The blood that’s shed when intolerance is perpetuated

Sunday, June 19, 2016 | 2 a.m.

An assault rifle is a horrible weapon capable of killing many innocent people in a matter of seconds.

And yet, before the rifle is picked up or a suicide vest is strapped on, a more horrible mechanism exists in our global culture: the radicalizing rhetoric that extremists use to provide unstable people with a focus and a target and a sick self-justification to do harm.

Sometimes, these extremists are our neighbors.

In the past two years, we’ve seen people take up arms to act out the radicalizing voices in their heads. We’ve seen murders in a black church a gunman who listened to bigoted rhetoric; communities and military bases and concert halls attacked by people listening to Islamic extremists; Latinos beaten on the streets by people listening to a presidential candidate’s hateful commentary; Planned Parenthood attacked by people listening to violent anti-abortionists. Federal law-enforcement officers have faced gunmen inspired by the radical speech of freeloading ranchers. A pizza shop and a Wal-Mart became killing grounds because of far-right conspiracies, and now, in the largest attack of its kind, the LGBTQ community has been targeted after months of rhetoric about the right to bathrooms and marriage and … you get the picture.

The unifying thread in the carnage is that abhorrent actions were taken by unstable people inspired by figures who refuse to restrain their bombast and refuse to take responsibility for it. An unbalanced person might be seduced by terrorists, but it is within our own country that he may be emboldened by the irresponsible remarks of a politician spewing thoughtless rhetoric, or the ready availability of the assault weapons adored by the National Rifle Association.

It will take some time to know for certain what led to the massacre in Orlando, but this much we can assume: It is the moment when anti-gay extremism joined with Islamic extremism to find a common target.

Of course, radical Muslims call directly for attacks on civilian populations. But it would be a grave error to think that Dylann Roof and Robert Dear were not acting on only slightly more veiled influences when they attacked, respectively, an African-American church and a Planned Parenthood clinic.

And now come the killings at Pulse after months of increasingly heated anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, especially in the South, where the violence erupted. Leaders who conjured accusations about transgender people molesting children in bathrooms to justify their bathroom bills, or who declared same-sex marriage to be a “crime against nature,” helped to create the noise in the head of someone broken enough to head to Pulse with guns in hand.

This was a hate crime against the LGBTQ community — no mistake about it. And American leaders should hang their heads in shame for perpetuating an environment rife with accusations and innuendo that dehumanizes those with whom they disagree.

In this political season, there has been much talk about “dog whistles,” where a subtle turn of phrase communicates a message to fringe groups. Too often they aren’t whistles at all, they’re megaphones. It’s one thing when it’s the likes of ISIS or David Duke or Nevada’s Bundy clan issuing calls to arms; we expect as much. They want people to do their shooting for them. But the overheated talk from partisan media or mainstream politicians that has become normalized is what’s even more frightening.

The way we frame debates in apocalyptic terms almost ensures there will be a nonstop wave of terrorist acts and hate crimes for years to come. We have politicians accusing those they disagree with of sedition, of criminal behavior, of being “the other” who must be stopped at all costs. And there will always be twisted people ready to follow them.