White Supremacy and Trump’s Coup to Overturn the Will of the People
By: Héctor Vila
Tags: Media Criticism, Democracy, Trumpracism, Racism, White Supremacy

Trump’s call to the speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives twice during the past week; his reaching out to Republicans in Michigan, and on Saturday his pressuring of Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) in a call to try to replace that state’s electors; and the Trump administration’s alliance with, and support of, The Thomas More Society’s Amistad Project — suits challenging the election results in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, Georgia, and Arizona — demonstrate the lengths to which White Supremacists are going to erase, even annihilate, the growing political power of a changing non-white electorate.

Most of the growth in the electorate since 2000 has come from Hispanic, Black, and Asian eligible voters. In the 2020 presidential election, flipped Biden states were less white than the nation as a whole; flipped states were less wealthy than the average American household; flipped states had fewer four-year college graduates than than the average state. Detroit, Cleveland, Philadelphia, and Atlanta were key, predominantly non-white cities that helped Biden win — and the major focal point of Trump’s racist attacks on voters of color.

Trump’s White Supremacist tactics, fully supported by GOP sycophants, say Amy Gardner, Josh Dawsey, and Rachel Bade, promotes a rhetoric that “is inciting violence. And while his efforts to overturn the result are widely viewed as fruitless, many officials said they are distressed at the lasting harm they believe he is doing to public faith in U.S. elections.” Protestors in Detroit showed up at the home of Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson; in Georgia, protestors “armed with bullhorns and some with guns, arrived shortly after the end of Trump’s rally in Georgia”; and in Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said dozens of armed protesters gathered outside her Detroit home, chanting and shouting obscenities about overturning the results of the 2020 presidential election (CNN).

Trump and his GOP followers are fully committed to a violent racist agenda — in rhetoric and action — which is growing in energy and tenacity as President-elect Biden fills his cabinet with appointees that mirror the racial diversity of the U.S.

Take The Thomas More Society, for instance, where Christian fundamentalism, and the Amy Coney Barrett wing of Catholicism, conservative think tanks, and politicians have created a lobby of zealots focused on fighting back America’s demographic shift to a more non-white, and progressive, society.

The Society’s Board is compromised of 6 white people, all but one a woman; their backgrounds are religious, pro-life, and very conservative, and associated with The Heritage Foundation and The Federalist Society. The Society’s Attorney’s are the same, with two notables, Jenna Ellis, a Trump campaign lawyer working with Rudi Guiliani, one of eight women among thirty-two white men, and Noel Meza, a conservative of Latinx descent.

Media is focused on the racial diversity of Biden’s proposed cabinet, which is what we do in the U.S. — focus on color. But what we also need is diversity in thought, in thinking. How is the most recent Biden appointment, retired General Lloyd Austin, graduate of West Point and former commander of the American military effort in Iraq, diversity in thought? Yes, Austin would be the first African-American secretary of defense; however, his appointment would mark the third time “a president has requested a waiver since Congress passed the National Security Act in 1947, which requires a prospective secretary to wait seven years after ending active duty as a commissioned officer,” we learn from Jim Golby, once special adviser to Vice Presidents Joe Biden and Mike Pence.

(I’ve already written about Biden’s cabinet appointees questioned because of affiliations with the consulting firm, WestExec Advisors and the investment fund, Pine Island Capital Partners. General Austin, after retiring from the military, joined the board of Raytheon, aerospace and defense, and became a partner in Pine Island Capital Partners, too, a fund focused on military related companies.)

I am re-stating these problems because the Democratic — and Biden’s — approach to the violent encroachment of White Supremacy is deploying the same school of academic-political-economically secure people — YES, representative of what America looks like — which will not abate the onslaught, especially since no one, politically and in the media, except for very few, such as Briahna Joy Gray, former national press secretary for Bernie Sanders 2020, co-host of Bad Faith podcast and contributing editor to Current Affairs, appearing in one of the few news outlets daring to challenge the status quo, Democracy Now!, is raising questions — or is allowed to raise questions. (There are more media alternatives, just take the time to engage the full story.)

The banner over The Washington Post reads: Where Democracy Dies in Darkness. We are in darkness, indeed, so why are alternatives to mainstream coverage of news and events — CNN, Fox, MSNBC, etc — not broadcasted more widely to Americans? What gives?

We like to say that Democracy requires a responsible, educated citizenry. Educating for Democracy requires deep inquiry into challenging ideas, some that may contradict one’s own thinking.

Media and politicians, especially Trump lackeys, fearing I don’t know what — loss of revenue? power? notoriety? the false gods privileged by society in the spectacle of grand illusion — are recalcitrant, eager to destroy and dismantle, while others remain complacently skating along the surface structure of things.

We cannot meet in the middle like this; we can’t come together anywhere like this, either.

How is this going to go, then, as White Supremacist ideology continues to violently push against all rational thinking, against Democracy, against humanity?

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Complimentary stories:

Can Biden’s Economic Team Reverse the Pandemic Economy? Megnha Chakrabarti, with Rana Foroohar, Michelle Singletary, and Jack Beatty (On Point — an exceptional hour on mainstream WBUR, public radio)

As Trump Rails Against Loss, His Supporters Become More Threatening, Nick Corasaniti, Jim Rutenberg and Kathleen Gray (NYT). Teaser:

M alcolm Kenyatta, a Democratic state representative from Pennsylvania, said he received dozens of emails every day. “It’s a bit more pronounced when you’re Black and queer like I am, that they go down the rabbit hole of parroting all the nastiness and vitriol that we see from the president all the time,” he said.

Coup or no coup, Trump sets dangerous precedents, Ishaan Tharoor (The Washington Post) — as we play intellectual parlor games, still no mention of the overt, violent racism Trump & Co are exercising, and calling forth.

The danger is growing that Trump’s lies about the election will lead to violence, The Washington Post Editorial Board.

The ‘Trump Won’ Farce Isn’t Funny Anymore, Jamelle Bouie (The NYT)

‘This Must Be Your First’, Zeynep Tufekci (The Atlantic)