On the day after Richard Spencer—the founder of the so-called “Alt-Right/Neo Nazi” movement, whom I shall refer to as “Alt-Nazi” unless quoting—stood at a Washington hotel and repeated virulently anti-Semitic white nationalist statements which finished with “Heil Trump” celebrating his election, the object of their affections President-elect Pepe told the New York Times behind closed doors that he “disavows” and doesn’t want to energize them.
"I don't want to energize the group, and I disavow the group," Trump told a group of New York Times reporters and columnists during a meeting at the newspaper's headquarters in New York.
"It's not a group I want to energize, and if they are energized, I want to look into it and find out why," he added, according to one of the Times reporters in the room, Michael Grynbaum.
Trump offered up the condemnation of the alt-Right, a far-right political movement rife with white nationalist, anti-Semitic and racist ideologies, after The New York Times' executive editor Dean Baquet asked Trump if he feels he did things to energize the alt-right.
To be honest it’s easier to believe that Trump is just plain lying here because it seems this kind of statement, just like when he finally said “Stop It” to Leslie Stahl, has to be
forcefully dragged out of him. Nobody has to prompt him to insult and condemn Rosie O’Donnell, or Alicia Machado, or the media, or any of the women who accused him of sexual assault or to demand that the cast of Hamilton apologize to VP-elect Pence
after they welcomed him to their play from the stage and said they hoped it had inspired him to be fair to all Americans. He doesn’t need his arm twisted for that, but when it comes to this it’s like pulling wisdom teeth.
The problem is that if he’s not lying, things are much, much worse. If he’s not pretending to be hopelessly completely utterly clueless, he really is totally fracking clueless.
Spencer has popularized the term “alt-right” to describe the movement he leads. Spencer has said his dream is “a new society, an ethno-state that would be a gathering point for all Europeans,” and has called for “peaceful ethnic cleansing.” [...]
“America was until this past generation a white country designed for ourselves and our posterity,” Spencer said. “It is our creation, it is our inheritance, and it belongs to us.”
The audience offered cheers, applause, and enthusiastic Nazi salutes.
Even though Trumpsters like to claim this is a minor insignificant little fringe group whom they don’t want to grant a response to from the president-elect which would “elevate” them, the fact is that this isn’t just about them, it’s also about the hundreds of hate crimes, domestic terrorism, intimidation, vandalism and violence that has spread all over the nation in the wake of Trump’s election.
Reported violent incidents since the election
Most of the reports involved anti-immigrant incidents (136), followed by anti-black (89) and anti-LGBT (43). Some reports (8) included multiple categories like anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant. The "Trump" category (41) refers to incidents where there was no clear defined target, like the pro-Trump vandalism of a "unity" sign in Connecticut. We also collected 20 reports of anti-Trump intimidation and harassment.
In response to which Trump initially said there were only a “couple incidents” and then followed when pressed only with “Stop it.” But just like that weak answer the fact that Trump’s response to Spencer and the alt-Nazis just doesn’t cut it either as David Gergen expressed on CNN.
Former White House staff assistant David Gergen called out Trump’s statement as weak. He said, “Donald Trump is trying to have it both ways here. I don’t think he’ll be successful. On one hand, he puts out statements denying there’s any racism, sexism or any other things we all find so abhorrent in his administration.”
“And thank goodness,” he continued. “We want presidents to do that. But on the other hand he’s appointed Steve Bannon as one of the most powerful people in the White House, one of the most powerful people in Washington, whose previous company … Breitbart, he said that it was the main platform for alt-right.”
Yeah, the Bannon thing.
In another portion of his candid talk with the New York Times earlier this week, the president-elect said this about his newly selected aid Steve Bannon and his connections with the Alt-Nazis:
Mr. Trump made a forceful defense of Mr. Bannon, who he named to become his chief strategist and who has drawn charges of racism and anti-Semitism. He said Mr. Bannon had been dismayed at the reaction to his hiring.
“I’ve known Steve Bannon a long time. If I thought he was a racist or alt-right,” he said, “I wouldn’t even think about hiring him.”
Mr. Trump added: “I think he’s having a hard time with it, because it’s not him. I think he’s been treated very unfairly.”
He also defended Breitbart, the news site Mr. Bannon founded, which has carried racist and anti-Semitic content, saying it was no different than The Times, only “much more conservative.”
