Esteban Santiago: White Hispanic or Islamic Terrorist?

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Esteban Santiago, the Florida shooter, wearing a Keffiyheh and making the Islamic salute.

A man has shot five people dead and wounded eight at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in Florida. He is believed to have served in the US military in some capacity, has been to Iraq, and had mental issues. He is a US citizen and his name is Esteban Santiago. It is believed that the gun he used to carry out the massacre was carried by him, lawfully, on the aeroplane. He acted alone and has been taken into police custody.

There are a lot of unconfirmed pieces of information flying around about this latest terrorist shooting in the US, so I will leave most of it out. I have included the information in the first paragraph as an example of the general outline of facts I have been given by the very small handful of MSM articles I have skimmed since I first heard the news.

When someone is lying to you, or trying to make an excuse, one technique they will use is to throw a lot of information at you very quickly. Hidden amongst this information will be the information which reveals their lie, but it all goes by so fast that by the time you pick up on it, they have left the building, or the cricket is now on.

There are several left-wing dog whistles provided in the first paragraph: lone wolf; mental issues; gun ownership/gun violence. A favourite perp in crime dramas is the war vet back from the Middle East. The kind interpretation is that war gave them PTSD, but the nastier implication is often that they were crazy, or psychopathic, to go for the army in the first place. These factoids, plus the confirmation that the shooter is a US citizen, allow most people who toe the MSM line, and live with the cognitive dissonance that his name is Esteban Santiago; think “White Hispanic.”

The very definition of this cognitive dissonance is the term “White Hispanic“, which was used to describe, and demonise, George Zimmerman, the shooter of Trayvon Martin, one of the events which triggered the racist Black Lives Matter movement. In referring to him as a “White Hispanic” the race-baiters of the regressive left MSM were able to obscure the fact that this was a case of one racial minority killing another racial minority, and were instead able to paint the shooting as a case of racial profiling by a white person against a black person. (The other crazy-make aspect is that given that Barack Obama’s mother was white, he could very well be described as “White Black”). The MSM has not, to my knowledge, attempted to use the term, but the series of facts associated with the name of the terrorist shooter convey this meaning.

Why have I included all these asides? It is because, if we follow the rules which the regressive left itself have set, then we understand that a term, that language, carries with it a set of assumptions, a world-view, which transmit more than just literal meaning. By using a set of terms, by placing facts in a certain way, an almost unshakeable set of conclusions can be inferred.

The conclusion these facts are designed to make you reach is that the shooting in Florida is yet another case of a sole, crazy, white-ish person with militaristic tendencies, who had access to a gun, who massacred people because the US’s flawed Constitution let him.

This entire edifice collapses, however, if you understand the context of this photo:

Esteban Santiago, the Florida shooter, wearing a Keffiyheh and making the Islamic salute.

This photo is of the Florida shooter, Esteban Santiago. There is a lot of information being spread around the internet which I cannot confirm, but is nevertheless unnecessary. I need only draw attention to two facts which can be drawn from the photo itself:

1. He is wearing a Keffiyeh. The Keffiyeh is a common article of clothing used in the Middle East, designed to shield the wearer from heat, dust and sand. It is also referred to as a “fashion accessory” by those who wear it in the West, although you will notice that it is almost never worn unconsciously; it is commonly understood to signify “solidarity” with the Palestinian cause, and by extension, given its use was popularised by Yasser Arafat, with Palestinian terrorism.

Combined with the following fact, the evidence becomes clear:

2. Esteban Santiago is making the Islamic salute with his forefinger. The meaning of this salute is simple: Islam is number one. Its origin precedes The Islamic State, referring to the tawhid, the indivisible oneness of Allah, he Islamic understanding of monotheism. Like the Kaffiyeh, its use was politicised by Islamic jihadis, and it has become the standard salute of the Islamic State. Importantly, when I first saw this image of Esteban Santiago on the Channel 9 Today show, his Islamic salute was notably cut out of frame.

It is reasonable to infer from this photo of Esteban Santiago that he was a Muslim, inspired by Islamic teaching to carry out terrorism against the United States. I cannot completely confirm this, but we will see how the two competing narratives of his identity and motivation play out over the coming days.

Finally, this is a prime example of yesterday’s XYZ Quote of the Day, which I will repeat here, as a conclusion:

“The problem for the MSM is that stories like this break live on the internet, so everybody gets to see the uncensored unedited reality of such a terribly malicious crime. So in effect, the MSM attempts to lie to you about what and why the crime is happening while you are watching the contradicting evidence. This utter contempt for the viewing public is the reason why nobody trusts the MSM any more.”