"Send her back" is where racism and authoritarianism meet [View all]

[DonViejo]

This viciousness isn’t an accident. It’s what Trumpism is really about.

By Zack Beauchamp @zackbeauchamp [e-mail] Jul 19, 2019, 8:30am EDT

“Send her back! Send her back! Send her back!”

It’s hard not to feel chills when you watch the video of a Trump rally in North Carolina where this chant, directed at Rep. Ilhan Omar, breaks out. The president, in the middle of a diatribe against Omar, pauses and looks out as the crowd chants — not smiling, exactly, but doing nothing to calm the chanters or quiet their refrain.

That moment, the chant demanding that a naturalized citizen and member of Congress be “sent back” to her native Somalia booming through an audience of thousands, put on display the particular fusion of racism and authoritarianism that defines Trumpism as a political movement.

“Send her back” is not the first such chant to break out at Trump events; it follows “lock her up,” the ritual demand from Trump supporters that Hillary Clinton be sent to jail. Together, “lock her up” and “send her back” demonstrate beyond doubt that the law, in the Trumpian view, is a vehicle for punishing political enemies and minority groups.

In the Trumpian imagination, political opponents are not mere rivals but existential threats aligned with anti-American elements (read: immigrants and minorities) in a bid to undermine everything they cherish about America. As such, Clinton and Omar should not merely be defeated in an election; they must be crushed. If that requires abusing the power of the state and twisting the law to do so, so be it.

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https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/7/19/20699231/send-her-back-racism-authoritarianism