Search MS 13 on twitter and you get some sense of how prominent—and unhinged—fear-mongering about the group is in GOP campaigns ongoing across the country. In real life I am a historian of migration and Ctral America, and any serious researcher knows these claims are absurd
MS13 is a vicious criminal gang, born of the dislocations of El Salvador's civil war, whose US presence numbers around 10,000, clustered in a small handful of counties, and whose violence is borne almost exclusively by fellow Ctral Americans propublica.org/article/ms-13-…
Yet in July 2018 fully 51% of Trump voters were either "somewhat" or "a great deal" worried that a member of *their own family* would fall victim to MS 13. 24% believed MS 13 to be the largest gang in the United States: wrong by an order of magnitude big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/athena/files/2… 
Fully 41% of registered Republicans believed MS 13 posed a "somewhat serious" or "very serious" threat to their *local* community. Again, this was in July. Before the 24/7 "caravan" drumbeating started.
Eleven people were killed in my synagogue today, apparently by someone who was among those taking those claims literally, and seriously.
I have no words.
I have no words.
