Category Archives: Racial Equality

Forget Dog Whistles

In the ten-plus months of this horrific excuse for a federal administration, the racism that powers the MAGA movement has become impossible to ignore or minimize. Trump and his sycophants aren’t even trying to mask their hatreds–they have withdrawn funding from universities and other organizations that engage in even the most modest efforts to level the playing field for minorities; waged war against (their version of) DEI; fired competent Black officials and replaced them with manifestly unqualified White ones; sent masked goons into Blue cities to kidnap Brown people…the list goes on.

Now, several media outlets report that the FBI has officially abandoned what has for years been its top domestic terrorism concern: White nationalism. The agency has cut its ties with two major civil rights watchdogs, yielding to pressure from MAGA influencers and Donald Trump’s FBI Director Kash Patel.

The FBI has abruptly ended long-standing partnerships with the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), organizations that for years have provided the agency with significant assistance in tracking hate groups. Not only has the FBI ended its relationship with those organizations, figures in the administration have libeled them. Kash Patel called the SPLC a “partisan smear machine,” and Elon Musk labeled it an “evil” source of “hate propaganda.”

The animus aimed at SPLC was evidently prompted by that organization’s Hate Map, which identifies White Nationalist, anti-government, and other extremist groups, and which includes Turning Point USA as one of  those anti-democratic, hard-right groups.

The FBI also ended its partnership with the ADL, which for years has trained agents to recognize antisemitism and hate crimes. (Patel mocked former FBI Director James Comey for praising the ADL, sneering: “That era is OVER.”) As one media source reported (link unavailable),

In 2017, then–FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress the agency had about 1,000 open domestic terrorism investigations, many linked to white nationalism. A 2021 GAO report backed that up: domestic terrorism cases surged 357% since 2013, with white supremacists responsible for the majority of deadly attacks.

But under Trump and Patel, the FBI is turning its back on civil rights, and walking away from groups that helped prevent homegrown hate.

It isn’t just the FBI. And it goes further than an administration that is “turning its back on civil rights.” This is an administration that absolutely revels in parading its bigotries. Actually, we shouldn’t be surprised by the degree to which its hatreds are being openly expressed–as the Brookings Institution, among others, has documented, racism has always been Trump’s not-so-secret sauce. In 2019, the Institution reported (emphases mine),

Donald Trump’s support in the 2016 campaign was clearly driven by racism, sexism, and xenophobia. While some observers have explained Trump’s success as a result of economic anxiety, the data demonstrate that anti-immigrant sentiment, racism, and sexism are much more strongly related to support for Trump. Trump’s much-discussed vote advantage with non-college-educated whites is misleading; when accounting for racism and sexism, the education gap among whites in the 2016 election returns to the typical levels of previous elections since 2000. Trump did not do especially well with non-college-educated whites, compared to other Republicans. He did especially well with white people who express sexist views about women and who deny racism exists.

Even more alarmingly, there is a clear correlation between Trump campaign events and incidents of prejudiced violence. FBI data show that since Trump’s election there has been an anomalous spike in hate crimes concentrated in counties where Trump won by larger margins. It was the second-largest uptick in hate crimes in the 25 years for which data are available, second only to the spike after September 11, 2001. Though hate crimes are typically most frequent in the summer, in 2016 they peaked in the fourth quarter (October-December). This new, higher rate of hate crimes continued throughout 2017.

What is so depressing is the “in your face” evidence that Americans haven’t come very far since the Civil War, that a significant percentage of White Americans continue to hate and fear people who are different. White Christian Nationalism is, in a number of ways, a continuation of the worst of the Confederacy, and it is still as fundamentally unAmerican as it was then.

Trump and MAGA are tearing down more than the East Wing of the White House. That destruction is symbolic of the arrogance with which they are trying to destroy the very fabric of a nation trying to live up to the principle that all people are created equal. 

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I Told You So

Who really hates America?

In the run-up to No Kings Day, Republican leaders hysterically described participants as terrorists–as people who “hate America.” Those charges were never particularly effective; the first No Kings protest had brought out a cross-section of citizens who very clearly loved the America of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and who were prepared to defend it against the real “enemy within.” Grandmothers and veterans joined young and middle-aged people in an affirmance of genuine patriotism.

If there was any confusion about who loves and who hates the America envisioned by the Founders, it came just a couple of days before the second No Kings Day, in an expose from Politico.

Here’s the lede:

Leaders of Young Republican groups throughout the country worried what would happen if their Telegram chat ever got leaked, but they kept typing anyway.

