L’art de la division : Trump et la racialisation de la politique

La présente contribution est une traduction-adaptation de mon article: Serge Ricard, « The Trump Phenomenon and the Racialization of American Politics », Revue LISA/LISA e-journal [En ligne], vol. XVI-n°2 | 2018, mis en ligne le 24 septembre 2018. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/lisa/9832 ; DOI : 10.4000/lisa.9832. Elle a fait l'objet d'une présentation orale le 17 octobre 2018 au colloque international de l'École militaire, Paris, 17-18 Octobre 2018, sur le thème : « Une puissance en transition? L’Amérique de Trump et les enjeux stratégiques américains pour 2020 ».

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Résumé : Il y a aujourd’hui parmi les commentateurs de la scène politique pléthore d’analyses de l’ascension de Donald J. Trump. Sa victoire peut sans doute être attribuée à une conjonction de causes, mais l’une d’elles en particulier mérite tout spécialement l’attention : le facteur racial. Le phénomène Trump fut regardé comme l’élévation à la magistrature suprême d’un égaré en politique alors qu’en réalité, il s’agissait d’un retour à la normale dans une société historiquement raciste. L’élection du premier président afro-américain des États-Unis fut atypique ; pas celle d’une vedette de la télé-réalité qui, huit ans plus tard, a su faire de la question raciale une arme politique efficace. La permanence du racisme dans la société américaine peut s’observer dans son impact sur l’élection de 2016, soit par le biais de son activation éhontée, soit à travers une rhétorique codée, sa centralité dans le discours trumpien, les beaux jours promis au nationalisme blanc sous un président qui attise les flammes de la division et des préjugés, ainsi que les signes inquiétants d’une « nouvelle guerre civile » dans une nation désunie.

Abstract: There is today among commentators of the political scene a scramble for analysis of the rise of Donald J. Trump. His victory can no doubt be attributed to a conjunction of causes but one in particular deserves special attention: the racial factor. The Trump phenomenon was regarded as the elevation to the highest office of a political misfit when it was actually a return to normalcy in a historically racist society. The election of the United States’ first African American President was atypical, not that of a reality-TV star who, eight years later, succeeded in turning the race issue into an efficient political weapon. The permanence of racism in American society is evidenced by its impact on the 2016 election, either by means of its unabashed activation or through a coded rhetoric, its centrality in the Trumpian discourse, the heyday of white nationalism under a President prone to stoking the flames of division and prejudice, together with the disquieting signs of a “new civil war” in a disunited nation.

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Si peu d’observateurs outre-Atlantique prédirent qu’une vedette de la télé-réalité succéderait au premier président afro-américain de l’histoire des États-Unis, il y a aujourd’hui parmi les commentateurs de la scène politique pléthore d’analyses du phénomène Trump. Les politologues et les sociologues interrogent les données démographiques et les facteurs économiques, les historiens scrutent les précédents chez les démagogues. L’ascension de Donald J. Trump peut sans doute être attribuée à une conjonction de causes, mais l’une d’elles en particulier mérite tout spécialement l’attention : le facteur racial. Non point qu’il soit négligé dans l’afflux d’articles sur l’accession à la Maison-Blanche du magnat de l’immobilier, mais il semble comparativement minimisé plutôt qu’exposé comme il le devrait. Les incidents raciaux qui se sont poursuivis pendant les deux mandats d’Obama, comme les émeutes de Ferguson ou la fusillade à l’église de Charleston, tendent à prouver qu’un changement  de président est loin d’avoir suffi à améliorer la situation. Les États-Unis sont historiquement une nation raciste —sous un verni de tolérance (qui craque aujourd’hui) depuis la propagation du « politiquement correct » dans les années 1990. L’élection de Barack Hussein Obama fut célébrée comme l’avènement d’une Amérique post-raciale alors qu’en fait les préjugés n’étaient que dormants et se réveillèrent à cette occasion, et la victoire de Trump fut regardée comme l’élévation à la magistrature suprême d’un égaré en politique alors qu’en réalité, il s’agissait d’un retour à la normale, comme le montra l’augmentation des incivilités et agressions d’origine raciste à partir du 8 novembre 2016.  L’élection d’Obama fut une anomalie, pas celle de Trump. La permanence du racisme dans la société américaine peut s’observer, on va le voir, dans : 1) son impact sur l’élection de 2016, soit par le biais de son activation éhontée, soit à travers une rhétorique codée ; 2) sa centralité dans le discours trumpien ; 3) les beaux jours promis au nationalisme blanc sous un président qui attise les flammes de la division et des préjugés, et 4) les signes inquiétants d’une « nouvelle guerre civile » dans une nation désunie.

Illusoire « Melting Pot »

Nonobstant la rhétorique du « creuset » au tournant du XIX^e siècle et les célébrations ultérieures du multiculturalisme, racisme et préjugés anti-immigrants sont des constantes de l’histoire américaine. S’y ajoutent les stigmates de l’esclavage et d’une libération à contrecœur qui est loin d’avoir conduit les Afro-Américains à une égalité parfaite un siècle et demi après leur accession à la citoyenneté. Le culte de la pureté raciale a souvent justifié des politiques d’exclusion envers les Indiens, les Noirs et les Mexicains. L’immigration masssive, surtout non blanche, a toujours entraîné des perturbations socio-économiques ; en témoignent les réactions « nativistes » des années 1850 contre les Irlandais, celles des années 1890 et 1910 contre les Européens de l’Est et du Sud, ou la Loi d’exclusion des Chinois, l’agitation anti-japonaise, les campagnes en faveur des tests d’alphabétisation, ou encore la Loi d’immigration de 1924. La politique anti-immigration de Donald Trump nous renvoie à ces époques troublées, lorsqu’un prétendu cheval de Troie de l’étranger mettait en péril la République. Cette question fut bruyamment remise au goût du jour pendant la campagne de 2016 lorsque le candidat républicain dénonça l’invasion du pays par des hordes de Mexicains, y ajoutant les Musulmans (1,1de la population américaine) pour faire bonne mesure et frapper les esprits en ces temps de terrorisme islamique en jurant d’interdire à ces derniers l’accès aux États-Unis.

L’élection de Barack Obama en 2008 avec le soutien des principaux groupes ethniques fut célébrée comme l’avènement d’une ère post-raciale alors qu’en vérité, les arbres cachaient la forêt. Huit ans plus tard, un magnat de l’immobilier à la mentalité de « petit blanc » lui a succédé sur fond de revanche des classes moyenne blanches s’estimant abandonnées et lésées au profit de minorités de couleur toujours plus nombreuses ; les griefs de cette catégorie de non-diplômés de l’enseignement supérieur sont multiples : sentiment d’être les laissés-pour-compte de l’économie, perte de statut, exaspération devant trois décennies de « politiquement correct » (perçu comme de la censure) et de discrimination positive (assimilée à de la discrimination à l’envers) — en fait une sourde rancune contre la fin de la hiérarchie raciale[1]. La popularité de Trump résulte de la vieille « stratégie sudiste » qui remonte aux années Nixon, sinon plus tôt, et qui faisait appel de façon codée aux préjugés racistes des Blancs et à l’intolérance. En ce sens, le nouveau locataire de la Maison-Blanche est bel et bien la créature du Parti républicain et le dernier symptôme de sa crise, un démagogue qui du fait de son franc-parler est devenu le héros et le porte-parole des nationalistes blancs et a aidé le GOP (Grand Old Party) à se radicaliser. On notera l’ironie grinçante du remplacement du premier président noir par la figure de proue du « Birther movement » qui a contesté sa naissance aux États-Unis, un candidat lent à rejeter le soutien du Ku Klux Klan et heureux d’être plébiscité par les nationalistes blancs. En ce sens l’élection de « Donald Trump apparaît comme une répudiation de l’héritage d’Obama et prouve l’existence d’une régression raciale »[2].

L’élection d’Obama : le mythe de l’Amérique post-raciale

Malgré son élection, le 44^e président ne s’est jamais bercé d’illusions quant au prétendu recul du racisme, comme il l’a dit dans son discours d’adieu, rappelant que les lois ne peuvent pas tout et que « les cœurs doivent changer ». Ce fut un leitmotiv pendant toute sa présidence ; il ne croyait pas à une Amérique post-raciale ; la condition des Noirs n’allait pas changer du jour au lendemain. À vrai dire, son élection avait fait illusion : Barack Hussein Obama n’avait pas gagné parce qu’il était noir, mais parce que le pays, secoué par deux guerres et une crise économique, aspirait au changement, et aussi parce que, jeune et brillant candidat, il incarnait la nouveauté et éclipsa de ce fait le vieux routier et franc-tireur de la politique, John S. McCain. Les relations raciales ne s’améliorèrent pas miraculeusement pendant ses deux mandats, au contraire, elles s’ aggravèrent, comme le révèle l’opinion des Américains, blancs et noirs, sur cette question[3] et sur les progrès de l’égalité raciale[4]. Sur les problèmes de race, le nouveau président s’efforça de ne rien politiser par souci d’impartialité et d’unité nationale ; il fut extrêmement prudent, trop pusillanime pour ses critiques afro-américains, trop clivant pour ses adversaires blancs. Paradoxalement, c’est sous le premier président noir et à la suite de multiples incidents et affrontements raciaux que fut fondé le mouvement « Black Lives Matter » (les vies noires comptent), le forçant à s’exprimer sur un mode plus passionné et plus intime. On en rappellera les principaux : le 16 juillet 2009 arrestation du professeur noir de Harvard, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., essayant de forcer sa propre porte ; le 19 juillet 2013 acquittement en Floride de George Zimmerman du meurtre d’un jeune noir de 17 ans, Trayvon Martin, au nom des pouvoirs de police que lui conférait sa surveillance du quartier ; le 9 août 2014 tirs mortels sur un jeune noir de 18 ans non armé, Michael Brown, par un officier de police blanc à Ferguson dans le Missouri, suivis de manifestations et d’émeutes, et marquant l’essor du mouvement « Black Lives Matter » ; en décembre de la même année, impunité assurée une nouvelle fois aux forces de l’ordre dans le cas d’un policier new-yorkais responsable de la mort par étouffement d’Eric Garner, un noir soupçonné de vendre des cigarettes illégalement ; plus dramatique encore, le 17 juin 2015, massacre par un suprématiste blanc de huit paroissiens noirs et de leur pasteur dans une église de Charleston en Caroline du Sud ; ou encore, le 17 juillet 2016, mort à Dallas de cinq officier de police tués par un tireur embusqué lors d’une manifestation pacifique contre de nouveaux tirs mortels de policiers visant des Noirs plus tôt dans la semaine en Louisiane (Alton Stirling) et dans le Minnesota (Philando Castile). Pendant tous ces moments difficiles de tension raciale, le Président montra beaucoup de tact tout en dénonçant la violence et le racisme.

