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National Survey Reveals “Alarming Tolerance” for Targeted Attacks Among White, Republican Men

Among the hallmarks of the incoming administration is not just a tolerance for intolerance, but a policy of  cruelty toward immigrants, hatred toward minorities, the LGBTQ+ community, and those seen as part of groups loosely referred to by MAGA adherents as “other”.

While President-Elect Donald Trump’s MAGA followers have referenced what is occurring as a culture war against “Wokeness”, the actual policies that are moving into position include a mass deportation plan for undocumented immigrants in the U.S. The unsavory plan was unveiled as a removal of the criminal element. But Trump’s folk are expanding it; voicing threats of inclusion of entire families composed of an American spouse and children born here, speaking out loud their rejection of birth-right citizenship, which happens to be enshrined in the United States Constitution.

Here in Central Colorado, bullying of minority and LGBTQ+ students in one of our local school districts has been  uncovered. A local Salida minority businessman was followed and attacked.

“This is Trump’s America,” repeatedly yelled the man who early in December, 2024 attacked a young, American-born, minority reporter in Grand Junction.

Here in Colorado, back in 2021, our lawmakers passed SB21-280 to update language on the existing law on how hate crimes are defined. But it took the death of a shop owner named Lakhwant Singh before that happened. “Go back to your country,” Eric Breeman is reported to have shouted at Singh, just before he ran him over with his car outside Singh’s Lakewood liquor store.

For years, Trump  has voiced his dislike of the media and suggested that his MAGA supporters should beat them/us up. This past November, he commented during a rally  that he wouldn’t mind if someone tried to shoot through the media riser to assassinate him. That’s not his first allusion to violence.

To his power play, add Trump’s vengeance act — he repeatedly alludes to retribution — threatening jail time for those who cross him (real or imagined), who simply disagree with him, or heavens, criticize him.

He doesn’t stop at that. He goes after news media and journalists if he doesn’t like what we say or write — or even how we edit his own comments. Proof that he said it often doesn’t matter:  he has filed multiple lawsuits against news agencies and journalists.

Bias Motivation Categories for Victims of Single-bias Incidents in 2023

The most recent FBI data available in the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program was released in September, 2024, showing bias motivated (hate) crimes continued high, but lower than the jump they had taken in a 2019 survey during Trump’s first term. As we enter 2025 and face his second term — it’s good to pay attention to these statistics.

Victims of Hate Crime Incidents for 2023:

  • 11,447 single-bias incidents involved 13,857 victims
  • There were 415 multiple-bias incidents that involved 559 victims

As reported by law enforcement agencies across the country, those agencies reported 11,862 hate crime incidents involving 13,829 offenses.

Writing for the news site The Conversation, Julie Posetti and Waqas Ejaz explained the findings of a national survey they helped commission. It’s a concerning finding: what they call an “alarming tolerance” for attacks on the press in the United States, “particularly among white, Republican men.”

From that report:

  • While 37 percent of white-identifying respondents thought it was appropriate for political leaders to target journalists and news organizations, only 27 percent of people of color did,” they wrote.
  • “There was also a nine-point difference along gender lines, with 39 percent of men approving of this conduct, compared to 30 percent of women.
  • Their conclusion: “It appears intolerance towards the press has a face — a predominantly white, male, and Republican-voting face.”

Why the Dept. of Justice Exists

Most Americans aren’t aware of why the U.S. Department of Justice even exists.

According to our government’s Hate Crimes site, “the Justice Department was founded in 1870. One reason: to protect the rights of Black Americans from the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacists who were trying to deprive them of the right to vote. Confronting hate-fueled violence is still central to its mission.”

The Hate Crimes website is a central hub for tracking hate crime resources for victims, advocacy groups, law enforcement, researchers, the media, and other interested individuals and organizations.

That all this increased political use of intolerance has had an impact is undeniable, and the evidence is growing of its impacts on Colorado — even in, or perhaps because of– counties’ status as leaning Republican or Democrat.

CBS News reported that back in 2017, New Yorker staff writer Peter Hessler, who lives in Ridgeway, Colorado attended a Grand Junction Trump rally where he reported that during one of Trump’s rants about the press, a man tried to climb over the barrier of the press pen “and security guards had to drag him away.”

That same year, the publisher of the Sentinel newspaper in Grand Junction made state and national headlines when he considered suing a local Republican state senator who had called his paper “fake news.”

CBS News also reported something that other media has not: this might weigh in regarding this latest attack on their Grand Junction reporters. The district attorney in Grand Junction has a brother in Colorado who happens to be a journalist with documented safety concerns because of his reporting.

Autocracy is the Goal

Something else is odd. There is a small, tight-knit group of white, South African men who have migrated here and amassed significant power in America in the past decade or so. Elon Musk is chief among them; and also happens to be the richest man in the world. They now surround President-elect Donald Trump.

Apartheid was a system of institutionalized racial segregation in South Africa and Namibia from 1948 to the early 1990s. Having left their apartheid country, these rich white men now appear to still weigh in as racist, white male, Christian autocrats. Their goal would appear not to be about left or right– but to ensure autocratic control.

The question becomes not just a policy question– but a human one: Where is this all going? Who and how many are going to join this bandwagon of hate?

Above all, what does this say about who we are as a people that a significant percentage of the population is willing to  not just tolerate such intolerance — but celebrate intolerance combined with authoritarianism and unlimited money?