WASHINGTON—Returning to the anti-Muslim bigotry that was a hallmark of his campaign, U.S. President Donald Trump once again endorsed a fictional U.S. massacre of Muslim terrorists, with bullets dipped in pigs’ blood, as an example of how to deter terrorism.It would be extraordinary even if the story were true: the president of the United States advocating extrajudicial killing, involving explicit religious animus, as an anti-terror tactic.But the story is fake. The president was asking the world to “study” an online hoax.“Study what General Pershing of the United States did to terrorists when caught,” Trump wrote on Twitter on Thursday afternoon. “There was no more Radical Islamic Terror for 35 years!”Trump did not elaborate, this time, on what the late U.S. general John Pershing supposedly did. But he told a detailed (and false) story about Pershing’s actions at a campaign rally during the Republicans’ South Carolina primary in February 2016.He claimed then that Pershing had executed 49 Muslim prisoners during the U.S. occupation of the Philippines in the early-1900s, adding religious insult by dipping the bullets in the bloods of pigs, which Muslims are forbidden to consume.“This was a terrible problem. They were having terrorism problems just like we do,” Trump said then. “And he caught 50 terrorists who did tremendous damage and killed many people. And he took the 50 terrorists and he took 50 men and he took 50 bullets, and he dipped them in pigs’ blood. You heard that, right? He took 50 bullets! And he dipped them in pigs’ blood.“And he had his men load his rifles, and he lined up the 50 people, and they shot 49 of those people. And the 50th person, he said, ‘You go back to your people and you tell them what happened.’ And for 25 years there wasn’t a problem, OK? Twenty-five years there wasn’t a problem.”The myth ...
|