Le premier président noir des États-Unis fut aussi personnellement l’objet d’attaques liées à ses origines. Sa naissance aux États-Unis fut de nouveau mise en en doute lorsque Trump relança le « Birther movement » au début de l’année 2011 et son physique continua lui de valoir des injures racistes. On notera que contrairement à la plupart des démocraties libérales, aucune loi aux États-Unis ne punit les injures racistes au nom du sacro-saint Premier Amendement qui défend la liberté d’expression de manière quasi absolue[5].

La campagne de Trump : la vengeance des WASP

Compte tenu de son histoire personnelle d’hostilité envers les Noirs, des procès qui lui furent intentés pour discrimination à son acharnement haineux contre les « Cinq de Central Park »[6] même après qu’ils furent innocentés, on peut penser que l’accession d’un Noir à la Maison-Blanche ne fut pas étrangère à la décision de « The Donald »[7] de briguer la présidence en 2016 ; compte tenu de son arrogance et de son narcissisme bien connus, on peut imaginer qu’elle date de l’humiliation publique qu’Obama lui infligea le 30 avril 2011 lors du traditionnel dîner des Correspondants à la Maison-Blanche, comme l’a suggéré son allié de longue date, Roger Stone, un consultant politique républicain[8]. Le Président qui trois jours plus tôt avait rendu publique la version longue de son acte de naissance pour faire taire la polémique lancée par les conspirationnistes et entretenue par Trump monta sur le podium et pendant de longues minutes se moqua impitoyablement du magnat de l’immobilier présent dans l’assistance, ironisant même sur son plus grand sujet de fierté, son émission de télévision « The Apprentice » (l’apprenti). Il se passerait encore cinq ans avant que ce dernier admette à contrecœur sous la pression des médias pendant la campagne qu’Obama était bien né aux États-Unis : « Le président Barack Obama est né aux États-Unis. Point final »[9].

Le 16 juin 2015, la veille de la fusillade de Charleston, Donald J. Trump descendit l’escalator de la Trump Tower à New York et annonça une candidature que personne ne prit au sérieux ainsi que son intention de « rendre sa grandeur à l’Amérique » ; les forces conservatrices du pays allaient bientôt se rallier à un nouveau représentant, un démagogue populiste qui pressentait que le « nativisme », la xénophobie et le non-respect des normes seraient essentiels à sa popularité auprès de l’électorat[10].

Sa cible principale allait être Obama qu’il rendait responsable de la chute des États-Unis au niveau d’« un pays du tiers-monde ». Il commença par dénoncer véhémentement l’immigration, contre laquelle il appelait à la croisade, et accusa le Mexique d’exporter ses pires éléments, des criminels, des violeurs, des trafiquants de drogue ; il promit de construire un mur à la frontière et de le faire payer par le Mexique ; il prétendit que par la faute d’Obama et des administrations précédentes l’Amérique était exploitée par le reste du monde.

On trouve dans ce discours par ailleurs débordant de suffisance et de prétention un concentré de la plupart de ses idées fixes et leitmotivs : le « désastre » d’Obamacare qu’il remplacerait par un système meilleur et moins cher, l’éducation trop coûteuse, le besoin d’un président capable d’éradiquer l’État islamique.

Ce discours marqua l’épanouissement de la « post-vérité », l’entrée dans l’ère des « faits alternatifs » en ce qu’il fit apparaître Trump comme le menteur compulsif que nous connaissons maintenant, qu’il croit ou non ses propres mensonges comme se le demandent certains observateurs aujourd’hui[11]. Sa campagne joua sur les angoisses des classes moyennes — peur des immigrants illégaux et des réfugiés musulmans, du « terrorisme islamique radical », de la violence des défenseurs des droits civiques manifestant contre les tirs policiers sur des Noirs désarmés. En fin de compte « le Donald » coiffa au poteau tous ses concurrents. Il montra à l’Amérique et au monde son vrai visage — son racisme, sa misogynie, sa propension au mensonge éhonté — et fit sans vergogne commerce électoral de son credo isolationniste obsessionnel concernant l’ALENA, le Partenariat Trans-Pacifique (TPP), l’OTAN, l’ONU, l’UNESCO, la Chine, le Japon, la Corée du Sud et leurs pratiques commerciales déloyales, les guerres de Bush et d’Obama, l’État islamique, etc. Il adopta cette pose ridicule et puérile de « superman » de la politique qui depuis deux ans caractérise  notamment sa diplomatie chaotique et révèle son inoxydable autosatisfaction.

Trump à la Maison-Blanche : la nouvelle normalité

Il est tentant de noter que « la folie du président Donald J. Trump n’est pas sans méthode » car toutes les décisions et mesures qu’il a prises depuis son entrée à la Maison-Blanche ont obéi à un schéma cohérent : oblitérer le bilan d’Obama. Leur liste par inférence révèle les innombrables réalisations et avancées dues au 44^e président dans la plupart des domaines — santé, éducation, emploi, justice sociale, finance, environnement, défense, diplomatie, etc. — et non sans quelque ironie peut se lire comme un hommage au bilan de son administration. L’action de Trump depuis janvier 2017 s’est définie essentiellement par opposition à celle de son prédécesseur. Son programme, toutefois, comprend d’autres priorités, maintenir le clivage racial, effrayer et rassurer tout à la fois sa base électorale blanche, intimider les « minorités », notamment les Noirs et les Hispaniques, et stopper l’invasion migratoire par la construction d’un mur  à la frontière mexicaine.

Lors de sa prestation de serment, il avait juré de mettre fin à « ce carnage américain », mais il allait en fait l’exacerber en promettant, comme il le fit lorsqu’il reçut l’investiture républicaine, de « restaurer la sécurité », dénonçant « les attaques contre notre police », « le terrorisme dans nos villes »[12]. Un message similaire paraîtrait sur le site Web de la Maison-Blanche au lendemain de son entrée en fonction[13]. Le but de ces déclarations était de perpétuer un « fantasme », d’amalgamer les violences criminelles et les manifestations en faveur du respect des droits civiques, « de diaboliser des groupes et mouvements protestataires réclamant une réforme de la police ». Comme le souligne Jamelle Bouie, « cela est essentiel à sa vision politique plus large, une politique identitaire blanche qui réagit avec scepticisme et hostilité aux accusations d’injustice raciale »[14]. Mais la réalité contredit la rhétorique de Trump : d’après les statistiques du FBI et du ministère de la Justice, la criminalité a baissé nettement ces vingt-cinq dernières années. D’autre part, tous les crimes et délits ne sont pas signalés et la plupart de ceux qui le sont ne sont pas résolus. De plus, la criminalité varie sensiblement selon la densité de population et les conditions économiques. Enfin, malgré la baisse, la perception qu’en a le public est tout le contraire : au moins six Américains sur dix pensent que la criminalité a augmenté au niveau national, comparé à l’année précédente, quand la moitié disent qu’il n’en est rien là où ils vivent[15].

Le cœur du problème, c’est que les groupes ethno-raciaux ne sont pas traités de manière égale, bien qu’une majorité écrasante de Blancs soient convaincus du contraire, et que le groupe qui pâtit le plus de la criminalité, les Afro-Américains, est la cohorte la plus susceptible de juger sévèrement les forces de l’ordre et de soutenir une réforme de la police, notamment des sanctions plus lourdes pour les officiers coupables d’un usage excessif de la force ou de racisme patent. L’approche de Trump, selon Bouie, « fait partie intégrante du nationalisme blanc qui a alimenté sa campagne, inspiré son administration et façonne maintenant son discours en tant que président », le signe qu’« il gouvernera avec l’œil sur les clivages et antagonismes raciaux comme pendant sa campagne ». Et la plupart des Blancs souscrivent à cette vision fortement « racialisée » de la société américaine[16].

Depuis son entrée en fonction le 45^e président a su habilement créer une réalité alternative dans laquelle tous les Noirs sont des criminels potentiels et tous les immigrants des membres du puissant gang latino-américain MS-13. Il a assimilé un mouvement protestataire symbolique à de l’antipatriotisme en attaquant les joueurs de la « National Football League » qui posaient un genou à terre pendant l’hymne national pour manifester contre les violences policières subies par les Noirs et a obtenu que la NFL change son règlement en violation de la liberté d’expression des joueurs garantie par le Premier Amendement. Il a même essayé d’instiller la peur chez les réfugiés à la frontière sud avec la cruelle séparation des enfants de leurs parents. La Maison-Blanche fut tellement déstabilisée par la violente réaction de l’opinion et la condamnation quasi-universelle de sa politique d’immigration-zéro que Donald Trump, généralement peu enclin à céder, annula son décret présidentiel  six semaines plus tard.

