Ilhan Omar speaking at worker protest against Amazon by Fibonacci Blue, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0/Original

The freshman class of the new Democrat-controlled Congress has had a tough go of things for their party. As they purportedly made history getting elected, and have repeatedly made news following, they have also made things tough for party leadership. At a time when the Democrats expected to be dominating the narrative and promoting agenda items they have also spent copious amounts of time cleaning up behind the rambunctious newcomers.

Ilhan Omar in particular seems intent on being as controversial and unapologetic as possible, and the recent resolution called on by party leaders to deal with her controversies did more harm than help. The House Dems rewrote their resolution to address Omar’s anti-Semitism so much that they completely neutered the document, diluting the message to a point that it meant nothing and ultimately they could not even name the problematic politician in its final version. It was a laughable farce.

As a result Omar has felt emboldened. By avoiding even so much as a slap on the wrist she has been just as outspoken and intemperate as she had been prior to her supposed disciplinary resolution. Omar recently sent a response to MSNBC producer Kyle Griffin on Twitter as he reported on a proposed hearing the House Judiciary Committee wants to call to address hate crimes. (The mirth of the House addressing hate-crime after giving Omar such a blatant Pass is almost too much to continue.)

It’s overdue! Far-right extremists were linked to every extremist murder in the U.S. last year, including the Tree of Life and Parkland shootings.
 
They are not operating in a vacuum. This is a crisis and it deserves national attention. https://t.co/i2buqaYGpA

— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) March 18, 2019

I may need to apologize, but my ears tend to curl forward with any mention of the Parkland shooting, and to see this firebrand attempt to politicize that tragedy is too much to let go by. In a follow up tweet to this hyperbolic divisiveness the Congresswoman who traffics in defaming Jews on the regular offers up a link to a piece from the Anti Defamation League, and upon reading you are posed with a real quandary: Did Omar even read the piece and (the bigger mystery) did the ADL headline writer even read it???

What we are dealing with here is the desire by the ADL to sell a narrative, and have us take their word for it. It entails searching out the actual report to find out that their claim — and Ilhan Omar’s — is rooted in hysteria, not facts. In their own lengthy report there are deep efforts to paint every killer as a “right-wing Supremacist”, even though the ADL frequently draws a completely different conclusion.

Parkland, Florida, February 14, 2018: The school itself was not a likely white supremacist target, nor did Cruz seem to target his victims by race, religion or ethnicity. However, little evidence has so far emerged to suggest that the MSDHS shooting spree itself was conducted as a white supremacist attack. In the end, however, it is not clear to what extent Cruz’s white supremacist beliefs may have played a role in the killings. Because of this uncertainty, Cruz’s killings have been listed here as non-ideological.
— This is the lead example in the report, and one Omar felt the need to note in her tweet. Non-Ideological, but listed as proof of right-wing extremism all the same.

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, October 27, 2018:

— Robert Bowers opened fire inside a synagogue killing 11. What the report fails to note is that Bowers despised President Trump, and his violence was apparently inspired by the President’s support of Israel and Jewish citizens. This places Bowers in a camp much closer to Ilhan Omar.

Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, March 12, 2018: Corey Johnson, 17, killed a 13-year-old and severely injured two others in a stabbing spree: In the year before the attack he had
become interested in radical Islam (and had even been reported to the FBI by local law enforcement). After his arrest, Johnson reportedly told investigators he had stabbed his victims “because of his Muslim faith”.
— Is Ilhan Omar actually comfortable calling those who murder in the name of their Muslim faith “right-wing extremists”?! That could explain quite a bit.

Nashville, Tennessee, April 22, 2018: Travis Reinking opened fire inside a Waffle House, killing four: Reinking also has a serious history of mental illness and the shooting appears to have been non-ideological in nature; he has been ruled incompetent to stand trial.
— Non-Ideological, and attributed to mental illness, but still tabulated here.

Sumter, South Carolina, August 11, 2018: Demetrius Alexander Brown, a self-proclaimed Moorish sovereign citizen, was arrested for the fatal shooting of Sharmine Pack following a dispute about a vehicle sale at an auto repair shop.
— Is violence over a car sale “extremist violence”? Brown was affiliated with the Moorish Sovereign Citizens, a group that declares they are African society members with no allegiance to state and federal rules of law. In other words, they are Black Nationalists.

Robstown, Texas, July 27, 2018: Richard Starry shot and killed four relatives at a local nursing center and at his home in an apparent act of domestic violence before killing himself. According to local media, Starry had been a member of a white supremacist group while in prison.
— The ADL recognizes this as a domestic violence situation, but since he was a member of the group they chalk that up statistically

Abingdon, Virginia, May 4, 2018: Roger Melvin Tackett was charged with first degree murder and other crimes after fatally shooting an acquaintance following a dispute.
— Okay, so how was this “right-wing extremism” exactly?
According to police, Tackett has multiple white supremacist tattoos.
— Ah, there it is. So we are not actually tabulating incidents any longer, just any tangential evidence will do

Dothan, Alabama, June 4, 2018: James Mathis, a member of the Georgia-based white supremacist prison gang Ghostface Gangsters, and his wife, Amanda Oakes, allegedly killed their six-month-old son and put his body in a freezer in a hotel room.
— I do not even know how this manages to qualify.

Athens, Georgia, May 11, 2018: Following a family argument, Malachi Qaadir Dorns, 19, stabbed his mother and older brother multiple times, wounding his mother and killing his brother. In an earlier arrest, Dornss told police that he was a sovereign citizen.
— Domestic violence…again, but he tried to dodge responsibility via nationalism, we guess???

Locust Grove, Georgia, February 19, 2018: Tierre Guthrie, a Moorish sovereign citizen, shot and killed a Locust Grove police officer when the officer and two Henry County sheriff’s deputies tried to take Guthrie into custody for a failure to appear warrant. Both deputies were wounded but survived. Guthrie, who was himself shot four times in the firefight, died at the scene.
— Another Black Nationalist we will pretend is white right-wing extremism

This is what it takes in our modern era to “prove” the hatred of those we disagree with politically. Evidence need not actually display the claim, the claim is enough — and thus hatred is proven. It is up to us to actually dig through the claims and verify if the stated charges are actually accurate or not, and even by then when shown to be wildly inaccurate the impression has been entrenched and the animosity taken root.

My question for Rep. Omar is a simple one: As a leader in DC, will you ever make efforts to lead and unify, or is your entire existence predicated on sowing division and creating tensions between groups?

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