They referred to Black people as monkeys and “the watermelon people” and mused about putting their political opponents in gas chambers. They talked about raping their enemies and driving them to suicide and lauded Republicans who they believed support slavery.

Politico obtained 2,900 pages of Telegram chats–representing 28,000 messages– reflecting conversations among the leaders of national Young Republican groups. The chats  spanned more than seven months, and included Young Republicans from New York, Kansas, Arizona and Vermont. As the report summed up the discovery, the contents offered “an unfiltered look at how a new generation of GOP activists talk when they think no one is listening.”

And the way they talk is both horrifying and profoundly unAmerican.

Together, the messages reveal a culture where racist, antisemitic and violent rhetoric circulate freely — and where the Trump-era loosening of political norms has made such talk feel less taboo among those positioning themselves as the party’s next leaders…

The group chat members spoke freely about the pressure to cow to Trump to avoid being called a RINO, the love of Nazis within their party’s right wing and the president’s alleged work to suppress documents related to wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein’s child sex crimes.

As Politico pointed out, the disgusting rhetoric employed by these Young Republican “leaders” reflects a widespread coarsening of political discourse and the increasing use of incendiary and racially offensive tropes. That coarsening comes straight from the top. The article referenced Trump’s post of an artificial intelligence-generated video portraying House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries in a sombrero, while Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer proposed trading free health care for immigrant votes. Offensive as that post was, it was only the latest of a long string of repellant social media outbursts from the senile and wildly unPresidential occupant of the Oval Office.

In his 2024 campaign, Trump spread false reports of Haitian migrants eating pets and, at one of his rallies, welcomed comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage” and joked about Black people “carving watermelons” on Halloween.

As the article quite accurately notes, the chat rhetoric, which spared few minority groups, essentially mirrored a number of popular conservative political commentators, podcasters and comedians, all of whom have participated in the erosion of what was previously considered acceptable discourse. It quoted a political science professor who attributed the increasing use of racist and anti-Semitic rhetoric to Trump’s “persistent use of hostile, often inflammatory language.”

In one astonishing exchange, a suggestion that they tie an opponent to neo-Nazi groups was discarded because participants noted that it might hurt more than help–because such ties would be viewed positively by their own voters. 

There is much, much more in the linked article, and it is sickening. It is also profoundly inconsistent with what I call the American Idea–the philosophy that permeates the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. It is an example–as if one were needed–of what the participants in protests like No Kings oppose.

Compare the disgusting, hateful, pro-Nazi comments in the chat (including one that “loved Hitler”) with the sentiments on the signs at the No Kings events, and draw your own conclusions about who the patriots truly are.

The Young Republicans who participated in this disgusting chat truly do hate the America that is trying to live up to its original ideals. And despite the pro-forma claims of elected Republicans trying to distance themselves from this filth, we know where they learned both the language and the sentiments.

 

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It’s All Out In The Open Now

We’ve come a long way, baby, from the days when our American bigots used to chafe at the “political correctness” that kept them from openly expressing their disdain for those despised “others.” As I have previously pointed out, the most consistent “through line” of America’s current, terrible administration has been its open assault on the civility that once kept people from broadcasting their hatreds; it has consistently conveyed its permission–indeed, encouragement–to voice them.

The Trump administration and Red state MAGA culture warriors enthusiastically attack anything that smacks of efforts to level the civic playing field–going after any program that hints of acceptance of diversity. At the federal level, Trump has fired talented and competent people of color and replaced them with wildly incompetent clowns whose most obvious (and often only) qualification for the job is White skin. Closer to home, our embarrassing and unethical Attorney General is harassing teachers and nonprofit organizations that display any concern for fair play or inclusion (one of the unfortunate teachers who made it onto Rokita’s threatening list of teachers he deems too liberal to be in a classroom is deemed guilty of being “unAmerican” because she included a rainbow flag in her room…).

Recently, media reports that the Trump administration has fired FBI agents who had the temerity to kneel in support of racial justice protests

WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI has fired agents who were photographed kneeling during a racial justice protest in Washington that followed the 2020 death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers, three people familiar with the matter said Friday.

The bureau last spring had reassigned the agents but has since fired them, said the people, who insisted on anonymity to discuss personnel matters with The Associated Press.

The number of FBI employees terminated was not immediately clear, but two people said it was roughly 20…

The FBI Agents Association confirmed in a statement late Friday that more than a dozen agents had been fired, including military veterans with additional statutory protections, and condemned the move as unlawful. It called on Congress to investigate and said the firings were another indication of FBI Director Kash Patel’s disregard for the legal rights of bureau employees.