Une nation divisée ne peut qu’inquiéter. Qui sème le vent récolte la tempête. Non seulement ont eu lieu pendant son court mandat trois des pires fusillades de l’histoire récente des États-Unis, perpétrées par des Américains atteints de troubles mentaux et non par des djihadistes ou des immigrants membres de gangs, mais le nombre de crimes racistes a augmenté spectaculairement depuis son élection. Ce phénomène résulte de sa propension à semer les graines de la division et à attiser les flammes du racisme ; le Président lui-même a enhardi les groupes qui véhiculent la haine raciale et dont il n’a jamais dénoncé le soutien qu’ils lui apportaient. Son dénigrement permanent des Musulmans a complété le message raciste. Voilà qu’aujourd’hui des citoyens blancs paranoïaques s’en prennent à de paisibles Afro-Américains en alertant la police au 911 pour un oui, pour un non ; et l’on ne peut être surpris que les tirs policiers sur des Noirs continuent, rituellement ponctuée par les protestations du mouvement  « Black Lives Matter », sans que le « twitteur  en chef » s’en inquiète, au contraire de ses prédécesseurs. Au bout d’un an de sa présidence 60% d’Américains estimaient que les relations raciales s’étaient aggravées, 8% disaient le contraire et 30% pensaient qu’il n’y avait pas eu de changement[17]. Il n’y a rien d’étonnant à ce que sa popularité auprès des électeurs noirs soit au plus bas — malgré le soutien que lui a apporté le talentueux rappeur bipolaire Kanye West, que ses fans ont pardonné car ils le savent coutumier d’excentricités et de provocations, mais que Trump a accueilli avec un enthousiasme puéril et comique. Le plus préoccupant demeure l’attitude ouvertement militante des nationalistes et des suprématistes blancs, sans parler de l’indéracinable Ku Klux Klan.

Depuis l’élection de Trump les suprématistes blancs ont organisé de nombreux rassemblements dans plusieurs régions des États-Unis. Quel qu’en soit le lieu, tous se sont déroulés selon le même schéma : chaque fois un petit nombre de suprématistes issus de diverses entités prônant la haine raciale (comme le Ku Klux Kan ou Identity Evropa) se sont alliés à des membres de groupes moins marqués par le nationalisme blanc, réunis sous la bannière de la « droite alternative » (alt-right). Ils se sont invariablement affronté à la police et aux contre-manifestants (comme Antifa, un groupe antifasciste violent), avec le plus souvent d’inévitables débordements, des tabassages, des fusillades et même mort d’homme. Le plus terrifiant eut lieu le 12 août 2017 à Charlottesville en Virginie où se rassemblèrent des centaines de nationalistes blancs, néo-Nazis et autres groupes de suprématistes. Les affrontements, d’une extrême violence, se soldèrent par la mort d’une contre-manifestante et constituèrent un tournant en raison de leur impact national  et international. Trump dans un premier temps condamna la violence « des deux côtés », y compris celle de ce qu’il appela the alt-left (la gauche alternative), notant qu’il y avait « des gens très bien » des deux côtés, tout en se distançant finalement de l’extrême droite (« J’ai condamné les néo-Nazis »). Le 23 août 2017 le Comité pour l’élimination de la discrimination raciale (CERD) de l’ONU, dans une rare mise en garde, appela le gouvernement des États-Unis à condamner « inconditionnellement et sans équivoque » les crimes et discours racistes, sans aller jusqu’à nommer le Président. Force est de constater que sous Donald Trump « les préjugés, la haine et le racisme, de marginaux sont devenus dominants »[18] et que les groupes d’extrême droite ont considérablement affiné leur discours, invoquant astucieusement la liberté d’expression, l’ouverture du débat et « l’union des droites » pour le rendre plus présentable, au point de duper certains libéraux. La tragédie de Charlottesville, cependant, fut universellement condamnée.

La boîte de Pandore et l’hydre du racisme

La démocratie pourrait bien être menacée aujourd’hui aux États-Unis. En faisant fi des normes et des traditions le 45^e président a révélé les failles de la constitution américaine[19]. Globalement, le Parti républicain s’est déplacé vers la droite depuis le début du XXI^e siècle ; il s’est de toute évidence radicalisé et a absorbé les ultraconservateurs du « Tea Party ». La disparition des accords bipartites est à présent une donnée de la politique au Congrès. Les conservateurs ont développé une panoplie d’insultes et de termes codés pour dépeindre les démocrates sous un jour désobligeant de dangereux gauchistes. Électoralement, « une maison divisée » est désormais victime d’une tyrannie de la minorité. Malgré la conquête de la Chambre des représentants par les démocrates lors des élections de mi-mandat le 6 novembre 2018, les républicains grâce à la chambre haute restent en position de force dans deux des trois arènes démocratiques (Chambre basse, Sénat, Présidence) bien que minoritaires en voix[20] — et les choix de Trump pour pourvoir les vacances de juges vont selon toute vraisemblance rendre le pouvoir judiciaire plus réactionnaire dans les années qui viennent. La réaction plus que le progrès semble à l’ordre du jour, aiguillonnée par une droite dure.

Depuis la victoire de Donald Trump l’ultra-droite a donné libre cours à ses idées pernicieuses. Le poison du racisme s’est répandu encore plus. Des propos hideux résonnent dans le débat national sur l’immigration et les questions raciales. Selon le « Southern Poverty Law Center » les groupes prônant la haine (hate groups), au nombre de presque un millier, sont présents dans les cinquante États de l’Union, non seulement des suprématistes blancs, mais aussi des groupes de nationalistes noirs. Dans la première catégorie, les néo-Nazis ont connu le plus fort développement[21]. À ce propos, le 1^er février 2018, le Huffington Post a publié un article sur  la « AtomwaffenDivision », un groupe néo-Nazi fortement armé qui admire Charles Manson et Adolf Hitler, dont l’ambition est de lancer une guerre raciale et de renverser le gouvernement des États-Unis et dont les membres sont les auteurs présumés de cinq meurtres (apparemment sans coordination) en huit mois[22]. Des suprématistes blancs ont également tenté d’organiser des contre-manifestations avec le slogan « White Lives Matter » (les vies blanches comptent).

De plus, une guerre idéologique est en cours. Quelques exemples peuvent l’illustrer facilement. À la fin décembre 2017, quelque 3000 étudiants venus de plusieurs campus américains se sont réunis en Floride près de Mar-a-Lago, le club privé de Trump, pour un « sommet » mis sur pied par « Turning Point USA », une organisation à but non lucratif qui entend former les étudiants à l’économie de marché ; la rencontre était consacrée à la liberté d’expression, aux « guerres culturelles » et au péril gauchiste. Plus préoccupante est la propagande suprématiste sur les campus universitaires en augmentation de 258% entre l’automne 2016 et 2017 d’après un rapport de la « Anti–Defamation League » de février 2018. Le postulat de la « droite alternative » qui l’alimente en grande partie est que tous les changements politiques depuis les années soixante sont partis des campus[23]. Une approche plus sournoise, plus inquiétante pour l’avenir car certains s’y laissent prendre, consiste à s’insinuer dans le discours dominant, comme s’y efforce Richard Spencer[24], et à habiller le racisme des oripeaux élimés de théories « pseudo-socio-scientifiques » pour le rendre plus respectable et, partant, plus acceptable.

Les nationalistes blancs, pour qui les Latinos, les Noirs, les Juifs et les Musulmans sont autant d’indésirables, ont indéniablement été encouragés dans leur militantisme par le verbe trumpien qu’ils ont applaudi en plusieurs occasions car il apparaissait comme une normalisation de leur discours de haine. Ils ont trouvé un héros dont le programme clivant est taillé à leur goût : interdire aux immigrants de couleur et aux Musulmans l’entrée des États-Unis, exclure les illégaux, repousser le jour prédit par le bureau du Recensement où les Blancs deviendront minoritaires, subvertir les sempiternelles valeurs américaines de justice et d’égalité, en un mot polariser et racialiser le débat national. Que peuvent présager les débordements de haine et d’intolérance sinon une guerre raciale ? À en juger par la première moitié du mandat de Donald Trump les États-Unis sont affligés d’une présidence conflictuelle et chaotique et engagés dans une forme de « guerre civile non déclarée » que rage et racisme marqueront de leur sceau. Cette guerre a déjà commencé avec la prise à partie dans des lieux publics de membres de l’équipe du Président[25] ; un « mouvement de résistance à Trump » s’est développé, une coalition hétéroclite d’« anti-trumpistes » qui divergent sur la tactique mais qui semblent s’accorder sur le bulletin de vote comme dernier recours et que les résultats des élections de novembre 2018 ont comblés. Avec le basculement à leur avantage de la Chambre basse, le combat anti-Trump va s’intensifier. Compte tenu des tensions à l’œuvre dans la société américaine, il y a peu d’espoir que les antagonismes politiques et raciaux s’apaisent de sitôt.

---

[1] Jamelle Bouie, « How Trump Happened », Slate, March 13, 2016.

[2] Nick Bryant, « Barack Obama Legacy : Did He Improve US Race Relations?, » BBC News, January 10, 2017.

[3] Jennifer Agiesta, « Most Say Race Relations Worsened under Obama, Poll Finds », CNN, October 6, 2016.

[4] Pew Research Center, « Most Americans Say Trump’s Election Has led to Worse Race Relations in the U.S. », December 19, 2017.

[5] Voir Frederick Schauer, « The Exceptional First Amendment », SSRN Electronic Journal, February 18, 2005. <https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=668543>, consulté le 7 juillet 2018.

[6] Dans les années 1980 Trump s’offrit de pleines pages de publicité dans quatre grands quotidiens new-yorkais pour appeler au retour de la peine de mort contre cinq jeunes Noirs et Latinos accusés à tort du viol de « la joggeuse de Central Park ». Il ne s’excusa jamais après qu’ils furent innocentés. Oliver Laughland, « Donald Trump and the Central Park Five : The Racially Charged Rise of A Demagogue », The Guardian, February 17, 2016.

[7] Un sobriquet popularisé par sa première femme, Ivana Trump, dans les années 1980. Amy Argetsinger, « Why Does Everyone Call Donald Trump ‘The Donald’? It’s an Interesting Story », The Washington Post, September 1, 2015.

