The number is certain to rise in the coming months.
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump not only surrounds himself with conspiracy theorists, he has spent years pushing conspiracy theories himself, much to the delight of his supporters.
At times, Trump tries to remain evasive about whether he actually believes these conspiracy theories, insisting that he simply “heard” or “read” them somewhere or is just asking a question.
We found at least 58 instances of Trump promoting false conspiracy theories on everything from immigration to President Obama’s birthplace.
The number is certain to rise in the coming months.
Topics:
President Obama
Assasinations
Muslims and Terrorism
Syrian Refugees
Christian Persecution
Guns and Crime
Immigration
Science
The Media
Miscellaneous
President Obama
1) Birtherism
For years, Trump has suggested that President Obama fabricated his birth certificate in order to be eligible to run for president. As evidence of this, he has cited the work of Maricopa County, Arizona, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, “Israeli Science,” the conspiracy theory clearinghouse WorldNetDaily and an unnamed “extremely credible source.”
Trump has falsely claimed that the president spent millions of dollars “to keep this quiet” and wrongly suggested that the president’s grandmother confessed to witnessing his birth in Kenya.
“He cannot give a birth certificate,” he told radio host Laura Ingraham in 2011. He added: “He doesn’t have a birth certificate or, if he does, there’s something on that certificate that is very bad for him. Now somebody told me, and I have no idea whether this is bad for him or not but perhaps it would be, that where it says ‘religion’ it might have ‘Muslim,’ and if you’re a Muslim, you don’t change your religion by the way, but somebody said, ‘Maybe that’s the reason he doesn’t want to show it.’ I don’t think so. I just don’t think he has a birth certificate and everybody has a birth certificate.”
“When I hear he took an ad in the paper, his parents, these are poor people, when did you ever hear of anybody taking an ad in a paper?” Trump said in the same interview, casting doubt on the announcement of Obama’s birth in a Honolulu newspaper. “I see so much fraud in the world. An ad like that could’ve been staged. I don’t mean staged at the time. I mean could have been computer-generated five years ago, eight years ago, two years ago, it could’ve been computer-generated.”
“The Rockefeller family doesn’t buy ads in a newspaper and now you’re going to have two poor people putting an ad in a newspaper that their son was born? There’s something fishy about the whole thing. Very fishy,” he continued.
Trump went on to hail birthers as “great American people” and described himself as a “proud” birther, noting that he “went to a great college, the best” and “was a very good student” and “a very smart guy.”
“Either it’s fine, or he was born in Kenya, or, in my opinion there’s a very good chance he was born here and said he was born in Kenya,” Trump said in 2014. “Because if you were born in Kenya, you got into colleges and you got aid. Very simple.”
Trump has also claimed that Obama himself “said he was born in Kenya” and promised to “write a book” laying out his birther theory.
2) Bill Ayers Wrote ‘Dreams From My Father’
Trump has embraced the far-right conspiracy theory — which initially started as a joke — that Obama didn’t write his book “Dreams From My Father.”
In a 2012 Fox News appearance, he explained:
He had a book, whether he wrote the book or not, but that book pushed him very hard and very strongly. And then they get into who really penned that book. It would be an interesting question for people to figure out. I don’t believe — I think somebody else had a lot to do with that book. I think he wrote the second book, which was certainly not a masterpiece. I'm very good at books, and it certainly wasn't a masterpiece.
“Bill Ayers wrote the book,” Trump said in 2011, explaining that “Barack Obama wouldn’t be president” if it weren’t for the “super-genius” Ayers. “A lot of people have said he wrote the book.”
“Now it’s coming out that Bill Ayers wrote it,” he told Ingraham in 2011.
3) Hawaii Official Was Murdered In Birth Certificate Cover-up
Detective Trump is on the case.
4) Obama Was ‘Born Barry Soetero’
On different occasions, Trump has referred to the president as “Barry Sotoro,” “Barry Soetoro” and “ Barry Sowoto.”
Indeed, Trump claims that “Soetoro” was Obama’s last name since his birth.
“Look, he was born Barry Soetero, somewhere along the line he changed his name,” Trump told Sean Hannity in 2011, despite the fact that, as Eric Kleefeld points out, Soetero is the “surname of Obama’s mother’s second husband, Lolo Soetoro, whom she married four years after Obama was born.” Soetoro came to Hawaii in 1962. Obama was born in 1961.
