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 20th 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 21st 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 44th 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 44th 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 45th
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 21st 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.
[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.
[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.
<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.
[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.
[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.
[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.
[34] Lauren Gambino and Oliver
Laughland, “Donald Trump Signs Executive Order to End Family Separations,” The
Guardian,
June 20, 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.
[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.
[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.
[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.
[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.
Bibliography
AGIESTA Jennifer, “Most Say Race Relations
Worsened under Obama, Poll Finds”, CNN, October 6, 2016.
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.
NEATE Rupert, “Donald Trump Announces
Presidential Run with Eccentric Speech”, The Guardian, June 16, 2015.
NEW AMERICA, “Terrorism in America
after 9/11,” https://www.newamerica.org/in-depth/terrorism-in-america/
OSNOS, Evan, “Donald Trump and the
Ku Klux Klan: A History,” The New Yorker, February 29, 2016.
PEW RESEARCH CENTER, “Most
Americans Say Trump’s Election Has led to Worse Race Relations in the U.S.”,
December 19, 2017.
PEW RESEARCH CENTER, “On Views of
Race and Inequality, Blacks and Whites Are Worlds Apart”, June 27, 2016.
SCHWAB Nikki, Daily Mail Online, September 22, 2016.
SCOTT Eugene, “The Problem with
Trump’s Claim about Kanye West and Rising Support among African Americans,” The
Washington Post,
May 5, 2018.
SHARPTON Al, “In America Bias, Hate and Racism
Move from the Margins to the Mainstream”, The Guardian, August 14, 2017.
SIDNER Sara and Mallory SIMON, “Number of
Neo-Nazi and Black Nationalist Hate Groups Grew in 2017, SPLC Says”, CNN, February 22, 2018.
SLATE Staff, “Hate in America”, August 14, 2017.
SPEROS, Bill, “Trump Wanted Tom
Brady as Son-in-Law, but Ivanka ‘Wasn’t into It,’” Boston Herald, July 30, 2018.
STANGLIN Doug and Stephanie INGERSOLL, “‘White Lives
Matter’ Rallies: Opponents Outnumber White Nationalists at Tennessee Shout
Fests”, USA Today,
October 28, 2017.
TOURÉ, “When Calling 911 Makes the Emergency,” Daily
Beast, May 12, 2018.
THE ECONOMIST, “Trampling on the First Amendment: Donald Trump and
the NFL,” May 30, 2018.
WOLFSON Sam, “‘Make Them Pariahs’: How Shaming Trump
Aids Became a Resistance Tactic,” The Guardian, July 11, 2018.
No comments:
Post a Comment