[8] Nikki Schwab, « Did Trump decide to run when Obama mocked him as a birther conspiracy theorist at White House dinner? », Mail Online, September 22, 2016.

[9] Stephen Collinson et Jeremy Diamond, « Trump Finally Admits It : ‘President Barack Obama Was Born in the United States’ », CNN, September 16, 2016.

[10] Nick Bryant, op. cit.

[11] Rupert Neate, « Donald Trump Announces Presidential Run with Eccentric Speech », The Guardian, June 16, 2015.

[12] Brad Plummer, « Full Transcript of Donald Trump’s Acceptance Speech at the RNC », Vox, July 22, 2016.

<https://www.vox.com/2016/7/21/12253426/donald-trump-acceptance-speech-transcript-republican-nominationtranscript >, consulté le 7 juillet 2018.

[13] <https://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/law-justice/>, consulté le 7 juillet 2018.

[14] Jamelle Bouie, « The Meaning of ‘American Carnage’ », Slate, January 23, 2017.

[15] John Gramlich, Pew Research Center, January 30, 2018.

[16] Jamelle Bouie, op. cit.

[17] John Gramlich, op. cit.

[18] Al Sharpton, « In America Bias, Hate and Racism Move from the Margins to the Mainstream », The Guardian, August 14, 2017.

[19] Partant du principe qu’il pouvait se permettre ce qu’aucune loin ne lui interdisait, Trump a foulé aux pieds un certain nombre de coutumes et conventions qui permettent à une démocratie de fonctionner sereinement sans  qu’elles soient inscrites dans sa constitution. Jonathan Freedland, « The Year of Trump Has Laid Bare the US Constitution’s Serious Flaws, » The Guardian, December 30, 2017.

[20] Christopher R. Browning, « Dangers I Didn’t See Coming : ‘Tyranny of the Minority’ and An Irrelevant Press », Vox, January18, 2017.

[21] Sara Sidner et Mallory Simon, « Number of Neo-Nazi and Black Nationalist Hate Groups Grew in 2017, SPLC Says », CNN, February 22, 2018.

[22] Christopher Mathias, « 1 Neo-Nazi Group. 5 Murders in 8 Months », The Huffington Post, February 1, 2018.

[23] Christopher Mathias, « White Supremacists Are Targeting College Students ‘Like Never Before’ », The Huffington Post, February 1, 2018.

[24] Richard B. Spencer, qui se considère membre du « mouvement identitaire » (identitarian), est un suprématiste blanc qui dirige le « National Policy Institute », un groupe de réflexion nationaliste blanc, et « Washington Summit Publishers », une maison d’édition de même orientation. Anti-Defamation League, « Richard Spencer : A Symbol of the New White Supremacy », May 14, 2013, https://www.adl.org/blog/richard-spencer-a-symbol-of-the-new-white-supremacy.

[25] Matt Lewis, « The Uncivil War Has Officially Begun », Daily Beast, June 26, 2018; Sam Wolfson, « ‘Make Them Pariahs’ : How Shaming Trump Aids Became a Resistance Tactic », The Guardian, July 11, 2018.

 

 

Bibliographie

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ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE, « Richard Spencer: A Symbol of the New White Supremacy », May 14, 2013.

ARGETSINGER Amy, « Why Does Everyone Call Donald Trump ‘The Donald’? It’s an Interesting Story », The Washington Post, September 1, 2015.

ASSOCIATED PRESS, « Some key moments related to race during Obama’s Presidency », January 4, 2017. <https://www.apnews.com/5fe1bbf09fd342b392d78a93f10ae7ca>

BERMAN Matt, RESNICK Brian, VASILOGAMBROS Matt & Niraj CHOKSHI, « President Obama: ‘Trayvon Martin Could’ve Been Me 35 Years Ago’ », The Atlantic, July 19, 2013. <https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/07/president-obama-trayvon-martin-couldve-been-me-35-years-ago/438021/>.

BOUIE Jamelle, « How Trump Happened », Slate, March 13, 2016.

BOUIE Jamelle, « The Meaning of ‘American Carnage’ », Slate, January 23, 2017.

BOUIE Jamelle « What the President Won’t Say: Donald Trump Breaks with Precedents by Not Speaking against Racial Violence, » Slate, March 30, 2018.

BROOKS David, « The Devolution of Anti-Trumpists », The Seattle Times, January 9, 2018.

BROOKS Risa A., « Muslim ‘Homegrown’ Terrorism in the United States: How Serious Is the Threat? », International Security, vol. 36, no. 2, Fall 2011, 7-47.

BROWNING Christopher R., « Dangers I Didn’t See Coming: ‘Tyranny of the Minority’ and An Irrelevant Press », Vox, January18, 2017.

BRYANT Nick, « Barack Obama Legacy: Did He Improve US Race Relations? », BBC News, January 10, 2017.

CHHOR Khatya, « Wonder Who’s Fighting Trump? Meet the #Resistance », France 24, May 31, 2018

CHRISTOL Hélène and Serge RICARD, eds., Hyphenated Diplomacy: European Immigration and U.S. Foreign Policy, 1914-1984, Aix-en-Provence: Publications de l’Université de Provence, 1985.

COLLINSON Stephen and Jeremy DIAMOND, « Trump Finally Admits It: ‘President Barack Obama Was Born in the United States’ », CNN, September 16, 2016.

EPSTEIN Jennifer, « American Political Jargon », Bloomsberg QuickTake, August 16, 2016.

FREEDLAND Jonathan, « The Year of Trump Has Laid Bare the US Constitution’s Serious Flaws », The Guardian, December 30, 2017.

GAMBINO Lauren and Sabrina SIDDIQUI, « Trump Defends Chaotic Foreign Policy: We’re Going to Straighten It Out, OK? », The Guardian, February 2, 2017.

GAMBINO Lauren and Oliver LAUGHLAND, « Donald Trump Signs Executive Order to End Family Separations », The Guardian, June 20, 2018.

GEST Justin, The New Minority: White Working Class Politics in an Age of Immigration and Inequality, New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.

GRAMLICH John, Pew Research Center, January 30, 2018.

HEER Jeet, « How the Southern Strategy Made Donald Trump Possible », New Republic, February 28, 2016.

KENDI Ibram X., « The Death of Post-Racial America: How Obama’s Presidency, and Trump’s Election, Definitely Killed an Idea that Never Made Sense », New York Daily Mail, January 14, 2017.

LAUGHLAND Oliver, « Donald Trump and the Central Park Five: The Racially Charged Rise of A Demagogue », The Guardian, February 17, 2016.

LEWIS Matt, « The Uncivil War Has Officially Begun, » Daily Beast, June 26, 2018.

LUSCOMBE Richard, « ‘We’re under Attack’: Young Conservatives Gather to Reject Political Correctness », The Guardian, December 23, 2017.

MATHIAS Christopher, « 1 Neo-Nazi Group. 5 Murders in 8 Months », The Huffington Post, February 1, 2018.

MATHIAS Christopher, « White Supremacists Are Targeting College Students ‘Like Never Before’ », The Huffington Post, February 1, 2018.

MOSKOWITZ Peter, « A Year in the Violent Rise of White Supremacy », Splinter, November 8, 2017.

MUHAMMAD Khalil Gibran, « How the Alt-Right Uses Social Science to Make Racism Respectable », The Nation, January 15, 2018.

NAVES Marie-Cécile, Trump, la revanche de l’homme blanc, Paris: Éditions Textuel, 2017.

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PEW RESEARCH CENTER, « Most Americans Say Trump’s Election Has led to Worse Race Relations in the U.S. », December 19, 2017.

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SCHAUER Frederick, « The Exceptional First Amendment », SSRN Electronic Journal, February 18, 2005. <https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=668543>

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*****

Serge Ricard est professeur émérite d’histoire et civilisation américaine à la Sorbonne Nouvelle (Université Paris III). Spécialiste reconnu de Théodore Roosevelt et son époque et membre du comité consultatif de la « Theodore Roosevelt Association », il a dirigé A Companion to Theodore Roosevelt (2011) pour la collection « Blackwell Companions to American History » et a beaucoup publié comme auteur, directeur ou co-directeur sur la politique étrangère américaine, les médias, l’immigration, l’ethnicité et les cultures hispaniques aux États-Unis. On compte parmi ses ouvrages Théodore Roosevelt et la justification de l’impérialisme (1986), The Mass Media in America : An Overview (1998), The “Manifest Destiny” of the United States in the 19^th Century : Ideological and Political Aspects (1999), et, plus récemment, Théodore Roosevelt et l’Amérique impériale et Les États-Unis, démocratie impérialiste. Essai sur un dessein manifeste (2016).

  

Serge Ricard is Professor Emeritus of American Studies and U.S. History at the Sorbonne Nouvelle (University of Paris III). A leading scholar of Theodore Roosevelt and his times and a member of the Theodore Roosevelt Association Advisory Board, he has edited A Companion to Theodore Roosevelt (2011) for the Blackwell Companions to American History Series and has published extensively as author, editor or co-editor on American diplomacy, the media, immigration, ethnicity, and Hispanic cultures in the United States. His books include Théodore Roosevelt et la justification de l’impérialisme (1986), The Mass Media in America: An Overview (1998), The “Manifest Destiny” of the United States in the 19^th Century: Ideological and Political Aspects (1999), and more recently Théodore Roosevelt et l’Amérique impériale and Les États-Unis, démocratie impérialiste. Essai sur un dessein manifeste (2016).   

