Trump's Racism Has Unified White Supremacists/Nationalists

Donald Trump is a racist.

Republicans would argue that point, but they must ignore his history and actions to do it.

He has been a racist all of his life, and his words and actions (from the early seventies to his current presidency) show that beyond any doubt.

And the nation's white supremacists and white nationalists are loving it! They know that he is one of them, and because of that, they have become bolder. They believe they have a leader that supports their own goals -- a white country.

The following is a small part of an excellent op-ed by Sean Collins at Vox.com:

Trump tweeted that the phrase “Black Lives Matter” is a “symbol of hate” weeks after overseeing armed forces gassing peaceful protesters demanding equality for Black people and other people of color.

When these actions — and all the other things Trump has done that align with white nationalist thought and values — are taken together, the president begins to appear as someone able to unify traditional forms of white supremacy and more modern modes of white power and white nationalism. 

“The Klan would wrap themselves in Christianity,” Nell Irvin Painter, a Princeton University historian and author of The History of White People, told Vox. (Painter is also a signee of a letter criticized, in part, because of its association with prominent anti-trans figures and themes.) “And in the American flag as well. So they were patriots and they were Christians in their own eyes. I don’t see any contradiction in Trump’s embrace of Confederate monuments and his embrace — literal — of the American flag.”

As the Klan did, the president has cloaked himself in the symbols of Christianity. He posed with the Bible. He highlighted virtual church services on Sundays throughout the pandemic. And he has endeavored to signal he is an ally to Christians across the nation, from promising to prioritize Christian refugees to taking strong positions on matters from the celebration of Christmas to abortion, even though he has few personal ties to Christianity or religion in general.

Similarly, Trump has worked to use the flag — sometimes even hugging it — as well as other American symbols like Mount Rushmore, to signal that his policies, white nationalist aligned or not, are American. And to argue criticism of those policies is anti-American.

Even the president’s rabid defense of Confederate statues — many of which were erected during periods of Black activism and serve as warnings to people of color to stop striving for equality — is revealing. This is not to say that Trump is using the monuments as part of a campaign of terror and intimidation. But positioning himself as a champion of America allows him to cast their concerns as unpatriotic extensions of a “left-wing cultural revolution” that wants “to overthrow the American Revolution.”

In connecting and conflating white men who tried to destroy the United States with prominent Revolutionary figures like Thomas Jefferson, the president highlights the thing that connects them: the barbaric ways they treated nonwhite people. 

“There is a kind of white nationalism that’s about infusing whiteness into the nation,” Belew said. “For the activists that are taking to the streets and training in paramilitary camps, the nation isn’t the United States; they are not at all interested in defending the United States. They want to defend the white nation. And they want to do that, often, by overthrowing the United States.”

This impulse mirrors the goals of the radical white nationalists of the Confederate States of America and is reflected in the president’s policies — particularly around immigration — and in tendencies his critics would call anti-democratic. “To the extent that that ideology has actually crept into governance, it’s shocking,” Belew noted. “Because it’s a revolutionary thing that is attempting to undo the very government where they sit.”

Trump’s immigration policy is notable not just for the ways it excludes people of color but for how it deems white immigrants the “right” type of immigrants.

In 2018, Trump said he’d like the US to have fewer immigrants from “shithole countries” in Africa and the Caribbean — instead, he wanted immigrants from the majority-white Norway. In practice, he has put up barriers to immigration for citizens from countries with majority people of color populations, including those with Muslim majorities, while casting them as “some of the most vicious and dangerous people on earth.” 

In June, Trump announced a temporary ban on green cards and the suspension of several work visas that are often used by immigrants of color, particularly those from India. Other countries that have been especially affected by Trump’s immigration policy include Vietnam, China, Mexico, and South Korea. Stuart Anderson, the founder of the immigration think tank National Foundation for American Policy, noted those four countries saw drastic reductions in immigration during Trump’s first two years in office, with immigration from China falling about 21 percentage points in that period.

Amid these declines, Trump reportedly hoped to find ways to “fast track” immigration from Europe — with former US Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland assigned in 2018 to work on the plan with Miller and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Through exclusion and the push to recruit white immigrants, the Trump administration has advocated for a rigid border policy for nonwhite immigrants and a more porous, generous one for those who are white. This advances the aims of white nationalism that transcends border — and that suggests the sovereignty of US borders matters less when the Trump administration is thinking of the role the country might play in advancing the global white nation than it does when thinking of the country as a discrete entity. 

White nationalist goals can only be achieved by dismantling the US government, and there, too, Trump has appeared to align with a violent element, like when he called on armed groups to “liberate” their states.

There are countless other examples, but the point is, Trump has contributed to the political unraveling of the United States some modern white nationalists see as necessary to achieve their goals. He has not done so by violently overthrowing the government. But he has taken steps in the direction these white nationalists want to go.