This filth by Drumpf while Elie Wiesel has just passed away today...

http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/donald-trump-getting-his-cues-hitler-how-gop-leader-following-fuhrers-recipe

Is Don­ald Trump Get­ting His Cues from Hitler? How the GOP Leader Is Fol­low­ing the Führer’s Recipe

That stun­ning but not entire­ly sur­pris­ing rev­e­la­tion comes from his ex-wife Ivana, who told Van­i­ty Fair in a 1990 inter­view that “from time to time her hus­band reads a book of Hitler’s col­lect­ed speech­es, My New Order, which he keeps in a cab­i­net by his bed.” The mag­a­zine said Trump con­firmed he got it from a film indus­try friend, Mar­ty Davis. “I thought he would find it inter­est­ing,” Davis said. “I am his friend, but I’m not Jew­ish.”

Adolf Hitler’s My New Order is not just any book. It came after Hitler’s two-vol­ume Mein Kampf (Ger­man for My Strug­gle), and was pub­lished in 1925 and 1926 before the Nazi rise to nation­al pow­er and World War II. It is not just a col­lec­tion of excerpts from speech­es Hitler made between 1918 and 1941; it is pro­fuse­ly indexed and filled with details about the speech­es’ impact on the media and polit­i­cal estab­lish­ment.

The Amer­i­can lit­er­ary mag­a­zine Kirkus Review, found­ed in 1933, puts it this way: “Par­al­lel­ing actu­al quo­ta­tions from Hitler’s own utter­ances, he [the edi­tor of the Eng­lish edi­tion] includes cor­re­spond­ing data show­ing the effect on the world press, and his own com­men­tary relat­ing the state­ments to doc­trines pre­vi­ous­ly pre­sent­ed in Mein Kampf… Sec­tion after sec­tion fol­lows pat­tern-back­ground, speech, press.”

Ivana Trump told Van­i­ty Fair that her ex-hus­band occa­sion­al­ly read it, which sup­ports the rest of the mag­a­zine’s pro­file of a tycoon who loved to live in the pub­lic eye and manip­u­late media cov­er­age. Trump, after con­firm­ing he had the book, lat­er told the reporter, “If I had these speech­es, and I am not say­ing that I do, I would nev­er read them.”

Nobody can know what Trump reads or does not read—or if he even reads. But it appears that one way or anoth­er, much of the con­tent in My New Order about how Hitler says pro­pa­gan­da works, and how he struc­tures his speak­ing style, and how Hitler tar­gets the low­est-com­mon denom­i­na­tor as his intend­ed audi­ence, has seeped into Trump: the way he speaks, argues, rages and responds in pub­lic. This goes beyond what has been report­ed in the New York Times, which ana­lyzed 95,000 words from five months of speech­es and con­clud­ed that Trump shares a style with the 20th cen­tu­ry’s biggest dem­a­gogues.

Trump’s speech­es are filled with sim­plis­tic racist attacks, first against Mex­i­cans and more recent­ly Mus­lims. He belit­tles and insults his com­peti­tors for the 2016 Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion. He attacks Democ­rats’ polit­i­cal “cor­rect­ness” as weak. He mocks women and dis­abled peo­ple. He threat­ens to oblit­er­ate the ene­mies he names. He doesn’t care about facts or incon­sis­ten­cies, and plays to his fol­low­ers’ fears and prej­u­dices.

All of these tac­tics, from the repet­i­tive style of his speech­es, to believ­ing what­ev­er he says is true, to his exces­sive and unri­valed view in his lead­er­ship, are mod­eled by Hitler in My New Order, accord­ing to a psy­cho­log­i­cal pro­file of the book in the Sep­tem­ber 2013 issue of the schol­ar­ly jour­nal, Psy­chi­atric Quar­ter­ly. “The ele­ments of a delu­sion­al sys­tem are there,” it states. “This is not sim­ply to say that the man is mad and so has plunged the world into chaos; but it is to say that there is over­whelm­ing evi­dence in 19 years of his speech­es that Hitler him­self firm­ly believes many of his most absurd dec­la­ra­tions, includ­ing some which are con­tra­dic­to­ry.”

