The Essence of Trump 2.0 Is Violent White Supremacy
The veil is off: the MAGA president is openly taking the country back to its violent, racist past.
Tune In TODAY:
Join me for a Substack Live at 2 pm ET (11 am PT, 7 pm GMT) today with author Robert P. Jones, whose books and polling have long documented white supremacy in the US. We will discuss my column below, ICE’s latest actions in Minneapolis, and the Trump administration’s recent posts echoing Nazi slogans. Plus, we’ll take your questions.
In 1980, Republican candidate Ronald Reagan ousted Democratic President Jimmy Carter by consolidating the political realignment that followed the civil rights movement.
Reagan used symbolism to court aggrieved white conservatives, delivering a “states’ rights” speech in the infamous Mississippi town where Ku Klux Klansmen had murdered three civil rights workers 16 years earlier. But his rhetoric reflected the 20th-century evolution in right-wing racial politics, from raw and ugly to sly and subtle.
The following year, a young White House aide explained that evolution in an interview:
“You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘n*****, n*****, n*****,’” Lee Atwater began. “By 1968, you can’t say ‘n****r’ – that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like ‘forced busing,’ ‘states’ rights’…abstract.”
“Now you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these…totally economic things. A byproduct of them is Blacks get hurt worse than whites. ‘We want to cut this,’ is much more abstract than even the busing thing.”
Cynical though it was, the shift reflected progress; modern America had made overt racism broadly unacceptable. That’s why conservative politicians took umbrage when journalists like me spotlighted their veiled appeals.
Nearly a half-century later, Donald Trump’s throwback administration has discarded the veils. Its essence, in plain sight, is white supremacy enforced with violence.
The 79-year-old president also conjures even more repugnant demons. Before his rise, comparing political opponents to Nazis was famously considered too shrill and extreme to be credible.
That’s no longer true. With words, actions, and appointments, Trump invites those comparisons.