5) Obama Never Attended Columbia
In 2014, Trump offered “$50 million for charity” if Obama released his college records, arguing that Obama “came out of nowhere” and “the people that went to school with him, they never saw him.”
He may have been referring to the claim posed by his friend and campaign surrogate Wayne Allyn Root, a right-wing pundit who simultaneously claims that Obama never attended Columbia University and that he was radicalized at Columbia by the school’s left-wing professors.
Oddly, Trump has also said that Obama was a “terrible student” at Columbia.
He urged hackers to find the truth:
6) Obama May Start A War To Win Re-election
Just weeks before the 2012 election, Trump predicted that Obama, upset about his “really bad” poll numbers, would “start a war or major conflict to win.”
After the election, Trump predicted that Obama would “do something really bad and totally stupid to show manhood” or “do something irrational and dangerous for our country in order to save face.”
7) Obama Is Persecuting Me
Trump tried to make himself a victim of the debunked conservative conspiracy theory that the IRS targeted conservative groups, suggesting that President Obama urged New York State Attorney General Eric Schneidermann to sue him for political reasons:
He appears to be referring the ongoing lawsuit over the Trump University scam.
8) Obama Will Target Conservative Websites
Conflating net neutrality with the Fairness Doctrine, Trump made the bogus claim that somehow Obama will “attack” the internet to “target conservative media.”
Net neutrality has been a focus of many conservative conspiracy theories that have no basis in reality.
9) Obama Doesn’t Want To Fight Terrorism
In one of his regular interviews with right-wing talk show host Michael Savage this year, Trump thundered that the president may not want to fight terrorism.
“It’s radical Islamic terrorism,” Trump said. “We have a president that won’t even use the words and if you don’t use the words, you’re never going to get rid of the problem. We have a — maybe he doesn’t want to get rid of the problem. I don’t know exactly what’s going on.”
Savage read between the lines: “Ah ha. Now you’re going as close to the board as a hockey player can go without hitting the puck into the stands. I get it.”
10) Obama Wears An Arabic Ring
In 2012, Trump posted on Twitter a WorldNetDaily article claiming that Obama wears a secret Muslim ring.
“Why does Barack Obama’s ring have an arabic [sic] inscription?” he asked. “Who is this guy?”
In the article, birther investigator Jerome Corsi claimed that Obama’s wedding ring states “There is no God but Allah” in Arabic. Corsi believes that Obama was previously secretly married to a male Pakistani roommate.
The design on Obama’s ring is actually just a series of loops.
11) Obama Is Aiding ISIS
Trump has falsely accused Obama of arming ISIS terrorists, citing a discredited claim that the administration was running guns from Libya to Turkey.
He has also claimed that the U.S. tried to stop Russia from bombing ISIS.
The U.S., in reality, has been arming rebels that fight against ISIS, and has questioned why the majority of Russian targets in Syria are anti-ISIS rebels.
12) Obama Is A Muslim
Trump has tied his birther conspiracy theory to the related right-wing allegation that Obama is a secret Muslim.
“People have birth certificates,” he told Bill O’Reilly in 2011. “He doesn't have a birth certificate. He may have one but there's something on that, maybe religion, maybe it says he is a Muslim. I don't know. Maybe he doesn't want that. Or he may not have one. But I will tell you this. If he wasn't born in this country, it's one of the great scams of all time.”
He also seized on the news that Madonna jokingly called Obama a Muslim, tweeting: “Does Madonna know something we all don't about Barack? At a concert she said 'we have a black Muslim in the White House.'”
Following Justice Antonin Scalia’s death, he similarly tweeted.
Assassinations
13) Was Scalia Murdered?
Days after Scalia’s death, Trump spoke with Savage, who asked him if heagreed that the justice was likely “murdered” and that a Warren Commission-type panel should investigate his passing.
Trump, naturally, was happy to raise suspicions about the justice’s death: “Well I just heard today, just a little while ago actually, I just landed and I’m hearing it’s a big topic, the question, and it’s a horrible topic but they say they found the pillow on his face, which is a pretty unusual place to find a pillow.”
14) Was Vince Foster Murdered?
