Donald Trump’s incitement to armed insurrection began on August 9, 2016 in Wilmington, North Carolina. The New York Times reported on the strong reactions to his speech at the time but failed to recognize the significance of where the speech was given, Wilmington, NC, the site of the only successful insurrection in the United States to overthrow a legitimately elected government. The city of Wilmington, the wealthiest city in North Carolina at the end of the nineteenth century, had elected a multiracial fusion party, a fusion of African Americans, American Indians and white liberals to run the city. As the cartoon above, published by Josephus Daniels’ Raleigh News and Observer shows, “Negro Rule” threatened the lifestyle, power and wealth of prominent white supremacists such as Mr. Daniels.
Over a century later, the election of Barack Obama rekindled the same forces of reaction in conservative white America as the election of the Wilmington fusion government did in 1898. At the forefront of the reaction was Donald Trump who lit a fire to the “birther movement” to attack the legitimacy of President Barack Obama. Mr. Trump continued his racist, but first Amendment protected speech through President Obama’s tenure but at his rally in Wilmington he escalated to egging to crowd towards armed violence if Hillary Clinton won the election. www.nytimes.com/...
Repeating his contention that Mrs. Clinton wanted to abolish the right to bear arms, Mr. Trump warned at a rally here that it would be “a horrible day” if Mrs. Clinton were elected and got to appoint a tiebreaking Supreme Court justice.
“If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks,” Mr. Trump said, as the crowd began to boo. He quickly added: “Although the Second Amendment people — maybe there is, I don’t know.”
Oblique as it was, Mr. Trump’s remark quickly elicited a wave of condemnation from Democrats, gun control advocates and others, who accused him of suggesting violence against Mrs. Clinton or liberal jurists. Bernice A. King, daughter of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., called Mr. Trump’s words “distasteful, disturbing, dangerous.”
The New York Times’ authors Nick Corasaniti and Maggie Habberman did not recognize the significance of where Trump gave this speech and interpreted the incitement as being about the potential loss of second amendment rights. However, in the context of Wilmington, NC, second amendment rights are about armed white citizens violently using their weapons to overthrow a legitimately elected multiracial government to replace it with white supremacist rule and reign of terror over people of color and white liberals. Because I reside about fifty miles inland of Wilmington in a town where politics and race relations is still in the shadow of the insurrection I wrote about the significance of Trump’s speech on August 10, 2016. www.dailykos.com/…
I concluded my report with words that foretold the insurrection at the Capitol.
Make no mistake, Donald Trump is making loud dog whistles to white supremacists to resort to violence and to delegitimatize Hillary Clinton when she is elected president in November. This coy invitation to violence endangers progressives like me who live in eastern North Carolina.
I do not believe for one minute that Donald Trump’s suggestion of gun violence as a solution to the election of Hillary Clinton was a slip of the tongue. I think he knew exactly why he said it in Wilmington North Carolina where white supremacy rose again in 1898. I am appalled that no one in the media has picked up on the significance of Wilmington North Carolina being the birth place of Jim Crow and the reign of terror across the south by white supremacists.
The insurrection at the Capitol did not start with Donald Trump’s speech that day inciting violence.
Donald Trump spent over four years inciting white supremacists to violence using semi coded speech like shock jocks on radio directed to white males. When he was running for office as a private citizen, this kind of speech was protected by the First Amendment. The day of the Capitol insurrection Trump held the office of the President and Commander in Chief. He used the power of the Presidency to disable our normal defenses against the insurrection leading to the deaths of Capitol Police defending our elected representatives. This was not a case of the insurrectionists misunderstanding Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump had been thinking about armed insurrection for over four years before he gave the speech that incited the crowd to attack Congress. It was a lynch mob modeled after the mob that overwhelmed the elected government of Wilmington, North Carolina in 1898.