First, it's a way of upholding his party's favored narrative that this attack was strictly attributable to extremist Islam, which in turn justifies their Islamophobia – and attempts to make their party's nominee for president, Donald Trump, and his "Muslim ban" look somehow reasonable.

Second, it's a way of distancing themselves from the particular hatred and bigotry their policies embody and promote.

Click through to read the whole thing.

Relatedly: Hillary Clinton gave an address earlier today in which she explicitly called the mass shooting at Pulse a hate crime.

Yet another reason that saying there's no difference between the two parties, or that "Hillary is basically a Republican," is some hot garbage.