trump legacy
WHITE SUPREMACY IN THE OFFAL OFFICE
by
HENRY A. GIROUX
__________________________________________
Henry
A. Giroux
currently holds the Global TV Network Chair Professorship at
McMaster University in the English and Cultural Studies Department
and a Distinguished Visiting Professorship at Ryerson University.
He is the author of more than 50 books including The Educational
Deficit and the War on Youth and Zombie
Politics and Culture in the Age of Casino Capitalism.
Many of his essays, including The Spectacle of Illiteracy, appear
on his website at www.henryagiroux.com.
His interview with Bill
Moyers is must viewing. He was recently named one of
the century's 50 most significant contributors to the debate
on education.
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YOUR
COMMENTSHistory shines a light on earlier periods
of authoritarianism and their connection to the present, making
it more difficult to assume that fascism is merely a relic of
the past. Memories of terror are not only present in the rise
of white supremacist demonstrations of hate and bigotry that
have taken place in a number of cities. They are also present
in Trump’s waging a culture war against civil disobedience,
admonishing NASCAR for banning the Confederate flag at all events
and properties, and attacking NASCAR’s only Black driver
Bubba Wallace for falsely reporting a hate crime, which he personally
did not report.
Echoes of a
poisonous past are also present in the current staffing in the
White House, which is home to white supremacists such as Stephen
Miller, who is a high level adviser to Trump and is viewed by
many as the architect of his draconian immigration policies.
Miller’s white supremacist views were on public display
when more than 900 of Miller’s emails were leaked by former
Breitbart editor Katie McHugh. Among the trove of emails, Miller
commented on and provided reference to white nationalist websites
such as VDARE and celebrated the racist novel, “The Camp
of the Saints.”
According to
Jared Holt, an investigative reporter at Right Wing Watch, he
“also reportedly espoused conspiracy theories about immigration,
backed racist immigration policies introduced by President Calvin
Coolidge that were praised by Adolf Hitler, and deployed slang
popular in white nationalist circles to reference immigration.”
Judd Legum argues that Miller also “obsessed over the
loss of Confederate symbols after Dylann Roof’s murderous
rampage,” a view that may have later shaped Trump’s
doubling down on protecting Confederate monuments.
In spite of
a barrage of calls from a number of politicians calling for
Miller’s removal from the White House, Trump held firm
reinforcing the widely accepted notion that Trump is a white
nationalist entirely comfortable with white supremacist ideology.
Since Trump waged a presidential campaign using the language
of white nationalism, it is not surprising that he brought such
extremists views into the White House.
Of course, removing
Miller would not change much. Miller is not the main white supremacist
in the Trump administration. Nor can his presence hide the fact
that white supremacy has been a staple of the Republican Party
for decades, evident in the history of and contemporary presence
of high profile Republican politicians such as Strom Thurman,
Jeff Sessions, former representative Steve King, Tom Tancredo,
and Dana Rohrabacher. Moreover, the long legacy of white supremacy
in the United States should not undercut the distinctiveness
of Donald Trump’s white supremacist views which he wears
like a badge of honor while escalating and normalizing white
supremacist sensibilities, practices, and policies unlike any
president in modern times. His scapegoating of minorities and
demonization of politicians, athletes, and other critics of
color reflects more than a divide-and-rule strategy, it is an
updated strategy for mainstreaming the death-haunted elements
of fascism.
Fascism has
deep roots in American history and its nativist legacy and anti-intellectualism
have always incorporated notions of racial cleansing, the dehumanization
of other groups, and an embrace of white nationalism and supremacy.
This legacy lives on in different forms in Trump’s view
of America. How else to explain not only Trump’s embrace
of birtherism, racist anti-immigration policies, his public
support for right-wing groups marching on state capitals protesting
COVID-19 restrictions, and his appropriation of the early 20th
century nativist and pro-fascist slogan “America First”?
More recently,
he used the vast reach of his social media platforms to retweet
a video to his millions of followers in which a man at a retirement
community riding in a golf cart bearing “Trump 2020”
and “American First” signs yells the racist phrase
“white power!” at a group of counter protesters.
Michael D. Shear writing in the Washington Post states that
while Trump later deleted the video, “he did not condemn
the ‘white power’ statement or specifically disavow
the sentiment expressed by his supporters.” A few days
later, as if he wanted to reinforce for his base his obsession
with violence, white supremacist brutality, and his deep disdain
for the widespread protests over racial violence and police
violence he retweeted a video of a white man and woman brandishing
a semi-automatic rifle and a handgun at peaceful black protesters
in St. Louis.
What Trump relentlessly
affirms whenever he addresses matters of race reinforces James
Baldwin’s argument that “White is a metaphor for
power.” How else to explain Trump’s comment that
“people love” the Confederate battle flag, and that
it has a place in American society because it’s about
freedom of speech, as if its legacy as a symbol of slavery and
the fact that it is a racist, painful and hurtful symbol to
Black Americans did not matter. Trump does not simply deny a
deep seated and residual racism in America, he embraces it as
a national ideal.
By
Henry Giroux:
The
Plague of Inequity
Covid
and our Embattled Society
Trump
and the Corona Death Waltz
Neoliberal
Fascism
The
Terror Unforseen
Interview
of H.A.Giroux
The
Normalization of Fascism
The
Public Intellectual II
Bertrand
Russell: Public Intellectual
Thinking
Dangerously in Dark Times
Democracy
in Exile
Authoritarianism
in America
Violence:
US Favourite Pastime
Losing
in Trump's America
In
Dark Times Teachers Matter
The
Age of Civic Illiteracy
Exile
and Disruption in the Academy
What
Society Produces a Donald Trump
From
School to the Prison Pipeline
Orwell
& Huxely
American
Sniper and Hollywood Heroism
Selfie Culture
The
Age of Disposability
In
the Shadow of the Atomic Bomb
Killing
Machines and the Madness of the Military
The
Age of Neoliberal Cruelty
The
Politics of the Deep State
Challenging
Casino Capitalism
Crisis
in Democracy
America's
Descent into Madness
