... what is so bone-chilling about it, is that there is the ability for people to write and subscribe to such philosophies filled with hate, the white supremacists acts of terrorism that have been fermented on social media. And to know that what this one individual did has been shared with the rest of the world, as well as the livestreaming of this military-style execution that occurred... in the streets of my hometown, and that is what is so fundamentally disturbing about this, that this is not just a long time ago, members of the KKK would sit in a hall and plot what they're going to do in their community. This spreads like a virus.
She wants social media platform execs to "examine their policies and to be able to look me in the eye" and say they're doing everything possible to prevent the spread of this stuff, and that they're able to take it down immediately. (Twitch, the Amazon-owned gaming platform on which the shooting was streamed, said the video was removed in less than two minutes, but it was available on other platforms where it had been shared hours later.)
Bash asked how this hate, things like the Great Replacement Theory, which was included in the published screed, is not just spreading online, "it's being pushed by some prominent right-wing voices, and it's been done so for years," can be stopped. The gov said the folks who spread this "need to be called out," and party officials need to
stand up at this moment and call it out and just shame it and to make sure that these people crawl back into their holes and stay there. This cannot be part of our mainstream dialogue here in the United States of America. So, leaders have a responsibility to call it out.
She also talked about her responsibility to protect people when it comes to guns. The laws here are "some of the toughest" in America,
but the guns are coming in from other states, or the enhanced magazine, which is exactly what happened here, the high-capacity magazine that led to the slaughter of people in my hometown.
There are also illegal guns, purchased legally in other states and brought to NY.
... they end up in someone's trunk. They bring them up I-81. They head into New York State, head over to the Bronx, head over to Brooklyn, head over to the city, or they go to places like New York, Buffalo, Syracuse, Rochester. So, that's how it's spreading. Other states do not have the same laws that we have, and people are just crossing those borders.
Hochul's not the first to mention that problem. NYC Mayor Eric Adams mentioned the so-called Iron Pipeline in one of his recent classroom visits. It's an issue impacting cities in multiple states. Sadly, knowing these trafficking routes exist, and doing something about them, are vastly different things.
Down the hall, George Stephanopoulos led his panel in a discussion on the shooting and the hate that drove it in the This Week classroom. Sitting around the table were ABC regulars Donna Brazile and Chris Christie, along with Julie Pace (AP) and Molly Ball (Time Magazine).
Brazile noted that FBI Director Chis Wray "warned us almost two years ago" that domestic terrorism by white supremacists was a big concern, but that we're not doing much about it.
We've got to talk about white supremacy. We've got to talk about the radicalization of -- of kids in this country. We cannot do a "both-sides" argument on this one here because, if we don't begin to address what is happening, it's going to continue to happen. El Paso, what we saw in Charlottesville, what we saw down in Charleston. We have to address it. We have to be vigilant. And we have to root out this type of extremism in our society.
Christie said this wasn't on his radar when he was a US Attorney (from 2002 - 2008), but it was - "a little bit" - near the end of his second term (in 2018) as New Jersey's governor, where he said law enforcement folks
started to see more people willing to act out violently, seemingly without any type of heads-up, because they're acting alone. And that's what makes it so difficult for law enforcement. Because, even with good intelligence work, it's really hard if someone is a crazy person who is not doing things overtly, publicly. It becomes harder.
He said it'll be interesting to learn why "we didn't see some of the stuff he was writing and... posting, and why he wasn't flagged." And he said Wray pointed out the need for all levels of law enforcement to work together, "in a way that flags some of the stuff that's happening on social media and keeps a watch on some of these folks who are going to act out violently."
Pace responded to George's question about the apparent amount of planning in advance of this, pointing out that it "seemed to happen in spaces where other people were, you know, these online communities right now are really robust" and where, as Christie said, often out of sight of law enforcement. And, she added,
I think it's going to be really interesting to see where the debate goes in terms of what the responsibility of the tech companies will be here but also other people that just exist online in these communities, what is their responsibility? We all get so used to flagging things when we see them in person, but this is sort of the next space, I think, where people need to be more alert.
Ball, who's a political correspondent, talked about the conversations she has with "everyday voters" and how many bring up how "mad" and "divided" we are.
And this is something that, I think, politicians see it as sort of just cheap, political rhetoric, everybody says, oh, well let’s come together. But people are really taking this seriously, this sense of division and hatred and just all of the strife that we feel. And I think particularly, you know, coming out of COVID, reemerging, trying to come back together as a society, there's so much we need to be doing just to try to knit people together and feel like a country again, feel like a community together...
Christie seemed to suggest we probably won't hear a lot of kumbaya over the coming months, noting that "midterms are particularly divisive." The typical midterm voters are the "true believers" on both sides, which means the pols are talking to folks who aren't as likely to be looking for unity or healing the divide. Rather, we'll likely see candidates doing more hardcore progressive or hardcore conservative communication over the next few months, but said
I definitely sense from being out there and talking to voters, that as we turn the clock from '22 to '24, I think there's going to be a new desire among voters to say, I want to hear from people who have the ability and the record to be able to bring people together rather than divide us. I think there is a desire for that in the country.
Brazile mentioned one of my least favorite things about politicians - "they speak in sound bites. They don't speak in the everyday ordinary language..."
They're not speaking to open the hearts and minds of a young man, 18 years old -- what drove this child to write a 110-page manifesto where he talks about his hatred of Jews, he talks about starting a war, Jews against non-Jews, and then he starts talking about black people? I'm, like, have you met one? Have you talked to anybody unlike anything you’ve ever seen? No, I don't want politicians to control this conversation.
She thinks the conversation belongs in the hands of teachers, business leaders, and the like, and said "the media has to understand that they cannot be complicit in this conversation. "
We need to have a conversation that doesn't go about the next election. It's just like on abortion. People call me, what do you think about Democrats and abortion? I said, before I was a Democrat, I was a human being, and why not talk about that and not just the next election? No, we need more than politicians to have this conversation.
Christie's next comments have me wondering what the heck he's smoking. He said he really believes there'll be
a different desire come '24 in terms of hearing something different from people who want to pursue high office because of the violence that we're seeing, because of the division that you are talking about. People are feeling it. They're feeling it at their dinner table. They're feeling it with their own children. They're feeling it at cocktail parties, at sporting events. They don't want to see it.
Um, does 2020 ring a bell, Governor? The Big Lie? Or 2021, and the insurrection? We've got the former president still spouting the former, and we've got Republicans still denying the latter. Current Republican officeholders, and wanna-be Republican officeholders traipse off to Mar-a-Lago to kiss whatever he demands them to kiss, looking for endorsement, or at least not opposition. And, he's a threat to what Christie's suggesting. Pace seems to agree, saying
-- it's great to think about the prospect of a 2024 campaign that is focused around unity in this country, but, I think, the reality is that we will have some very powerful forces, potentially the former president who doesn't really speak that language and has enormous support from within the Republican Party. So, I think there's a long way to go before we get to that place where we might really have that national conversation that is more focused on unity.
She's spot 0n with that thinking. After all, we just had a campaign in which the winner, Joe Biden, ran on trying to unite us, and ran into the other party's fully-dug-in position of stopping his administration.
There's a long way to go, for sure. See you around campus
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