What is real­ly stunning—whether or not he care­ful­ly read My New Order—is that Trump is chan­nel­ing the very tenets about how pro­pa­gan­da works laid out by Hitler in his books. In addi­tion to the col­lec­tion of speech­es and their impact, Mein Kampf has a chap­ter on the hows and whys of polit­i­cal pro­pa­gan­da. Look at these six excerpts from Ralph Manheim’s 1943 trans­la­tion that have been put into a “Teach­ers Guide To The Holo­caust” pro­duced by the Uni­ver­si­ty of South Flori­da. Hitler wrote:

“The func­tion of pro­pa­gan­da does not lie in the sci­en­tif­ic train­ing of the indi­vid­ual, but in call­ing the mass­es’ atten­tion to cer­tain facts, process­es, neces­si­ties, etc., whose sig­nif­i­cance is thus for the first time placed with­in their field of vision.”
“All pro­pa­gan­da must be pop­u­lar and its intel­lec­tu­al lev­el must be adjust­ed to the most lim­it­ed intel­li­gence among those it is addressed to. Con­se­quent­ly, the greater the mass it is intend­ed to reach, the low­er its pure­ly intel­lec­tu­al lev­el will have to be.”
“The more mod­est its intel­lec­tu­al bal­last, the more exclu­sive­ly it takes into con­sid­er­a­tion the emo­tions of the mass­es, the more effec­tive it will be. And this is the best proof of the sound­ness or unsound­ness of a pro­pa­gan­da cam­paign, and not suc­cess pleas­ing a few schol­ars or young aes­thetes.”
“Once under­stood how nec­es­sary it is for pro­pa­gan­da to be adjust­ed to the broad mass, the fol­low­ing rule results: It is a mis­take to make pro­pa­gan­da many-sided, like sci­en­tif­ic instruc­tion, for instance.”
“In con­se­quence of these facts, all effec­tive pro­pa­gan­da must be lim­it­ed to a very few points and must harp on these in slo­gans until the last mem­ber of the pub­lic under­stands what you want him to under­stand by your slo­gan.”
“The func­tion of pro­pa­gan­da is, for exam­ple, not to weigh and pon­der the rights of dif­fer­ent peo­ple, but exclu­sive­ly to empha­size the one right which it has set out to argue for. Its task is not to make an objec­tive study of the truth… its task is to serve our own right, always and unflinch­ing­ly.”
Who Are Trump’s Fol­low­ers?

Trump’s lat­est media-bait­ing, atten­tion-grab­bing gam­bit has been to call for a tem­po­rary ban on for­eign Mus­lims enter­ing the coun­try. Even though he’s been crit­i­cized by most of the GOP (except right-wing radio hosts), as well as Democ­rats and for­eign lead­ers, his pop­u­lar­i­ty among Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry vot­ers has gone up. Bloomberg.com reports that his Mus­lim-ban idea is sup­port­ed by two-thirds of like­ly GOP pri­ma­ry vot­ers, based on a Tues­day poll. RealClearPolitics.com says he has sup­port of 30.4 per­cent of GOP vot­ers nation­wide, when aver­ag­ing the most recent polls. That is almost dou­ble the sec­ond place hold­er. Trump also leads in Iowa and New Hamp­shire, the polling-track­ing web­site says.

All of this rais­es the ques­tion, who are these peo­ple who sup­port Trump? Or put less del­i­cate­ly, who is buy­ing his vicious pro­pa­gan­diz­ing? Snap­shots from var­i­ous media and polling firms show these sec­tions of the elec­torate are dis­af­fect­ed, tend to be Repub­li­can, are most­ly but not entire­ly white, are not high­ly educated—and cru­cial­ly, accord­ing to focus groups led by Frank Luntz, a top Repub­li­can poll­ster cit­ed by the Wash­ing­ton Post and Wall Street Journal—they are incred­i­bly loy­al to Trump, sup­port­ive of his pos­tur­ing and swipes, and com­plete­ly unmoved by con­dem­na­tions of their can­di­date.

In Thursday’s Post, Luntz is quot­ed as say­ing, “I’ve nev­er seen any­thing like this. There is no sign of them leav­ing.” In Thursday’s Jour­nal, he lists six fea­tures of Trump’s sup­port­ers: “They have a dim view of the U.S.,” “They hate Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma.” “They hate the media, too.” “They’re sus­pi­cious of Mus­lims.” “They are unswerv­ing­ly loy­al to Mr. Trump.” “They kind of like Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.”

