Racist textual content messages focusing on Black folks throughout the US simply hours after Donald Trump gained a second presidency have now expanded to the Hispanic communities – and homophobic variations have been geared toward LGBTQ+ folks, the FBI mentioned on Friday.
Authorities say they’re investigating the messages – which now embrace emails – and that they haven’t acquired stories of violent acts stemming from the hateful messages.
The recipients of the messages embrace highschool college students being informed that they’ve been “chosen for deportation or to report back to a re-education camp”, the FBI mentioned in an announcement.
After the 5 November US presidential election noticed Trump returned to the White Home, Black People reported receiving racist textual content messages telling them they’d been “chosen” to select cotton and wanted to report back to the “nearest plantation”.
Black folks in states together with Alabama, South Carolina, Georgia, New York, New Jersey and Nevada, and in Washington DC and elsewhere, reported receiving the messages. The messages have been despatched to Black adults and college students.
A few of the texts have been signed “a Trump supporter”. Trump’s spokesperson, Steven Cheung, mentioned the marketing campaign “has completely nothing to do with these textual content messages”.
The Nationwide Affiliation for the Development of Coloured Individuals (NAACP) condemned the messages, saying that they “characterize an alarming enhance in vile and abhorrent rhetoric from racist teams throughout the nation, who now really feel emboldened to unfold hate and stoke the flames of concern”.
“The unlucky actuality of electing a president who traditionally has embraced, and at instances inspired hate, is unfolding earlier than our eyes,” the NAACP president and chief govt officer, Derrick Johnson, mentioned in an announcement final week.
The FBI mentioned it’s contact with the US justice division and different federal authorities on the racist and homophobic messages.
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