These firings follow others that targeted agents who investigated the January 6th insurrection, or who looked into Trump’s illegal retention of classified documents. Lawsuits stemming from those actions, which were patently illegal, allege that those dismissals are part of an ongoing effort to remove any FBI officers who investigated Trump or his cronies.

There is, rather clearly, also an effort to rid the FBI of officers who display support for racial justice.

In the short time Trump has been in office, he has gutted the Justice Department and turned the DOJ and FBI into compliant tools of his corrupt and lawless administration. Lawmakers and government lawyers have turned a blind eye to Trump’s multiple grifts, allowing him to run the administration like a Mafia boss, and rake in billions of dollars in what are outright bribes. Investigations of Trump allies have been dismissed, while efforts to take vengeance against those who have incurred Trump’s anger have ramped up, leading to meritless indictments (Comey) and invasive and publicized searches (Bolton).

Needless to say, these are the tactics of fascists and autocrats, not the proper activities of an American administration.

And that brings me back to what constitutes the underlying strength of this horrifying, unAmerican cabal: racism (with a side of misogyny). I cannot account for the corruption of the six “Conservative” justices on the Supreme Court, but it has become quite obvious that the Republicans in Congress are completely in thrall to the GOP’s MAGA base–the White supremacists who continue to support Trump because he’s making bigotry acceptable again.

Are groceries more expensive? Is health insurance becoming unaffordable again? Has America’s position and power in the world declined precipitously? Are masked thugs snatching people off the streets? Is public health declining? Is your city struggling due to the federal cutoff of previously authorized funds? Are free speech and the rule of law under attack? Has persistent incompetence and dysfunction caused a government shutdown?

None of that matters to MAGA folks so long as Trump gives them permission to express contempt for those detested “others.”

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An Insider Analysis

Some of the most distressed observers of our national plunge into the very unAmerican, neo-fascist nightmare we’re experiencing are the political strategists who spent years working to elect Republicans. A number of them are now “Never Trumpers” who are wrestling with hard questions: how much of GOP rhetoric was simply PR? What was it in the GOP incentive structure that took the party down this disastrous path? What were the danger signals they failed to see?

One of those Never Trumpers is Stuart Stevens, and a while back, he wrote an essay in the Bulwark in which he tried to trace how the “law and order party had become the party of Jeffrey Epstein.” As he began,

Let me begin with a question that a lot of us are asking ourselves. How did we get here? How is it that right now, as we speak, there are American citizens that haven’t been charged with a crime, much less convicted, sitting in a concentration camp in Florida while one of the most notorious, evil, child sex traffickers of our time has cut some sweetheart deal so that she has been transferred from a prison in Florida to a Club Fed in Texas?

Stevens noted that Maxwell’s transfer violated clear Prison Bureau guidelines, and questioned how America had gotten to so lawless a place. “How did it happen? Well, the easy answer is that we elected Donald Trump. But that’s really a cop-out because it’s not just Donald Trump.”

When Trump first started to dominate the Republican Party, many of my Bush-era Republican friends talked about how Donald Trump had hijacked our party. This never made sense to me. The hijacker on the plane is not popular with the passengers. No one is thanking the hijacker for the chance to go to Cuba instead of grandma’s house. But Donald Trump quickly became the most popular figure in the Republican Party by a wide margin.

That, of course, is the question all sane Americans are constantly asking ourselves–especially those (like yours truly) who spent years in the Republican Party, assuming that the party’s political rhetoric accurately reflected its political and philosophical beliefs. As Stevens glumly concludes, “Trump didn’t hijack the Party, he revealed it.”

It’s hard to disagree with that conclusion; as Stevens writes, “People don’t abandon deeply held beliefs in a matter of months… What the party called ‘bedrock principles’ turned out to be nothing more than marketing slogans.”

As Stevens probes the reason for the GOP’s enthusiastic embrace of Trump, he comes to the same conclusion I did. It all goes back to America’s original sin: racism.  He points to the telling homogeneity of today’s Republican Party.

Race is the original sin of the modern Republican Party. This isn’t new to the Trump era. In 1956, Eisenhower got 39% of the Black vote. In 1964, Barry Goldwater opposed the Civil Rights Act and received 7% of the Black vote. In 2020, Trump got 12% of the Black vote, a number he improved to 13% in 2024. That’s a six-point increase in 60 years.

In the Bush 43 years, in what seems like a long time ago in a galaxy far away, the party admitted it had failed to attract Black voters and took responsibility for the failure. In 2005, the Chairman of the Republican Party, Ken Melman, gave a speech at the NAACP convention apologizing for the Southern Strategy, which leveraged white racist anger to maximize Republican votes. Does it mean anything that you apologized? I think it does. It’s an acknowledgement that what had happened is wrong and that the party had to endeavor to earn more Black support.

