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This Is What Donald Trump's America Could Look Like

by Alexandra Svokos
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At a Donald Trump rally on Saturday, Mercutio Southall Jr., a Black Lives Matter activist, was punched and kicked.

As the man was being hit, Trump shouted:

Yeah, get him the hell out of here, would you, please? Get him out of here. Throw him out.

When asked about the incident on Sunday, Trump said:

Maybe he should have been roughed up because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing.

This isn't the first time a minority person was physically attacked because of Trump.

This summer, two brothers beat a homeless Hispanic man in Boston. The assailants reportedly said they were inspired by Trump. One told police:

Donald Trump was right, all these illegals need to be deported.

When Trump was told about the attack, he responded:

I will say that people who are following me are very passionate. They love this country and they want this country to be great again.

At this point, it's hard to argue Trump's presidential campaign has not been a racist, bigoted affair.

He started his campaign by claiming Mexican immigrants are rapists and murderers and gained support saying he'd build a wall to keep all Mexicans out.

In September, Trump said this about the Black Lives Matter movement:

I think they're trouble. I think they're looking for trouble.

He rejected the BLM movement in favor of "all lives matter."

Over the weekend, he tweeted out a fake statistic originally sent by a user with a swastika for a profile picture that insinuated black people are violent and dangerous.

Following the Paris attacks, Trump said he would consider closing mosques and making Muslim citizens carry special IDs.

These are just the most prominent points of Trump's discriminatory rhetoric. Regardless of how seriously you take his candidacy or how doable his policy suggestions would be should he ever actually makes it to the presidency, this rhetoric is dangerous.

In an op-ed in the New York Times on Monday, Charles M. Blow referenced Martin Luther King Jr.'s quote that the "ultimate logic" of racism is genocide. Blow explained racist language leads to tangible discriminatory practices, like Muslim people being denied jobs.

Discrimination progresses from not liking certain people to rejecting them from spaces to violence against those people. It's the root of targeted attacks, hate crimes and, at its height, genocide.

Hearing someone -- especially someone with a large amount of influence and a huge platform -- speak in a discriminatory manner gives people who may have been leaning toward bigotry a justification for acting on their biased feelings and becoming more hateful.

Trump's language dehumanizes large swathes of people across the United States. This language is how you eventually end up with internment and concentration camps, lynchings and slavery.

This may sound extreme but consider in the last few months two minority men have been physically attacked with direct links to Trump.

Trump's campaign isn't just a farce or a theatrical showing of extremism or your drunk neighbor "telling it like it is." Trump's campaign is dangerous. It's time to tell that like it is.