Trump supporters ask to #BoycottHawaii—and it spectacularly backfires

Last night, a federal judge in Hawaii blocked President Donald Trump’s revised travel ban from going into effect today, saying the executive order “disfavour[ed] a particular religion” as it would bar people from six predominately Muslim countries from entering the U.S. While pro-immigrant advocates and liberals rejoiced, Trump supporters took to Twitter to announce their plan to #BoycottHawaii.

Taking it one step beyond denouncing the ruling, boycotters offered such key argument as: Hawaii isn’t legitimately a state anyway, the islands aren’t a wanted part of America, and tourism will likely suffer without Trump supporters.

https://twitter.com/AnthonyEinzig/status/842377087059165184

https://twitter.com/JoshHallGOP/status/842380478359441408

However, people from Hawaii were quick to point out that natives never asked to be part of the United States in the first place. A brief history of Hawaii’s colonization: Native Hawaiians, or Kanaka Maoli, were doing their own thing until England’s Captain James Cook “found” Hawaii in the late 1700s. Protestant missionaries followed, eventually getting the Kanaka to abolish their “sinful” cultural kapu system, while European and American businessmen saw there was money to be made by turning Hawaii’s lush land into sugar plantations. With the Kanaka populations whittled from 300,00 to 71,000 from Western disease by 1853, plantation owners shipped in immigrants from China, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, and Portugal to do manual labor for low wages. By 1893, American colonists controlled much of the economy and overthrew Hawaii’s last monarch, Queen Liliuokalani. Five years later, Hawaii was officially a U.S. territory, a strategic military point between the mainland and the East.

In other words, while being American surely has its perks, there are groups of Kanaka who still want sovereignty and reparations. And the families of all those immigrants from the plantations are what make Hawaii the most culturally diverse state in the country today. Which is why people from Hawaii on Twitter were lol’ing at what little people understand about their state’s history.

https://twitter.com/sierraawolf/status/842193912659812353

https://twitter.com/sierraawolf/status/842234216372879361

Others on Twitter were like, “I think people in Hawaii are just fine with their perfect weather, beaches, and non-hostile people, so the joke’s on you.”

https://twitter.com/GoodwinMelissa/status/842347080978964480

Hawaii: Not afraid to show aloha to foreigners even after foreigners took their land.