Thread by @letsgomathias

NEW: @HuffPost, partnering with ProPublica’s @DocumentHate, has created a database of 800 hate incidents over the last 4 years in which perpetrators told their victims some variation of “go back to your country.”
huffpost.com/feature/go-bac…

Here are some of our findings: huffpost.com/feature/go-bac…

Among those victims in our database: Elvis Smith & Robert Peete.

Smith & Peete, talking exclusively to @HuffPost, recount the day last year when a white man near Baltimore told them to "go back to Africa" before shooting Smith in the leg. huffpost.com/feature/go-bac…

There were multiple, horrifying incidents like this in suburban Maryland alone in the last few years. huffpost.com/feature/go-bac…

The white man who shot Smith and Peete was later identified as Brandon Troy Higgs, a 24-year-old former Navy cryptologist.
huffpost.com/feature/go-bac…

Higgs appears to have been involved with Vanguard America, the same white supremacist group connected to James Alex Fields, the Nazi who drove his car into anti-racist protesters in Charlottesville, killing Heather Heyer. huffpost.com/feature/go-bac…

Higgs also was a frequent poster in white supremacist message groups, in which he expressed his murderous hatred of Baltimore's black population, and his admiration of Dylann Roof. huffpost.com/feature/go-bac…

A staggering 20 percent perpetrators, while targeting their victims in hate incidents, invoked Trump's name or his campaign slogans

@jeanninelbell, who studies hate crimes, can't remember this ever happening before. huffpost.com/feature/go-bac…

.@jasonintrator warned that research shows there's typically a gap between hateful rhetoric and mass violence. Look at Myanmar and Nazi Germany. huffpost.com/feature/go-bac…

He warned that the kind of MAGA nationalism we are seeing right now is at the "core of fascism."

We also discussed the relationship between sanctioned state violence and the kind of unsanctioned street-level violence of the "unofficial militia" huffpost.com/feature/go-bac…

Ultimately, telling someone to "go back" to where they come from is a foundational white nationalist insult in American history, meant to make people believe that they don't belong, and that this country is only for white people.
huffpost.com/feature/go-bac…

Telling people to "go back" is also the animating idea of "Make America Great Again."

We are entering a very dangerous election cycle, when Trump will ramp up the racist rhetoric. The media should be diligent about documenting hate incidents. huffpost.com/feature/go-bac…

Smith and Peete saw Higgs, the white supremacist who attacked them, in court for the first time last month. They sat across the aisle from Higgs' family & friends. One woman stood up and yelled "I love you" to Higgs.

The trial starts in January. huffpost.com/feature/go-bac…

This was a project that would have been impossible without the work of the great @ksophiewill, our summer intern, a data whiz who built this database. Here's her methodology: huffpost.com/entry/methodol…

A giant thank you to @Riogringa for making all this possible through @propublica's deeply important @DocumentHate project. huffpost.com/feature/go-bac…

And another big thank you to @CherylDiazMeyer, who took stunning portraits of Elvis and Robert for this piece. huffpost.com/feature/go-bac…

We'll be publishing more stories from this "Go back to your country" database soon. Thank you.

And! A big thank you to @rebeccazisser & @ivylise for all their work on designing this article.