Tag: Trump white nationalism

Colbert Shows How Trump’s Racist Lies Led To Spa Shootings In Damning Supercut

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“The Late Show” host called the former president “a hateful man who left a stain” on the nation.

Stephen Colbert says former President Donald Trump bears a “particular responsibility” for amplifying the racist hatred that led to this week’s deadly shootings in the Atlanta area. 

Police say a sex-obsessed gunman fatally shot eight people, including six women of Asian descent, at three massage spas. 

Colbert noted the attack comes after Trump spent much of 2020 using anti-Asian rhetoric and slurs in front of his cheering throngs in an attempt to deflect blame for his mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic.  Continue reading.

As CPAC dismisses claims that its stage resembled a Nazi insignia, Hyatt calls hate symbols ‘abhorrent’

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For four days at the Hyatt Regency hotel in Orlando, speakers at the Conservative Political Action Conference shared a number of contentious views, from echoing false claims about election fraud to undermining the seriousness of a pandemic that has killed more than 512,000 Americans.

But some critics also took aim at a seemingly more mundane detail: the shape of the conference stage.

Images of the CPAC stage went viral this weekend as many noted a resemblance to the Odal or Othala Rune, a symbol emblazoned on some Nazi uniforms. The Anti-Defamation League has classified the insignia as a hate symbol that has been adopted by modern day white supremacists. Continue reading.

Democrat wins cheers with a passionate rebuke to opponents of LGBTQ rights bill: ‘You used God to enslave’

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If passed by Congress, the Equality Act would amend and expand the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Democratic Rep. Al Green of Texas gave a passionate speech in favor of the bill during a U.S. House of Representatives session on Thursday, noting some of the ways in which religion was deceptively used to justify segregation and racist Jim Crow laws in the past.

The African-American congressman (not be confused with R&B/gospel singer, the Rev. Al Green) told members of the House, “You used God to enslave my foreparents. You used God to segregate me in schools. You used God to put me in the back of the bus. Have you no shame?”

President Joe Biden has been an outspoken supporter of the Equality Act, but its Republican opponents have claimed that it would discriminate against religion if passed. Green alluded to the fact that the same type of argument was used in defense of segregationist laws during the 1950s and 1960s. Continue reading.

Liz Cheney issues stark warning to GOP lawmakers about distancing party from white supremacy

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Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) on Tuesday issued a warning to her Republican colleagues about becoming complacent on race relations and relative issues plaguing the United States following the Capitol riots as she urged them to “make clear that we aren’t the party of white supremacy.”

On Tuesday, the third-ranking House Republican participated in a virtual foreign policy event held by the Reagan Institute where she expressed concern about colleagues who refuse to blatantly condemn the deadly civil unrest that erupted at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Cheney acknowledged that while some may have the desire to simply “look away,” it is imperative that they do not, reports Talking Points Memo.

“It’s very important for us to ignore the temptation to look away,” Cheney said. “It’s very important, especially for us as Republicans, to make clear that we aren’t the party of white supremacy.” Continue reading.

‘Its Own Domestic Army’: How the G.O.P. Allied Itself With Militants

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Actions taken by paramilitary groups in Michigan last year, emboldened by President Donald J. Trump, signaled a profound shift in Republican politics and a national crisis in the making.

LANSING, Mich. — Dozens of heavily armed militiamen crowded into the Michigan Statehouse last April to protest a stay-at-home order by the Democratic governor to slow the pandemic. Chanting and stomping their feet, they halted legislative business, tried to force their way onto the floor and brandished rifles from the gallery over lawmakers below.

Initially, Republican leaders had some misgivings about their new allies. “The optics weren’t good. Next time tell them not to bring guns,” complained Mike Shirkey, the State Senate majority leader, according to one of the protest organizers. But Michigan’s highest-ranking Republican came around after the planners threatened to return with weapons and “militia guys signing autographs and passing out blow-up AR-15s to the kiddies on the Capitol lawn.”

“To his credit,” Jason Howland, the organizer, wrote in a social media post, Mr. Shirkey agreed to help the cause and “spoke at our next event.” Continue reading.

The Boogaloo Bois Have Guns, Criminal Records and Military Training. Now They Want to Overthrow the Government.

Hours after the attack on the Capitol ended, a group calling itself the Last Sons of Liberty posted a brief video to Parler, the social media platform, that appeared to show members of the organization directly participating in the uprising. Footage showed someone with a shaky smartphone charging past the metal barricades surrounding the building. Other clips show rioters physically battling with baton-wielding police on the white marble steps just outside the Capitol.

Before Parler went offline — its operations halted at least temporarily when Amazon refused to continue to host the network — the Last Sons posted numerous statements indicating that group members had joined the mob that swarmed the Capitol and had no regrets about the chaos and violence that unfolded on Jan. 6. The Last Sons also did some quick math: The government had suffered only one fatality, U.S. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, 42, who was reportedly bludgeoned in the head with a fire extinguisher. But the rioters had lost four people, including Ashli Babbitt, the 35-year-old Air Force veteran who was shot by an officer as she tried to storm the building.

