Trump the Extremist
The
new president has given white supremacists plenty of reasons to feel he’s
copacetic with their agenda.
By Michael German | Contributor
Feb. 14, 2017, at 3:30 p.m.
It pains me to think that my experience as an FBI undercover
agent working inside white supremacist groups might give me relevant insights
into a U.S. president’s policy choices.
My time spent underground with neo-Nazis and anti-government
militias gave me an ear well-tuned to pick up dog whistles – the coded messages
many conservative politicians have long peppered into speeches and policy
positions to appeal to the racist far right. I didn’t need that skill for
candidate Donald Trump. He broadcast racist, anti-Muslim and anti-Latino sentiments through a bullhorn
rather than a dog whistle. But now that he’s won, will President Trump cater to
these angry and intolerant supporters? And what will that mean for the rest of
our country?
Just two weeks in, Trump has given white supremacists plenty of
reasons to feel he’s copacetic with their agenda.
Trump retained alt-right promoter Steve Bannon and Islamophobic
conspiracy theorist Michael Flynn as advisers and gave them dominant roles on
the National Security Council. Although Flynn didn’t last long, it wasn’t because of his
extreme views. Trump selected Sen. Jeff Sessions as attorney general, who reportedly called the ACLU and NAACP “un-American”
and has a long record of opposition to voting rights and immigration reform. These picks sent a clear
message that the Trump administration would be as hostile to minorities as the
Trump campaign, but that was just the start.
Trump’s combative first phone call with Mexican President
Enrique Pena Nieto elevated an insulting campaign pitch to make Mexico pay for
his border wall into a potential trade war. His executive order increasing border and
immigration forces and stripping funds from sanctuary cities raised fears of a
crackdown that didn’t take long to materialize.
Hardcore white supremacists were initially leery of Trump because of his
supportive statements regarding Israel and his many Jewish friends and
associates – particularly his closest confidants, daughter Ivanka and
son-in-law Jared Kushner. But once in office, the White House issued a
Holocaust Remembrance Day message that failed even to mention its
Jewish victims. If playing into the dark rhetoric of Holocaust-deniers was
meant to send a message of solidarity with neo-Nazis, it was well-received.
Trump also made good on his promise to enact a “Muslim ban,” even
though, as former Mayor Rudy Guliani confided to Fox News, he had to narrow
its scope to make it “legal.” From the far right extremist viewpoint, the
policy had the intended effect of sending a clear message to Muslims that they
are the enemy in Trump’s America. The nationwide protests against the policy
have not dampened the extremist right’s enthusiasm for this action; rather,
they have sharpened the divide these extremists see between those who defend
their nation’s security and those who threaten it. Even though the protests
were nonviolent, the image of disorder and resistance to authority is one
extremists can twist to galvanize support from traditional law and order
conservatives.
Donald Trump and Mike Pence have laid bare the GOP's true maxim:
politics as brute force.
While the influence of the far right on Trump’s administration
and policies is clear, the question of whether Trump’s presidency will embolden
increased far right violence is harder to answer. There are early indications
that racists have felt empowered to act out in harmful ways
since Trump mainstreamed racial and religious bigotry. His demand to “stop it” during
a post-election spike in hate crimes was welcome but
late, and his failure to even acknowledge the Canadian mosque attack that
killed six Muslim worshipers reinforced the message that right-wing terrorism
somehow isn’t “real” terrorism. Republican Rep. Sean Duffy made this argument
more explicitly, ignoring the hundreds of victims of far right violence
in this country since 9/11, including six killed in a Sikh temple in his home state
of Wisconsin in 2012.
Still, it’s hard to make predictions about a rise or fall in
hate crimes because the government doesn’t bother to keep accurate records. The good
news is 74 percent of police agencies surveyed in 2014 ranked far right
extremists the number one threat, and most address these crimes with the seriousness
they deserve even if some politicians don’t. This is understandable
because far right extremists often target law enforcement, killing more than 50 police officers since 1990.
At the same time, the FBI has raised concerns about white supremacists inside
law enforcement. Any level of involvement of law enforcers in organized hate
groups is horrifying, of course, but garden-variety bias might be as big a
problem. Authoritarian regimes the Trump administration seems to be emulating
have always relied on a combination of sanctioned and unsanctioned violence.
Aggressive and discriminatory law enforcement actions are meant to spread fear
and intimidate political opposition just as much as any inaction against
unsanctioned racist violence would. Anti-Muslim law enforcement training has been on ongoing problem and the overzealousness with which some customs
and immigration officials enforced Trump’s Muslim ban, including handcuffing a 5-year-old U.S. citizen,
suggests an inappropriate level of vindictiveness. Similarly aggressive
immigration enforcement actions throughout the country last week
and the hostility some law enforcement officials have expressed toward the Black
Lives Matter movement raise legitimate worries that there may be increased
police violence as Trump’s tough-on-crime policies are implemented.
So what can Americans do to resist the divisive rhetoric, policies
and violence? First, all of us must make a concerted effort to look out for one
another. Go to your local mosque, synagogue, church, immigrant services and
LGBTQ support center and let them know you care about their safety and
well-being. Find out who in your local police department and FBI office are
responsible for investigating hate crimes. Make sure all hate crimes and police
abuse are documented and reported to the proper authorities and the local
media. Hold them accountable.
Second, make sure your state and local governments are
responsive to your concerns. In the civil rights era the federal government had
to step in to ensure state and local authorities adhered to the law. Now it is
the opposite. Sixteen state attorneys general filed a lawsuit challenging the Trump
administration’s Muslim ban. Sanctuary cities are vowing to resist Trump’s harsh
immigration enforcement policies. The San Francisco Police Department suspended their participation in the
FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force over concerns about civil liberties and
religious freedom.
The politics of fear and division will fail if we join together
in response.
Southern
Poverty Law Center: Hate Groups Emboldened and Flourishing
Inform
Michael German is a fellow at the Brennan
Center for Justice at NYU School of Law and a former special agent with the
Federal Bureau of Investigation.
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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