With Donald Trump’s latest foray into the world of White Supremacist/neo-Nazi symbolism— a Star of David affixed to an image of Hillary Clinton— we are past the point of debating whether Trump is merely giving playful winks to the racist core of the GOP. The frequency of these symbolic references in his tweets and campaign rallies (which have included supporters raising their right hands to pledge loyalty to him, and his use of the slogan ‘America First’, as perhaps the most notorious reminders of the heyday of American fascism, circa 1938) reflect something quite purposeful, and which Mr. Trump himself is obviously comfortable with. (As a side note, it seems apparent that he also has made it clear to his staff that he, and they, are able to voice any view, make any claim, no matter how transparently false or odious, and no worries, tomorrow you simply say: 1) we didn’t say it, 2) it’s the left-wing media’s fault, 3) because political correctness, 4) some combination of 1-3.)
Chauncey Devega, in a chilling interview with sociologist Dr. James Scaminaci III at Salon, provides invaluable insight into the psychology, motives and operational framework of the alliance between fundamentalists, so-called ‘cultural conservatives’, anti-government conservatives (which run the gamut from suburban libertarians to all out secessionists) the big money backers of the GOP, and White Supremacists:
[CD]One of the dominant frames in the mainstream news media is that Donald Trump is some type of surprise, an aberration of sorts, that has come out of nowhere to bulldoze the 2016 Republican presidential field. Is this narrative accurate?
[JS] Trump is the logical outcome and expression of what has always been present in the Republican Party.
White supremacy is the operating system of America and it is strongest in the Republican Party. Marc Hetherington and Jonathan Weiler in their bookAuthoritarianism & Polarization in American Politics demonstrate that the two major political parties have sorted their supporters out along the authoritarianism dimension, with the Republican Party stronger on authoritarianism and the Democratic Party weaker. That is not to say that every Republican is an authoritarian or vice versa. But, authoritarianism is correlated with being anti-black, racial resentment, anti-immigrant, against reproductive rights, and against gay rights, for example.
We also know from George Lakoff that the family model of the right-wing is the strict father model which is based on authority, obedience, discipline, and punishment. This is consistent with the extreme rightward turn of the Republican Party.
Trump’s right-wing populism is also consistent with academic studies of the Tea Party movement in which supporters favored Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid for people like themselves and opposed all types of social welfare programs for non-whites, people they thought were undeserving.
If you look at these deep, swirling undercurrents, why should it be a surprise that Donald Trump has triumphed?
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[CD] In your writing and research, you have suggested that Trump’s policy goals are not something cobbled together, random, or a product of his political naïveté and pandering to the GOP base, but rather, an example of what has been described as “4th generation warfare” (4GW) applied to American domestic politics. Can you explain this concept and how it helps us to understand contemporary movement conservatism, more generally, and Trump’s rise, specifically?
[JS] Fourth Generation Warfare is a conflict between a state actor and a non-state 4GW actor. The 4GW actor can be driven by ideas, religion, or the defense of the “purity of its race.” The central objective is to undermine and destroy the legitimacy of the state actor, to deny the state actor a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, and to use manipulations of moving images and other psychological warfare techniques to remove affective support from the state actor. Psychological warfare would be more important than military operations.
A sub-component of 4GW is William Lind’s conspiracy theory of the internal war for supremacy between what he called “cultural Marxists” and their ideology of “Political Correctness” or “multiculturalism” and the “traditional American culture” or “Judeo-Christian culture.” Lind argued that “cultural Marxists” hate America’s “Judeo-Christian culture” and were seeking to destroy it. The losers were to be rich, white, conservative, Christian, heterosexual men.
This is where religious supremacy and white supremacy link up, and where Trump is attempting to fuse in his own person.
Internally, this clash of cultures is weaponized as propaganda campaigns designed to delegitimize whole classes of peoples: Blacks and civil rights and voting rights; women and reproductive rights; the LGBTQ and gay rights; workers and labor rights; environmentalists and environmental laws and science.
Outside the country, the clash of civilizations is between Christianity and Islam. In fact, Weyrich and Lind began in the early 1990s to target Islam as a violent, illegitimate religion. One can draw a straight line from the anti-Muslim views of Weyrich and Lind in the early 1990s to the Islamophobia of today.
Trump’s core policies are all consistent with Lind’s writings since 2005. Lind called for a Berlin-style wall on the U.S.-Mexican border, supported the Minutemen militia on the border, likened Latino and Muslim immigrants to invaders that had to be stopped, considered Muslim immigrants an imported cultural disease, and, if good immigrants came in, it was the destructive Black culture that turned them bad, and opposed Wall Street conservatives.
Lind’s ideas have circulated throughout the right-wing for just over a decade. Trump is just telling the Republican base what they have already heard or read.
