White supremacy is nothing new in the United States. In fact, it was a deeply held belief well before there was a United States and the founding principle of the traitorous disunion memorialized by the statue in Charlottesville. But the way that this nationalism is being folded into the Republican Party, and into the support base for Donald Trump is new.
It’s no coincidence that the alt-Reich is drawing from the same energy that drives Donald Trump: a sense of white victimhood. Where the media has been quick to seize on the decline of jobs and wealth in rural America, Trump and his Breitbart followers haven’t channeled that reaction into demands for improved conditions for workers, or higher wages, or limits on corporate greed. They’ve turned the energy into a reason to strike out at immigrants, at blacks, at Muslims, at anyone who can serve as a convenient “other” in their blame game. As Perry Bacon at 538 details ...
What is different about this iteration of white nationalism is how the movement is framing its ideas, and the place those ideas occupy in U.S. politics. One of the chants white nationalists repeatedly turned to as they marched in Charlottesville on Friday night and Saturday was “white lives matter” — a direct response to the “Black Lives Matter” movement that emerged after the killing of Michael Brown by Ferguson, Missouri, police in August 2014 and the resulting protests.
Where Black Lives Matter was intended to press back against the idea that African Americans could be killed with impunity, white nationalists aren’t arguing over inclusion. They’re painting everything from economics to rights as a zero sum game, where only white lives matter.
The Black Lives Matter movement is also part of a broader push on the left for promoting gender equality, expanding rights for gay and transgender Americans and ensuring workplaces and universities have more “diversity,” which usually means adding to the number of black, Latino, Asian and other non-white employees, along with women of all races.
But white nationalists can’t admit that blacks, women, gays, transgender people, or anyone else are affected by discriminatory practices. Instead, any gain made by any group must be stolen from white men.
The victimhood narrative doesn’t hold up to facts, history, experience, or any logical test. It doesn’t have to. It’s an emotional appeal that stretches between people who feel as if they are owed a superior position—and that civil rights laws are actually laws against white people. It’s an explanation of a declining rural economy that doesn’t involve dry statistics about productivity or automation. It provides something that every good conspiracy needs—an enemy.
It’s an argument that goes beyond the torch bearers in the streets of Charlottesville. Only one-quarter of Republicans overall will admit that there is significant discrimination against blacks. Let that sink in for a moment: 74 percent of Republicans do no believe blacks are discriminated against. In fact, twice as many Republicans—even Republicans who are not Christian—think there is significant discrimination against Christians. Almost as many think there is discrimination against whites.
By a wide majority, Republicans don’t believe there needs to be a Black Lives Matter. Or a Voting Rights Act. Or affirmative action. And because they don’t believe there’s a need for any of those things, they don’t see them as an effort to address discrimination against blacks. They see them as an attack on whites.
Which tees up Donald Trump for his statements on Saturday.
And then there’s the role of President Trump. Some of the activists on Saturday invoked Trump and said his victory had galvanized them. And the president, in repeated statements about Charlottesville, was unwilling to explicitly condemn “white supremacy,” a phrase used by others, including some Republicans.
Trump’s “on many sides” statement that implied that groups standing up to Nazis are equally to blame for violence may seem like an extreme position that would appeal only to the white nationalist faction in his hardcore base. It’s not. It’s a position that’s increasingly mainstream within the Republican Party, where the number of people who think white people suffer significant discrimination has tripled in the last decade.
This isn’t a splinter fragment of the right. This is a movement of the right.
What’s clear is that we are seeing strong, overt signs of white identity politics from conservatives, and Trump is executing an agenda that pushes back against the identity politics of liberals. Trump could eventually and pointedly criticize “Unite the Right.” He could call for the removal of Confederate monuments. But I doubt he will, because for now it appears that a kind of white identity politics is a key part of American politics and one that is aligned with Trump.