It’s no different than the Times but “more conservative?” I’m sure that went over in the room like a lead fart. Somehow he just doesn’t see the connection between the alt-Nazis and what Bannon’s Breitbart media has published, even when one of the second largest ad networks has dropped the site for its promotion of racism.
According to Bloomberg Technology, AppNexus — which handles about $2.5 billion in ad spending — is pulling the plug on the website that has promoted itself as the home of the so-called “alt-right” by promoting extreme rightwing and racist stories.
“We did a human audit of Breitbart and determined there were enough articles and headlines that cross that line, using either coded or overt language,” AppNexus spokesperson Joshua Zeitz explained.
Which is odd and surprising when they’ve done pieces specifically on Richard Spencer and the Alt-Nazis promoting their viewpoint ...
The origins of the alternative right can be found in thinkers as diverse as Oswald Spengler, H.L Mencken, Julius Evola, Sam Francis, and the paleoconservative movement that rallied around the presidential campaigns of Pat Buchanan. The French New Right also serve as a source of inspiration for many leaders of the alt-right.
The media empire of the modern-day alternative right coalesced around Richard Spencer during his editorship of Taki’s Magazine. In 2010, Spencer founded AlternativeRight.com, which would become a center of alt-right thought.
He just doesn’t get how people like Spencer see his presidency as a resurgence of white supremacy? Really? C’mon, man.
There’s Bannon and his fairly long history of supporting and promoting anti-semitism and the alt-Nazis, as well as his own anti-Semitic and misogynist statements. In addition Trump’s first hires to his cabinet and staff included two documented Islamophobes, Michael Flynn and Jeff Frank Gaffney whose writings and arguments inspired mass murderer Anders Breivik. Then there is longtime bigot Jefferson Beauregard Sessions as attorney general who, even if he has “reformed” somewhat since he was denied a seat on the federal bench later when he as a Republican senator, helped scuttle Justice reform legislation, helped block the restoration of the Voting Rights Act and apparently thinks Kenyan immigrants are more likely to be spies.
So there’s all of that to consider.
And then there was the time Bannon went on his radio show to discuss with Milo Yiannopolous — a guy who’se tweets criticizing Saturday Night Live Comedienne Leslie Jones were so vile they got him banned for life — his latest article castigating Paul Ryan for calling the “alt-Right” — correctly — “Racist.”
Bannon said of Ryan, “In a radio interview, he starts talking about this new brand of conservatism that’s starting to rise out of this kind of populist, nationalist movement, which is called Alt-Right, driven, really, by young people, right, young people, young activists. And he went right to the left-wing playbook. Walk us through what happened.”
“It’s interesting that his instinctive, his knee-jerk, his first response was immediately to dismiss them as a nationalist, white nationalist, all that stuff,” Yiannopolous responded. “What is really happening is this: The Trump phenomenon wasn’t created by Trump. Trump has taken advantage of frustration with globalism and globalization, frustration with open borders, frustration with wages being depressed, frustration with law and order … and in addition to that, concerns about freedom of speech, about western culture being preserved from immigration from certain bits of the world, and the total rejection of political correctness. These things have sort of congealed to become something that we now call the Alt-Right. And that represents at least half of the Republican base, and probably a lot more than that.”
Claiming that “a lot of those characteristics are shared by Bernie supporters,” Yiannopolous said that the Alt-Right is “sort of a young, mischievous, dissident, anti-establishment strain of politics that represents a huge proportion of Republican voters.”
Despite these denials— yeah — they are white nationalist and also yeah, their views are represented by “a huge proportion of Republican voters.” But if Trump truly doesn’t understand it, perhaps he should ask one of the former editors at Breitbart, Ben Shapiro, who was interviewed by Vox.com.
Ben Shapiro; The alt-right are people like Richard Spencer who think that Western civilization and Western culture are inseparable from ethnicity. In other words, European ethnicity is the dominant force behind Western culture and Western civilization biologically. So it's a racist and anti-Semitic movement.
They truly believe that multiethnic democracies cannot succeed. This is essentially a white nationalist movement that claims to have intellectual backing for its cause.
Sean Illing: Are there any concrete political goals on the alt-right, apart from restoring a kind of cultural hegemony?
Ben Shapiro: They want to destroy the Republican Party from within and take it over. They want the constitutional right destroyed. They actually hate the constitutional right more than they hate the left. They don't actually hate the left. They think the left is wrong about racism but they don't object to big government that takes care of people; rather, they think you should have special privileges if you're of European descent. They want what they call "Christendom" protected from foreign bodies.