It’s certainly correct to say that Trump is stultifyingly ignorant, a narcissist, bigoted, and misogynistic. He not only lacks the most basic knowledge of history, but apparently lacks the capacity to learn and understand material above the grade school level.
However, it would be an easy, and grievous, mistake to confuse his sheer clownishness for an absence of ideology. He subscribes to the ideology that is (and has always been) premised on the dominance of heterosexual White males— White Supremacist. His re-tweeting of memes, images, quotations and symbols that are used by the alt-right, White Supremacists, and neo-Nazis are markers of where Trump and his staff get their information, and with whom they prefer to associate. (At this point, every Trump tweet should come with a standard disclosure: “I’m Donald J. Trump, and I approved this use of anti-Semitic symbolism lifted from 8chan”.)
It’s also a mistake for progressives to downplay how pervasive throughout the country, and how determined White Supremacists and neo-Nazis, are; it’s equally a mistake to ignore the sophistication of their political and media operations. ‘Conservative think-tanks’ (like Heritage and American Enterprise Institute) are funded by billionaires, and exist to desensitize the media and populous to White Supremacist messages. The Southern Poverty Law Center traces these connections:
Founded in 1943, the Washington, D.C.-based American Enterprise Institute (AEI) is one of the most influential conservative think tanks in America. While its roots are in pro-business values, AEI in recent years has sponsored scholars whose views are seen by many as bigoted or even racist.
For example, Dinesh D'Souza, the author of The End of Racism, holds an Olin Foundation research fellowship at AEI. D'Souza has suggested that civil rights activists actually help perpetuate racial tensions and division in the United States, and has even called for the repeal of the 1964 Civil Rights Act…
The American Immigration Control Foundation, founded in 1983, has been headed since 1990 by John Vinson, a conspiracy-oriented Christian nationalist. Vinson wrote the AICF-published Immigration and Nation: A Biblical View, in which he claims that it is against God's will to weaken the "divinely unique" character of every nation.
In the case of America, Vinson makes clear in the booklet, that character belongs to English-speaking white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. In fact, Vinson attacks Catholics who came to America in the 19th century, claiming that because they did not understand God's plan, they foolishly supported a strong federal government and high taxes.
He says that assimilating "the races of the world" is "an impossible task," and argues that current immigration patterns may "destroy our nationhood." Vinson also attacks the "spiritual Balkanization" he says immigration of non-Christians promotes…
Founded in 1953 by Illinois industrialist John Merrill Olin, the Olin Foundation funds projects that "strengthen the economic, political and cultural institutions upon which the American heritage of constitutional government and private enterprise is based." Among its grantees over the last 20 years are the American Enterprise Institute, theCenter for the Study of Popular Culture, the Federation for American Immigration Reform, the far-right Free Congress Foundation and the Rockford Institute.
This is about more than the ‘right-wing echo chamber’— this is a concerted effort to effect a bloodless (not really) coup d’ tat, undermining and undoing progressive achievements of the past hundred years through a gullible and compliant media, gutting of laws, and seizing the judiciary:
The Federalist Society’s board of trustees is co-chaired by Bork and U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch -- one of the most conservative members on Capitol Hill. Other trustees include former Attorney General Meese, William Bradford Reynolds, who was assistant attorney general for civil rights in the Reagan Administration, sought to have court-ordered affirmative action programs overturned, and C. Boyden Gray, former President Bush’s chief White House attorney, who opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1991…
We have Justice Antonin Scalia (who advised the Federalist Society at its inception and later hired two of its three founders as his law clerks), who two years ago gave a public lecture at Columbia Law School where he stated if Brown vs. Board of Education was to be presented to him today, he would rule against the plaintiff. In other words, this was a threat that if Brown vs. Board of Education was voted on before the Supreme Court, he would overturn it.
While progressives may breathe a sigh of relief at Scalia’s death, he, Justice Alito and Justice Thomas didn’t appear out of nowhere— their appointments to SCOTUS were the fruits of a decades long effort (conscious, meticulously planned, with a never-ending supply of financial backing). What is laughably referred to as ‘the conservative establishment’, is intertwined conceptually, financially and organizationally with American White Supremacists and neo-Nazis. There never was a boundary separating them, only the fictional narrative of the ‘conservative mainstream’ and the ‘right wing fringe’, in order to make someone like Scalia acceptable to the poorly-informed/misled general public. The founding principles, motives and goals are indistinguishable between the ‘mainstream’ and ‘fringe’ of the right, only the language and degree of disingenuousness varies.
Trump’s White Supremacist tweets are not coincidental, and Trump is not an outlier in the GOP.
If anyone who calls themselves a progressive tells you they’re voting for Trump, remind them who they’re deciding to align with, but also question whether they are a progressive at all.