BuzzFeed News links Trump supporters to Taliban
August 23, 2021
BuzzFeed News claims that former President Donald Trump supporters and other “far-right extremists” “are drawing inspiration from the Taliban’s victory in Afghanistan” in a new article. Such a claim directly contradicts the Right’s hard-line stance against the Taliban and what Trump called “radical Islamic terrorism.”
“[I]n darker corners of the internet, far-right extremists, including Donald Trump supporters, white nationalists, and neo-Nazi terror groups, which often push Islamophobic messages, celebrated the fact that an underequipped insurgent group could defeat a great power — and one commanded by a Democratic president,” the article says. “Now experts are warning that the scenes of the past week and the failed US-led 20-year war in the country will likely be used by such extremists as recruitment tools to push misinformation, grow their ranks, and fuel organizing.”
Such organizing, according to one of the story’s sources, is likelier because the evacuation of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul resembles the fall of Saigon in 1975. Since that “fuel[ed] decades, if not generations, of organizing,” so will the Taliban’s takeover, the logic goes.
The organizers will be “Ghost Skins,” “past and present military and law enforcement members who don’t openly display their white nationalist beliefs but are part of the complex makeup of extremist groups,” the article says.
Republicans have a long track record of taking a hard stance against the Taliban and radical Islamic terrorism in word and deed. Progressives don’t.
Former President Barack Obama refused to use the term “radical Islamic terrorism” or refer to such terrorists. Trump was fond of the term on the campaign trail, at his inauguration and throughout his presidency.
In 2014, Obama released five Taliban commanders from Guantanamo Bay to free Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. According to the New York Post, one of those commanders was the “mastermind” behind the Taliban’s takeover.
Obama ended the American combat mission in Afghanistan in late 2014. As a result, al Qaeda restrengthened, leading to a record number of civilian deaths in Afghanistan in 2018.
Over Obama’s eight years in office, there were at least 13 major, verifiable radical Islamic terror attacks on U.S. soil.
Trump enacted a travel ban impacting various mostly Muslim countries that restricted their citizens’ legal ability to travel to the United States. He defeated ISIS, “deliver[ing] a tremendous victory,” wrote David French in late 2017.
Former President George W. Bush – a Republican – started the War on Terror after 9/11 in 2001. While the Right maintain a healthy focus on terrorism, the Left would rather ignore the Taliban and other terror threats to demonize their fellow citizens.