And this is how Shapiro explained Trump’s relationship with the Alt-Nazis.
Sean Illing : I’d say it goes well beyond winking and nodding. On Monday, you published a piece detailing in brief who Steve Bannon is and what you think his ascension means. What does Trump’s decision to appoint him as “Chief Strategist” signal to you?
Ben Shapiro: It signals that [Trump]'s not going to throw the alt-right overboard now that he's in the White House. It doesn't necessarily mean that this will be the motivating ideology behind his presidency, but it does mean that he's happy to fellow-travel with them to get where he wants to go.
Sean Illing: Do you think Trump gives a damn about any of the principles animating the alt-right? Or do you see him more as an opportunist who knows a good bet when he sees one?
Ben Shapiro: I think he's an opportunist who's taking an advantage of the climate he's confronting. I'm not a mind-reader, so I can't say anything definitive, but I do think the way he talks suggests that he's perfectly happy to live with the tacit approval of the alt-right, and that says something about the man.
This right here is exactly why Trump keeps getting asked about the Alt-Nazis, about Bannon and about bigotry. It’s not just his words, it’s been his actions, and his lack of action.
It’s been his own bigoted statements about Mexicans, Muslims, to and about black people, his support of biased policies like “stop and frisk,” his five year birther attack on President Obama, and his choice of anti-gay Governor Mike Pence as his vice president speaks volumes that a simple “Stop It” and “I disavow” just doesn’t undo. That just doesn’t cut it, not hardly. Does anyone believe that Spencer is going to “stop it,” or that he now feels chastened by Trump’s behind closed doors “disavowal?” I certainly don’t.
Let’s say that neither Trump nor Bannon believe themselves to be racist and neither is specifically promoting racism deliberately, even if that’s the case it’s pretty clear that both of them, as Shapiro describes, are more than willing to use and endorse racist ideas for their own ends, and now they’re suddenly “hurt” and “dumbfounded” that the media keeps harping on it?
Frak that bullshit. They brought this on themselves.
Frankly, when these questions are asked what we’ve constantly seen is an incredible overblown hyper-offended reaction just to the issue being brought up, as if it’s worse to ask about racism, than actually being a racist or a person willing to stand-by and tacitly let racism flourish without confronting it. That is done by design; it’s on purpose to block out the ability to confront these issues openly and honestly without deflection, minimization and distortion of the issue.
And ultimately what that process does is make the abnormal, normal. It ignores that racism exists on a spectrum and there are many layers and many options between 0 and 100 percent bigotry. That simpleminded light-switch view has already made the despicable and the deplorable, closer and closer to acceptable—just as people like Spencer intended. We’ve seen exactly that over-reaction and crazy false equivelencies from his surrogates time and time again.
For example you have both Kayleigh McEnany and Jeffry Lord blaming the left for these alt-Nazis. First Jeffrey, which was pretty much a shouting match over “identity politics” with Ana Navarro that didn’t help clarify much.
Jeffrey Lord suggested that it was a matter of “identity politics.” However, Navarro said of Lord, “He supported a candidate who is now President-Elect that has spent the last 18 months using identity politics as the wedge issue. Do you think when he calls Mexicans rapists and criminals that is not identity politics?”
She continued, “What Donald Trump has to do to is take responsibility. He’s unleashed the Kraken, and it is not a coincidence that after he got elected, hate crimes spiked up. It is not a coincide the KKK celebrated his victory and wanted a parade in North Carolina.”
“It is not a coincidence these white supremacists were holding their hands up in a Nazi salute yelling ‘Heil Trump,'” she continued. “He needs to take leadership and take ownership and he needs to know he has a responsibility in this and he needs to go out and try to unify the country. Stop fighting with Broadway … Fight the division in the country. Fight the white supremacists.”
In order to do that he'd have to admit his own hand in fostering and emboldening them with his own rhetoric and he simply isn’t. doing. that. Then came the McEnany:
McEnany, who has consistently been an apologist for Trump throughout his campaign and increasingly since his win — going so far as to suggest that Trump is the only candidate to repeatedly denounce racism — came to his defense yet again.