Just as Trump has found Obama’s birth certificate to be “fishy,” he has alleged that the 1993 death of Vince Foster, an aide to then-President Clinton, was “very fishy.” Trump insists that he doesn’t necessarily believe that Bill and Hillary Clinton were involved in Foster’s death, merely noting that “there are people” who “think it was absolutely a murder.” TPM reports:
“He had intimate knowledge of what was going on,” Trump told the Post about Foster’s relationship with the Clintons before his death. “He knew everything that was going on, and then all of a sudden he committed suicide.”
Trump also said about Hillary Clinton: “It’s the one thing with her, whether it’s Whitewater or whether it’s Vince or whether it’s Benghazi. It’s always a mess with Hillary.”
But in his typical fashion, the billionaire mogul claimed he didn’t know enough about Foster’s death to bring it up in the first place.
“I don’t bring [Foster’s death] up because I don’t know enough to really discuss it,” Trump said. “I will say there are people who continue to bring it up because they think it was absolutely a murder. I don’t do that because I don’t think it’s fair.”
Several investigations have found that Foster’s death was a suicide.
15) Was Rafael Cruz Involved In The JFK Assassination?
In at least three separate interviews this year, Trump has claimed that Rafael Cruz, the father of his GOP presidential rival Ted Cruz, was involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Trump said he got this information from the National Enquirer, hailing the supermarket tabloid as a reliable source of information. He even argued that neither Cruz denied the story (they both did).
Finally, when Cruz dropped out of the race, Trump told CNN host Wolf Blitzer that he never actually believed that the elder Cruz was involved in the assassination.
The National Enquirer has consistently praised Trump and gone after his opponents. Trump is close friends with its CEO.
Muslims And Terrorism
16) 9/11 Attackers Had Girlfriends Who Fled To Saudi Arabia
Trump defended his plan to commit war crimes by murdering the family members of terrorists by falsely claiming that the girlfriends of the 9/11 plotters left the U.S. shortly before the attacks occurred.
Trump said in a GOP debate last year that “people were put into planes that were friends, family, girlfriends, and they were put into planes and they were sent back, for the most part, to Saudi Arabia. They knew what was going on. They went home and they wanted to watch their boyfriends on television.”
At another event, Trump made a similar but slightly different claim.
“The wife knew exactly what was happening,” he said. “They left two days early with respect to the World Trade Center and they went back to where they went and they watched their husband on television flying into the World Trade Center, flying into the Pentagon and probably trying to fly into the White House except we had some very, very brave souls on that third plane.”
As PolitiFact makes clear, the 9/11 Commission found that “not a single hijacker had a wife, girlfriend or family member in the country in the days and months before the terrorists executed their plan. Only two of the 19 hijackers were married and only one had a girlfriend. Ziad Jarrah had a girlfriend in Germany, and hijackers Marwan al-Shehhi and Abdul Aziz al-Omari were married” to women who were not living in the U.S. The commission also “found no evidence that any of these women knew about the plot in advance,” as the terrorists had “broken off regular contact with their families.”
17) Thousands Of Muslim-Americans In New Jersey Celebrated On 9/11
Trump has repeatedly asserted that “thousands and thousands of people were cheering” were cheering in Jersey City, New Jersey, as “the World Trade Center came tumbling down,” making it clear he was referring to the city’s Muslim residents.
“I know it might be not politically correct for you to talk about it, but there were people cheering as that building came down, as those buildings came down, and that tells you something,” he said last year. “It was well covered at the time.”
Trump cited as sources a blog post on the conspiracy theory outlet InfoWars, his fans on Twitter and an activist and a reporter who both contradicted his claim. His campaign also released a video that ended up debunking the claim.
All assessments of what happened in Jersey City found that Trump’s allegation was completely inaccurate.
Nonetheless, Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, has insisted that there is footage of the (nonexistent) celebrations but every single media outlet refuses to air it because they all want to hurt Trump.
18) 100 Percent Of Mosques Preach Hate
In March, when CNN host Chris Cuomo asked Trump if he believes that all Muslims are “part of the hatred,” Trump responded, “If you look at the mosques and you go to various places and you look at what’s going on there and it’s virtually 100 percent. Certainly you can say radical Islam is a disaster right now, it’s causing tremendous problems worldwide, not just here. But the question was asked about Islam and there’s a great hatred, there’s no question about it.”
