Kill ‘Every Last Muslim’: Michigan Official Stands By Social Media Post

KALKASKA, MI — A village official in northern Michigan has refused to apologize for social media posts that denounced Islam and appeared to call for the killing of “every last Muslim.” Residents of Kalkaska demanded a mea culpa from Village President Jeff Sieting at a meeting last month, but he refused, and his critics are looking into a recall election, according to media reports.

The posts on Sieting’s personal Facebook page came up again Monday at a village meeting when real estate broker Cindy Anderson, who grew up in the Kalkaska area and still owns land there, asked Sieting if he thought he should apologize. As an elected official, she said, he doesn’t have license to post whatever he wants on his personal social media page.

Sieting was defiant, according to a Traverse City Record-Eagle account, defending his comments as constitutionally protected.

“I owe nobody an an apology for exercising my First Amendment rights,” he said, adding he thinks the kerfuffle is partially backlash over a sign at his business, Sieting Hotel, which asks residents and visitors to pray for President Trump. (For more local news, click here to sign up for real-time news alerts and newsletters from Detroit Patch, click here to find your local Michigan Patch. Also, like us on Facebook, and if you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app.)

Sieting told Michigan Radio in June that Trump’s critics claim First Amendment freedom “to spew out what I consider hate speech.”

“They want to kill our president,” he said. “They make no bones about it. They talk about it openly and freely on national TV …

“And so, my question would be, you know I’m a lowly little village president in a small little cow town in Northern Michigan that put something on my private Facebook page. I didn’t hang that on the front of my hotel. And so everybody else seemingly exercises their freedom of speech about killing people that have nothing to do with the situation, and I put something on there that historically is correct. Thomas Jefferson actually implemented exactly what I said. If anybody would go back and study their history they would find that we have been battling the Muslims since the inception of this country.”

The social media post at the center of the controversy surrounding Sieting went online in November and appeared to have been copied and pasted from the North Carolina-based blog “NC Renegade,” MLive.com reported. The post said Muslims are destructive and “there is simply no place for them in our world.”

A group of about 150 residents are organizing as “Kalkaska Residents for Peace” and are looking into the possibility of a recall election and are scouring around for candidate to challenge Sieting, who has been village president since 2010, when the office comes up for election in 2018.

Sieting has supporters who rejected critics who claimed the posts call into question his ability to represent all village residents.

Joyce Golden, who lives in Kalkaska County outside the village corporate limits, said she doesn’t know Sieting, but if people don’t like what he posts, they should scroll past his Facebook page.

“From what I do know, you are a very honest, faithful, hardworking man and I thank you for that,” Golden said at the village meeting, the Record-Eagle reported. “I hope you continue and stand your ground for your beliefs. I don’t believe he has to represent everybody.”

Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images News/Getty Images