“This is what those who don’t like Trump choose to ignore,” she said, “He started out his presidency, pretty much the first words out of his mouth were ‘I want to be a president for all races and religions.’ Bryan Lanza put a statement out last night denouncing all racism on behalf of the administration. … [Trump] looked in the camera on 60 Minutes and said ‘Cut it out.'”
She continued, “If it were up to you leftists, he would spend every day standing on top of the Trump Tower saying ‘I’m not a racist.’ He’s not going do that … He’s already done that four times.”
Actually he said “stop it” which I’m sure has about as much effect as when a mom tells her four year old to “stop it.” It won’t take him saying it everyday of his presidency, just once with genuine conviction without being forced into it.
Then you have this Trump surrogate who gets huffy and offended when someone quotes a Donald Trump advisor using the N-word, because I guess quoting bigotry is worse than being a bigot.
[Charles] Kaiser rattled off a list of ways the president-elect had already emboldened neo-Nazis. Kaiser said Trump retweeted a Twitter user named “white genocide” who listed his address as “Jew America,” asked his supporters to give the Nazi salute (by asking them to pledge their support to his candidacy), selected “the most homophobic man in American public life” as his running mate and choose as White House counsel “a man who uses the word n*gger.”
“Charles, I appreciate you going through all of this, but please don’t use the n-word on my show,” Baldwin interjected.
“I’m sorry,” Kaiser said, “But I never use the n-word, except when I’m quoting someone who’s been appointed by the President to the Oval Office, since this such a disgusting moment in our history.”
Dennard called Kaiser’s use of the n-word “highly offensive,” before arguing it “is enough” for Trump to disavow the comments.
Alt-Nazis call black people “Skittles” because that’s what Trayvon Martin had in his pockets when he was killed, they call Muslims “Googles” because of their filters against Islamophobia, Jews are “Yahoos” and Asians are “Skypes.” Banning the N-word doesn’t really change anything because a living language is fungible.
Trump can weakly disavow comments, but when it comes to hiring documented xenophobes? Not. a. problem. Then you have this guy who tried to excuse Trump’s lack of response to Spencer’s Nazi salute with some jibber-jabber about MLK being a Republican.
Conservative commentator Carl Higbie noted that Trump had not yet denounced the latest incident because he has been too busy denouncing the protesters “tearing down local businesses.” As Mediaite noted, he then claimed that the GOP is the party that “freed the slaves” and the party that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. belonged to.
CNN contributor Angela Rye couldn’t take anymore. “My history is clear. Your history is ass backwards!” she exclaimed. “Let me help you. The Republican Party is not the party of the 13th and 14th and 15th amendment. Your party is the one pushing forth voter suppression legislation all throughout this country. Your party is the one who helps ensure that Shelby v. Holder would gut the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Your party is the one in Pennsylvania where a GOP legislator said these laws were put in place to ensure that Republicans would win back the House, the Senate, the presidency. Let’s be clear. Your party is living and thriving off of oppression.”
Or Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI) who excuses Trump’s weak response to Alt-Nazis because Barack Obama didn’t “stand up” to Black Lives Matter. Yeah, really.
Responding to Scuitto’s question about why it too “so long” for Trump to “condemn this really disgusting hate group,” Duffy pivoted to complaining about mounting protests against the impending Trump administration.
“He did condemn them and that’s a good thing,” Duffy said adding it was the “right move” and shows Trump’s leadership skills. “My concern is that Barack Obama, when he had a chance, didn’t condemn the riots across America that were in protest of Donald Trump’s victory in the election or didn’t condemn Black Lives Matter,” the representative added.
“You’re equating Americans protesting a politician with outright the and bigotry from a group that was using the Hitler salute to celebrate Donald Trump’s victory and are nothing more than white supremacists?” Scuitto asked. “That’s not a fair comparison.”
Why exactly would Barack Obama condemn people using their First Amendment rights? No he didn’t condemn people who peacefully protested Trump any more than he condemned people who peacefully protested his presidency in rally after rally sponsored by the tea party for years.
President Obama won’t try to call off protests against Donald Trump, he said Thursday, ignoring pleas from the president-elect’s advisers to denounce the nationwide demonstrations.
“I would not advise people who feel strongly or are concerned about some of the issues that have been raised over the course of the campaign, I would not advise them to be silent,” Obama said during a joint news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Obama said protests are just something Trump would have to get used to as the leader of the free world.
“I’ve been the subject of protests during the course of my eight years,” he said. “And I suspect that there’s not a president in our history that hasn’t been subject to these protests.”