 

The Trump Phenomenon and the Racialization of American Politics

Serge Ricard, « The Trump Phenomenon and the Racialization of American Politics », Revue LISA/LISA e-journal [En ligne], vol. XVI-n°2 | 2018, mis en ligne le 24 septembre 2018. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/lisa/9832 ; DOI : 10.4000/lisa.9832

The Trump Phenomenon and the Racialization of American Politics

Serge Ricard

Sorbonne Nouvelle (Université Paris III)

*****

Abstract: If very few observers across the Atlantic predicted that a reality-TV star would succeed the United States’ first African American President there is today among commentators of the political scene a scramble for analysis of the rise of Donald J. Trump. His victory can no doubt be attributed to a conjunction of causes but one in particular deserves special attention: the racial factor. The Trump phenomenon was regarded as the elevation to the highest office of a political misfit when it was actually a return to normalcy in a historically racist society. Barack Obama’s election was atypical, not Trump’s. The following essay attempts to throw light on the permanence of the race factor in American society, its impact on the 2016 election, either by means of its unabashed activation or through a coded rhetoric, its centrality in the Trumpian discourse, the heyday of white nationalism under a President prone to stoking the flames of division and prejudice, together with the disquieting signs of a “new civil war” in a disunited nation.

Résumé : Si peu d’observateurs outre-Atlantique prédirent qu’une vedette de la télé-réalité succéderait au premier président afro-américain des États-Unis, il y a aujourd’hui parmi les commentateurs de la scène politique pléthore d’analyses de l’ascension de Donald J. Trump. Sa victoire peut sans doute être attribuée à une conjonction de causes, mais l’une d’elles en particulier mérite tout spécialement l’attention : le facteur racial. Le phénomène Trump fut regardé comme l’élévation à la magistrature suprême d’un égaré en politique alors qu’en réalité, il s’agissait d’un retour à la normale dans une société historiquement raciste. L’élection d’Obama fut atypique ; pas celle de Trump. L’essai qui suit tente de mettre en évidence la permanence du facteur racial dans la société américaine, son impact sur l’élection de 2016, soit par le biais de son activation éhontée, soit à travers une rhétorique codée, sa centralité dans le discours trumpien, les beaux jours promis au nationalisme blanc sous un président qui attise les flammes de la division et des préjugés, ainsi que les signes inquiétants d’une « nouvelle guerre civile » dans une nation désunie.

 *****

If very few observers across the Atlantic predicted that a reality-TV star would succeed Barack Obama, there is today among commentators of the political scene a scramble for analysis of the Trump phenomenon. Political scientists and sociologists are having a field day exploring demographics and economic factors, historians in scrutinizing precedents in demagoguery. The rise of Donald J. Trump can no doubt be attributed to a conjunction of causes, but one in particular deserves special attention: the racial factor. Not that it is being neglected in the outpour of articles about the unexpected accession of the real estate mogul to the White House, but it seems comparatively to be played down rather than trumpeted as it should. The continuing racial incidents throughout Obama’s Presidency, like the Ferguson riots or the Charleston church shooting, tend to prove that it takes more than a change of Chief Executive to improve the situation. The United States is historically a racist nation with a veneer – cracking today – of tolerance since the spread of “political correctness” in the 1990s. Obama’s election was hailed as the advent of post-racial America when in fact prejudice was only dormant and awakened in the process, and Trump’s victory was regarded as the elevation to the highest office of a political misfit when it was actually a return to normalcy, as attested by the increase in racially-motivated incivility and crime since November 8, 2016. The election of the first African American president Barack Hussein Obama was atypical, not Trump’s. The following essay attempts to throw light on the permanence of the race factor in American society, its impact on the 2016 election, either by means of its unabashed activation or through a coded rhetoric, its centrality in the Trumpian discourse, and the heyday of white nationalism under a President prone to stoking the flames of division and prejudice.

The Melting Pot Fallacy

Despite the Melting Pot oratory of the early 20^th century and its later mosaic and salad-bowl avatars, racism and anti-immigrant prejudice run as constants throughout U.S. history. Besides, this unique nation of immigrants also bears the stigma of its original sin, slavery – the importation of black servile labor from Africa, the involuntary immigrants, historically welcomed as chattel before the Civil War but later unwanted as citizens. A century and a half after their accession to citizenship, black Americans still struggle to achieve full acceptance in every walk of life. The cult of racial homogeneity, if not racial purity, has often justified exclusionary policies towards Native Americans, Blacks, and Mexicans. Massive immigration, especially non-white or viewed as such, has always been socially and economically disruptive; the nativistic reactions of the 1850s against the Irish, of the 1890s and 1910s against eastern and southern Europeans, or the Chinese Exclusion Act, anti-Japanese agitation, the literacy test campaigns, the Immigration Act of 1924, are among the numerous examples of this. The immigration issue in Donald Trump’s United States today harks back to these troubled times when illegal aliens appeared as some sort of Trojan horse that imperiled the whole Republic.[1] It was stridently resurrected during the 2016 campaign as the Republican candidate decried the browning of America, the new scapegoats being the Latinos who have outnumbered Blacks since the turn of the 21^st century. Concomitantly, in the world context of Islamic terrorism, he targeted Muslims (1.1% of the U.S. population) as convenient bogeymen, despite the unlikelihood of the threat this minority allegedly represented, and vowed to bar from entry into the U.S. Muslims from countries harboring terrorists.[2]

Barack Obama’s election in 2008 with strong support from major ethnic groups (Asian Americans, Hispanics and African Americans) was hailed as the advent of a post-racial era when in fact the forest could not be seen for the trees. Eight years later a real estate tycoon with a “redneck” mindset, to the brazen applause of white supremacists and the “alt-right,”[3] succeeded the outgoing black President. His triumph smacked of WASP working- and middle-class revanchism[4]: as much as the economic desperation of non-college educated Whites facing status loss it bespoke their subterranean resentment at the upending of the racial hierarchy as well as their silent exasperation with almost three decades of political correctness (equated with censorship) and affirmative action (seen as reverse discrimination) that allegedly benefited minorities at their expense.[5] Trump’s popularity is the outcome of the Republican Party’s longtime “Southern Strategy” that goes back to Nixon if not earlier, a coded appeal to white race prejudice and bigotry. The new White House incumbent is decidedly the GOP’s creature and the latest symptom of its crisis, a demagogue whose outspokenness made him the hero and mouthpiece of white nationalism and helped it morph into open militancy.[6] There is grim irony in the fact that America’s first black President was “followed by the untitled leader of the Birther movement, a candidate slow to disavow support from the Ku Klux Klan[7] and happy to receive the backing of white nationalists […]”; in that sense “Donald Trump can easily be portrayed as a personal repudiation and also proof of racial regression”.[8]

Obama’s Election: The Post-Racial America Myth

Despite his unimaginable elevation to the highest office the 44^th President never deluded himself about the alleged retreat of racism. As he observed in his farewell speech in Chicago on January 10, 2017:

There’s a second threat to our democracy—one as old as our nation itself. After my election, there was talk of a post-racial America. Such a vision, however well-intended, was never realistic. For race remains a potent and often divisive force in our society. I’ve lived long enough to know that race relations are better than they were ten, or twenty, or thirty years ago—you can see it not just in statistics, but in the attitudes of young Americans across the political spectrum.

But we’re not where we need to be. […]

Going forward, we must uphold laws against discrimination—in hiring, in housing, in education and the criminal justice system. That’s what our Constitution and highest ideals require. But laws alone won’t be enough. Hearts must change. […][9]

During his two terms in office, he would repeatedly refute the myth of a post-racial society. The United States in 2008 had not turned colorblind. The nation was not atoning for the original sin of slavery and the taint of segregation. The condition of African Americans was unlikely to change overnight.[10] Barack Hussein Obama did not win because he was a black man, but because a country shaken by two wars and an economic crisis was yearning for change, and also because he was a brilliant young and novel candidate who eclipsed the popular old maverick John S. McCain. Race relations did not improve miraculously during his tenure; on the contrary, they got worse. By the end of his Presidency, according to a CNN/ORC poll,[11] a majority of Americans (54%) felt that relations between Blacks and Whites had worsened since his election (57% of Whites and 40% of Blacks said so) and about four-in-ten Blacks were doubtful that the U.S. would ever achieve racial equality.[12] The new President’s approach to the race question was extremely cautious, too subdued for his black critics and too divisive for his white opponents; he was always careful not to politicize the issue whenever it erupted on the national scene so as to avoid the accusation of partiality for this was the most daunting of his challenges: he was the President of all Americans, not of just one segment of the population as some would inevitably uphold, and in his response to racial incidents he could not afford to appear influenced by his origins. Such occurrences actually abounded while he was at the helm, racial strife giving rise to the “Black Lives Matter” movement, which paradoxically emerged when the White House welcomed its first black President, forcing him to speak out more passionately and more intimately.[13]

On July 16, 2009, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., a black Professor at Harvard University, was arrested by a white police officer while trying to open a jammed door at his home; a suspected burglary had been reported. A few days later, Obama commented that he was not sure what part race had played in the incident, but “that there [was] a long history in this country of African Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately.” The remark sparked a controversy that Obama tried to quell by inviting Gates and the officer to the White House for what became known as the “Beer Summit.” On his first Martin Luther King Jr. holiday as President, on January 17, 2010, he reflected on the distractions caused by remarks about his race. Referring to the so-called “post-racial” era that some had predicted would result from his election, he said, “That didn’t work out so well.” It was well nigh impossible for him to remain silent or neutral in most race-related circumstances. On July 19, 2013, a Florida neighborhood watch volunteer, George Zimmerman, was acquitted in the shooting death of a black teenager, Trayvon Martin. At the time of the youth’s death in 2012, Obama had mused, “[he] could have been my son.” After the trial, against charges of divisiveness in conservative quarters, he ventured again to explain black America’s reaction to the case:

Trayvon Martin could have been me thirty-five years ago. And when you think about why, in the African-American community at least, there’s a lot of pain around what happened here, I think it’s important to recognize that the African-American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that doesn’t go away.[14]

Police shootings of unarmed black men continued as in the past. On August 9, 2014, unarmed eighteen-year-old Michael Brown, was shot and killed by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, triggering protests and riots that brought to national attention the incipient “Black Lives Matter” movement. Impunity seemed to be the rule in such cases of police homicide. In December of that year, a grand jury declined to indict an NYPD officer in the chokehold death of Eric Garner, a black man suspected of selling cigarettes illegally.

