Trump’s “Ban Muslims” Proposal Is Not Far Outside the U.S. Mainstream | Hacker News Reader

Trump’s “Ban Muslims” Proposal Is Not Far Outside the U.S. Mainstream

theintercept.com

43 pointsshadowmoses26 comments

The President has the authority to suspend entry of any class of aliens for any length of time, for any reason. [1] Jimmy Carter did exactly that in 1980, disallowing Iranians entry into the country, and for similar reasons. [2] That's only the most recent historical example.

[1] 8 USC § 1182(f); see https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1182

[2] http://www.frontpagemag.com/point/261062/carter-banned-irani... ; see also http://www.snopes.com/jimmy-carter-banned-iranian-immigrants...

Thankfully congress has the power to change that with a normal majority.

Certainly, they can change any laws they like, subject to the normal legislative process, including a Presidential veto.

Of course, they could try to ram that through before Obama leaves office, to avoid such a veto. However, I can think of few better ways for Congress to ensure a Trump victory.

Ok, so there's two things one can read from this: 1) It's okay to prevent (alien) muslims (henceforth A) from entering the country because it was okay to prevent Iranians from entering (B). 2) It's legal for the president to do A because it was legal to do B.

Proposition 1 is obviously false: whether or not it was okay to prevent one group (based, in B, on nationality) from entering simply has, in the general case, no bearing on whether or not it is okay to prevent an entirely different group (based, in A, on religion). Even if the two groups were closely related, it wouldn't mean much, but this is out of scope since they aren't closely related. On a sidenote, Carter allowed for entry for "compelling and proven humanitarian reasons".

Proposition 2 I cannot judge since IANAL -- and I'd hope the president can't just make up completely arbitrary rules --, but if true, makes the whole debate even more ominous: it's not just an empty threat.

The two propositions are, again obviously, unrelated; the set of legal actions is much larger than the set of sensible actions, for everyone of us but particularly a person with power.

> [The media] simply do not see that as their role. For most of them, a posture of “neutrality” and “opinion-free” blankness are the highest values.

> ... that’s all one can expect from large sectors of the U.S. media: cowardly neutrality, feigned analytical objectivity ...

> Shortly before this article was published this morning, Cuomo re-appeared on Twitter and apparently had a change of heart from last night’s proclamation. ... Sometimes, social media shaming works.

Am I the only one really bothered by what the author of this article thinks news should be? As an instrument to shut down political ideas you don't like? I find it ironic that he criticizes the idea of limiting freedom of speech to fight terrorism, but then thinks we should turn around and silence bigots.

I think journalists have opinions - and sharing those opinions is a big part of 'news' - whether you like it or not, that's constantly done, either through direct words, or through more subtle means. That's why you have 'conservative' and 'liberal' entities of the news.

Moreover, the media also decides what's important - think about how they've covered Trump vs. Sanders - Trump is selling ratings, they are promoting his message in a way that's unequal to other candidates, and then saying 'oh, we're being neutral.'

I agree with you that Trump gets a ridiculously disproportionate amount of news -- not a surprise, considering how much money covering him makes -- but that's not how I interpreted the article's complaints. It read to me like the author was upset that the media weren't actively denouncing him, like they had some moral obligation to. If I've misinterpreted that then that's my error.

Yeah, don't know. Agree w/ you that journalists/ reporters do not need to have moral obligations, though [unless they make moral statements, and are not electing to do so in certain cases] - but even that's a slightly different issue.

As much as I love Greenwald, he can be really facetious. Trump said that immigrant Muslims should not be admitted, not citizens. Some hacks reporting a late-night e-mail that was put straight few hours later notwithstanding. The article notes that at the very end, but why not link it from where the allegation is made?

And, ladies and gentlemen, we bomb Muslims, day and night, and have been doing so non-stop since the beginning of this century. Let's keep things in perspective: temporary immigration ban vs. forever war. Cannot agree more with the Teju Cole quote toward the end.

Its naive to believe that President Trump's _temporary_ ban on Muslim immigration will be the end of the story. It will just be the start of a nightmare. It took about 10 years for the gas chambers to fire up after Hitler came to power.

I just watched Schindler's List again recently. I kept thinking, "how could this happen?"

You're comparing a religion and political ideology where large parts of its 1600 000 000 followers think it's okay to kill apostates... with Jewish and Roma targeted for genocide because of eugenics?

You do realize Islam isn't a race. Ex-Muslims aren't dead nor acquired whiter skin tone.

Trumps is an idiot, that goes without saying. But people like sure do help him the best you can.

> You're comparing a religion and political ideology where large parts of its 1600 000 000 followers think it's okay to kill apostate

People in civilized societies are judged based on their actions, not their beliefs.