The Los Ange­les Times, in a recent decon­struc­tion of its polling data, finds that Trump sup­port­ers increase with age. Only 15 per­cent are aged 18 to 29; 53 per­cent are age 30 to 64; and 34 per­cent are 65 and old­er. Many of them did not state their race, but of those who did, only 31 per­cent said they were white, while 12 per­cent said they were black, and anoth­er 11 per­cent said Lati­no. And they span the eco­nom­ic spec­trum: 28 per­cent said they made less than $50,000 a year. The same per­cent said they made from between $50,000 and $100,000. And 22 per­cent said they made more than $100,000. This data was from the Novem­ber 25 poll.

The most detailed pro­file might be from RealClearPolitics.com, which homed in on the per­son­al­i­ties of peo­ple who would be drawn to Trump’s fas­cist pres­ence. His back­ers are not par­tic­u­lar­ly ide­o­log­i­cal, but most­ly in the Repub­li­can camp. Only “20 per­cent of his sup­port­ers describe them­selves as ‘lib­er­al’ or ‘mod­er­ate.’ ” They’re also “a bit old­er, less edu­cat­ed and earn less than the aver­age Repub­li­can. Slight­ly over half are women.”

On edu­ca­tion, “One half of his vot­ers have a high school edu­ca­tion or less, com­pared to 19 per­cent with a col­lege or post-grad­u­ate degree,” the website’s reporters said, adding that Trump appeals to a cer­tain breed of south­ern Repub­li­can. “The Don­ald appears to have a spe­cial appeal to Tex­ans: he took the high­est pro­por­tion of sup­port from Ted Cruz, then from Rick Per­ry,” the for­mer gov­er­nor who slammed Trump before with­draw­ing from the race. “Trumpism—a tox­ic mix of dem­a­goguery and non­sense.”

The New York Times, when ana­lyz­ing the con­tent and style of the 95,000 words com­pris­ing all of Trump’s speech­es in the five months between July and Novem­ber, wrote his “pat­tern of ele­vat­ing emo­tion­al appeals over ratio­nal ones is a rhetor­i­cal style that his­to­ri­ans, psy­chol­o­gists and polit­i­cal sci­en­tists placed in the tra­di­tion of polit­i­cal fig­ures like [Bar­ry] Gold­wa­ter, George Wal­lace, Joseph McCarthy, Huey Long and Pat Buchanan, who used fiery lan­guage to try to win favor with strug­gling or scared Amer­i­cans.”

They com­pare Trump to some of America’s worst dem­a­gogues. “Sev­er­al his­to­ri­ans watched Mr. Trump’s speech­es last week, at the request of the Times, and observed techniques—like vil­i­fy­ing groups of peo­ple and stok­ing the inse­cu­ri­ties of his audiences—that they asso­ciate with Wal­lace and McCarthy.”

But what the Times did not do is go far enough back in his­to­ry or look at the pur­port­ed read­ing mate­r­i­al at Trump’s beside, where they would see the unnerv­ing par­al­lel with Adolph Hitler in his style, beliefs, deliv­ery, ego­tism and intend­ed audi­ence. Trump did tell Van­i­ty Fair’s reporter in 1990—before he tried to retract the statement—that he had been giv­en Hitler’s My New Order by a friend, which Ivana said was kept by his bed­side where he read it.

As Trump’s cam­paign for the pres­i­den­cy con­tin­ues, one can only won­der if he’ll be pro­pelled by a 21st-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can ver­sion of the “good Ger­mans,” peo­ple who are seduced by Trump’s boasts, prej­u­dice, blam­ing, war-mon­ger­ing and author­i­ty. As Gus­tave Gilbert, the prison psy­chi­a­trist at the post-WWII Nurem­burg War Crimes tri­bunal famous­ly said, “The per­pe­tra­tors showed no great devi­a­tion from the norm.”

