Donald Trump is operating straight from the white supremacist playbook
The New York Times Daily podcast featured an interview last week with a fellow named Derek Black, who was suckled from childhood on white supremacy and even helped create a children's page on Stormfront — his father's website — which is variously described as "white nationalist," "white supremacist" and "neo-Nazi."
His godfather was David Duke, probably the most famous Ku Klux Klansman in the United States.
Black spent his youth attending rallies and learning how to proselytize, and generally bathing in the notion that the only way to make America great again would be to purge it of non-white races.
In any case, the arc of the interview was that eventually Derek Black went off to college out of state and found himself contending with educated people who would systematically shred the studies and pseudo-science Black cited in support of his beliefs that, for example, there are IQ differences between races.
In short, Black himself received a humiliating education, decided white supremacy was a fringe movement for ignorant, angry people and publicly abandoned it. In return, his family basically disowned him.
Selling white supremacy
It was much more, though, than a feel-good, I-have-seen-the-light interview. Black explained the white supremacist movement's recruiting strategy, which, he said, necessarily involved some self-concealment.
"We told people all the white nationalist talking points, without necessarily saying that we're white nationalists," he said.
"My whole talk was the fact that you could run as Republicans and say things like we need to shut down immigration, we need to fight affirmative action, we need to end globalism, and you could win these positions, maybe as long as you didn't get outed as a white nationalist."
Sound familiar?
The plain fact is that America now has a president who operates straight from the white supremacist playbook. At the very least, Donald Trump and his most rabid followers have been objective allies of the white supremacist movement, even if they thought they weren't. Vladimir Lenin would have called them "useful idiots."
Earlier this month came the march in Charlottesville, Va., which was organized by a white supremacist, Jason Kessler, and whose promotion contained unambiguously white-supremacist and even neo-Nazi symbolism. This was a march for whites, mostly male whites.
The pretext was preventing the removal of a statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee, who led the military effort to maintain slavery. Charlottesville had already renamed the space in which the statue stands from "Lee Park" to "Emancipation Park," and the white supremacists saw it as a chance to recruit under the guise of "protecting our history and culture."
Black said he expected the usual denunciations by politicians of both parties at just about every level, because "everyone knows it's extremely easy to condemn a white nationalist rally."
Put another way, it's a moral imperative.
And indeed, the condemnations flowed freely on Aug. 12, the Saturday after the rally took place. With one prominent exception.
That Donald Trump did not immediately denounce the marchers (though he read a boilerplate repudiation from a teleprompter on Monday), said Black, was "weird" and was taken as somewhat of a victory by his racist former fellow travellers, some of whom had shouted "Hail Trump" at the rally.
Donald Trump is operating straight from the white supremacist playbook: Neil Macdonald
The New York Times Daily podcast featured an interview last week with a fellow named Derek Black, who was suckled from childhood on white supremacy and even helped create a children's page on Stormfront — his father's website — which is variously described as "white nationalist," "white supremacist" and "neo-Nazi."
His godfather was David Duke, probably the most famous Ku Klux Klansman in the United States.
Black spent his youth attending rallies and learning how to proselytize, and generally bathing in the notion that the only way to make America great again would be to purge it of non-white races.
In any case, the arc of the interview was that eventually Derek Black went off to college out of state and found himself contending with educated people who would systematically shred the studies and pseudo-science Black cited in support of his beliefs that, for example, there are IQ differences between races.
In short, Black himself received a humiliating education, decided white supremacy was a fringe movement for ignorant, angry people and publicly abandoned it. In return, his family basically disowned him.
Selling white supremacy
It was much more, though, than a feel-good, I-have-seen-the-light interview. Black explained the white supremacist movement's recruiting strategy, which, he said, necessarily involved some self-concealment.
"We told people all the white nationalist talking points, without necessarily saying that we're white nationalists," he said.
"My whole talk was the fact that you could run as Republicans and say things like we need to shut down immigration, we need to fight affirmative action, we need to end globalism, and you could win these positions, maybe as long as you didn't get outed as a white nationalist."
Sound familiar?
The plain fact is that America now has a president who operates straight from the white supremacist playbook. At the very least, Donald Trump and his most rabid followers have been objective allies of the white supremacist movement, even if they thought they weren't. Vladimir Lenin would have called them "useful idiots."
Earlier this month came the march in Charlottesville, Va., which was organized by a white supremacist, Jason Kessler, and whose promotion contained unambiguously white-supremacist and even neo-Nazi symbolism. This was a march for whites, mostly male whites.
The pretext was preventing the removal of a statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee, who led the military effort to maintain slavery. Charlottesville had already renamed the space in which the statue stands from "Lee Park" to "Emancipation Park," and the white supremacists saw it as a chance to recruit under the guise of "protecting our history and culture."
Black said he expected the usual denunciations by politicians of both parties at just about every level, because "everyone knows it's extremely easy to condemn a white nationalist rally."
Put another way, it's a moral imperative.
And indeed, the condemnations flowed freely on Aug. 12, the Saturday after the rally took place. With one prominent exception.
That Donald Trump did not immediately denounce the marchers (though he read a boilerplate repudiation from a teleprompter on Monday), said Black, was "weird" and was taken as somewhat of a victory by his racist former fellow travellers, some of whom had shouted "Hail Trump" at the rally.
Donald Trump is operating straight from the white supremacist playbook: Neil Macdonald
