Any chance of more clips of Cenk on MSNBC, please? I only see a few short ones getting uploaded after he's done whole shows, even whole weeks.
Here's the transcript...
Now joining me is Mark Potok, one of America`s foremost experts on hate crimes. He`s the intelligence project director for the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Mark, let`s look at what happened today with the cabbie or I should say yesterday getting stabbed. Do you think that`s just, oh, random coincidence that a Muslim cabbie happened to get stabbed yesterday or is this related to all the demagoguery about the so-called mosque near Ground Zero?
MARK POTOK, SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER: Well, I think it`s about as clear as it could be that this comes right out of the really rancid debate around the whole Ground Zero Islamic Center.
I mean, you named some of the villains. No doubt about it, Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin and so on, but we also have major outfits like the National Republican Trust Political Action Committee claiming that the Islamic center will be a celebration of the murder of 3,000 people.
You know that, kind of language is not only grotesquely false, but it is obviously demonizing and that kind of demonization, as you`ve suggested is precisely what`s leading to what seems to be a real spike in anti-Muslim hate crimes.
UYGUR: Mark, that leads to the obvious next question of what can we do about it because, I mean, you see it. The baby killer, what are you going to do about it they`re asking their audience and all of a sudden, somebody kills Dr. Tiller.
You know, you see it with the liberal churches. You just saw the whole list. Now they`re doing it with Muslims, but they have First Amendment rights so what can you do about it?
POTOK: Well, one hopes that one can shame some of these political leaders into saying something a little more responsible. You know, you`re speaking about the Republican Party. It`s probably worth remembering that one of the very decent things that President Bush did was immediately after, actually nine days after 9/11, he gave a very important speech in which he talked about Muslims were not our enemies, Arabs were not our enemies. A very specific network of terrorists was our enemy.
And I think that Bush actually had the effect of tamping down what could have been an absolutely amazing backlash against Muslims and perceive Muslims. It`s worth remembering immediately after 9/11, there was a 1700 percent rise in anti-Muslim hate crimes.
But by the beginning of the next year, 2002, that had dropped by more than two-thirds. So I think that when political leaders like bush speak out responsibly, it works. It`s helpful.
UYGUR: And you have to give credit to Bush on that, there`s no question about that. What didn`t help is him randomly attacking another Muslim country that didn`t have anything to do with 9/11. That didn`t really help the situation.
POTOK: Of course.
UYGUR: It seems the Republicans have gone the more radical since Bush. But one final question for you what`s happened since Obama took office? Has there been a rise in hate crimes, et cetera?
POTOK: Well, there has definitely been a rise in threats towards the president, in domestic terrorism aimed at the president and at hate speech essentially revolving around the idea that we have a black man and his black family in the White House.
So that`s undeniable. I mean, we`ve seen skin head assassination plots, a guy who wanted to set off a dirty bomb at the inauguration and a whole long list. Many of the cases you mentioned like the man hop murdered three officers in Pittsburgh were also influenced by this anti-Obama atmosphere.
And the idea that whites are losing their majority in this country. So this seems to be we`re seeing right now kind of another spasm of the same kind of hate directed against people who do not look like the white majority.
UYGUR: All right. Thank you, Mark. We appreciate you coming in.
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