The Ominous Threat to a Post-Trump America: White Supremacy
By: Stephen Hanks
Tags: White Supremacy, Politics, 2020 Presidential Race, Joe Biden, Racism

Even After Donald Trump Is Gone, The Threat of More Charlottesvilles Will Always Be Present

[Author’s Note: This essay was originally written in late October 2016 and has been slightly revised and updated for this posting on Medium.]

About a month before the 2016 Presidential Election, I was standing with a tiny gaggle of “Hillary Clinton for President” supporters on New York’s Fifth Avenue in front of the garishly gold and ostentatious testament to a man with penile insecurities known as Trump Tower. Just 10 months before, candidate Trump had said he could shoot someone on this famed street and get away with it. A few of my cohorts were holding up hastily made signs (i.e. “GOP — Grab Our Pussies — Dump Trump”) lambasting the megalomaniacal misogynist who somehow became the Republican candidate for President.

It was clear this mini-protest was desperately in need of a rhythmic chant. I lobbied for a message that would cut “The Donald” to his core and suggested a variation on the battle cry “Let’s Go Ran-gers” for my favorite hockey team: TRUMP’S-A-LOSER was quickly adopted by the crowd. I was imagining the totalitarian twit watching us through a security camera and ranting at the top of lungs in agony like the Roman Emperor Caligula at the end of the film The Robe after he hears the characters played by Richard Burton and Jean Simmons announce they would “rather die than live another day in a kingdom ruled by you.”

Aside from the fact that I’ve basically despised Donald Trump since the early 1980s when he emerged on the New York scene like primordial ooze that was left out of the evolutionary process, one of the motivations for making this symbolic stand at one of Trump’s phallic symbol erections was CABARET.

No, not Cabaret as in the performance art form in which I’d indulged as a reviewer, performer, producer, and publicist for the previous six years, but Cabaret, as in the iconic Broadway musical and film.

It had been decades since I watched the Bob Fosse movie version so when I found it on Turner Classic Movies during that Labor Day weekend, I took the musical trip to pre-World War II Germany. As wonderful a piece of cinematic art as Cabaret certainly is, it’s not a film you want to watch in the midst of a Presidential election when one of the candidates displays all the signs of being a Hitler mini-me. But then again, maybe it is.

There are many intensely disturbing scenes in Cabaret. There’s the one early in the film when Nazi party thugs — after having previously been banished from the “Kit Kat Club” — viciously beat up the owner. There’s the scene when Michael York’s character Brian is pummeled by a bunch of young Nazi’s after he slaps some Nationalist Socialist Party propaganda out of their hands. And there’s the scene when some young hooligans who’ve been seduced by the fascist message leave the dead dog of Marissa Berenson’s character Natalia in front of her home with the word “Juden!” scrawled on the doorstep.

But probably the most disturbing scene in Cabaret begins idyllically in a rural beer garden. As Brian and his bisexual lover Max are having cocktails in the midst of the locals on a sun-drenched afternoon, an apparently non-threatening young Aryan Adonis begins to sing in a soft, lilting tenor:

The sun on the meadow is summery warm . . . The stag in the forest runs free . . . But gather together to greet the storm . . . Tomorrow belongs to me . . .

As he begins singing the second verse, the camera slowly pans down his body to reveal the brown uniform of the Hitler youth, still in its nascent stage. As the song progresses, the vocal becomes more aggressively strident and the young man raises his right hand in the Nazi salute. Inspired almost to the point of frenzy, the locals stand, join in the singing, and mimic the gesture that would come to identify the most murderous nation on the planet; one hell bent on world domination.