“I think Islam hates us,” Trump said in an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “There is an unbelievable hatred of us.” He went on to say that it is impossible to separate radical versions of Islam from the faith as a whole.
While Trump didn’t mention how he knows this, there have long been right-wing rumors claiming that most mosques in America preach hatred.
19) Around One-Third Of Muslims Would Wage War Against America
While speaking with Fox News host Chris Wallace in March, Trump alleged that studies have found that anywhere from 27 to 35 percent of the world’s Muslims “would go to war” against the U.S.
Trump, in this case, did cite a group: The Pew Research Center.
A Pew spokeswoman told FactCheck.org, however, that the group “has not issued a survey saying that 27 percent of Muslims would go to war with the US, nor has the Center asked a question of Muslims about ‘going to war.’”
Trump later cited “an unscientific, opt-in online poll conducted by the Center for Security Policy,” a far-right anti-Muslim group, to substantiate his claim that a large segment of the Muslim community in the U.S. supports anti-American violence.
20) Philippines Massacre
On several occasions, Trump has regaled audiences with the chain-email-inspired tale of an American general in the Philippines who supposedly solved the country’s “tremendous” terrorism problem by massacring a large group of Muslim detainees with bullets washed in pigs’ blood. Trump likes to tell the story to fondly recall a better time when American leaders were “tough” and didn’t stand for political correctness and rules against committing war crimes, rules that Trump wants to change.
Aside from the fact that it is troubling to see the presumptive GOP nominee praise a massacre, the story isn’t even true.
But that hasn’t stopped Trump from telling it. In fact, he has relished the fact that journalists have called the story into question, urging his supporters to trust his historical expertise: “The press was saying it was a rumor; it’s not a rumor, it’s a true story.”
21) ISIS Tried To Attack Me
After a man tried to rush the stage of a Trump rally in Dayton, Ohio, in March, the candidate immediately claimed that the man “has ties to ISIS,” citing what Jim Dalrymple II of BuzzFeed described as “an old, fake video meant to mock the man.” For example, the “alleged ISIS video” includes “badly garbled” Arabic that “appears to say ‘Tommy D’ was trying to look ‘cool,’” and the footage was taken from a separate video where the man was at a protest.
When asked on “Meet the Press” why he was so quick to cite a “hoax” video, Trump didn’t back down: “He was playing Arabic music; he was dragging the flag along the ground; and he had Internet chatter with ISIS and about ISIS... He's dragging the flag, the American flag, which I respect.”
“All I know is what's on the internet,” he said.
Syrian Refugees
22) Syrian Refugees Are Mostly Young Men
Trump has repeatedly claimed that Syrian refugees are typically “young, strong men” who “look like prime-time soldiers,” suggesting they are part of an ISIS “Trojan Horse” as there are “very few” women and children refugees.
In fact, the majority of refugees are women in children.
23) Syrian Refugees Bill ISIS For Their Phones
Trump apparently believes that ISIS pays the cell phone bills of Syrian refugees, using his typical just asking the question style of speaking to wonder: “So they don’t have money, they don’t have anything. They have cell phones. Who pays their monthly charges, right? They have cell phones with the flags, the ISIS flags on them. And then we’re supposed to say, ‘Isn’t this wonderful that we’re taking them in?’”
24) Syrian Refugees Aren’t Vetted
At a Rhode Island rally, Trump warned supporters that they should be afraid of the Syrian refugees being resettled in the state:
We don't know who these people are. We don't know where they're from. We don't know where they're from. They have no documentation. We all have hearts and we can build safe zones in Syria and we'll get the Gulf states to put up the money. We're not putting up the money, but I'll get that done. But you know what? We can't let this happen. But you have a lot of them resettling in Rhode Island. Just enjoy your — lock your doors, folks.
…
We don't know where they come from, who they are. There's no documentation. We have our incompetent government people letting 'em in by the thousands, and who knows, who knows, maybe it's ISIS."
The refugees, however, are thoroughly vetted, with the process often taking “two years or longer.”
25) Syrian Refugees Only Sent To GOP-led States
Trump has also suggested that the federal government tries to “send [refugees] to the Republicans, not to the Democrats, you know because they know the problem,” referring to states with Republican and Democratic governors.
