Throughout his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, Donald Trump has deftly manipulated public sentiment through a forceful command of the US media, and he has achieved seemingly impossible results in the polls. In the process, his campaign has become the butt of jokes for his cartoonish comments about women, disabled people and immigrants. But now he has gone too far.
In a statement on Monday, Mr Trump called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” until American authorities can “figure out what is going on” after the extremist attacks last week in San Bernardino, California.
Only recently, Mr Trump publicly professed that he “loved Muslims” but seeing that his poll numbers have been falling as the race closes in on critical primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire, the businessman ramped up anti-Muslim rhetoric. In the course of his campaign, he has called for the creation of a database that would track Muslims and said that thousands of Muslims were celebrating during the attacks of September 11, 2001, citing widely discredited rumours. This elementary fear mongering has given Mr Trump surprisingly sound polling numbers.
This week’s comments are particularly dangerous for two main reasons. By inciting hatred against “all” Muslims with a prospective travel ban, the inexperienced politician is feeding directly into ISIL’s false narrative of a clash of civilisations. In other words, the billionaire television star is providing the extremists with fodder for their campaign against the West.
Secondly, America would never realise Mr Trump’s travel ban calls for a number of reasons, not least of which is the fact that banning Muslims solely on the grounds of their faith is against the US constitution. Mr Trump surely knows this and that is why his rhetoric is so dangerous. He is influencing the tone of a political narrative where outright racism and hate are allowed to seep into mainstream discourse. The more outlandish his comments become, the more acceptable outright anti-Islam hate speech will be in America.
As a candidate, Mr Trump is his own worst enemy but the potential legacy of his verbosity towards Muslims presents a slippery slope for American political discourse as a whole. It is now up to the other candidates to reject wholeheartedly Mr Trump’s hurtful words and ensure that he doesn’t plant any seeds for future political discussion in the United States.
