“Hate Rising,” the new documentary with journalist Jorge Ramos, premiered on Fusion and Univision last night — and for many of us, the images from the film have been sadly all too familiar for the past year and a half.
HATE RISING Promo from CatTails on Vimeo.
Ramos spent nine months traveling the US and speaking with extremists — oftentimes in very treacherous situations, as both a Mexican-American man and immigrant — to examine the disturbing resurgence of hate groups, including the KKK and neo-Nazis, following the candidacy of the Republican nominee for President, Donald Trump.
In a recent interview with HuffPo, Ramos says it was a now-infamous incident in Iowa last year that helped sparked the documentary:
“Go back to Univision.” That’s how Donald Trump answered award-winning journalist Jorge Ramos’ question on the specifics of how the GOP presidential hopeful planned to deport all 11 million undocumented immigrants from the U.S.
Shortly after Trump’s outburst, security physically removed the Mexican-American anchor for Univision and Fusion from the August 2015 event.
Trump used his “Go back to Univision” remarks as code for “Go back to Mexico” or “Go back to your country of origin,” Ramos told The Huffington Post. “And just a few seconds later, one of his followers told me, ‘Get out of my country,’” the journalist recalled. “To which I responded, ‘Well, this is also my country, I’m also a U.S. citizen.’ And that’s when I realized that hate is contagious.”
Ramos then spent nine months “following hate” across the country. He found people “who are afraid and angry about what is happening in the United States,” he said. “And what’s happening is that white will eventually be a minority in this country in 2044, and they hate that,” Ramos added.
Ramos’s ejection from the press conference was among the first Trump-related hate incidents that led to the creation of our own “Trump Hate Map,” which has disturbingly expanded to dozens of incidents against Latinos, immigrants, African-Americans, Muslim-Americans and others across the United States since the start of Trump’s campaign in June 2015.
In addition to physical violence, reports have also found a surge in the online harassment of people of color and other minorities, with the Anti-Defamation League finding “that 2.6 million anti-Semitic messages were posted on Twitter from August 2015 to July 2016.”
Ramos, even as a respected journalist and anchor watched by millions, tells HuffPo he feared for his safety during filming of the documentary:
I met one person in Texas, he’s an imperial wizard of the KKK in Texas, and he told me that he was superior to me simply because of the color of his skin. Simply because he’s white and I’m Latino. I had never experienced anything like that. And he didn’t want to touch me. He made the move to shake my hand, then he pulled back his hand.
In Ohio, I went to a meeting of Neo-Nazis and white supremacists, and I didn’t feel comfortable saying a single word for almost three hours because it was not a safe space to be an immigrant.
“It is a very dangerous moment that we are living right now,” Ramos said. “Everybody is going to remember that and I think we ― you and me and all the journalists and all the voters and politicians ― will be judged by how we reacted to Donald Trump.”
If you haven't watched our documentary Hate Rising, here's the link. https://t.co/Nl7H9ANLkY
— JORGE RAMOS (@jorgeramosnews) October 30, 2016
