Trump, Race, and the GOP
The Candidate's Race-Baiting is Consistent with the Party's Recent History
I drew this cartoon today. I think it sums up who Donald Trump is and what he and his campaign are about, and acts as a follow to yesterday’s piece.
When Daddy Comes Home
Fascism is not an ideology. As Jason Stanley argues in his book How Fascism Works, fascist political structures can differ greatly in their policy goals, but nearly all follow a basic political playbook.
The Washington Post today has a story making the claim that Trump’s fascist Sunday rally at Madison Square Garden “reflects a party where hate speech has become mainstream.” The rally did just that, but the story does not offer the proper context.
The Republican Party’s dalliances with hate groups and hate speech predate Trump, though it is Trump who has remove the mask worn by a party that has pretended at compassion for six-plus decades.
Richard Nixon ran on race in 1968, turning White Southern rage into an electoral majority.
Ronald Reagan used race — couched in a bogus critique of welfare — in his 1980 run for the White House, which he launched in the same Mississippi county where three civil rights workers were famously killed.
George H.W. Bush radicalized the crime debate with the infamous Willie Horton ad.
Race was the subtext in these campaigns — and others. White voters were the audiences and, for most voters, this allusive approach allowed them to pretend that race was not central to their votes.
No one can say that about Trump, but no one should pretend he is somehow divorced from recent Republican history.
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Suggested readings:
An explainer from the Migration Policy Institute debunking the migrant crime wave myth.
A piece from The Conversation linking Trump’s rhetoric to the 20th-Century eugenics movement.
Rick Perlstein asks “What will you do?”