And when it comes to violence and riots, he did condemn that in no uncertain terms in public without having to have it dragged out of him behind closed doors. He said it in the Rose Garden with the American Flag behind him:
Point #3: There’s no excuse for the kind of violence we saw the yesterday. It is counter productive. When individuals get crowbars and start prying open doors to loot, they aren’t protesting, they’re not making a statement, they’re stealing. When they burn down a building it’s arson. And they’re destroying and undermining businesses and opportunities in their own community, that rob jobs and opportunity from people in that area.
It’s entirely appropriate that the Mayor of Baltimore and the Governor, whom I spoke to yesterday, stop that kind of senseless violence and destruction. It is not a protest. It is not a statement. It is a handful of people taking advantage of a situation for their own purposes and they need to be treated as criminals.
Point #4: The violence that you saw yesterday distracted from the fact that you had seen multiple days of peaceful protests that were focused on entirely legitimate concerns of these communities in Baltimore, led by clergy and community leaders. And they were constructive, and they were thoughtful. And frankly didn’t get that much attention. One burning building will be looped on television over and over again, and the thousands of demonstrators who did it the right way have been lost in the discussion. The overwhelming majority of the community in Baltimore did this the right way, expressing real outrage about the possibility that our laws were not applied appropriately in the case of Mr. Grey. That accountability needs to exist.
I think it’s my understanding that some of the same organizers now, have gone back into the community to try and clean up what a handful of protestors — uh, a handful of criminals and thugs, who tore up the place. What those community leaders, clergy and others were doing, that is a a statement. It’s the kind of organizing that needs to take place if we’re going to tackle this problem and they deserve credit for it and we should be lifting them up.
Yeah, that’s a bit more than “If if helps, I’ll say ‘stop it.” No, that doesn’t help, not even a little.
Duffy’s claim that he didn’t do this is just plain false. President Obama was much more direct, more more forceful and passionate. He didn’t hide behind closed doors or only respond simply because reporters forced him to answer the question. There’s no legitimate case that he didn’t mean what he said, which is why Duffy has to deny he said anything at all.
What Obama did here about violent riots is exactly what Trump won’t do about Alt-Nazis. He was assertive, direct, clear and unequivocal, but Trump hasn’t been and frankly since he doesn’t even “understand” why these people are shouting “Heil Trump” in the first place—and he probably never will be. Meanwhile his surrogates will go on deflecting and crying crocodile tears about how they’re so offended that people bring this up, and the New York Times writes stories about it.
Even the hosts on The View get how this tepid little back-door “disavowal” is ridiculous:
“I get that Donald Trump has other things to do than, you know, belittle the cast of ‘Hamilton,’ because, you know, he thought they were being disrespectful to Pence,” she continued. “Or call out the media and talk about all the stuff they didn’t do for him, after they gave him a podium for the last two years. But to these guys, ‘Well, yeah, racism is bad.’ That was his response to this.”
The women all agreed that Trump needs to come out and quell the fears of a divided nation instead of spending his time going after Alec Baldwin or “Hamilton.”
Co-host Sunny Hostin noted that Trump was the same candidate who criticized President Barack Obama and Secretary Clinton for not using the words “radical Islamic terrorists.”
“You must say the words!” Hostin mimicked Trump. “Well, President Trump, you must say ‘the alt-right is a white supremacists group’ and denounce it and you don’t stand by it! And I think we all need to know that we’re calling it the ‘alt-right.’ Now, the person we just saw in that video is the person that coined that phrase. Don’t call it the alt-right, call it what it is. It’s white supremacy. And I think we are sort of normalizing this movement by calling it the alt-right and we all need to stop doing that.”
Whether it’s because his disavowal is a lie or because he simply doesn’t get how he himself paved the yellow brick road to deplorable-town with his own words, decisions and inaction—he never will do it the way Obama did. He just won’t.
And even if he did the fact is that it’s frankly far too little and far too late for him to do as Obama did and come out make a direct clear statement on this. His reluctance clearly shows us that the SNL cast, the Hamilton cast and the New York Times bothers him far more than “Heil Trump” does.
Spencer certainly won’t believe he really means it by “I disavow,” and I seriously doubt most of the rest of us will either.
This is the new normal and Trump-merica. Bigots welcome in the back door, but don’t admit to anyone it was by invitation.
