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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums"Trumpism" Is Simply White Supremacy
If you run a search on What is Trumpism? a wide variety of answers and theories pop up.
Wikipedia suggests it is a term for the political ideology, style of governance, political movement and set of mechanisms for acquiring and keeping power that are associated with Donald Trump, and his political base.
The BBC quotes a Republican analyst as saying Trumpism is, What the president believes on any particular moment on any particular day about any particular subject.
The Atlantic argues its, A populous prototype, a personality cult, or something stranger.
The answer, however, is very straightforward and all you need do is look at Trumps policies, history and statements.
Trumpism is white supremacy.
And while white supremacy has been a feature of many movements over the centuries, from the Doctrine of Discovery to Nazi-era fascism, its also its own standalone ideology.
Donald Trumps incarnation as a Republican in the modern era, what led him straight to running in the Republican primary, was often called birtherism.
This was the theory, whose principal and most high profile advocate was Donald Trump, that Americas first Black president couldnt possibly have been born in this country, because, in Donald Trumps mind and those of his white supremacist followers, no American Black man could be that smart, articulate or politically savvy.
Obama mustve been a Muslim Trojan horse, Trump supporters said, a cleverly installed plant, sent here by China or Kenya to bring America to its knees. The headline in the Chicago Tribune summed it up: Obama Faces Vile Insults Like No Other President Has, and chief among Obamas antagonists was Trump.
Prior to being politically famous for birtherism, Donald Trump made his chops in New York politics by running a full page ad in The New York Times calling for the death penalty for five innocent young Black men who were falsely accused of beating and raping a white woman in Central Park.
Even though they were exonerated by DNA and the actual perpetrator was captured, confessed and already imprisoned for another, similar crime, Trump continues to this day to insist that they should be put to death. Theyve got to be guilty of something terrible, right? Theyre Black!
There is literally an entire, lengthy wikipedia page dedicated to the racist comments by Trump. Even newspapers in other countries get it.
Donald Trump learned white supremacy at his fathers knee.
As a young man working in his dads real estate empire, one of young Trump family members jobs was to put the letter C for Colored on rental applications from Black people so they could get the phone call that, So sorry, but the apartment has just been rented out to somebody else.
As former Trump Organization senior executive John ODonnell notes in his book Trumped, Donald told him, Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.
In 1989 Trump offered a positively Limbaughian observation about the white freak-out then going on around affirmative action programs: A well-educated black has a tremendous advantage over a well-educated white in terms of the job market. ... Ive said on one occasion, even about myself, if I were starting off today, I would love to be a well-educated black, because I believe they do have an actual advantage.
In 1990, he noted, Laziness is a trait in blacks.
He kicked off his primary campaign by characterizing brown-skinned Mexicans as rapists and murderers who, he said, were bringing crime and disease into America.
When an American-born (Indiana) judge who is ethnically Hispanic convicted Trump for committing a massive fraud on thousands of Americans in the Trump University case, Trump referred to him as a Mexican judge. Hes got brown skin: case closed.
In Charlottesville, Nazis and white supremacists were marching in response to a widespread meme on social media that Jewish Billionaire George Soros was financing abortion and homosexuality among white people to reduce white numbers and replace whites with darker-skinned people. Theres an entire international movement promoting this Great Replacement theory that they say includes everything from birth control to immigration to affirmative action.
The theory has been implicitly endorsed by rightwing media and Trump for years. Thus, Jews will not replace us was their chant. These marchers/murderers of Heather Heyer were, according to Donald Trump, very fine people.
He called African countries shithole countries, and when he later denied it, Senator Dick Durban who was in the meeting with Trump where he made the comment said about his denial, Its not true. He said these hate-filled things. And he said them repeatedly.
Trump, for his part, said he wasnt opposed to immigration generally, he just wanted more people from Norway instead of shithole countries. His actual quote was: Why do we want all these people from Africa here? Theyre shithole countries
We should have more people from Norway.
Trump publicly told several Black and Latinx congresswomen to go back to where they came from. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez replied on twitter, When @realDonaldTrump tells four American Congresswomen to go back to their countries, he reaffirms his plan to Make America Great Again has always been about making America white again.
When asked to simply and publicly denounce white supremacy and racism in his first debate with Joe Biden, Trump refused with his famous stand by comment to one of the nations more high-visibility white supremacist groups. But I'll tell you what, he told the moderator, Fox News Chris Wallace. Somebody's got to do something about antifa and the left. Yep, thats his solution for solving racism in America: do something about the left.
Donald Trump is the man George Wallace hoped he could one day become. He rode the train of white supremacy all the way to the White House, something Wallace only dreamed of.
While Nixon and Reagan both had a long history of making racist comments in private, and were perfectly willing, as was the elder George Bush, to use racist appeals to gain the White House, theres little evidence that the fires of white supremacy burned as hot and deep in their bellies as they do in Donald Trumps. It was peripheral, not central to their core identities.