More dramatic still, on June 17, 2015, a white supremacist brandishing the Confederate flag fatally shot eight black worshippers and their pastor at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. The next week, Obama delivered the eulogy for the slain Reverend Clementa Pinckney and led the audience in singing the hymn “Amazing Grace,” stirring raucous emotion in one of the most powerful moments of his Presidency. And there was more to come. “On July 7, 2016, a sniper ambushed and cut down five Dallas police officers at a peaceful protest against the police killings earlier that week of Alton Sterling in Louisiana and Philando Castile in Minnesota. Amid rising racial tensions, the President spoke at the officers’ memorial service and in a delicate balancing act praised law enforcement officials for their courage while also expressing the need to understand the grievances of African Americans who protested racial bias”.[15]

America’s first black President also had to confront racist personal attacks. On April 27, 2011, the White House released copies of his long-form birth certificate to prove that he was born in Hawaii in an attempt to silence the “birther” movement that Donald Trump had reignited two and a half months before and to discard the barefaced falsehood that Obama was born in Kenya. The “birther” conspiracy theory developed as a concerted right-wing effort to delegitimize the White House incumbent. Racial slurs were also frequently used in reference to his features; his campaign for reelection in 2012 unleashed a slew of racist insults, like the bumper sticker showing a picture of a chimpanzee next to “Obama 2012.” In most Western countries such blatant racism would not have been tolerated. In France, for example, several lawsuits were filed following attacks on French Guiana-born Minister of Justice Christiane Taubira in which she was compared to or pictured as a banana-eating monkey. The problem is that no such constraints exist in the United States; no law punishes racist abuse and hate speech, for the First Amendment’s protection of freedom of expression is almost absolute; and in that, the U.S. distinguishes itself from other liberal democracies.[16]

Trump’s Campaign: Revenge of the WASPs

Given his personal history of animus towards Blacks, from his racial discrimination suits to his 1989 active hatred of the exonerated “Central Park Five,”[17] it could be argued that Donald Trump’s decision to run for the Presidency had to do with the accession of a black man to the White House; given his well-documented arrogance and narcissism, it could further be argued that it dates back to the public humiliation he suffered at the hands of Barack Obama on April 30, 2011, at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, as suggested by longtime Trump ally Roger Stone, a Republican political consultant. Three days before that night, the White House had released the President’s long-form birth certificate as a response to the “birther” claim that Trump had launched earlier that year. Obama took over the podium in the star-filled ballroom of the Washington Hilton, and for several minutes roasted and excoriated “The Donald”[18] who was sitting in the audience as a guest of the Washington Post, making fun of citizenship conspiracy theories – “birtherism” – and mocking one of Trump’s greatest sources of pride, his TV show “The Apprentice”.[19] Trump would actually cling to the theory for another five years, even claiming at some point that Hillary Clinton had started the “birther” movement, and he would eventually renounce it late in the campaign, declaring reluctantly on September 16, 2016, under media pressure: “President Barack Obama was born in the United States. Period”.[20]

On June 16, 2015, the day before the Charleston church shooting, Donald J. Trump came down an escalator at Trump Tower, New York City, and announced his improbable bid for the White House, his campaign to “Make America Great Again” [21]; the forces of conservatism were about to rally behind a new figurehead, a populist demagogue who sensed that nativism, xenophobia, and norm-breaking would be central to his electoral appeal.[22]

His main target was Obama whom he blamed for letting the country collapse to the level of “a third world country.” He began by ranting on the subject of immigration, which would become his signature crusade, accusing Mexico of “bringing their worst people”: “They’re sending people that have lots of problems and they’re bringing their problems […]. They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists, and some I assume are good people but I speak to border guards and they tell us what we are getting.” He promised that one of his first actions would be to build a “great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall.” He claimed that Obama and previous administrations had allowed Mexico, China and other countries to take away American jobs and prosperity: “Our enemies are getting stronger and stronger by the day, and the US as a country is getting weaker and weaker. How stupid are our leaders, how stupid are our politicians to let this happen? Our President doesn’t have a clue.” He went on to say with a wink to football fans that the Chinese leadership was much smarter than Obama and his team: “It’s like the New England Patriots and Tom Brady [playing] a high school team.”[23] He added that politicians were “all talk and no action”: “They will not bring us, believe me, to the Promised Land.”[24]

Most of his idées fixes and leitmotifs were floated in this speech, which among other things exuded his trademark smugness and pretentiousness – that “Obamacare,” the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, was “a disaster” and “a big lie,” that he would replace it with a “much better and much less expensive” system; that education was too costly and that drastic cuts were in order for “people [were] tired of spending more money on education per capita than any other country”; that “nobody [would] be tougher on ISIS [the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria] than Donald Trump”, and that he would be “the greatest jobs President that God ever made.”

The speech also signaled the blooming of a “post-truth” era in that it exposed Trump as a compulsive liar, whether or not he believes his fabrications, as some observers now wonder. He questioned government statistics showing that unemployment had fallen to 5.4% (which was true): “Our real unemployment is 18-20%, don’t believe their 5.6%. China has our jobs, Mexico has our jobs. I’ll bring back our jobs and bring back our money.” He told the crowd that somebody had to stand up for the good of the country, to stop it from “dying”: “We’re dying, we’re dying. We need money, and we need the right people.” He vaunted his fortune and claimed that he did not need “anyone else’s money,” hinting that he was perfectly disinterested in seeking the highest office. He had bragged in a recent interview with the Associated Press that the television networks would put him on the upcoming nationally televised Republican debate in August (for the ten top-ranking candidates in national polls) “because I get great ratings”.[25]

Trump campaigned on white middle class angst – fear of undocumented immigrants and Muslim refugees, of “radical Islamic terrorism, of the violent civil rights protesters demonstrating against police killings of unarmed Blacks”. “The Donald” eventually outsmarted all his competitors. He revealed to America and the world his true nature – his racism, his misogyny, his mendacity – and peddled successfully his obsessive isolationist credo: his conviction that such trade agreements as NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) and the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) were detrimental to the U.S., that in actual fact the United States was being taken advantage of by friends and foes alike – by its NATO allies whose share of defense expenditures was insufficient, by the UN and UNESCO whose budgets were heavily financed by America with criticism from its member states in return instead of gratefulness, by China, Japan, and South Korea, guilty of unfair trade practices. He inveighed against the wasteful and indecisive foreign wars George W. Bush had launched and Obama continued, as well as the latter’s failure to vanquish ISIS (the Islamic State) which he, Trump, of course would crush in no time. Throughout his tumultuous norm-braking campaign, he claimed that he would fix the ills of America and the world as no one else could, a ridiculous and puerile “Mr. Fixit” posture that he would never tire of touting, as he would do later as President in defense of his unpredictable foreign policy:

That’s what I do. I fix things. We’re going to straighten it out. Believe me. When you hear about the tough phone calls I’m having— don’t worry about it. Just don’t worry about it. They’re tough. We have to be tough, it’s time we’re going to be a little bit tough, folks. We’re taken advantage by every nation in the world, virtually. It’s not going to happen any more. [26]

Trump in the White House: The New Normal

It is tempting to remark that “there is method” in President Donald J. Trump’s “madness,” for most of his decisions and measures since he entered the White House have followed a consistent pattern: eradicating Barack Obama’s record. The list of adverse counter-measures and policy reversals that have been implemented since January 20, 2017, reveals by inference in a sense the 44^th President’s innumerable accomplishments in most fields – health, education, employment, social justice, finance, the environment, defense, diplomacy, etc. – and may ironically read as a tribute to them. Trump’s performance since he became Chief Executive has essentially defined itself by its opposition to his predecessor’s. His agenda, however, includes other priorities, maintaining the racial divide, scaring and reassuring in turn his white base, bullying minorities, especially Blacks and Latinos, and stopping the immigrant invasion by building a wall on the U.S. southern border.

Trump who vowed to stop “this American carnage” on inauguration day has, in fact, exacerbated it and added chaos on top. His message throughout was one of racial reaction as when he vowed to “restore safety” in American streets upon accepting the Republican nomination on July 21, 2016:

Our convention occurs at a moment of crisis for our nation. The attacks on our police, and the terrorism in our cities, threaten our very way of life. Any politician who does not grasp this danger is not fit to lead our country.

Americans watching this address tonight have seen the recent images of violence in our streets and the chaos in our communities. Many have witnessed this violence personally. Some have even been its victims.