Steven Rosen­feld cov­ers nation­al polit­i­cal issues for Alter­Net, includ­ing Amer­i­ca’s retire­ment cri­sis, democ­ra­cy and vot­ing rights, and cam­paigns and elec­tions. He is the author of “Count My Vote: A Cit­i­zen’s Guide to Vot­ing” (Alter­Net Books, 2008).

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/for-donald-trump-its-white-america-first/2016/07/15/4faa1b60-49f9-11e6-90a8-fb84201e0645_story.html

For Trump, it’s (white) Amer­i­ca First

It was just anoth­er week in Don­ald Trump’s (white) Amer­i­ca First cam­paign.

At least twice, Trump alleged that peo­ple have called for a “moment of silence” for the mad­man who killed five police offi­cers in Dal­las at a Black Lives Mat­ter protest.

It was an incen­di­ary accu­sa­tion, bound to stir racial hatred. Like Trump’s accu­sa­tion that New Jer­sey Mus­lims cheered the 9/11 attacks, this, too, was cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly false. There was no sign of such calls, and a top Trump advis­er couldn’t cor­rob­o­rate the alle­ga­tion.

Yet what was remark­able about the reck­less accu­sa­tion was how unre­mark­able Trump’s appeals to racist divi­sion have become. Days before and after that remark, Trump:

●Snubbed the NAACP, say­ing he wouldn’t appear at the group’s con­ven­tion.

Trump points out African Amer­i­can man at ral­ly

Play Video2:20

Speak­ing at a ral­ly in Red­ding, Calif., Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Don­ald Trump point­ed out a man at the ral­ly and said, “look at my African Amer­i­can.” Trump then men­tioned an African Amer­i­can sup­port­er who punched a Trump pro­test­er dressed like a Ku Klux Klan mem­ber at an Ari­zona ral­ly in March. (Reuters)

●Declared in response to racial unrest that “I am the law-and-order can­di­date” — an echo of Richard Nixon’s response to vio­lence fol­low­ing the Mar­tin Luther King Jr. assas­si­na­tion.

●Spoke at a ral­ly where, accord­ing to reports, sup­port­ers answered men­tions of Pres­i­dent Oba­ma with “he’s a mon­key” and of Hillary Clin­ton by say­ing “hang that bitch.”

●Was pre­ced­ed at the lectern at one event by a speak­er who asked the crowd if they would walk down a street in Wash­ing­ton or Bal­ti­more on a week­end. The response, per The Post’s Jen­na John­son: “No!”

There was also the delet­ed tweet by promi­nent Trump sur­ro­gate Carl Pal­adi­no, who said of the African Amer­i­can attor­ney gen­er­al: “Lynch @LorettaLynch.” Pal­adi­no said it was a mis­take, and maybe it was. Repub­li­cans try­ing to jus­ti­fy their sup­port for Trump would like to believe each inci­dent is a mis­un­der­stand­ing. But they can’t all be.

As Repub­li­cans head to Cleve­land to nom­i­nate Trump for the pres­i­den­cy, here, for easy ref­er­ence, is a com­pi­la­tion of what they’d like to ignore.

Trump tweet­ed an image, pre­vi­ous­ly post­ed to an anti-Semit­ic mes­sage board, of a Star of David atop paper mon­ey; he lat­er object­ed to his campaign’s deci­sion to remove the image.

Trump told Jew­ish Repub­li­cans, “You’re not going to sup­port me, because I don’t want your mon­ey.”

He had sup­port­ers raise their hands in a loy­al­ty pledge that the for­mer head of the Anti-Defama­tion League called a “fas­cist ges­ture.”

He said, “I don’t have a mes­sage” for sup­port­ers of his who threat­ened anti-Semit­ic vio­lence against a Jew­ish jour­nal­ist. The jour­nal­ist had crit­i­cized Mela­nia Trump, who said the writer “pro­voked” the attacks.

His “Amer­i­ca First” cam­paign slo­gan was the name of the iso­la­tion­ist, anti-Semit­ic orga­ni­za­tion that opposed involve­ment in World War II.

Trump has banned news orga­ni­za­tions, includ­ing The Post, from cov­er­ing his events but cre­den­tialed the host of a white-suprema­cist radio show.

He repeat­ed­ly declined to dis­avow David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan in a CNN inter­view.