At the risk of being overly dramatic, that was the depressing epiphany engendered from that scene in Cabaret. The “pitchfork and torches” audiences at Donald Trump rallies (both during the 2016 campaign and his Presidency), and most infamously at Charlottesville, Va August 2017, have been the angry American equivalent of German townspeople singing, “Tomorrow Belongs To Me.” Only their version has been “Make America Great Again.” They’ve ecstatically cheered at his racist dog whistles, his demonization of the media, his exhortations to “lock up” his opponents, and his claims that his Impeachment and the CoronaVirus pandemic were both “a hoax.” What, in the fanatical minds of his followers, will make America great again? Deport all immigrants. Let everyone have guns. Punish women who have abortions. Suppress voting rights, especially of minorities. Build border walls. Put opponents in jail. Silence the press. Systematically destroy government agencies. Insult, abandon or blackmail our allies. Brandish assault weapons at State capitals. Call out the U.S. military to assault Americans in the Nation’s Capital. Take to armed revolution if the election doesn’t go their supreme leader’s way. But perhaps the idea the Trump Kool-Aid Drinkers love best of all: The encouragement of White Nationalists and White Supremacy.

Those are the reasons why Donald Trump has been a threat to our Republic, and why even after he loses the election in 2020 he will be leaving some very scary stuff in his wake. Life will not be a cabaret, old chums, even if Joe Biden wins in a landslide.

The list of Trump’s reprehensible words, actions, and policy positions (such as they are) are endless. Any one of this sociopathic miscreant’s pronouncements should have disqualified him as a candidate when the 2016 primary process began and should have led to his Impeachment during the past three-plus years. He combines being a pathological liar and an unapologetic narcissist with being a bigot, a racist, and a soulless sexual predator completely devoid of empathy. Add to all that his ignorance of the Constitution and his embrace of the Russian dictator and his Presidency has been a toxic brew that makes you wonder how someone doesn’t contract radiation poisoning when they come close to his air space. Thankfully, his time in the Oval Office has been long enough for his own deplorable personality profile to finally come out in the wash and is showing up now in his low favorability ratings and every 2020 Presidential poll.

But the stain that will remain after Trump is an embarrassing historical footnote (especially if his business “empire” completely collapses — hey, we can hope, can’t we?) is the re-emergence of the “Tomorrow Belongs To Me” crowd, no matter how fringy that might be. Like an evil Dr. Frankenstein, Donald Trump — along with his despicable Alt-Right puppet masters, his insufferably stupid surrogates, his FOX News mouthpiece machine, and his very own Joseph Goebbels-like Nazi propaganda minister Stephen Miller — have reanimated the dead body of the monster that is the White Supremacist Movement. A Trump defeat in 2020 may save us from a potential nuclear catastrophe and restore normalcy to American government, but it won’t change this dangerous dynamic: Trump’s Presidency based on hate and fear (pretty much the usual Republican party M.O., but taken to the extreme with Trump) has given new voice to millions of gun-loving xenophobes who despise Jews, Catholics, African-Americans, and anyone else who they deem a threat to their notion of white superiority. While always lurking in the shadows, they had been pretty much marginalized for a couple of decades. Once Donald Trump came along five years ago, they had found their savior. One only needed to see how far-right extremist groups operating with names such as “Boogaloo Boys” recently amped up the violence during Black Lives Matter protests while posing as progressive anti-fascists. Trump never repudiates these miscreants, he encourages and enables them.

The forces that led to the candidacy of Donald Trump and the re-emergence of the “Angry White Man” constituency (and the women who love them) really shouldn’t be much of a surprise. The seeds were planted in 2008 the minute an African-American with a Muslim-sounding name became the Democratic nominee for President. The AWMs and their “hockey mom” cohorts found a kindred spirit in the Republican Party’s Vice-Presidential nominee Sarah Palin, perhaps the poster child for what Hillary Clinton would characterize during the 2016 campaign as “The Deplorables.”

When Barack Obama became President in 2009, the country was reeling from the debacle in Iraq, acts of terrorism at home and abroad, and a financial crisis that destroyed millions of middle class-and working-class lives. The response to all this national chaos and having a Black Man in the White House was the emergence of the Tea Party Republicans and their unpatriotic obstruction of President Obama’s agenda (highlighted by the demonization of the Affordable Care Act and the perpetual Hillary Clinton witch hunts), which turned the Government into an institution that merited scorn and loathing. The 2012 re-election of President Obama basically put the Angry White Men Brigade over the edge. By 2015, the notion that now a woman named Clinton could become the next President was too much for the AWMs to bear. Hence, the creation of Donald Trump and the new Boogiemen through which these proverbial cornered rats could channel their extreme frustration — IMMIGRANTS. Trump’s excoriation of Mexicans and Muslims was music to the ears of the Alt-Right and the White Supremacists.

