Conference Education Fund says hate crimes in the United States are likely to spike ahead of the 2024 election.
The report said: ‘From the mainstreaming of hate and the failure of social media platforms to adequately address disinformation, the current climate is rife with opportunities for the trend of increased hate to continue into the 2024 election — unless action is taken.
The data, which draws on findings from 230 national human rights organisations, suggests that from 2008, when Barack Obama, the first Black American president in US history, took office, hate crimes have been on the rise.
The report continues: ‘Research has shown that the 2008 election cycle served as a ‘‘rebirth’’ of the anti-government militia movement from the 1990s.
‘The final weeks of the 2008 election saw an increase in hate crimes targeting racial and ethnic minorities as the United States elected its first black president.’
The report says hate crimes have nearly doubled since 2015. It says a staggering spike came during and after Donald Trump’s election campaign and it has not returned to the levels before the Trump period.
The civil rights group suggests that black people and Muslims are the main targets of hate crimes.
The Muslim population of the United States has increasingly been the target of Islamophobia and hate crimes in the years following the September 11, 2001 attacks, which unleashed a new era of racism and discrimination against Muslims.
Steven Freeman, vice president of civil rights at the Anti-Defamation League, said: ‘I think that’s a responsibility for anybody in a leadership role, anybody who’s running for president or office or anybody who’s currently in government, to use their pulpit to speak out against hate.’
Anti-hate groups have urged the US government to make sure that tech giants like Meta, YouTube and Twitter increase transparency and ‘invest in de-platforming hate for the upcoming local, state, and national elections’ to address hate incidents.
Michael Lieberman, senior policy counsel at the Southern Poverty Law Centre, a contributing partner to the report, said that one of the purposes of the report is ‘to signal an early warning about what we can see and what we can predict’.
Lieberman said: ‘Knowing how the election cycles have brought out hate and normalised hate in the past, and what that had meant in terms of actual violence being directed against people on the basis of personal characteristics, we need to make sure that we are doing everything we can as a government, as community-based organisations, to make sure that we are prepared for the 2024 election cycle.
Meanwhile, US federal prosecutors have alleged that 21-year-old Jack Teixeira, who was charged with leaking top American military secrets, owns ‘multiple guns, including a high-capacity AK-style weapon’.
Teixeira, who is an IT specialist with the US Air National Guard, appeared in federal court on Thursday, where federal prosecutors argued he should remain in custody because he poses ‘a danger to the community and an ongoing risk’ to America’s national security and should remain in jail until his trial.
He appeared in US District Court in Worcester, Massachusetts for his detention hearing according to the media in the US. The hearing lasted more than an hour.
US Magistrate David Hennessy said: ‘Some of the information he is accused of taking he actually copied. If I write something, I’m going to remember it reasonably well.’
Hennessy, however, declined to rule on whether Teixeira should be released into the custody of his father pending his criminal trial.
Hennessy ordered the court into recess after listening to arguments for and against Teixeira’s continued detention in federal custody.
The US Justice Department has said that Teixeira might still have access to classified documents and that what it called ‘hostile’ nations could help him escape if he is released from prison.
Teixeira was arrested by the FBI on April 13th at his home in Massachusetts and charged with violating the Espionage Act.
He was charged with two counts that carry maximum prison sentences of 10 years and five years.
Prosecutors said Teixeira leaked classified documents, including some relating to troop movements in the Russia-Ukraine war, to a group of gamers on the messaging app Discord.
The documents posted online unveiled the Pentagon’s concern over Ukraine’s military capacity against invading Russian forces, and showed the US had apparently spied on allies Israel and South Korea.
Prosecutors said the 21-year-old had destroyed evidence in the case and they also pointed to his history of making violent threats online, saying he should be detained pending trial because he is a flight risk and poses a threat.
In a filing late on Wednesday, prosecutors said Teixeira, who lived with his mother and stepfather, kept a gun locker two feet from his bed, which contained handguns, bolt-action rifles and a military-style rifle with a high-capacity magazine.
According to a motion filed by the office of US Attorney Rachael Rollins: ‘The defendant undoubtedly poses a danger to the US at large based on his ability to cause exceptionally grave danger to the US national security.
‘However, there is also evidence to suggest that the defendant may also pose a physical danger to the community.’
In a post on Wednesday, Simon Ateba, chief White House correspondent for Today News Africa in Washington, denounced the arrest and trial of Teixeira.
He said: ‘Imagine a world where we all claim we want the truth.
‘Then Julian Assange leaks the truth, and we jail him for many years. Jack Teixeira leaks the truth, and we arrest him, try him and say that truth was classified.
‘Many people claim to be seeking the truth, but in reality, all they do is to become tools for the propaganda.
‘They come to Washington vowing to drain the swamps but they get so comfortable that they just become part of it.
‘Now, they are flying with the President on Air Force One, they are live on Sundays shows, they wear nice suits, eat at cool restaurants, go to the gym, do yoga and meet beautiful people at happy hours as they drink champagne. How can they abandon that new lifestyle?
‘Speaking the truth now means they will embarrass their new friends who will ban them from their circle. And so they conform.’
- The global trend of substituting the US dollar with local currencies in trade transactions is speeding up as more countries are ditching the greenback.
On Wednesday, Argentina said it will pay for Chinese imports in yuan instead of dollars to preserve its international reserves.
In a meeting in Buenos Aires with China’s ambassador Zou Xiaoli, Economy Minister Sergio Massa said Argentina will be able to ‘programme a volume of imports in yuan worth (the equivalent of) more than $1 billion from next month’.
Massa said the South American country will programme a volume of imports in yuan worth more than one billion dollars from next month, which will replace the use of dollars.
He added that the decision to pay in yuan ‘improves the perspective of Argentina’s net reserves’.
The trend is known as de-dollarisation.