The Blue Jays Have An Asshole, And His Name Is Anthony Santander

Outfielder Anthony Santander appears to be a brain-poisoned, red-pilled moron and an Islamophobe. Santander shared to his Instagram account on Wednesday a video warning about America’s impending adoption of Sharia law, and another about Muslims being inherently violent. The videos stayed up until Thursday, by which time they had drawn the attention of his employer, the Toronto Blue Jays. Santander then scrubbed the videos, and the Blue Jays issued a somewhat limp statement, assuring fans that “individual comments do not represent our organization’s values and beliefs.”

Santander seems to be getting his news from bad sources. Laura Loomer, the deranged right-wing carnival-barker, told her too-many Twitter followers Tuesday night that “America is over” and claimed, falsely, that the midterm blue wave swept into Congress people who “openly talk about their hatred of America, love of communism, and support for Sharia law.” The videos shared by Santander originated with the Instagram accounts of The American Truth Project and Nuhu Simon Jatau. The former is a right-wing propaganda dispensary whose website is littered with headlines like “300 MILLION DEAD AMERICANS” and “SATANIC PRAYER.” The latter is a very obviously psychotic Nigerian man (a Lakers fan, to boot) who posts swirly-eyed videos claiming, among other things, that Muslims are pagans who worship Satan.

You don’t have to be so fully submerged in Christian-right paranoia in order to encounter outright, targeted Islamophobia, and from newsmakers and publications that project a superficially convincing, far less YouTube-coded, veneer of authority. Maya Sulkin of the Free Press posted a video Wednesday claiming, falsely, that Abdul El-Sayed, Michigan’s senator-elect, delivered his victory speech in Arabic. Sulkin’s video linked El-Sayed together Ilhan Omar, representative from Minnesota, and Aber Kawas, a newly elected state senator from New York, to make the explicit case that America is under attack from, uhh, democratically elected American Muslims. “I wonder if this sounds like America to you,” ponders Sulkin, twitching and quivering with panic. It was not until late Friday afternoon that the Free Press got around to dumping a correction onto Twitter, acknowledging that El-Sayed’s speech was delivered in English, with three Arabic phrases thrown in. “The Free Press regrets the error,” claimed the Free Press, falsely.