But as FactCheck.org notes, “nongovernmental agencies, such as World Relief and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, place the refugees, not the government, and those decisions are based on family ties, employment and other factors, not politics.” Not to mention the fact that the majority of states have Republican governors.
The idea that the Obama administration is trying to put Muslim refugees in conservative areas has been circulating in the right-wing media for years.
26) Syrian Refugees In U.S. To Number 250,000
On the stump and in interviews, Trump has repeatedly alleged that the administration is trying to resettle 200,000 to 250,000 Syrian refugees, “and it could very well be ISIS.”
“Our president wants to take in 250,000 from Syria,” he said last year. “Think of it, 250,000 people. And we all have heart, and we all want people taken care of and all of that, but with the problems our country has, to take in 250,000 people — some of whom are going to have problems, big problems — is just insane.”
In fact, President Obama has planned to accept only 10,000 refugees and, according to The New York Times, “the United States has let in less than a fifth of that number” as of April.
The 250,000 figure appears to come from a fake news article.
27) Syrian Refugees Are Part Of Evil Plot
In his just asking the question style of conspiracy theorizing, Trump said last year that President Obama is bringing in refugees for nefarious reasons: “Obviously some people think it’s evil intentions, I think it's incompetence, regardless, a lot of people think it’s evil intentions.”
In one speech, Trump said that Obama was deliberately ignoring terrorism for reasons we don’t know about, as one attendee shouted “He’s a Muslim!”
“I don’t know what’s wrong with Obama,” Trump said. “He wants to close his eyes and pretend it’s not happening. Why is he so emphatic on not solving the problem? There’s something we don’t know about. There’s something we don’t know about.”
28) U.S. Importing Terrorists
“This is a war against people that are vicious, violent people, that we have no idea who they are, where they come from,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News host Bill O’Reilly in March. “We are allowing tens of thousands of them into our country now. Some of them happen to have cellphones with the ISIS flag on them. So, I think it's something that we have to be very tough and very vigilant and very smart or we will be in big trouble.”
Seeing that the U.S. accepts only 70,000 refugees from the entire world annually, PolitiFact notes that “this would mean that Trump is saying that all or nearly all refugees are terrorists, including the many who are not even Muslim and who don’t come from the Middle East.”
Not to mention that refugees allowed to resettle in the U.S. are thoroughly vetted.
Christian persecution
29) Christians Can’t Come Into America
Last year, Trump told the Iowa National Security Action Summit that Christians are prohibited from coming into the U.S.: “Muslims can come in but other people can’t. Christians can’t come into this country but Muslims can. What’s that all about? What is that all about? Something has got to be coming down from the top. When I heard that, I couldn’t believe it. And that is one of the top people in the world on immigration having to do with this country. Muslims can come in but Christians can't, and the Muslims aren't in danger and the Christians are.”
Trump didn’t identify his “top” source, but has continued to repeat this myth.
“If you're a Muslim, you can come into the country very easy,” he said in an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody last year. “If you're from Europe and you're a Muslim, you can come in. But if you are from Europe and you’re a Christian, you can't come in.”
Speaking in Nevada last year, Trump said: “I heard something the other day that’s hard to believe, it’s hard to believe. Believe me. If you’re from Syria and you’re a Christian, you cannot come into this country, and they’re the ones that are being decimated. If you’re Islamic and you come in, if you, I mean, it’s hard to believe, you can come in so easily. In fact, it’s one of our main groups of people that are coming in. Now, not that we should discriminate against one or the other, but if you’re Christian, you cannot get into the country. You cannot get into the country. I thought that was unbelievable.”
There is, of course, no policy prohibiting Syrian Christians, or Christians from anywhere else, for that matter, from entering the country. While there have been far fewer Syrian Christian refugees resettled in America compared to Syrian Muslim refugees, the Syrian population has a large Muslim majority.
While Trump said he doesn’t believe in discrimination, he later proposed a temporary ban on all Muslims “from entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”
30) ‘They’ve Shut Christianity Down’
“Christianity is being chipped away at in this country,” Trump said at a campaign stop in March, citing tax regulations that prevent churches from engaging in partisan electoral activity. “I mean, really, they’ve shut Christianity down.”
