Today's Must-Read: Words Have Consequences

And when the speaker is the focus of a cult -- well. . . .

From Tom Sullivan at Hullabaloo, who connects the dots:

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in 2003 convicted three former media executives from Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM) for their role in broadcasting lists of people to be killed in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Kennedy Ndahiro, editor of The New Times, wrote in The Atlantic in April this year:

Twenty-five years ago this month, all hell broke loose in my country, which is tucked away in the Great Lakes region of Africa. Hordes of members of the Hutu ethnic majority, armed with machetes, spears, nail-studded clubs, and other rudimentary weapons, moved house to house in villages, hunting for Tutsis, the second largest of Rwanda’s three ethnic groups. The radio station RTLM, allied with leaders of the government, had been inciting Hutus against the Tutsi minority, repeatedly describing the latter as inyenzi, or “cockroaches,” and as inzoka, or “snakes.” The station, unfortunately, had many listeners.

The promoters of genocide used other metaphors to turn people against their neighbors. Hutus, by reputation, are shorter than Tutsis; radio broadcasters also urged Hutus to “cut down the tall trees.”

That's by way of background. At a pro-Trump conference -- at one of Trump's resorts, natch -- this happened:

A video depicting a macabre scene of a fake President Trump shooting, stabbing and brutally assaulting members of the news media and his political opponents was shown at a conference for his supporters at his Miami resort last week, according to footage obtained by The New York Times. . . .

The video, which includes the logo for Mr. Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign, comprises a series of internet memes. The most violent clip shows Mr. Trump’s head superimposed on the body of a man opening fire inside the “Church of Fake News” on parishioners who have the faces of his critics or the logos of media organizations superimposed on their bodies. It appears to be an edited scene of a church massacre from the 2014 dark comedy film “Kingsman: The Secret Service.”

There have been a number of incidents in which Trump has been noted as an inspiration by the perpetrators. Sullivan has the details.

I supposed given that record, it's no surprise Trump gave Turkey the OK for genocide in Syria.