The Trump cam­paign chose a white suprema­cist as a del­e­gate, then blamed a data­base error.

Trump retweet­ed a mes­sage from @WhiteGenocideTM, pho­ny crime sta­tis­tics that orig­i­nat­ed with neo-Nazis, a quote from Mus­soli­ni and a mes­sage from a sup­port­er who embraces a “right-wing death squad” label.

Trump’s cam­paign blamed an intern’s mis­take for tweet­ing an image of Nazi sol­diers super­im­posed on the Amer­i­can flag next to Trump’s like­ness.

Trump said of a Black Lives Mat­ter pro­test­er at his event: “Maybe he should have been roughed up.”

He talked of pay­ing the legal fees of a sup­port­er who suck­er-punched a black pro­test­er at an event.

He told reporters at anoth­er event to “look at my African Amer­i­can over here.”

Trump launched his cam­paign say­ing Mex­i­co was send­ing “rapists” across the bor­der. He called for mass depor­ta­tion of 11 mil­lion ille­gal immi­grants, “half” of whom are crim­i­nals.

He said the Amer­i­can-born judge pre­sid­ing over a fraud case against him could not be impar­tial because of his Mex­i­can ances­try.

He tweet­ed a pho­to of him­self with a taco bowl and wrote “I love His­pan­ics!” He kicked Jorge Ramos out of a news con­fer­ence and said Uni­vi­sion “takes its march­ing orders” from Mex­i­co.

He used bro­ken Eng­lish to mock Asians. He used a fake Indi­an accent. He referred to Eliz­a­beth War­ren, who claimed Native Amer­i­can ances­try, as “Poc­a­hon­tas.” He asked a Texas-born Asian Amer­i­can at one event: “Are you from South Korea?”

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He pro­posed ban­ning Mus­lims from enter­ing the Unit­ed States. He spoke favor­ably of forc­ing those already here to reg­is­ter with author­i­ties. When a tur­ban-wear­ing pro­test­er was removed from one of his events, Trump said: “He wasn’t wear­ing one of those hats, was he?”

Trump said last year that “I real­ly don’t know” if Oba­ma was born in the Unit­ed States. He implied that Oba­ma was respon­si­ble for the mass shoot­ing in Orlan­do. He let stand the remark by a ques­tion­er at one of his events who called Oba­ma a Mus­lim.

There are many more, but this col­umn is 800 words — far short­er than Trump’s cat­a­logue of racial ani­mus.

Twit­ter: @Milbank

Don­ald Trump Just Tweet­ed a Cam­paign Ad Fea­tur­ing What Look Like Nazi Sol­diers

The link includes pho­tos and tweets:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/07/donald-trump-campaign-ad-nazi-soldiers

The tweet is now delet­ed. Why did Trump delete it? Maybe it has some­thing to with those the sol­diers march­ing next to The Don­ald’s shoul­der:

Yes, Trump (or his graph­ic design min­ions) appar­ent­ly includ­ed a pho­to of sol­diers from the Waf­fen-SS, the noto­ri­ous mil­i­tary wing of the Nazi SS, in the image. John Schindler, who seems to know his World War II Ger­man uni­forms, has been detail­ing the Trump cam­paign’s pho­to-research fail:

It’s not clear what the source of the pho­to in the Trump tweet is; the sol­diers in the pho­to could be mod­ern-day World War II reen­ac­tors. Accord­ing to the most recent poll from Suffolk/USA Today, Trump leads the GOP field by three points.

Fly­nn, who was on the short­list to be Trump’s VP and spoke dur­ing prime­time at the Repub­li­can nation­al con­ven­tion last week, retweet­ed a post in sym­pa­thy with a Trump sup­port­er who mocked Hillary Clinton’s cam­paign, which has blamed Russ­ian hack­ers for the leak.

The retired army lieu­tenant gen­er­al Michael Fly­nn retweet­ed an explic­it­ly anti­se­mit­ic mes­sage regard­ing the leak of thou­sands of emails from the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Com­mit­tee.

Fly­nn, who was on the short­list to be Trump’s VP and spoke dur­ing prime­time at the Repub­li­can nation­al con­ven­tion last week, retweet­ed a post in sym­pa­thy with a Trump sup­port­er who mocked Hillary Clinton’s cam­paign, which has blamed Russ­ian hack­ers for the leak.

