Donald Trump Is Mainstreaming Anti-Semitism and White Supremacy | Nicole Hemmer
2016/07/07 Leave a comment
All too true and worrisome:
The friendly relationship between Trump and the alt-right represents a genuine reversal of conservative and Republican politics. In the 1950s, conservatives at the journal National Review made a concerted effort to expel anti-Semites from their ranks, banning anyone from the magazine who wrote for anti-Semitic publications. A decade later the magazine extended its ban to members of the John Birch Society, which, while not primarily an anti-Semitic organization, welcomed a number of prominent anti-Semites as spokespeople.
Conservative leaders believed this sort of distancing was necessary in order to gain respectability, and thus political power, in mid-century America. And by and large, that has been true ever since. It’s why code words and dog-whistles became so important – because open anti-Semitism and racism had become so disqualifying.As a candidate, Trump has dropped the dog whistle and started speaking in openly prejudiced terms. His decision to do so did not keep him from winning the Republican nomination. Some have argued that he won because of his racism; I think it’s more complicated than that. But either way, he has become the Republican nominee, thus legitimating his decision to un-code his language.
Trump certainly sees no reason to change course. Since capturing the nomination, he has doubled-down on political racism and anti-Semitism. There’s the Star of David tweet, the attacks on Judge Gonzalo Curiel’s Mexican heritage. And there’s a telling incident that unfolded a few days ago on the campaign trail, when an audience member asked Trump to fire TSA workers wearing “heebee-jabis” and give their jobs to veterans. Trump said he was looking into it.
The incident was useful not only because Trump expressed openness to religious discrimination, but because the incident had a close parallel to the 2008 campaign. Then, John McCain fielded a question from a woman who said she could not trust Obama because she had heard he was an Arab. McCain visibly blanched, shaking his head and defending Obama as a “decent family man” and “citizen.”
How times have changed.
There are no longer the sort of gatekeepers that can keep groups like the alt-right far on the fringes of American politics. Republican leaders tried to stop Trump. They failed. National Review came out hard against him. It failed, too.
And political journalists, who have cataloged the many incidents of racism and anti-Semitism in the Trump campaign, now face a tough choice. Because Trump is the nominee, there is going to be tremendous pressure to air “both sides” of these controversies in order to appear balanced. CNN, for instance, gave former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, who it has hired as a commentator, airtime to call criticism of Trump’s Star of David tweet “political correctness run amok.”
If that’s the kind of coverage that dominates this campaign season – rank anti-Semitism met with largely unquestioned “on the one hand, on the other” reporting – then the mainstreaming of prejudice will continue unabated over the next several months. And if that happens, win or lose, Trump’s legacy will be secure: making America hate again.
Source: Donald Trump Is Mainstreaming Anti-Semitism and White Supremacy | US News Opinion
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