For Trump, though, its a religion, a mantra, a catechism.
Virtually every person he appointed throughout his presidency, from federal judges to officials up and down the various government agencies he had control over, were white (and most men). The occasional Black person he did appoint had to first publicly demonstrate, after being attacked by Trump, their fealty and obeisance to Trump, certifying in his mind that they knew their place and could be trusted not to challenge his white supremacist rhetoric and policies.
And his white supremacist followers are right there with him.
During the treasonous January 6th attack on our Capitol by Trumps white supremacist followers, every Black police officer willing to talk with the media recounted how they were repeatedly called the N-word. Some of those traitors called for the Black officers to be lynched (and theyd brought a gallows with them, although its intended target was apparently Mike Pence).
Among Trumps political lapdogs, Senator Lindsey Graham just publicly spoke about how if the power ever went out in his neighborhood and the gangs started ravishing his neighbors, they couldnt get him because he has an AR-15. Gangs of course, has long been white supremacist shorthand for any number of Black or Latinx people greater than three or four.
Trumps two accomplishments as president were to give a massive, trillion-dollar tax break to almost-exclusively-white billionaires, and siphon money away from GI housing repairs to build a wall to keep out brown-skinned refugees.
Most white Americans have, at one time or another in their lives, known somebody who was a fulminating white supremacist like Trump. People who love to use the N-word and rail against affirmative action and blame their problems in life on folks who arent white.
Which makes it all the more curious that our mostly-white media so rarely identifies this singular touchstone of his cult.
Instead, they desperately look for other labels. Populist. Demagogue. Conservative. Movement-driven.
The simple truth is that Donald Trump and his followers are white supremacists.
Its about time we - and the media - started saying it out loud.
Original post with links to sources here: HartmannReport.com
Irish_Dem
(46,918 posts)That is why his racist base does't care about any of the crimes Trump has committed.
They are one issue voters.
bluestarone
(16,906 posts)Plus i'd throw in a little NAZI ism as well!!
Skittles
(153,147 posts)Last edited Tue Mar 30, 2021, 08:32 PM - Edit history (1)
that's what gets them hysterical, the idea that the world no longer revolves around THEM
EYESORE 9001
(25,927 posts)that theyll get treated the way that they treated minorities once theyre no longer in charge. Shoulda treated people better, I say.
Skittles
(153,147 posts)like when they yell REVERSE DISCRIMINATION! idiots
Thomas Hurt
(13,903 posts)the KKK and the Birchers. Same sh*t, different name.
catbyte
(34,373 posts)That whole "economic anxiety" excuse has been code for racism since the Tea Party surged in 2009 (gee, I wonder what happened then?) They made a seamless transition by morphing into MAGAts in 2016.
Yavin4
(35,437 posts)cities like Baltimore, Chicago, and South Central L.A. and African Americans found themselves with no way to economically support themselves. It was easier to blame it on character.
whathehell
(29,067 posts)along with a lot of anti-intellectualism.
LetMyPeopleVote
(145,129 posts)The GOP has been the party of racists for a long time and trump has merely encouraged these assholes to go public with their racist views
bdamomma
(63,836 posts)and true. The media needs to call it what it is.
Silent3
(15,201 posts)...I think a lot of people are into Trump for the sheer asshole-ishness of the movement. (A lot of overlap in appeal there, of course.)
Buckeye_Democrat
(14,853 posts)... that right-wing authoritarian (RWA) personality/beliefs was easily the best predictor of a Trump supporter. (It was conducted during the 2016 GOP primaries.)
Here's a link to an RWA online test:
https://openpsychometrics.org/tests/RWAS/
Here's some parts of that test, with agreement being an RWA trait, which has racist overlap given this country's history:
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* The established authorities generally turn out to be right about things, while the radicals and protestors are usually just "loud mouths" showing off their ignorance.
* The only way our country can get through the crisis ahead is to get back to our traditional values, put some tough leaders in power, and silence the troublemakers spreading bad ideas.
* The "old-fashioned ways" and the "old-fashioned values" still show the best way to live.
* Our country will be great if we honor the ways of our forefathers, do what the authorities tell us to do, and get rid of the "rotten apples" who are ruining everything.
* This country would work a lot better if certain groups of troublemakers would just shut up and accept their group's traditional place in society.
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Edit: And if you look at the test, there's major overlap with fundamentalist Christian beliefs too.
Martin68
(22,791 posts)but there are other components that are equally important. One is the idea that there are no limits in public discourse, even by the President, in terms of disparaging and just plain making up stuff about your enemies. Another is that "both sides do it, so why not do it better." Corruption, unlimited donations from secret donors, dirty tricks, daily lies and distortions to create a false reality that sucks in naive and gullible and low information people. Using selective media like Fox, Rush, and now Newsmax to amplify lies and give them a little more credibility. It involves lies about economics, the justice system, taxes, the political process, the media, the education system, voting, and a great deal more. It would be easier to fight if it werfe just white supremacy.