On early Sunday morning, President Trump retweeted a video of a white man yelling “white power” to protesters in a Florida seniors community called The Villages. Beyond its shocking reflection of the President’s current state of mind, the now-deleted Tweet also reflects a frightening observation of America in the summer of 2020:
White nationalism is no longer in the shadows of America’s towns and villages — it is uncomfortably out in the open for all the world to see.
The troubling early morning Tweet, in which the President referred to the protestors as “great people,” is another instance of Trump using social media to flirt with white nationalism. It continues his string of comments that seemingly endorse the tacit racism of white supremacists. For example, following the 2017 “Unite the Right” in Charlottesville, Virginia, after a white nationalist rally turned violent, Trump said: “You had some very bad people in that group. But you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.”
In another example of his race-baiting language, in 2019, Trump tweeted about four Women of Color who serve in the Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna S. Pressley of Massachusetts, and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, incorrectly suggesting they were not U.S. citizens. “Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came,” the President tweeted. Trump also uses language such as “invasion” and “thugs” to describe immigrants to the United States, particularly with respect to those located near our southern border with Mexico. He does not shy away from violent rhetoric, recently tweeting that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” in reference to Minneapolis protests that turned violent following the killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, by four police officers.
But it’s not just the President’s own Tweets that spark controversy. He regularly traffics in the racist and conspiratorial Tweets of others, seemingly using the words of others as proxies for his own beliefs. Given his large following, those Tweets are often shared by millions of others, which encourages the spread of hateful rhetoric. Many far-right activists see the President’s language as “dog whistles,” or signals that, despite his own vows that he is not racist, Trump is empathetic to their views.
Regardless of what Trump truly believes, one fact is certain: since Trump’s election in 2016, the nation has seen a rise in white nationalism. A recent Anti-Defamation League study showed a nearly 123 percent increase in white nationalist propaganda in a single year, surging from 1,214 incidents in 2018 to 2,713 in 2019. This is the highest level of white supremacist activity that the organization has ever recorded, the ADL said.
President Donald Trump delivers remarks on Medicare at the Sharon L. Morse Performing Arts Center, ... [+]
The increase in activity is only exacerbated by the pandemic and the recent social protests that have gripped America in the wake of the killings of unarmed Black people, including George Floyd in Minneapolis, Breonna Taylor in Louisville, and Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta. Some white nationalists are aligning themselves with other groups that have surfaced over the past several months, such as the Boogaloo movement, that sees America as heading towards a new civil war.
Most disconcerting, however, is the way some white supremacist language is becoming mainstream, as Trump’s early Sunday morning Tweet suggests. For a nation that has been jolted to confront its history of systemic racism and discrimination, the video of a white man unabashedly yelling “white power” to protesters in an upper middle-class area in the heart of Florida is as chilling as it is worrisome. And in a country that is already deeply divided on many issues around race, the fact that such a troubling video was shared by a President shows a willingness to break all convention as he seeks reelection is disturbing.
How will America stem the troubling tide of white nationalism that is seemingly unencumbered by shame? It will not be an easy fix. Once the flames of hate are fanned, it is not so easy to extinguish them. But as America heads into an autumn of decision after a spring and summer of struggle, it is clear that more than election is at stake…
So is the very soul of the nation.