Trump said he would have “less difficulty” advocating a ban on Christians from entering the U.S. as he did for Muslims.
Of course, Christians continue to make up the vast majority of the American population and continue to have freedom of religion in the U.S.
31) No ‘Lobby’ For Christians
Trump believes that there is no one in politics representing Christians, telling supporters that groups like Muslims have been able to “band together better or something.”
“You actually have less power, and yet if you look at it, I was talking to someone, we probably have 250 million, maybe even more, in terms of people, so we have more Christians than we have men or women in our country and we don’t have a lobby because they’re afraid to have a lobby because they don’t want to lose their tax status,” he said.
“So I am going to work like hell to get rid of that prohibition and we’re going to have the strongest Christian lobby and it’s going to happen.”
In fact, many denominations from across the religious divide have advocacy arms, and many lobbying groups represent the Christian Left, Right and center.
32) Christmas Has Disappeared
“Remember the expression ‘Merry Christmas?’” Trump has asked. “You don’t see it anymore.”
He has claimed that “the progressives” are trying to expunge Christmas from American society and once floated the idea of boycotting of Starbucks because their seasonal holiday red cups didn’t say “Merry Christmas.”
Christians’ “power is being taken away,” he said last year in an interview with Religious Right leader Tony Perkins. “You know,” he said, “you go from one thing to the next to the point where it’s not politically correct to say ‘Merry Christmas’ to anybody, or you go to stores and you don’t ever see the word ‘Christmas’ anymore. You don’t see that term anymore.”
Aside from the fact that the so-called War on Christmas is nothing but a right-wing myth, and we are not sure what constitutional provision gives the president the power to order department stores to post “Merry Christmas” signs.
33) I Am Being Persecuted For Being A ‘Strong Christian,’ Maybe
Following a CNN debate in February, Trump insisted that he is facing a government audit because he is being targeted by the IRS and “maybe because of the fact that I’m a strong Christian.” Trump cited the audit to justify his refusal to release his tax returns.
However, in a letter released by his campaign one month later, Trump’s own lawyers debunked his claim that he was the victim of politically motivated, anti-Christian bureaucrats, explaining that the businessman had faced “continuous examination” by the IRS since 2002, “consistent with the IRS’ practice for large and complex businesses.”
Guns and Crime
34) Obama Wants To Take The Guns
While campaigning in South Carolina last year, Trump told supporters about a planned move by Obama to “take your guns away”: “You know, the president is thinking about signing an executive order where he wants to take your guns away. You hear this one?”
The next day, he once again insisted that he had “heard” from “somebody” that Obama was going to try to take people’s guns through an executive order. He never mentioned who that “somebody” was, but said he had “read it in the papers.”
While conservatives have been predicting for years that Obama is on the verge of implementing a massive gun grab using his powers as president, none of his executive orders, or ones that he has considered, have come anywhere close to taking people’s guns.
“Whenever I see gun-free zones, that’s a flag for the wackos to come in and start shooting people,” Trump told CNN in January, despite the fact that several of his properties are gun-free zones.
35) Hillary Wants To Take The Guns
Trump has repeatedly claimed that Hillary Clinton is coming to seize guns and bullets by eliminating the Second Amendment.
“Hillary Clinton wants to abolish the Second Amendment, she wants to abolish it,” he said at a rally in Washington state. “Hillary Clinton wants to take your guns away, she wants to abolish the Second Amendment, she wants to take the bullets away, she wants to take it.”
Trump told the NRA convention this month that Clinton will “overturn the Second Amendment” and “release the violent criminals from jail.”
While Clinton has called for expanded background checks and a ban on assault weapons, a ban once supported by Trump, she has not advocated for the elimination of the Second Amendment or anything close to mass gun confiscation.
36) Hillary Wants To Release Violent Criminals From Jail
At the NRA conference, Trump insisted that President Obama and Hillary Clinton are determined “to release the violent criminals from jail.”
“She wants them all released,” he said. “She wants people released that you wouldn't want to walk on the street with, you wouldn't want to look at.”
However, Clinton’s proposals to reform the criminal justice system focus on nonviolent offenders, PolitiFact points out: “If anything, Clinton’s policy page bends over backward to focus her attention on ‘nonviolent