The pseu­do­ny­mous Trump sup­port­er tweet­ed: “CNN impli­cat­ed. ‘The USSR is to blame!’ Not any­more, Jews. Not any­more.”

Don­ald Trump con­sid­ered hav­ing Gen­er­al Michael Fly­nn as VP. He is still under con­sid­er­a­tion for a Cab­i­net Post or Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Posi­tion. Fly­nn Tweet­ed a com­ment that was not only anti-semit­ic. The arti­cle did not men­tion that the tweet sug­gests a phi­los­o­phy of the exis­tence of a large Jew­ish pow­er block or “a vast Jew­ish Con­spir­a­cy” rem­nant of Hitler’s regime.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/24/donald-trump-general-michael-flynn-antisemitic-tweet

Don­ald Trump and allies forced to answer ques­tions about anti­semitism

Retired US army lieu­tenant gen­er­al Michael Fly­nn
Asso­ci­a­tions of anti­semitism returned to shad­ow Don­ald Trump’s pres­i­den­tial cam­paign on Sun­day, after the Repub­li­can and his allies, includ­ing a three-star gen­er­al who was a vice-pres­i­den­tial hope­ful, were forced again to answer ques­tions about sup­port­ers with explic­it­ly big­ot­ed views.

The retired army lieu­tenant gen­er­al Michael Fly­nn retweet­ed an explic­it­ly anti­se­mit­ic mes­sage regard­ing the leak of thou­sands of emails from the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Com­mit­tee.

Fly­nn, who was on the short­list to be Trump’s VP and spoke dur­ing prime­time at the Repub­li­can nation­al con­ven­tion last week, retweet­ed a post in sym­pa­thy with a Trump sup­port­er who mocked Hillary Clinton’s cam­paign, which has blamed Russ­ian hack­ers for the leak.

The pseu­do­ny­mous Trump sup­port­er tweet­ed: “CNN impli­cat­ed. ‘The USSR is to blame!’ Not any­more, Jews. Not any­more.”

The retired gen­er­al delet­ed his retweet and lat­er said “the ear­li­er retweet was a mis­take” and that he had meant to link to an arti­cle on Clin­ton and the DNC emails. “My sin­cer­est apolo­gies,” he added.

On Sat­ur­day, Trump hint­ed that he would con­sid­er Fly­nn for sec­re­tary of defense, although he is inel­i­gi­ble under fed­er­al law, which requires can­di­dates to have spent at least sev­en years out of active ser­vice.

A spokesper­son for the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee told the Guardian: “There is no place in the Repub­li­can Par­ty for anti­se­mit­ic com­ments.”

In an inter­view broad­cast on Sun­day, Trump had once again to answer ques­tions about one of his loud­est and most noto­ri­ous sup­port­ers: David Duke, a for­mer grand wiz­ard of the Ku Klux Klan who on Fri­day announced a run for Sen­ate in Louisiana.

“I’m over­joyed to see Don­ald Trump and most Amer­i­cans embrace most of the issues that I’ve cham­pi­oned for years,” Duke said, a day after prais­ing Trump’s plat­form as reflec­tive of his own.

In Feb­ru­ary, Trump wavered on dis­avow­ing Duke’s endorse­ment, claim­ing “I know noth­ing about white suprema­cists” even though he had named Duke “a Klans­man” in 2000.

On Sun­day, the Repub­li­can nom­i­nee was much faster to reject Duke, say­ing he would poten­tial­ly sup­port a Demo­c­rat against him. “Depend­ing on who the Demo­c­rat [were],” Trump told NBC’s Meet the Press. “But the answer would be yes.”

The can­di­date added: “Rebuked. Is that OK? Rebuked, done.”

Duke has remained unfazed by Trump’s dis­avow­al, in June defend­ing the busi­ness­man from accu­sa­tions of racism by say­ing they were “very illus­tra­tive of the Jew­ish trib­al nature”, and that Jew­ish peo­ple behaved “like a pack of wild dogs”.

