http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/38768-white-nationalism-in-the-oval-office-and-the-suppression-of-dissent
Henry A. Giroux | White Nationalism in the Oval
Office and the Suppression of Dissent
Sunday, December 18, 2016By Henry Giroux, Truthout | News Analysis
From left:
Retired Adm. Chuck Kubic, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama), Donald Trump and
retired Gen. Keith Kellogg during a national security meeting at Trump Tower in
New York, October 7, 2016. (Photo: Stephen Crowley / The New York Times)
Under
President Trump, Americans are entering a historical conjuncture in which
intolerant and racist ideologues are ascending to top White House posts.
Some of the
most egregious appointments thus far have included Jeff Sessions as attorney
general, Stephen Bannon as chief White House strategist, Mike Pompeo as head of
the CIA and Tom Price as secretary of health and human services. All of these
men are poised to promote policies that will increase the misery, suffering and
policing of the vulnerable, sick and poor.
In
increasingly overt ways, racism is becoming the major ideological force for
establishing terror as a weapon of governance. Not only did Trump make
"law and order" a central motif of his presidential campaign, he also
amplified its meaning in his attacks on the Black Lives Matter movement and his
depiction of Black neighborhoods as cauldrons of criminal behavior.
The repressive
racial state is certain to intensify and expand under Jeff Sessions -- a strong
advocate of mass incarceration and the death penalty, and a white nationalist
spokesman for the Old South. The Nation's Ari Berman observes that
Sessions is "the fiercest opponent in the Senate of immigration reform, a
centerpiece of Trump's agenda, and has a long history of opposition to civil
rights, dating back to his days as a US Attorney in Alabama in the 1980s."
Sessions has a
long history of racist rhetoric, insults and practices, including opposing the
Voting Rights Act and addressing a Black lawyer as "boy." He was
denied a federal judgeship in the 1980s because his colleagues claimed that he
made racist remarks on a number of occasions. Sessions has also called
organizations, such as the ACLU, NAACP and the National Council of Churches
"un-American" because of their emphasis on civil rights, which he has
portrayed as being shoved down the throats of the American public. He was also
accused of falsely prosecuting Black political activists in Alabama for voting
fraud.
Sessions'
racism often merges with his religious fundamentalism. As Miranda Blue
observes, he has "dismissed immigration reform as 'ethnic
politics' and warned that allowing too many immigrants would create 'cultural
problems' in the country. Earlier this year, he cherry-picked a couple of Bible
verses to claim that the position of his opponents on the immigration issue is
'not biblical.'"
Under
Sessions, a racist militarism is set to serve as an organizing principle to
legitimate ultranationalist endeavors to create a society strongly shaped by
white nationalists. As Andrew Kaczynski points out, Sessions made his racist
principles clear while appearing on the Matt & Aunie talk radio show on
WAPI.
Sessions
has praised Trump's
stance on capital punishment by pointing to Trump's "1989 newspaper ads
advocating the death penalty for five young men of color accused of raping a
jogger in Central Park." Sessions made these comments knowing full well that
the Central Park Five were not only exonerated by DNA evidence after serving
many years in jail, but were also awarded a wrongful conviction settlement,
which ran into millions of dollars. Moreover, Sessions was aware that Trump had
later criticized the settlement calling it a disgrace, while suggesting that
the Central Park Five were guilty of a crime for which they should not have
been acquitted in spite of the testimony of Matias Reyes, who confessed to
raping and attacking the victim.
Sessions' racism
was on full display when he stated in the interview that Trump "believes
in law and order and he has the strength and will to make this country
safer." He then added: "The biggest benefits from that, really, are
poor people in the neighborhoods that are most dangerous, where most of the
crime is occurring." Trump's tweets falsely alleging voter fraud in order
to defend the ludicrous claim that he won the popular vote is ominous because
they suggest that in the future he could allow Sessions to make it more
difficult for poor minorities to vote.
At the same
time, Sessions is far from an anomaly and only one of a number of prominent
officials appointed in the Trump administration who are overtly racist and run
the gamut in arguing for a Muslim registry, to suppressing voter rights, to
producing social and economic policies that target immigrants and Black people.
