On the September 12, 2019 episode of Radio Renaissance, host Jared Taylor commemorated the 18th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks by lamenting that Americans had acted insufficiently racist toward Muslims. Taylor is the founder of the white nationalist website American Renaissance.

Taylor said he wanted to “muse a little bit” about how “mistaken” he was about the actions Americans would take in the aftermath of the attacks.

“To me, it was so clear that this would never have happened without a group of Muslims living in the United States in which these terrorists could swim like fish the way Mao described Communist guerrillas swimming like fish in the sea amongst the Chinese peasantry,” he said.

Taylor claimed that this was “such a clear example of bad immigration policy that I thought it would get people thinking, ‘Well wait a minute, do we really need more Muslims?'” He said he believed that once Americans asked themselves that question they would move on to other groups like Haitians and Mexicans.

Taylor went on to say he was “wrong” in his assumption and that America, instead, took in more and more Muslim immigrants. His co-host, Paul Kersey, on the other hand, pointed out that if it weren’t for the 9/11 attacks Donald Trump would not have won on a platform of deporting and turning away immigrants.

“A significant number of Americans actually did think about that question because that’s the reason why Donald Trump was elected,” Kersey said. “Think about what happened: ‘Build the wall,’ ‘Send them back’ — earlier this year, the chants that started up. Of course Donald Trump, well I guess he disavowed them but they came up spontaneously.

Taylor complained that this happened a full 15 years after the attacks took place, however, and called immigration a “gun to our head” and a “plane to our iconic buildings.” He added that if people try to use the 9/11 attacks to argue for a ban on immigrants they will inevitably be called racists.

The FBI found an increase in anti-Muslim hate crimes following the 9/11 attacks. White supremacist Mark Stroman murdered two immigrants — one Muslim and one Hindu — and wounded a third between September 15, 2001 and October 4, 2001. Stroman was executed ten years later.

Some hate crimes were directed at Sikhs who, because of their turbans, were mistaken for Muslims. A Sikh gas station owner in Mesa, AZ named Balbir Singh Sodhi was gunned down on September 15, 2001 by a racist who told people he was “going to go out and shoot some towel-heads.”