Trump's Britain First Retweets

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Overview

Trump's Britain First Retweets refer to three retweets made by Donald Trump of tweets showing videos of Muslims allegedly participating in violent acts made by Jayda Fransen, deputy leader of Britain First, a far-right British activist group. The retweets were condemned by both the left and right as well as British politicians, and some wondered if the retweets would actively lead to violence against Muslims in America.

Background

On November 29th, 2017, Donald Trump retweeted three videos tweeted by Jayda Fransen, deputy leader of Britain First.^[1] The videos were captioned "VIDEO: Muslim migrant beats up Dutch boy on crutches!"^[2] "VIDEO: Muslim Destroys a Statue of Virgin Mary!"^[3] and "VIDEO: Islamist mob pushes teenage boy off roof and beats him to death!"^[4]

Developments

Fransen celebrated the retweets in a tweet^[5] that read:

"THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, DONALD TRUMP, HAS RETWEETED THREE OF DEPUTY LEADER JAYDA FRANSEN'S TWITTER VIDEOS! DONALD TRUMP HIMSELF HAS RETWEETED THESE VIDEOS AND HAS AROUND 44 MILLION FOLLOWERS! GOD BLESS YOU TRUMP! GOD BLESS AMERICA! OCS" (EN: "OCS" stands for "Onward Christian Soldiers")

English politicians swiftly denounced the retweets.^[6] Jeremy Corbyn stated, "I hope our Government will condemn far-right retweets by Donald Trump. They are abhorrent, dangerous and a threat to our society." Others noted that Fransen had been arrested for hate speech in Northern Ireland days prior.^[7]

Meanwhile, immediately after the retweets were posted, they received intense backlash from Twitter and media sources. Twitter user @AGlasgowGirl^[8] stated the actions of "the leader of the free world" using his power to "demonise (Muslims) to his rabid audience" felt "eerily familiar" (shown below, left). Paul Joseph Watson of Infowars, a vocal Trump supporter on Twitter, admitted that the retweets were "not great optics."^[9]

Meanwhile, conservative Dutch website Dumpert,^[10] which initially shared the video of what is alleged to be a Muslim beating up a Dutch boy on crutches, had since removed the video at the request of the police. GeenStijl, the right-leaning blog which owns Dumpert, claimed the perpetrator was not a Muslim nor a migrant, but simply a "Dutch guy."^[11] AP News^[13] clarified the context of the videos as such:

"One video from 2013 showed a radical Islamist in Egypt throwing a 9-year-old boy off a roof. The video was filmed in Egypt days after the overthrow of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi by Egypt’s military. The perpetrators of the roof violence were later sentenced to death for killing the boy and another man.
Another shows a man -- said to be a supporter of Syria’s al-Qaida affiliate then known as the Nusra Front -- smashing a blue and white statue of the Virgin Mary. The video appeared on the internet in October 2013, in the midst of a civil war in Syria, and was reported by the Middle East Media Research Institute, MEMRI.
The third video shows two young men fighting near a river bank. It was originally posted to a Dutch viral video site in May 2017 and picked up by Dutch media the following day. Two 16-year-old boys were arrested, according to De Telegraaf, and police removed the video. The boys’ religion was not included in any of the reports."

According to Paste Magazine^[12] wrote that it was likely that Trump's retweets would open the door to more anti-Muslim violence in America.