HRW Names Donald Trump as a Threat to Human Rights in Scathing Report Leeron Hoory - Vocativ
go to original January 13, 2017

Human Rights Watch Warns of Trump-Style Populism (Al Jazeera English)

The rise of populism fueled by leaders like Donald Trump are among some of the biggest threats to human rights, according to the 2017 World Report released on Thursday by Human Rights Watch.

“Trump and various politicians in Europe seek power through appeals to racism, xenophobia, misogyny, and nativism,” HRW Executive Director Kenneth said in a press release for the 687-page report. “They all claim that the public accepts violations of human rights as supposedly necessary to secure jobs, avoid cultural change, or prevent terrorist attacks. In fact, disregard for human rights offers the likeliest route to tyranny.”

In the report, which HRW issues annually to detail the state of human rights around the world, it says that populists are encouraged by a growing public that perceives “rights as protecting only these ‘other’ people, not themselves, and thus as dispensable” and the “dangerous trend threatens to reverse the accomplishments of the modern human rights movement.”



As for Trump the report credits his appeal to the growing public discontent with the status quo, fueled by the belief that globalization is taking away jobs in the U.S., increasing inequality, and leaving many people behind, as well as fear fueled by the threat of terrorism.

Trump has disavowed, albeit slowly in some cases, some of the discriminatory rhetoric that plagued him on the campaign trail from card-carrying racists and members of the so called alt-right movement. He’s also vowed to create a Muslim registry, ban Muslims from entering the US, vilified undocumented immigrants from Mexico and attacked trade deals and globalization as threats to the US economy. Of these campaign promises, the HRW calls them baseless and empty.

“The mass deportation of migrants that he threatened, including of many with established ties in the United States and a record of contributing productively to the economy, will do nothing to bring back long-lost manufacturing jobs,” the report said.

Read the rest at Vocativ

Related: Is the World Turning Fascist? And Does It Matter? (London School of Economics)

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