That all ended in 2016 with Donald Trump’s openly racist campaign.

Today’s parties have sorted themselves into White Nationalists versus everyone else.

As Stevens notes, the homogeneity of the Republican Party makes it much easier to message to core voters than it is to message to the far more diverse Democratic Party. And Stevens ties that observation to the fecklessness of Congressional Republicans, pointing out that a “party that spends 60 years relying on candidates who can win by maximizing white voters inevitably draws a different kind of candidate than a party that requires appealing to a more diverse electorate.” That observation goes a long way toward explaining the current Republican politicians who exhibit “a North Korean-style supplication to their leader.”

It’s hard to discount Stevens’ “insider analysis.”

His essay answers the persistent question–why on earth would anyone vote for a pathetic, delusional ignoramus in possession of not a single redeeming human quality? That answer is depressingly simple. For far too many voters, primal hatreds overcome humanity and rational self-interest.

But who knew there were so many of them?

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No More Dog Whistles

What has surprised me the most about America’s pell-mell plunge into autocracy and chaos under MAGA and Trump has been the rapidity with which the veil of civility has been discarded–how quickly a depressingly-large segment of our population has abandoned pretense and “dog whistles” and proudly paraded their racism. Even the pretense that DEI and “woke-ism” were really efforts at “reverse discrimination” has been so ludicrous it might as well have been delivered with a wink and a sneer.

We live in an ugly time–a time that has favored the emergence of some particularly ugly people. In a recent post, Charlie Sykes profiled one of them, an “out and proud” Nazi named Nick Fuentes. As he writes, “I confess, I still find it amazing — and deeply disturbing — that a Hitler-praising, crypto-Nazi troll has amassed a following in a movement already packed with cranks, bigots, and loons.”

Sykes quotes liberally from an Atlantic article that quite accurately notes, “Fuentes is not your garden variety racist — he serves it up in all its vile purity.”

Earlier this year, in yet another stream, Fuentes described Chicago as “n*gger hell.” He then laughed and added: “I just came up with that, just now. Isn’t that good?” Fuentes has also said that Hitler was “really fucking cool” and posited that “we need to go back to burning women alive.” (Fuentes did not respond to multiple requests for an interview.)

As Sykes observes, “this is shocking rhetoric even in 2025, when the far right has embraced race science and the federal government could be mistaken for pursuing the aims of the Proud Boys.”

And he quotes the Atlantic article for the observation that– in the deeply racist MAGA media ecosystem– “it’s working.”

Fuentes is among the most popular streamers on Rumble, a right-wing platform similar to YouTube; his videos regularly rack up hundreds of thousands of views. He’s gained more than 100,000 new followers on X since late June. The White House now posts on X in a gleefully cruel style that seems inspired by Fuentes’s followers, who call themselves “Groypers”—in fact, at the end of May, Trump posted a meme of himself that was first posted by a Groyper account. At least one Fuentes supporter, Paul Ingrassia, works in the administration as a liaison to the Department of Homeland Security. Ingrassia, who didn’t respond to an interview request, has also been nominated to lead the U.S. Office of Special Counsel. No matter how far Fuentes pushes his bigotry, his influence continues to rise.

Those of us who live in a very different world–a world where we recognize that humans come in assorted sizes and colors, a world where the mere fact of difference doesn’t translate to “existential threat”–can only be disheartened and baffled by these numbers. Yes, there have always been deeply disturbed individuals clinging to hateful ideologies that reassure them that they are blameless victims of one or another “Other.” But we are now seeing evidence that their numbers are far greater than most of us could have imagined.

When we look at the horrific damage being done to American government every day, when we see the corruption and self-dealing and kowtowing to the wealthy, it’s tempting to blame America’s plutocrats–the all-too-sleazy billionaires who surround our Mad King. And they certainly are not blameless. But their weapon–the appeal that allows MAGA to win elections and exercise power–is the viciousness and extent of racism and other assorted bigotries.

The public emergence and popularity of figures like Nick Fuentes is a sign of a deep social illness. I have no idea how to cure that illness, but I do know that we dismiss its significance at our peril. There are obviously millions of damaged, unhappy, resentful Americans–people who are desperate for someone to blame for their problems, desperate to identify some “Other” whose perfidy explains why their lives haven’t gone the way they wanted.

They are MAGA–and their version of a “great” America is terrifying.

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