If President Trumps ends up gassing 3-6 million Muslims in the United States, it wouldn't be any less worse than Hitler gassing 6 million Jews.

Sorry, but Trump is not the president

There will be someone left to speak for me, because every time I see this kind of bigotry I will speak up for my fellow humans.

Pre-judging someone based on a trait they have/belief they share is not acceptable.

You won't prejudge the national socialist beliefs I presume?

In any case, I thought the final paragraph was the most important: "So by all means: unleash the contempt and the righteous indignation for Trump. It’s well-deserved. But that should not obscure everything that led to this moment, nor exonerate those who for years have been spewing unadorned anti-Muslim animus from multiple corners and under various banners. They’re more subtle and diplomatic (and thus more insidious) than Trump, but they’re reading from the same script."

"Given that an ISIS attack in Paris just helped fuel the sweeping election victory of an actually fascist party in France". What is this low level journalism doing on HN ? 1. The "Front National" is an extremely conservative party with racist undertones but certainly not fascist. The Republican Party seems far more conservative on certain subjects. However the "Front National" does have quite a statist vision of the economy. 2. It is far from having won a "sweeping victory". It may win, worst case scenario, 4 regions out of 13 next Sunday, which is unprecedented but not a sweeping victory.

"Fascist" means "right-wingers I don't like" similar to how "socialist" means "left-wingers I don't like."

Unless you're in Europe, here "socialist" mostly means government.

So the sentence should be the unprecedented electoral success of an extreme right wing party in France? That's not a big stretch. And his point, for what it's worth, stands.

That same party has had their candidate make the run-off rounds in the presidential election. (Chirac v Le Pen, 2002)

> So the sentence should be the unprecedented electoral success of an extreme right wing party in France?

Its not even clear that the particular results are tied to the attack. While the connection seems attractive to draw, it leaves out consideration of the fact that, while the result was unprecedented for this particular kind of election, FN won a unprecedent success in a different set of French elections last year -- being the leading party in France in the European Parliament elections (following a series of successes in France municipal elections earlier in the year) and securing more than a third of France's seats; it seems a lot more like the FN is just having a surge of popularity that predates the attacks by a least a year, and that that was the source of the results earlier this month, rather than the attacks led to the results this month.

Agreed. The quality of journalism at The Intercept is really pretty disappointing and often (as here) smacks of ax grinding. Most importantly, the article gives extraordinarily thin support for the claim in the headline, apart from bald assertions and a handful of similar ideas from other people.

In addition, I'm no Trump fan, but I'll also add that this is very misleading, and only true in the most useless sense:

The Intercept:

> His spokesperson later clarified that this exclusion even includes Muslim-American citizens who are currently outside the U.S.

The Source that the Intercept itself links to to support this claim:

> Asked by The Hill whether that would include American Muslims currently abroad, Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks replied over email: “Mr. Trump says, ‘everyone.’ ”

> During a Tuesday morning interview with ABC's "Good Morning America," however, Trump clarified that American Muslims would still be able to travel freely under his plan.

> "If a person is a Muslim and goes overseas and come back, they can come back. They are a citizen, that is different," Trump said.

Also more importantly, the FN is eurosceptic, or more precisely keen on France sovereignty.

Since the crisis, Euro skepticism sentiment is quite strong in Western Europe. The handling of the Cyprus, Greece, ... has split in people mind Europe, the region and Europe, the political construct. So even people very pro Europe as an identity are against Europe as currently implemented ( that is quite striking in my circle of all expats friends ). Parties like the FN are boosted by the traditional extreme-right voters, the traditional eurosceptics now joined by those Euro disappointed.

ISIS and the refugees is yet another botched handling by Europe (regardless if you want to help or want to keep them away, the handling is a disaster). The anger of the attack followed almost immediately by an election has probably tilted the balance for a lot of people.

'What is this low level journalism doing on HN?' is a bizarre way to phrase a question that's really saying 'I disagree with the assertion/characterization' - which is one that is made routinely, over the course of many years, both through news outlets and in various forums of more substantive debate.

Some examples of using the 'fascist' label: From The Financial Times, quoting Sarkozy: “Are 6.5m French people fascists?” [http://blogs.ft.com/the-world/2012/04/is-the-front-national-... ]; In 2014,German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble on Tuesday branded the French National Front party fascist: [http://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-elections-fascism-idUSK... ]; French court ruling they can be called 'fascist': [http://www.english.rfi.fr/france/20140410-front-nationals-le... ]; 'Donald Trump is Now America's Marine Le Pen':[http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/could-donald-trum... ]

The internet tells me there are about 1 million other references one could use to, in fact, make the claim this is not low-level journalism.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com