More and more often, the White House’s narrative when faced with public scrutiny — a clearly protected form of free speech — has taken on the tone of a middle school mean girl with a vindictive imagination. If our nation is to survive with any scraps of a true democracy still intact, we must learn to see through the propaganda and flat-out lies being pushed into the public airwaves by the president’s team. Then we must push back against those who refuse to do so.
No longer can we afford to blindly believe what stories the government spins around journalists’ arrests and the bombing of alleged drug boats in the Atlantic. Patriotism is not blind acceptance but healthy skepticism and robust reporting by critical thinkers, who present unbiased facts to an equally skeptic public. The growing vilification of reporters by the current president and his Department of Homeland Security puts the future of our own independent, democratic nation at great risk.
Journalists on the job are being gassed, shot with rubber bullets, and detained by ICE. Recently, foreign journalists working in the U.S. have found their visas revoked for simply speaking out against Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.
The latest arrest, of British journalist Sami Hamdi, took place at the prompting of ultra-right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, a self-proclaimed “white advocate,” as reported by London-based newspaper The Guardian.
Hamdi was taken into custody over the weekend for allegedly “supporting terrorism and undermin[ing] American national security,” according to the Department of Homeland Security. How, exactly, the personal opinion of a single British reporter against a foreign government puts American citizens at risk is a mystery that only Loomer’s followers can explain.
One shudders to think how easily that phrase — “national security” — has been used by the president and DHS to justify public witch hunts. In years past, one might read a government press release and garner from it some idea of observable fact. However, this was the hallmark of a functional government. We are no longer operating under such idyllic circumstances.
For instance, following a highly-critical report in The New York Times detailing confirmed accounts of citizens being detained by ICE unlawfully, DHS posted a press release decrying the paper’s “false and misleading” report.
“We have said it a million times: ICE does NOT arrest or deport U.S. citizens,” said Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin. “One week after the terrorist attack targeting ICE in Dallas, the media is once again shamefully peddling a false narrative …”
Yet the truth cannot so easily be wiped away in the era of cell phone cameras and citizen journalists. As dozens of videos, media reports, and personal interviews can attest, at least 170 American citizens have been detained by ICE at raids or protests, as reported by nonprofit news agency ProPublica. Further, at least 20 of those citizens held and later interviewed said they had not been given access to a lawyer or a phone call to loved ones for more than a day, a clear violation of their rights.
Those who believe claims to the contrary from DHS are living in a startlingly different timeline than those of us who understand the importance of peeking behind the wizard’s curtain. No longer can we afford to roll our eyes at their misinformation and blind allegiance. The battle for America’s soul has become an info war, and we are already losing as journalists’ voices are stifled.
Without those voices, vulnerable Americans will continue to go unnoticed and unprotected.
Take, for example, PBS’s coverage of Andreina Mejia and her 15 year-old son, who has disabilities. It is only a snippet of reality for many Hispanic Americans, yet it highlights the growing callousness of ICE despite their claims otherwise.
Mejia’s family recently filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration claiming racial profiling, false arrest, and assault after ICE agents aggressively surrounded her parked car this summer, with guns drawn, and pulled both her and her disabled son from the vehicle before even asking for identity, she told PBS.
“All I remember me telling my son is like: ‘Don’t make any movement. Just follow instructions,’ just because, in my mind, I’m like, OK, they’re pointing guns. If they see my son trying to reach for something, I don’t know if they’re going to shoot.”
They released the pair soon after realizing her child wasn’t their target. As her son, crying, hugged her, one agent quipped that at least he would have an exciting story to tell his friends when he went back to school, she said.
“I just looked at him. And, as a mom, it hurt me, because I was just thinking, there’s nothing exciting about getting guns pointed at you.”
It’s easy for some to laugh off the indignation of a mother and son being forced from their car at gunpoint due to mistaken identity. It’s easy, for some, to celebrate the optics of exploding an alleged drug boat in international waters, despite any real evidence against its passengers. But we cannot allow it to be easy for this administration to claim the old trope of “national security” for each of their constitutional and human rights abuses.
We cannot continue to hold our tongues when our neighbors parrot the false narratives from the White House. Just like the walls of the East Wing, so too has the government’s commitment to the truth crumbled.
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