After Charleston, the time has come for Republicans to denounce hate peddlers or be stained by them

We know why he did it. Exactly why. The terrorist Dylann Roof hated and feared African Americans, and that's why he murdered nine people in Charleston, South Carolina. He wanted to "start a civil war" for "the sake of the white race." Let's dispense with the banalities of Nikki Haley, who offered "we’ll never understand what motivates" such actions. How dare a governor of South Carolina make such an ignorant statement? And for God's sake (pun intended), Fox News and Republican elected officials need to stop—right now—pretending that these murders were about persecuting Christians. The time has come for some honest reckoning about why this evil, white supremacist terrorist did what he did, about who, other than Dylann Roof himself, bears responsibility, and about what those people will do going forward.Among those who bear the most direct responsibility for Dylann Roof's fear and hatred of black Americans are the people who preached exactly those ideas. And yes, of course, anyone who gins up fear and hatred of another group deserves condemnation. But our country needs to deal most urgently with the one specific form of hate that—by far—has long posed the greatest threat, namely the kind exemplified by Dylann Roof.

One could fill a book with example after example of media figures trying to get whites worked up about the black boogeyman. And yes, this has gotten even worse with the election of President Obama. On June 4, 2009, Rush Limbaugh told millions of white Americans that:
The days of [minorities] not having any power are over, and they are angry. And they want to use their power as a means of retribution. That's what Obama's about, gang. He's angry; he's going to cut this country down to size. He's going to make it pay for all the multicultural mistakes that it has made -- its mistreatment of minorities. I know exactly what's going on here.

I stand by what I've previously written about this statement: Limbaugh walks right up to the line of fomenting race war. He all but calls for white people to meet at the town square with their guns and attack before they are attacked themselves.

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