But let’s assume that among all Americans who consider themselves Republicans, Independents, or Libertarians — even those who didn’t vote in 2016 or aren’t going to vote in 2020 — that the Alt-Right represents just a fringe of the population. When Hillary Clinton said 50 percent of Trump supporters were “Deplorables” (which could certainly have been an underestimation), she was basically describing slightly less than 20 percent of the country’s voters. But what about the millions of current Trump supporters who may not be so “deplorable?” Or the middle- and working-class folks who didn’t appreciate the Trumpian dog whistles but still feel marginalized and have given up on our institutions. How does the Democratic Party in general, and Joe Biden in particular, engage them when he takes office, as well as putting the White Supremacist genie back in the bottle?

Like many passionate progressives, I often howl at the moon about how so many people can “vote against their own interests.” The refrain basically goes like this: Middle class- and working-class Whites have supported the Republican Party (going back to Richard Nixon in the late 1960s) even though the policies of the political right haven’t necessarily been good for them. How has this happened? The Conservative playbook to seduce such voters has been simple — tough on crime, bullish on military spending, cut taxes (especially on the wealthy and corporations), eliminate regulations, prevent immigration, and gut entitlement programs for the poor and unemployed (except for the ones they like, such as Social Security and Medicare), while co-opting Christian Conservatives and Evangelicals on the red meat social issues, such as abortion, gay rights, and the 2nd Amendment.

There are millions of people with legitimate grievances about how government has failed them, especially in the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown and again now during the 2020 pandemic. And when people do pay attention to what’s going on in Washington, they experience inaction, incivility, and partisanship that is so off the charts their frustration is understandable. But do they understand why government isn’t working? Do they get that in spite of the Founders best intentions in regard to “checks and balances,” that in contemporary American politics it makes absolutely no sense for the Presidency to be in the hands of one party while the rest of Congress is controlled by the other? Do they even know the three branches of Government? Apparently not.

In 2008, 2,508 Americans took the Intercollegiate Studies Institute “Civic Literacy Test.” 71 percent failed and the average score was 49. Less than half could name all three branches of government. 79 percent didn’t know the phrase “government of the people, by the people, and for the people” came from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Only 53 percent knew the power to declare war belongs to Congress. Don’t worry, it gets worse. A few years ago, a study called “A Crisis in Civic Education” by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, found that almost 10 percent thought that Judith Sheindlin, TV’s “Judge Judy,” was a member of the Supreme Court. Almost 20 percent of American college graduates — college graduates — couldn’t identify the effects of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Over the past three to four decades the American educational system has been in steady decline, highlighted by lowered standards and dumbed down requirements. When you combine that with the pervasive inculcation of pop culture, electronic games, social media, junk food, and a greedy, self-centered “what’s-in-it-for-me” mentality, is it any wonder our society is plagued by massive civic ignorance? When the majority of the population is more concerned about who wins TV talent competitions and reality game shows than about voting in state legislature races, the conditions are ripe for the creation of a demagogue such as Donald Trump, who in February 2016 probably made the most chilling comment of his campaign (among the dozens that would qualify) when he said after winning the Nevada Republican primary, “I love the poorly educated.”

Nobody analyzed the situation better than retired Supreme Court Justice David Souter, who in 2012 made this prescient statement about how the decline of civic education was a danger to the country:

“I don’t worry about our losing a republican government in the United States because I’m afraid of a foreign invasion,” Souter remarked during an appearance at the University of New Hampshire School of Law. “I don’t worry about it because of a coup by the military, as has happened in some other places. What I worry about is that when problems are not addressed people will not know who is responsible, and when the problems get bad enough — as they might do for example with another serious terrorist attack, as they might do with another financial meltdown — some one person will come forward and say ‘Give me total power and I will solve this problem.’”