For example,
Trump's appointment of Stephen Bannon as senior counselor and chief White House
strategist is deeply disturbing. Bannon is an incendiary figure whom critics as
politically diverse as Glenn Beck and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont have
accused of being a racist, sexist, anti-Semite. While the head of Breitbart
News, Bannon courted white nationalists, neo-Nazi groups and other far-right extremists.
In doing so, Amy Goodman points
out, he helped to rebrand "white supremacy [and] white
nationalism, for the digital age" under the euphemistic brand of the
"alt-right."
Bannon is on
record stating that only property owners should vote; stating to his ex-wife
that he did not want his twin daughters "to go to school with Jews;"
calling conservative commentator Bill Kristol a "Republican spoiler, renegade
Jew;" and publishing
incendiary headlines on Breitbart's website, such as
"Would you rather your child had feminism or cancer?" and "Birth
control makes women unattractive and crazy."
What we see in
Trump and his advisors and appointees is an America that embraces the values
and ideals of an ultranationalist and militarized white public sphere. Even
before Trump takes office, the threat of authoritarianism is becoming visible,
"exploding in our face, through racist attacks on school children, the
proliferation of swastikas around the country, name-calling, death threats, and
a general atmosphere of hate," in the words of Rebecca Gould.
Given the
vice-president-elect's abysmal record on women's issues, there is also little
doubt that the war on women's reproductive rights will accelerate under the
Trump administration. As NARAL Pro-Choice America Senior Vice President Sasha
Bruce has observed,
"With the selection of Tom Price as Secretary of Health and Human
Services, Donald Trump is sending a clear signal that he intends to punish
women who seek abortion care. Tom Price is someone who has made clear
throughout his career that ... he wants to punish us for the choices we make
for our bodies, our futures, and our families."
An Escalation
of Racist Militarism and Weaponized Ignorance
As Donald
Trump's rule begins, it appears that Americans are entering a period in which
civic formations and public spheres will be modeled after a state of racist
warfare. During his presidential campaign, he provided a nativist language that
targeted the most vulnerable in American society, including immigrants, Blacks and
Muslims. He also provoked society's vilest impulses, energizing a range of
extremist racist and anti-Semitic groups, including authoritarians, fascists,
neo-Nazis and white nationalists, some of whom seek to normalize their bigotry
under the umbrella of the "alt-right." According to The
New York Times, members of various racist and ultranationalist
groups have been energized by Trump's election.
One of the
founders of the neo-Nazi website, The Daily Stormer, was quoted as saying that
Trump's victory has resulted in a "reboot of the White Nationalist
movement." The same article also quoted Richard B. Spencer, another
prominent figure in the so-called "alt-right" movement, who without
apology argues that his organization, the National Policy Institute, is
dedicated to "the heritage, identity and future of people of European
descent" and that "Race is real, race matters. Race is the foundation
of identity." This is simply neo-Nazi dribble dressed up in the discourse
of difference. There can be little doubt that these antidemocratic and racist
tendencies will play a major role in shaping Trump's presidency.
The call for
regime change, a term used by the White House to designate overthrowing a
foreign government, seems certain to intensify under Trump's administration.
This means a more militant foreign policy under Trump. But it also signals a
domestic form of regime change as well, since this authoritarian neoliberal
government will deregulate, militarize and privatize everything it can. With
this regime change will come the suppression of civil liberties and dissent at
home through the expansion of a punishing state that will criminalize a wider
range of everyday behaviors, expand mass incarceration, and all the while
enrich the coffers of the ultra-rich and corporate predators. The hate-filled
discourses of intolerance, chauvinism and social abandonment are already
creeping further into the ever-widening spheres of society bent on blending a
militarized war culture with a totalizing embrace of corporate capitalism.
Under Trump,
ignorance has been weaponized and will continue to be used to produce a
profoundly disturbing anti-intellectualism. It is important to remember that in
his various speeches, Trump emptied language of any meaning, giving credence to
the charge that he was producing with his endless lies a kind of post-truth in
which words did not count for anything anymore, especially when informed
judgments and facts could no longer be distinguished from opinions and
falsehoods.
