Opinion Why Trump is doubling down on racism
"Former president Donald Trump has gone full racist (or “nativist,” as some outlets delicately describe it). In Aurora, Colo., the New York Times reports, he spewed “repeated claims, which have been debunked by local officials, that Aurora had been ‘invaded and conquered,’ described the United States as an ‘occupied state’ … and revived a promise to use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport suspected members of drug cartels and criminal gangs without due process.” He has continued demonizing legal immigrants from Haiti in Springfield, Ohio. In Detroit, as he does in many cities with large numbers of African American voters, he bashed the city. (“The whole country is going to be like — you want to know the truth? It’ll be like Detroit,” he said. “Our whole country will end up being like Detroit if she’s your president. You’re going to have a mess on your hands.”)
Regardless of his location, he invokes the specter of a non-White horde displacing Whites. Illegal immigrants are “evil,” are “taking your jobs,” and have “bad genes.” Right-wing hosts, elected Republicans and most down-ticket Republican candidates don’t blanch, let alone denounce racism unprecedented in modern American presidential elections. The mainstream media has begun to feature Trump’s racism (sometimes thinly disguised with fuzzy language) in headlines.
Aside from instilling anger, fear and resentment in his White base, why would he do this, and in particular go to cities and towns to insult those communities in person?
For starters, Trump has consistently evidenced racism throughout his career. He might have flipped on abortion, but racial animus seems baked into his psyche. Whether being sued for refusing to rent to African Americans, demonizing the innocent Central Park Five, promoting the “birther” conspiracy theory to delegitimize the first Black president, announcing his entry into politics by slandering immigrants as murderers and thugs, refusing to denounce white nationalists at a debate in 2016, referring to non-White-majority countries as “s---holes” or preemptively blaming Jews for his defeat, Trump has never departed from a steady stream of racism, xenophobia and antisemitism. His exaggeration about crime in big cities is a racial dog whistle; his phony “immigrant crime wave” is a racial bullhorn. This is who he is.
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But like other authoritarians, Trump uses racism instrumentally as part of his assault on democracy and his quest to become a “dictator on day one.” Retired Gen. Mark A. Milley told Bob Woodward that Trump is “fascist to the core.” Milley knows from firsthand experience. Trump deployed a violent mob on Jan. 6, 2021, and still frequently uses thethreat of violence; he wanted to fire on civilian demonstrators; he scapegoats minorities; he uses conspiracy theories to terrify the masses; and he identifies with and praises dictators.
Whether it was fascists in the 1930s, India’s Narendra Modi (marginalizing Muslims), China’s Xi Jinping (persecuting Uyghurs) or Russia’s Vladimir Putin (attempting to eradicate Ukraine), authoritarians inevitably enlist the power of the state against a minority group whom they blame for society’s ills. In the name of protecting their country from a virulent threat, anything and everything is permissible.
Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat told Politico that Trump has “been taking Americans and his followers on a journey since really 2015 conditioning them … step by step instilling hatred in a group, and then escalating.” She explained that in Trump’s vision, “immigrants are crime. Immigrants are anarchy. They’re taking their jobs, but now they’re also animals who are going to kill us or eat our pets or eat us. That’s how you get people to feel that whatever is done to them, as in mass deportation, rounding them up, putting them in camps, is OK.”
Moreover, for Trump, racism is crucial to his voter suppression and election denial. The spate of voter suppression laws following Jan. 6 disproportionately affecting non-Whites, the targeting of cities in swing states with large Black electorates in 2020 (Detroit, Philadelphia), the attacks on Black poll workers and the ongoing claims of millions of undocumented immigrants voting all have a common purpose. Trump and his followers aim to put non-Whites outside the American electorate (not “real Americans”) and cry foul based on unsubstantiated charges of fraud when the candidate loses. If non-Whites are not “real” Americans or stand in the way of Whites attaining or retaining power, then making it harder to vote (or not counting their votes) — and removing immigrants on the mere suspicion that they are illegal — are justified.
It’s no coincidence that in the closing weeks of the campaign, Trump is returning to race. His racism, xenophobia and antisemitism are not incidental to his campaign (it’s all about tax cuts!) but, rather, central to his personality and to his political movement. Those who vote for him, enable him and normalize him must take responsibility for the movement that threatens to destroy pluralistic democracy."
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