“That is how the Roman republic fell. Augustus became emperor not because he arrested the Roman senate. He became emperor because he promised that he would solve problems that were not being solved. If we know who is responsible, I have enough faith in the American people to demand performance from those responsible. If we don’t know, we will stay away from the polls, we will not demand it and the day will come when somebody will come forward and we and the government will in effect say, ‘Take the ball and run with it, do what you have to do.’ That is the way democracy dies.”

Thankfully, according to the current polling, we might dodge the bullet of having Donald Augustus of Rome as a two-term President. But we will be left with his millions of diehards who apparently will be chomping at the bit to keep those Right Wing rallies going or take advantage of open-carry gun laws. It will be up to Joe Biden and hopefully a Democratic Congress and Senate to articulate why 20–30 percent of the population’s penchant for “voting against their own interests” is incredibly misguided, to educate the “poorly educated” about how THEY can help make government be more responsive to their needs, and, most importantly, get the White Supremacist fringe back in their holes where they belong.

The message, frankly, can be explained simply and rationally and should have been one of Hillary Clinton’s primary talking points through the entire 2016 campaign. In many ways, the Democratic candidates during the 2020 Presidential campaign articulated this in all the debates. Bottom line: Republican Party/Conservatism — Bad, Democratic Party (in spite of its flaws)/Progressivism — Good.

Let us assume that political scientists and pundits are correct when they claim that the majority of Americans vote on economics — primarily “pocketbook issues” like jobs and taxes. Since Jimmy Carter was elected President in 1976 — that’s 44 years, folks — the Democratic Party has been advocating major spending on infrastructure, almost along the lines of FDR-style “New Deal” programs. In the 12 years since the financial crisis — a period when the country desperately needed to create millions of jobs (on top of what emerged through the too small stimulus program) — the Republican Party had first obstructed Obama’s desire for more spending on infrastructure, preventing a jobs boom in the industries where most middle- and working-class folks ply their trades. Then in 2017 they gave corporations and American oligarchs a $1.5 trillion tax cut. Where is the frustrated Trump supporter’s outrage about that? When George W. Bush was President, massive tax cuts for the wealthy and tax loopholes for corporations became law, increasing income disparity and causing more shrinkage of the middle class. Where is the frustrated Trump supporter’s outrage about that? When the Neo-Cons and mainstream Republicans in the Bush administration pushed America into a devastating war in Iraq based on lies and deceit (that many Democrats like Clinton went along with, lest they be branded “traitors”), the cost was losing the lives of thousands of young people — mainly from working class families — and trillions of dollars that could have been spent on infrastructure, education, health care, and the social safety net. Where is the frustrated Trump’s supporters outrage about that? When it was clear that a pandemic was upon us this past January and February, Donald Trump played golf and claimed the disease would all go away like magic. The upshot at this point? Almost 125,000 dead Americans and climbing, and the worst financial crisis since The Great Depression. Where is the frustrated Trump’s supporters’ outrage about that?

But none of that matters because the possibility that White People in America are projected to become the minority population by 2045 “trumps” everything else. [According to the Census, during that year, Whites will comprise 49.7 percent of the population in contrast to 24.6 percent for Hispanics, 13.1 percent for Blacks, 7.9 percent for Asians, and 3.8 percent for multiracial populations.] So you know where the outrage and hate will be directed now and in the future? At Blacks, Latinos, Muslims, Immigrants, the “Deep State,” Planned Parenthood, Marriage Equality, Mainstream Media, people who identify as LGBTQ, and any group the White Supremacists can find to blame for their lot in life. That’s how for decades the Republican Party has seduced people to vote against their best interests. The cretinous Donald Trump has just taken that snake oil salesmanship to a new level in a sea of “poorly educated” voters. And washing ashore in that dangerous high tide is the ever-present and still emerging Alt-Right, White Supremacist gang that Trump has still never repudiated.

And as we’ve clearly seen in the last month, if not over decades, a fair number of them have been wearing police uniforms.

So as our new President, Joe Biden’s mission will be clear: Get through to these misguided Americans once and for all so that TOMORROW CAN BELONG TO ALL OF US.

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