I have a message for all of you: The crime and violence that today afflicts our nation will soon — and I mean very soon come to an end. Beginning on January 20th 2017, safety will be restored.[27]

A similar message appeared on the White House website after his inauguration:

President Trump understands that safe communities and low crime levels don’t happen by accident. To ensure public safety, the Administration has taken significant steps in its first year to restore the rule of law, forge new partnerships with state and local law enforcement agencies, encourage respect for officers nationwide, and adopt aggressive strategies for tackling gang- and drug-related violence. Continued work to support law enforcement will help reduce violent crime to historic lows.[28]

The purpose behind such statements is to perpetuate a “fantasy,” to conflate criminal violence and civil rights outbreaks so as “to demonize groups and protest movements organized around police reform.” As Jamelle Louie underlines, it is “central to the President’s larger political vision, white identity politics that looks with skepticism and hostility toward claims of racial injustice”.[29] Reality belies Trump’s rhetoric: violent crime and property crime in the U.S. have fallen sharply in the past twenty-five years according to official sources like the FBI data and the Bureau of Justice Statistics; interestingly, most crimes are not reported to the police and most reported crimes are not solved; besides, there are significant variations in crime rates depending on population density and economic conditions. It should also be noted that public perceptions of crime in the U.S. are not borne out by facts: despite the downward trend since 1993 regular Gallup surveys have shown time and again that at least six-in-ten Americans believed that there was more crime at the national level compared with the year before, though half of them or fewer said such was not the case in their area.[30]

The heart of the matter is that racial and ethnic groups are not treated equally, although an overwhelming majority of Whites believe they are, and that one group bears the brunt of violent crime—African Americans, a cohort most likely to be critical of law enforcement and supportive of police reform, notably stricter accountability for officers using excessive force or evincing racial bias. Trump’s approach, as Bouie puts it, is “part and parcel of the white racial nationalism that fueled his campaign, informed his administration, and now shapes his rhetoric as President,” an indication that “he will govern with the same eye toward division and racial antagonism he had as a candidate.” And most Whites seem to subscribe to this highly racialized vision of American society.[31]

Since his inauguration the 45th President has indeed shown himself adept at creating an alternative reality in which Blacks are essentially potential criminals and immigrants are all members of the infamous MS-13 gang.[32] He has successfully equated a symbolic racial protest with anti-patriotism with his attacks on the National Football League players kneeling during the National Anthem and thereby got the NFL to change its rules in violation of the players’ First Amendment rights.[33] He has even tried to instill fear in refugees at the southern border with the cruel separation of children from their parents. The White House was for once so unsettled by the backlash and almost universal condemnation which followed the implementation of its zero-tolerance immigration policy that Trump uncharacteristically rescinded his executive order.[34]

He who sows the wind shall reap the whirlwind. There is cause for concern in a divided nation. Not only has Trump’s short tenure witnessed three of the worst mass shootings in modern U.S. history, carried out by mentally troubled white Americans and not by jihadists or immigrant gang members, but the number of hate crimes has soared dramatically since he was elected. On August 14, 2017, Slate reported the following:

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which has aggregated media reports and gathered submissions from its website, catalogued 1064 such incidents, 13 of which were later debunked as false reports, in the first month after Trump won the Presidency. (Twenty-six of those incidents were perpetrated against Trump supporters.) The SPLC has presented that data in aggregate, creating an invaluable record of the scope of post-election hate crimes.[35]

This phenomenon resulted from his sowing the seeds of division and fanning the flames of racism; the President of the United States himself emboldened hate groups whose support he never denounced. His relentlessly hammered disparaging comments about Muslims completed the racist message. Now paranoid white citizens have even taken to calling 911 to target peaceful black Americans going about their business[36]; and not surprisingly police shootings of Blacks have gone on, routinely punctuated by protests from “Black Lives Matter,”[37] with no reaction from the “Tweeter in Chief,” unlike his predecessors.[38] Almost a year into Trump’s Presidency, 60% of Americans felt that his election had led to worse race relations, 8% said the opposite, and 30% believed that there had been no change.[39] No wonder that his support among black voters is at a low ebb – not withstanding the endorsement Trump rather childishly and comically claimed he had received from bipolar rapper Kanye West, a very talented but troubled artist to whom his numerous black fans gave a pass on account of his frequent eccentricities and provocation.[40] The darker picture lies in the openly militant posture of white nationalists and white supremacists, to say nothing of the perennial Ku Klux Klan.

Since Trump’s election white supremacists have held quite a few rallies across the United States. Regardless of their location, all of them have been staged in similar fashion: each time a small number of white supremacists from various hate groups (e.g., the KKK, Identity Evropa) have united with members from less explicitly white nationalist groups, who often assemble under the banner of the “alt-right.” They have invariably been met by police and counter-protesters (like Antifa, a violent anti-fascist group), and total chaos has frequently ensued, with beatings and even shootings and loss of life. These pro-Trump rallies feature racially charged messages and Confederate flags in the South. Incidents occurred notably in Portland, Ore., Rexboro, N.C., Washington, D.C., Seattle, Wash., Berkeley, Calif., Pikeville, Ky., New Orleans, La., Portland, Ore., Boston, Mass., Gainesville, Fla., Murfreesboro and Shelbyville, Tenn. The worst one – and the most horrific – took place in Charlottesville, Virginia, where hundreds of “alt-righters,” white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and other white supremacist groups gathered on August 12, 2017. The event, which ended in deadly violence, was in a way a turning point on account of its national and international impact. Trump at first condemned “both sides” for the violence, including what he called the “alt-left,” and claimed both sides had “some very fine people,” finally clumsily distancing himself from the far right (“I’ve condemned neo-Nazis”). On August 23, 2017, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) in a rare warning urged the United States government to “unequivocally and unconditionally” condemn racist speech and crimes, stopping short of criticizing the U.S. President by name.[41] Under Donald Trump “bias, hate and racism [have moved] from the margins to the mainstream”[42] and the far right groups have considerably improved their rhetoric, astutely draping their views in the guise of “free speech,” open debate, and “right-wing unity” in order to make them more palatable, thereby fooling some liberals. But the Charlottesville drama has led to near-universal censure.[43]

Pandora’s Box and the Hydra of Racism

Democracy could very well be at risk in today’s United States. By ignoring and defying norms and traditions, the 45^th President has exposed the flaws of the American Constitution.[44] Globally, the Republican Party has moved further to the right since the beginning of the 21^st century; it has obviously radicalized in recent years and absorbed its Tea Party fringe. The demise of bipartisanship is now a given in congressional politicking. Conservatives have developed a panoply of insults and coded terms to derogatorily depict Democrats as left-wingers.[45] Electorally, “a house divided” has fallen prey to the tyranny of the minority. Despite the Democrats' takeover of the House of Representatives in the midterm elections of November 6, 2018, the Republicans who still control the upper chamber remain in a position of strength in two of the three nationwide democratic arenas (House, Senate, Presidency) even without a majority of voters for either one of them [46]—and Trump's judicial picks are likely to to make the judiciary more conservative in the years to come. Reaction rather than progress seems to be the new mantra, and it slants towards the extreme right.

Since the rise of Donald Trump, the ultra right has given free vent to its noxious views. The poison of racism is spreading further. More hideous voices resonate in the national conversation about immigration and race. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, for the first time in eight years, hate groups (almost a thousand of them) were found in all fifty states, not only white supremacists but also black nationalist hate groups. Within the former category, neo-Nazis saw the highest growth.[47] More explicitly, on February 1, 2018, The Huffington Post published a piece on the AtomwaffenDivision, a well-armed neo-Nazi group that admire Charles Manson and Adolf Hitler and ambition to wage a race war and overthrow the U.S. government, and whose members have allegedly committed five (apparently uncoordinated) murders in eight months.[48] Some white supremacists have also tried to organize counter-marches with the slogan “White Lives Matter.”[49]

An ideological war is being waged, too, which a few examples can easily illustrate. In late December 2017, some 3,000 students from campuses nationwide convened in Florida for four days near Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate for a “summit” held by Turning Point USA, a conservative non-profit organization dedicated to educating students in free market values; the meeting was devoted to free speech, “culture wars,” and the leftist peril.[50] More troubling is the white supremacist propaganda aimed at college campuses which has increased 258 percent between the falls of 2016 and 2017, according to an Anti-Defamation League’s February 2018 report. The assumption of the “alt-right,” which is responsible for most of it, is that political change since the Sixties has always originated on campuses.[51] A more devious approach, more worrying for the future, consists in going mainstream, as attempted by Richard Spencer,[52] and dissembling racism under the worn-out cloak of “pseudo-social-scientific” theory to make it more respectable and therefore more palatable:

Thus, by focusing their opprobrium on the Nazi next door, white liberals are missing the very real threat posed by a growing white nationalism. These new white supremacists are coming not with tiki torches but with reasoned arguments, buttressed by facts and figures, to make palatable racist ideas that many people, deep down, have always felt were true.[53]

The white nationalists who lump together Browns, Blacks, Jews, and Muslims as undesirables have undeniably been encouraged in their militancy by Donald Trump’s rhetoric, which they have applauded on several occasions, for it sounded like a normalization of their hate speech. They have found a hero whose divisive agenda is similarly tailored to suit them: barring immigrants of color and Muslims from entry into the U.S., expelling illegals, postponing the day predicted by the Census Bureau when Whites in the United States would become a minority, subverting long-held American ideals and values, in a word polarizing and racializing the national debate. Who knows what this opening of the floodgates of hatred and bigotry may portend if not a looming race war? Judging from the first half of Donald J. Trump’s tenure, the United States is heading for a confrontational Presidency and a kind of undeclared civil war in which race and rage will feature prominently. This “uncivil war” has already begun with the public shaming and shunning of Trump officials[54]; a “Resistance to Trump” movement is under way, a motley coalition of “anti-Trumpists” who diverge on tactics but seem to agree that the ballot is the last resort.[55] Given the current tensions in American society there is little hope that political and racial antagonisms will be appeased anytime soon.

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[1] On the impact of European immigration on U.S. foreign policy, see Hélène Christol and Serge Ricard, eds., Hyphenated Diplomacy: European Immigration and U.S. Foreign Policy, 1914-1984, Aix-en-Provence: Publications de l’Université de Provence, 1985.

[2] Since 9/11 there have been 104 deaths caused by Islamic terrorist acts in the U.S., perpetrated mostly by homegrown jihadists, none of them originating from the five countries targeted by Trump’s “Muslim ban”: Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen. Far right-wing terror attacks, incidentally, have resulted in 73 deaths. New America, “Terrorism in America after 9/11,” https://www.newamerica.org/in-depth/terrorism-in-america/. It should be remembered that the nineteen 9/11 hijackers came from Egypt (1), Lebanon (1), the United Arab Emirates (2), and especially Saudi Arabia (15). See also Risa A. Brooks, “Muslim ‘Homegrown’ Terrorism in the United States: How Serious Is the Threat?”, International Security, vol. 36, no. 2, Fall 2011, 7-47.

[3] Or “alternative right,” a loosely-connected and ill-defined grouping of white supremacists, neo-Confederates, neo-Nazis, neo-fascists, and other far-right fringe hate groups that reject traditional conservatism.