In a series of posts, the Last Sons said her death should be “avenged” and appeared to call for the murder of three more cops. Continue reading.

Professor explains how Trump’s ‘Save America’ rally contained not-so-subtle elements of fascist propaganda

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Hours before a mob of far-right insurrectionists — including members of the Proud Boys, QAnon supporters, White nationalists and members of various militia groups — violently stormed the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, then-President Donald Trump held a “Save America” rally in Washington, D.C.’s Ellipse Park. Trump and his allies showed a propaganda video at that event, and according to Yale University professor Jason Stanley — author of the book “How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them” — that video was full of fascist themes.

Stanley has made no secret of the fact that he considers Trumpism a fascist movement. In an article published by Just Security on February 4, the Yale professor identifies some of the overtly fascist themes in the video presented at the Save America Rally.

“On January 6,” Stanley explains, “Trump supporters gathered at a rally at Washington D.C.’s Ellipse Park, regaled by various figures from Trumpworld, including Donald Trump, Jr. and Rudy Giuliani. Directly following Giuliani’s speech, the organizers played a video. To a scholar of fascist propaganda, well-versed in the history of the National Socialists’ pioneering use of videos in political propaganda, it was clear, watching it, what dangers it portended. In it, we see themes and tactics that history warns pose a violent threat to liberal democracy. Given the aims of fascist propaganda — to incite and mobilize — the events that followed were predictable.” Continue reading.

Scholar explains how the conservative movement transmits ‘sanitized versions of white supremacist ideology’

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As the longest sustained period ofracial justice protests in American history segues into the heat of election season, dark shadows have appeared, from the vigilante killing of protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin — and widespread conservative defenses of the teenage accused murderer — to ludicrous charges against protesters, including “terrorism,” to the Trump administration’s crackdown on federal antiracism training, calling it “anti-American,” and Attorney General Bill Barr’s call for protesters to be charged with sedition. 

So much for the notions that Donald Trump has no ideology, or, for that matter, that getting rid of him will make America great again. In July of 2016, I wrote about why such views were myopic: “Trump advances core paleoconservative positions,” researcher Bruce Wilson told me, including “rebuilding infrastructure, protective tariffs, securing borders and stopping immigration, neutralizing designated internal enemies and isolationism.”

Trump’s record as president has been surprisingly consistent for such an erratic figure, with his purely rhetorical support for infrastructure as the most notable exception. And therein lies a key to the current moment: With infrastructure removed from the equation — the most broadly popular position Trump’s ever embraced — the remaining white nationalism stands out in stark relief, highlighted in the frenzied push toward violent confrontation around the election, and beyond. Continue reading.

POLITICO-Harvard poll: Pandemic fallout, racial reckoning are deeply personal to 2020 voters

A rapid approval of a coronavirus vaccine would do little to boost Trump’s political fortunes, the poll also indicates.

It’s the economy, again. But it’s also the coronavirus pandemic, the upheaval it’s brought to kids’ education and a nationwide reckoning on racial discrimination that’s top of mind for likely voters, according to a new POLITICO-Harvard poll gauging their attitudes heading into the presidential election.

While the economy is typically a top voter issue in presidential elections, it’s taken on new urgency with millions out of work because of the pandemic. The new poll shows that unlike some past elections, issues that are deeply personal to Americans’ everyday lives, rather than policy debates that can be more abstract, rank among the most important priorities that will influence voters.

“Issues which are broader and further away from people’s lives may not have the same impact as they would have at another time when you didn’t have an epidemic and a recession,” said Robert Blendon, a professor of health policy and political analysis at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health who designed the poll. Continue reading.

New report details Trump’s racist behind-the-scenes comments about Black Americans and Jewish people

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President Donald Trump recently claimed that he has done more for African-Americans than any U.S. president since Abraham Lincoln, but this is the same person who — during a MAGA rally this week — reiterated his belief that Rep. Ilhan Omar (a Somali immigrant) shouldn’t be “telling us how to run our country. His campaign has also focused on the message that low-income housing (a dog whistle for Black housing) will destroy the quality of life in suburbia. Journalist Greg Miller, in an in-depth report for the Washington Post, examines Trump’s problems with non-Anglo voters and how prominent an issue they are in the election

“In unguarded moments with senior aides,” Miller explains, “President Trump has maintained that Black Americans have mainly themselves to blame in their struggle for equality, hindered more by lack of initiative than societal impediments, according to current and former U.S. officials. After phone calls with Jewish lawmakers, Trump has muttered that Jews ‘are only in it for themselves’ and ‘stick together’ in an ethnic allegiance that exceeds other loyalties, officials said. Trump’s private musings about Hispanics match the vitriol he has displayed in public, and his antipathy to Africa is so ingrained that when First Lady Melania Trump planned a 2018 trip to that continent, he railed that he ‘could never understand why she would want to go there.’”

When confronted about racially insensitive remarks, Miller notes, Trump will insist that he has been a strong ally of Black voters — and yet, his cabinet is “overwhelmingly white and among the least diverse in recent U.S. history.​” Continue reading.