High school teacher's Facebook page 'urged people to vote for Donald Trump so Muslims could be butchered'
Barack Obama was described as the 'Imam-in-chief'
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Your support makes all the difference.A US teacher has been condemned after posts on his Facebook page called for people to vote for Donald Trump so Muslims would be “butchered”.
The publicly available posts on an account in the name of Dan Close, a history teacher and athletics coach at Dewey High School in Oklahoma, included a series of rants in which Islam was described as a “death cult” and same-sex marriage as “a sin against nature”.
One of the posts, which have since been deleted, was responding to a terror attack and allegedly said: “Another Islam attack. Happy Ramadan to everyone. Death cult.
"Vote for Clinton if you want to appease the dog pigs. Vote Trump if you want them butchered. Happy Ramadan to all infidels.”
Hillary Clinton was called a “pantsuited beast”, Barack Obama was the “Imam-in-chief” living in the “White Mosque”, and another post claimed Michelle Obama was not female.
America had “spit in the face of God, Jesus and the Laws of Nature” by legalising same-sex marriage and the “Gaystapo” were running the country, the posts added, according to Buzzfeed News.
The messages were sent several years ago and were public until complaints were made in November 2016.
A former pupil of Mr Close – who is a friend of his on Facebook and who wished to remain anonymous, said it had been clear that Mr Close was right-wing.
“I knew his political leaning and there was definitely a bias in that he made it very clear which political side he was on," he said.
He insisted Mr Close was a good teacher but had a “political fire” in him that was “definitely skewed towards the right”.
The posts first came to light when a retired teacher from Oklahoma City, Paula Washington, reported them to the local public school system’s superintendent, Vince Vincent.
She told Buzzfeed: “I told him how objectionable it was. I told him how a teacher has an obligation to express facts — especially a history teacher, to teach facts without opinion.
“The vitriol and the complete hatred that he had shown on his Facebook page had not only been seen by his students, but students all over the country.
“Had it not been associated with his work, I would support his First Amendment rights, but I also know he represents the educational system for which he works, and I couldn’t mesh the two."
She said Mr Vincent had been “respectful” about the matter but regarded it as a freedom of speech issue.
Mr Vincent told The Independent the school did not wish to comment on the matter but did say they were “aware of the story” and were “continuing to investigate the situation”.
The Independent has contacted Mr Close for comment.
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