Critics slam Yucaipa mayor’s Facebook posts targeting Muslims, undocumented immigrants

A slew of posts slamming Muslims and undocumented Latino immigrants on Yucaipa Mayor Bobby Duncan’s Facebook wall triggered a harsh response Tuesday from civil rights groups and advocates.

“These posts, if authentic — representing white nationalism and anti-Muslim bigotry — are morally incompatible with government service, and the city hopefully understands that and will launch a full investigation immediately,” said Brian Levin, a criminal justice professor at Cal State San Bernardino and director of the university’s Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism.

Duncan, who has served on the Yucaipa City Council since 2012 and was appointed mayor in December, peppers his Facebook wall with memes carrying anti-Islamic and anti-undocumented immigrant messages. Among them:

• “I don’t know about you, but I am 100% anti-Islam and anti-Sharia! Who else is with me and feels the same way?”
• “Stop all welfare to illegal aliens and they’ll deport themselves”
• “Islamophobic: A bulls— term invented to vilify and silence anyone being honest about mankind’s most violent supremacist culture.
• “How do you walk 3,000 miles through Mexico ‘without food or support’ and wind up at the border 100 lbs overweight and with cell phones?”

Another meme depicts a group of white men and women with beaming smiles, with a caption reading: “White lives matter: How long will it take Facebook to take this down?”

Eugene Fields, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim civil rights and advocacy group, called for an immediate apology from Duncan on Tuesday.

“CAIR-LA strongly denounces Mayor Duncan’s statements. Islamophobia, xenophobia, anti-Semitism and bigotry are all too real,” Fields said in a statement. “The shootings at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, at a church in Charleston and a mosque in New Zealand, as well as a bomb threat against our recent Valley Banquet in Woodland Hills and the arrest of a man in New York who threatened Rep. Ilhan Omar give credence to the rise in hatred stemming from hate speech like what Mayor Duncan posted.”

Reached by telephone Tuesday, Duncan declined to comment.

“I don’t really want to talk about it. I’m not going to discuss it with you,” he said. “You can write what you want. That’s your prerogative.”

City Manager Ray Casey also did not respond to a telephone call Tuesday seeking comment.

Revelations about Duncan’s social media posts surfaced on the same day as a Capitol Hill hearing on white nationalism, which prompted so many racist and anti-Semitic comments on a YouTube livestream it was forced to disable the chat feature, The Associated Press reported.

“It’s on a day we are examining the breadth of white nationalism in congressional hearings that a public official in our own backyard promotes these prejudiced messages, brazenly,” Levin said. “It just goes to show how far we have to go in this nation.”

Greg Bogh was the only Yucaipa City Council member to return a telephone call Tuesday seeking comment. He said he was unaware of Duncan’s Facebook posts and does not follow him on social media.

“That’s something I definitely wouldn’t post,” Bogh said, referring to Duncan’s posts about Muslims and undocumented immigrants. “My Facebook page is mostly family stuff and city events. That’s my focus — make sure people understand what’s going on in the city.”

He declined to comment further on Duncan’s posts and how the city could handle the situation. “I really need to research it more before I give you too much of an opinion,” Bogh said.

A similar controversy erupted last year in the Inland Empire involving the lead prosecutor with the San Bernardino County district attorney’s hardcore gang unit. Last July, civil rights activists demanded the immediate termination of prosecutor Michael Selyem when news surfaced about racist and xenophobic rants he posted on his Facebook and Instagram accounts. In his posts, Selyem attacked Mexican immigrants, former first Lady Michelle Obama, U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, and a still unidentified victim of a police shooting.

Publicity surrounding the controversy drew the attention of civil rights activists and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who paid a visit to San Bernardino and held a news conference demanding that Selyem be disbarred.

Selyem, 51, of Placentia was suspended after the Southern California News Group first reported the story. Following a six-month administrative investigation, he resigned on Jan. 2.