President Trump is stoking white nationalism, exploiting racist fear

  In the days since he was implicated as a co-conspirator in a federal crime, the president – with the help of his allies in the right-wing press – has fallen back on his most basic political strategy: stoking racial resentment and fear.

  He has not only shamelessly exploited a horrible tragedy in Iowa but tweeted out his intention to put the full force of the U.S. State Department behind a white nationalist conspiracy theory.

Charles C. Haynes: After Charleston

  The brutal murder of nine people at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina on June 17 was an act of “racial terrorism” – to quote NAACP President Cornell Williams Brooks.

  It was also a chilling assault on fundamental freedoms guaranteed every American under the First Amendment – the freedom to worship, the freedom to speak out for justice, and the freedom to assemble and organize for change.

  What happened in Charleston must not be reduced to a story about a mentally disturbed “lone wolf” – as often happens when a young white man commits mass murder.

Richard Cohen: Charleston shooter’s manifesto reveals hate group helped to radicalize him

  This weekend we found out more about how the suspected Charleston church shooter, 21-year-old Dylann Storm Roof, became a violent racist extremist at such a young age.

  On his website, Roof left a 2,000-word manifesto in which he identifies himself as a white nationalist and says he was “truly awakened” to his beliefs after reading the online propaganda of the Council of Conservative Citizens, a notorious, racist hate group.