Charlottesville, Virginia, USA: On 15th August 2017, the so-called ‘alt-right’ came to town. With them, the terrifying spectacle of a surreal procession of thousands of torch-wielding white supremacists, marching in the fashion of Hitler’s Nazis, reminding Americans and the world of the Nazification of the Ku Klux Klan. It was a celebration rally partly in honour of Confederate Commanding General Robert Lee and, as David Duke, the white supremacist leader claimed at the rally, to remind President Trump of his compact with the white supremacists, who were the architects of his victory last year. As they marched, they chanted anti-Semite “Jews will not replace us” and “Blood and Soil,” standard Nazi slogans. The racist march led to violence and a woman was killed, and as was expected, President Trump refused to condemn his benefactors, the white racists. In November 2016, the handwriting was on the wall as a racist partisan ascended the American presidency.
Since last week the politically correct way to explain the miracle that was the victory of Donald J. Trump has been to say that he was the instrument of Providence who felt the pain of the marginalized working class whites and had rushed selflessly to be their champion. Those poor hardworking people had been relegated to the background of an unjust and rigged system where they got stuck on low wages without a future, their American dreams extinguished. They had become outsiders, ignored and despised, in their father’s kingdom, the great American empire, and Mr. Trump, a fellow outsider, rode in like the proverbial cavalry to help them to take their country back.
That, in a nutshell, is the version which the right-wing propaganda mill will feed the world henceforth to make the election of Donald Trump appear like a regular event. But we all know it is not. We also know that the Orwellian 1982 has finally arrived in America as Slavery is projected as Freedom and Falsehood is substituted for Truth. The Ministry of Truth is to be run by Stephen Bannon, the unrepentant white supremacist, who spearheaded the fact-free but victorious Trump juggernaut. For what it is worth, white supremacists don’t believe in human equality.
Americans always argue that you campaign in poetry but govern in prose. Which is probably true if you saw the joint White House press appearance of President Obama and President-elect Trump. These two incompatible opposites were able to pretend that they could work together.
Trump even had a few kind words for the man he always derided as the “worst president in American history;” and Obama was able to say that he saw a willingness to work with his team of a man he was so sure was utterly “unqualified” and who had no “temperament” to be President. But do not be deceived. Candidates govern the way they campaigned. They replicate what has worked for them. Everyone had said Trump would change strategy if he won the primaries. He won the primaries but he never changed a thing.
Now everyone, including President Obama, is hoping Trump will change strategy now that he’s won the election. But Obama is not naïve. American voters have put Mr. Trump in the Oval Office. They should enjoy their new champion. He is surely going to govern the way he campaigned. Now on the initial protests against Trump’s election, his propaganda machine now says it is the duty of Mrs. Clinton, President Obama and the Democrats to order the protesters off the streets, not for Trump to reassure the populace or to apologize to the numerous groups he had insulted and threatened. That’s taken out of 1982 and the gospel of the Orwellian Ministry of Truth.
Many are shell-shocked. Van Jones, the black media man, was wondering the other day and saying, “How do you tell your son not to be a bully?” Trump made bullying respectable, rewarding and mainstream — and won. “Don’t be a bigot?” Trump promoted bigotry and racism — and won. “Do your home work.” Trump could care less about facts and figures on any issue, so he lost all three presidential debates, but he won the election.
When, therefore, Trump appointed Steve Bannon as his top adviser, it was the unmistakable signal that “white supremacists will be represented at the highest level in Trump’s White House,” said Adam Jentleson spokesman for Senate minority Leader Harry Reid. “It is easy to see why the KKK (Ku Klux Klan) views Trump as their champion when Trump appoints one of the foremost peddlers of White Supremacists (vilest) rhetoric as his top aide.” Even the Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol, the foremost philosopher of the Republic Party, tweeted in horror, “is there precedent for such a disreputable and unstable extremist in (|White House)…?”
President of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured Peoples Cornel William Brooks tweeted that “Racism has been routinized; anti-Semitism normalized; xenophobia deexceptionalized; and misogyny mainstreamed.” And this is just the beginning. The next day, the director of a non-profit group and the mayor of a small town in West Virginia insulted the First Lady Michelle Obama calling her an “Ape in Heels.” White students at a Pennsylvania school called their black peers “cotton pickers” and began to chant “Heil Hitler.” In De Witt, Michigan, white students linked arms to create a “wall” blocking a Latino student from her locker telling her to “go back to Mexico.” Students at a Minneapolis high school spray-painted the walls of a bathroom door with words “Trump Train, Whites only” and “White America.” Minority students are now horrified to go to class.
New York University said the word “Trump” was spray-painted across a Muslim prayer room in its engineering school. A North Carolinian Ku Klux Klan chapter is holding a victory parade to celebrate Trump’s election. A website for the group refers to it as “Victory Klavalkade Klan Parade and announced in all caps that “Trump’s Race United My People.” A neo-Nazi website called the Daily Stormer is calling on its readers to “troll” liberals and Trump opponents in hopes of driving them to commit suicide. A post on the site contains a list of tweets from people who said they are frightened by the outcome of the election.
In a separate post titled “Dear Liberals: This is now the Era of Revenge,” the publisher who encourages people who did not vote for Trump to commit suicide: “We beat you, we beat you badly,” he wrote. “And now that you are on the ground, we are going to keep kicking you in the head.” New York Daily News writer wrote he has heard of at least 50 stories of women having their hijab pulled off in public. In Synagogues across the country Jewish communities gathered for prayer, less fearful of Trump himself than the anti-Semitic supporters his campaign has empowered. “This has exposed something we’ve been ignoring for too long.
There was a discussion of the stages of grief and talk of making aliyah, or emigrating to Israel – not as a plausible possible, but as a back-of-mind option in case things get really bad. And, yes, people brought up Nazi Germany.” In Europe, Trump’s election reminded Europeans of the same season in 1933 as Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. It feels like the Burning Cross has replaced the Statue of Liberty.
First published November 17, 2016