Words for
Trump are reduced to emotions, shock and effects that mimic tawdry
reality-TV-style performances. He continues to speak from a discursive space in
which everything can be said, the truth is irrelevant and informed judgment
becomes a liability. Under such circumstances, it is extremely difficult to
grasp what he knows about anything. He steals words and discards their meaning,
refusing to own up to them ethically, politically and socially.
There is more
at work here than the registers of incoherency, ignorance and civic illiteracy.
There is also an inconsistency that errs on the side of a militant racism and a
racist militarism. For instance, the only moments of clarity in Trump's
discourse are when he uses the toxic vocabulary of hate, xenophobia, racism and
misogyny to target those he believes refuse to "Make America Great
Again."
The
Suppression of Dissent Has Already Begun
Under Trump
leadership, a war culture, a culture of aggression and state violence are set
to intensify. There will almost certainly be a widespread suppression of
dissent -- a suppression similar to the police violence used against those
protesting the Dakota Access pipeline in Standing Rock, North Dakota, along
with the arrests of journalists covering the protests.
It is
reasonable to assume that under the Trump administration there will also be an
intensification of the harassment of journalists similar to what happened to Ed
Ou, a renowned Canadian photojournalist who has worked for a number of media
sources, including The New York Times and Time magazine. Ou was recently
detained by US border officers while traveling from Canada to the US to report
on the protests against the Dakota Access pipeline. According to Hugh
Handeyside, "Ou was detained for more than six hours and
subjected ... to multiple rounds of intrusive interrogation. [The border
officers] questioned him at length about his work as a journalist, his prior
professional travel in the Middle East, and dissidents or 'extremists' he had
encountered or interviewed as a journalist. They photocopied his personal
papers, including pages from his handwritten personal diary." In the end,
he was refused entry into the US.
Given Trump's
recent insistence that protesters who burn the American flag should be jailed
or suffer the loss of citizenship, his hostile criticism of the Black Lives
Matter movement and his ongoing legacy of stoking white violence against
protesters, it is reasonable to assume that his future domestic policies will
further legitimate a wave of repression and violence waged against dissenters
and the institutions that support them.
For instance,
his tweeted threats regarding the burning of the American flag can be read as
code for threatening dissent, or worse, unleashing the power of the state on
them. How else to explain the motive behind Trump's consideration of Milwaukee
Sheriff David Clarke as a potential candidate for secretary of the Department
of Homeland Security?
Clarke has
referred to the Black Lives Matter movement as "Black Lies Matter"
and compared it to ISIS. Grace Guarnieri reports in
Alternet that Clarke has "proposed that terrorist and ISIS
sympathizers in America need to be rounded up and shipped off to Guantanamo,
and has stated that 'It is time to suspend habeas corpus like Abraham Lincoln
did during the civil war'.... He guessed that about several hundred thousand or
even a million sympathizers were in the United States and needed to be
imprisoned." It is difficult to believe that this type of egregious call
for repressive state violence and a disregard for the Constitution supports
rather than disqualifies somebody for a high-ranking government office.
Expanding what
might be called his Twitter battles, Trump has made a number of critical
comments regarding what he views as dissenting criticism of either him or his
administration. For instance, after Brandon Victor Dixon, the actor in the
Broadway play Hamilton, addressed Vice-President-elect Mike Pence
after the curtain call, stating, in part, "We are diverse Americans who
are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our
planet, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable right,"
Trump tweeted that Pence was harassed by Dixon and that the actor should
apologize. Trump also took aim at a "Saturday Night Live" episode in
which Alec Baldwin satirized a post-election Trump in the process of trying to
figure out what the responsibilities of the presidency entail. Trump tweeted
that it was "a totally one-sided, biased show -- nothing funny at all.
Equal time for us?"
As
cyber-bully-in-chief, Trump has taken to Twitter to launch tirades against the
cast of the play Hamilton, against "Saturday Night Live"
and against Chuck Jones, president of United Steelworkers Local 1999. Trump's
verbal takedown of the union chief was a response to Jones accusing Trump of
lying about the number of jobs he claimed he prevented Carrier Corporation in Indiana
from shipping to Mexico. Actually, since 350 jobs were slated to stay in the US
before Trump's intervention, the number of jobs saved by Trump was 850 rather
than 1,100.