[4] See for example Justin Gest, The New Minority: White Working Class Politics in an Age of Immigration and Inequality, New York: Oxford University Press, 2016, and Marie-Cécile Naves, Trump, la revanche de l’homme blanc, Paris: Éditions Textuel, 2017.

[5] Jamelle Bouie, “How Trump Happened”, Slate, March 13, 2016.

[6] Jeet Heer, “How the Southern Strategy Made Donald Trump Possible”, New Republic, February 28, 2016.

[7] During the campaign Trump famously declared on February 28, 2016, “I don’t know anything about David Duke… I don’t know David Duke… And I just don’t know anything about him.” Yet, when Trump considered running for president with the Reform Party in 2000 he clearly had knowledge of the former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard and his past. Evan Osnos, “Donald Trump and the Ku Klux Klan: A History,” The New Yorker, February 29, 2016.

[8] Nick Bryant, “Barack Obama Legacy: Did He Improve US Race Relations?,” BBC News, January 10, 2017.

[9] Barack Obama, “Farewell Speech”, The Los Angeles Times, January 10, 2017.

<http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-obama-farewell-speech-transcript-20170110-story.html>, accessed July 7, 2018.

[10] Ibram X. Kendi, “The Death of Post-Racial America: How Obama’s Presidency, and Trump’s Election, Definitely Killed an Idea that Never Made Sense”, New York Daily Mail, January 14, 2017.

[11] Jennifer Agiesta, “Most Say Race Relations Worsened under Obama, Poll Finds”, CNN, October 6, 2016.

[12] Pew Research Center, “Most Americans Say Trump’s Election Has led to Worse Race Relations in the U.S.”, December 19, 2017. 

[13] Nick Bryant, op cit.

[14] Matt Berman, Brian Resnick, Matt Vasilogambros & Niraj Chokshi, “President Obama: ‘Trayvon Martin Could’ve Been Me 35 Years Ago’”, The Atlantic, July 19, 2013.

[15] Associated Press, “Some key moments related to race during Obama’s Presidency,” January 4, 2017.

[16] See Frederick Schauer, “The Exceptional First Amendment,” SSRN Electronic Journal, February 18, 2005. <https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=668543>, accessed July 7, 2018. “The precise form of attempting to control hate speech by law varies considerably among the nations of the world. Germany and Israel, among other countries, ban the Nazi party and its descendants, as well as prohibiting other political parties whose programs include racial hatred, racial separation, and racial superiority. Germany, Israel, and France are among the nations that prohibit the sale and distribution of various Nazi items, including swastikas, Nazi flags, and, on occasion, images of Adolph Hitler and copies of Mein Kampf. Canada, Germany, and France, along with others, permit sanctions against those who would deny the existence of the Holocaust. France imposes fines with some frequency on public utterances espousing the racial or religious inferiority of various groups, or advocating the exclusion of people from France on the basis of their race, their religion, their ethnicity, or their national origin. The Netherlands outlaws public insults based on race, religion, or sexual preference. And South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and all of the Scandinavian countries, among many others, follow the mandates of Article 20(2) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and Articles 4(a) and 4(b) of the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination by making it a crime to engage in the incitement to racial, religious, or ethnic hatred or hostility. In contrast to this international consensus that various forms of hate speech need to be prohibited by law and that such prohibition creates no or few free speech issues, the United States remains steadfastly committed to the opposite view […].”

[17] In the 1980s, Trump bought full-page ads in four major newspapers calling for the death penalty to be reinstated in New York against five black and Latino kids in the Central Park jogger rape case. He never apologized when they were exonerated. Oliver Laughland, “Donald Trump and the Central Park Five: The Racially Charged Rise of A Demagogue,” The Guardian, February 17, 2016.

[18] So nicknamed by his first wife, Ivana Trump, in the 1980s, a moniker that caught on. Amy Argetsinger, “Why Does Everyone Call Donald Trump ‘The Donald’? It’s an Interesting Story,” The Washington Post, September 1, 2015.

[19] Nikki Schwab, Daily Mail Online, September 22, 2016.

[20] Stephen Collinson and Jeremy Diamond, “Trump Finally Admits It: ‘President Barack Obama Was Born in the United States’”, CNN, September 16, 2016.

[21] Rupert Neate, “Donald Trump Announces Presidential Run with Eccentric Speech”, The Guardian, June 16, 2015.

[22] Nick Bryant, op. cit.

[23] Trump is a fan and friend of the National Football League (NFL) New England Patriots’ quarterback Tom Brady whom he “could have had” as a son-in-law but “got Jared Kushner” instead. Bill Speros, “Trump Wanted Tom Brady as Son-in-Law, but Ivanka ‘Wasn’t into It,’” Boston Herald, July 30, 2018.

[24] Rupert Neate, op. cit.

[25] Ibidem.

[26] Lauren Gambino and Sabrina Siddiqui, “Trump Defends Chaotic Foreign Policy: We’re Going to Straighten It Out, OK?,” The Guardian, February 2, 2017.

[27] Brad Plummer, “Full Transcript of Donald Trump’s Acceptance Speech at the RNC”, Vox, July 22, 2016.

<https://www.vox.com/2016/7/21/12253426/donald-trump-acceptance-speech-transcript-republican-nominationtranscript >, accessed July 7, 2018.

[28] <https://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/law-justice/>, accessed July 7, 2018.

[29] Jamelle Bouie, “The Meaning of ‘American Carnage’”, Slate, January 23, 2017.

[30] John Gramlich, Pew Research Center, January 30, 2018.

[31] Jamelle Bouie, op. cit.

[32] Loïc Pialat, “Qui sont les MS-13, ce gang que Donald Trump veut éradiquer?”, Le Monde, July 30, 2017.

[33] The Economist, “Trampling on the First Amendment: Donald Trump and the NFL,” May 30, 2018.

[34] Lauren Gambino and Oliver Laughland, “Donald Trump Signs Executive Order to End Family Separations,” The Guardian, June 20, 2018.

[35] Slate, “Hate in America”, August 14, 2017.

[36] Touré, “When Calling 911 Makes the Emergency,” Daily Beast, May 12, 2018.

[37] See the movement’s website: blacklivesmatter.com.

[38] Jamelle Bouie, “What the President Won’t Say: Donald Trump Breaks with Precedents by Not Speaking against Racial Violence,” Slate, March 30, 2018.

[39] John Gramlich, op. cit.

[40] Eugene Scott, “The Problem with Trump’s Claim about Kanye West and Rising Support among African Americans,” The Washington Post, May 5, 2018.

[41] “UN rights experts criticize US failure to unequivocally reject racist violent events”, UN NEWS, August 23, 2017, <https://news.un.org/en/story/2017/08/563722-un-rights-experts-criticize-us-failure-unequivocally-reject-racist-violent>, accessed July 7, 2018.

[42] Al Sharpton, “In America Bias, Hate and Racism Move from the Margins to the Mainstream”, The Guardian, August 14, 2017.

[43] Peter Moskowitz, “A Year in the Violent Rise of White Supremacy”, Splinter, November 8, 2017.

[44] A few commentators have made that point: “[…] Trump has vividly demonstrated that much of what keeps a democracy intact is not enshrined in the written letter of a constitution, but resides instead in customs and conventions – norms – that are essential to civic wellbeing. Trump trampled all over those as a candidate – refusing to disclose his tax returns, for example – and has trampled over even more as president. Convention dictated that he had to divest himself of private business concerns on taking office, to prevent a conflict of interest – but in the absence of a law explicitly forcing him to do so, he did no such thing. The same goes for appointing unqualified relatives to senior jobs, sacking the director of the FBI with no legitimate cause, or endorsing an accused child molester for the US Senate. No law told him he couldn’t, so he did.” Jonathan Freedland, “The Year of Trump Has Laid Bare the US Constitution’s Serious Flaws,” The Guardian, December 30, 2017.

[45] Peter Moskowitz, op. cit..

[46] Christopher R. Browning, “Dangers I Didn’t See Coming: ‘Tyranny of the Minority’ and An Irrelevant Press”, Vox, January18, 2017.

[47] Sara Sidner and Mallory Simon, “Number of Neo-Nazi and Black Nationalist Hate Groups Grew in 2017, SPLC Says”, CNN, February 22, 2018.

[48] Christopher Mathias, “1 Neo-Nazi Group. 5 Murders in 8 Months”, The Huffington Post, February 1, 2018.

[49] Doug Stanglin and Stephanie Ingersoll, “‘White Lives Matter’ Rallies: Opponents Outnumber White Nationalists at Tennessee Shout Fests”, USA Today, October 28, 2017.

[50] Richard Luscombe, “‘We’re under Attack’: Young Conservatives Gather to Reject Political Correctness”, The Guardian, December 23, 2017.

[51] Christopher Mathias, “White Supremacists Are Targeting College Students ‘Like Never Before’”, The Huffington Post, February 1, 2018.

[52] Richard B. Spencer, who considers himself a member of the identitarian movement, is a white supremacist heading the National Policy Institute, a white nationalist think tank, and Washington Summit Publishers, a white nationalist publisher. Anti-Defamation League, “Richard Spencer: A Symbol of the New White Supremacy, May 14, 2013, https://www.adl.org/blog/richard-spencer-a-symbol-of-the-new-white-supremacy.

[53] Khalil Gibran Muhammad, op. cit.

[54] Matt Lewis, “The Uncivil War Has Officially Begun,” Daily Beast, June 26, 2018; Sam Wolfson, “‘Make Them Pariahs’: How Shaming Trump Aids Became a Resistance Tactic,” The Guardian, July 11, 2018.

[55] Khatya Chhor, “Wonder Who’s Fighting Trump? Meet the #Resistance,” France 24, May 31, 2018; David Brooks, “The Devolution of Anti-Trumpists,” The Seattle Times, January 9, 2018.

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