To some, this
may seem like a trivial matter, but Trump's weaponizing of Twitter against
critics and political opponents functions not only to produce a chilling effect
on critics, but also gives legitimacy to those willing to suppress dissent
through various modes of harassment and even the threat of violence. Frank
Sesno, director of the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington
University, is right in stating that
"Anybody who goes on air or goes public and calls out the president has to
then live in fear that he is going to seek retribution in the public sphere.
That could discourage people from speaking out." Such actions could also
threaten their lives, as Chuck Jones found out. After the president-elect
called him out, he received an endless stream of harassing phone calls and
online insults, some even threatening him and his children. According to Jones,
"Nothing that says they're gonna kill me, but, you know, you better keep
your eye on your kids. We know what car you drive. Things along those
lines."
I am not
convinced that these tweets are simply impetuous outbursts from an adult who
has the temperament of a bullying 12-year-old. It seems more probable that his
right-wing advisors, including Stephen Bannon, view the tweets as part of a
legitimate tool to attack their perceived political foes. In this case, the
attack was not simply on Jones but also on unions that may rebel against
Trump's policies in the future.
Trump is at
war with democracy, and his online attacks will take place not only in
conjunction with ongoing acts of state repression but also with the production
of violence in the culture at large, which Trump is seeking to orchestrate as
if he were producing a reality TV show. At first glance, such responses seem as
thoughtless as they are trivial, given the issues that Trump should be
considering, but Frank Rich may be right in suggesting that Trump's tweets,
which amount to an attack on the First Amendment, are part of a strategy
engineered by Bannon to promote a culture war that riles "up his base and
retains its loyalty should he fail, say, to deliver on other promises, like
reviving the coal industry."
In addition,
such attacks function to initiate a culture war that serves to repress dissent
and divert the public from more serious issues, all the while driving up
ratings for a supine media that will give Trump unqualified and uncritical coverage.
Referring to the Dixon incident, Rich writes:
It's possible that much of that base
previously knew little or nothing about Hamilton, but thanks to
Pence's visit, it would soon learn in even the briefest news accounts that the
show is everything that [the] base despises: a multi-cultural-ethnic-racial
reclamation of "white" American history with a ticket price that can
soar into four digits -- in other words, a virtual monument to the supposedly
politically correct "elites" that Trump, Bannon, and their wrecking
crew found great political profit in deriding throughout the campaign. Pence's
visit to Hamilton was a sure-fire political victory for Trump
even without the added value of a perfectly legitimate and respectful curtain
speech that he could trash-tweet to further rouse his culture-war storm
troopers. The kind of political theater that Trump and Bannon fomented
around Hamilton is likely to be revived routinely in the Trump
era.
Trump's
trash-tweeting mimics the hate-filled discourse and threats of violence in
which he often engaged during the presidential primary campaign -- only now he
has a much broader audience. Americans are already witnessing a growing climate of
violence across the United States, spurred on by Trump's
previous support of such actions aimed at Muslims, immigrants, Black people,
foreign students and others deemed expendable by Trump's white ultranationalist
supporters. Of course, none of this should seem surprising given the long
legacy of such violence, along with the decline of the welfare state and the
rise of the punishing state since the 1970s. What is distinctive is that the
formative culture, organizations and institutions that support such violence
have moved from the fringe to the center of American politics.
Copyright, Truthout. May not be
reprinted without permission.
Henry
A. Giroux currently is the McMaster University Professor for Scholarship in the
Public Interest and The Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar in Critical
Pedagogy. He also is a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Ryerson University.
His most recent books include The Violence of Organized Forgetting (City
Lights, 2014), Dangerous Thinking in the Age of the New
Authoritarianism (Routledge, 2015) and coauthored with Brad
Evans, Disposable Futures: The Seduction of Violence in the Age of
Spectacle (City Lights, 2015). Giroux is also a member of Truthout's
Board of Directors. His website is www.henryagiroux.com.
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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