The party’s chair­man, Reince Priebus, has force­ful­ly rebuked any hint of asso­ci­a­tion with anti­semitism, say­ing on Sat­ur­day: “David Duke [and] his hate­ful big­otry have no place in the Repub­li­can par­ty and the RNC will nev­er sup­port his can­di­da­cy under any cir­cum­stance.”

Trump him­self was accused of anti­semitism ear­li­er this month, when his cam­paign tweet­ed an image of Clin­ton jux­ta­posed with images of mon­ey, a six-point­ed star and the words “most cor­rupt can­di­date ever”. The tweet was delet­ed, but Trump defend­ed it and insist­ed it did not show a star of David, even though the image was traced to an account the reg­u­lar­ly posts anti­se­mit­ic mate­r­i­al.

‘Rev­o­lu­tion is com­ing’: ex-KKK leader David Duke to run for Sen­ate

The busi­ness­man has also adopt­ed the ral­ly­ing cry “Amer­i­ca First”, which became famous as a slo­gan of the famous avi­a­tor Charles Lind­bergh and iso­la­tion­ists in the 1930s and ear­ly 1940s. Lind­bergh, who was wel­comed in Nazi Ger­many sev­er­al times before the sec­ond world war, wrote about “racial strength” and said civ­i­liza­tion depend­ed “on a west­ern wall of race and arms which can hold back either a Genghis Khan or the infil­tra­tion of infe­ri­or blood”.

The Anti-Defama­tion League asked Trump to stop using the phrase in April, but it appeared promi­nent­ly through­out the Repub­li­can con­ven­tion. Trump told the New York Times last week that he con­sid­ers the phrase “a brand-new, mod­ern term”.

Jew­ish reporters have suf­fered a bar­rage of anti­se­mit­ic harass­ment from Trump sup­port­ers for cov­er­age deemed neg­a­tive toward the can­di­date. The busi­ness­man has tried to appeal to Jew­ish Repub­li­cans by not­ing that his daugh­ter and son-in-law are Jew­ish.

In Decem­ber he told the Repub­li­can Jew­ish Coali­tion: “Look, I’m a nego­tia­tor like you folks, we’re nego­tia­tors.”

He added: “Is there any­body who doesn’t nego­ti­ate deals in this room?”

— Ben Jacobs con­tributed report­ing

All the Evi­dence We Could Find About Fred Trump’s Alleged Involve­ment with the KKK
March 9 , 2016
http://www.vice.com/read/all-the-evidence-we-could-find-about-fred-trumps-alleged-involvement-with-the-kkk

Late last month, in an inter­view with Repub­li­can fron­trun­ner Don­ald Trump, CNN host Jake Tap­per asked the can­di­date whether he would dis­avow an endorse­ment from long­time Ku Klux Klan leader and white nation­al­ist celebri­ty David Duke. Trump declined. “I don’t know any­thing about David Duke,” he said. Moments lat­er, he added, “I know noth­ing about white suprema­cists.”

Trump has since walked back his com­ments, blam­ing his hes­i­tance to con­demn the Klan on a “bad ear­piece.” The mat­ter has now been filed away into the ever-grow­ing archives of volatile state­ments Trump has made about race and eth­nic­i­ty dur­ing the cur­rent elec­tion cycle—a list that includes kick­ing off his pres­i­den­tial cam­paign by call­ing Mex­i­cans rapists, call­ing for the “ ‘total and com­plete shut­down of Mus­lims enter­ing the Unit­ed States,” and com­ment­ing that per­haps a Black Lives Mat­ter pro­test­er at one of his ral­lies “should have been roughed up.”

But the par­tic­u­lars of the David Duke inci­dent call to mind yet anoth­er news sto­ry, one that sug­gests that Trump’s father, the late New York real estate titan Fred Trump, once wore the robe and hood of a Klans­man.

Ver­sions of this sto­ry emerged last Sep­tem­ber when Boing Boing dug up an old New York Times arti­cle from May of 1927 that list­ed a Fred Trump among those arrest­ed at a Klan ral­ly in Jamaica, Queens, when “1,000 Klans­men and 100 police­men staged a free-for-all,” in the streets. Don­ald Trump’s father would have been 21 in 1927 and had spent most of his life in Queens.

As Boing Boing point­ed out, the Times account sim­ply names Fred Trump as one of the sev­en indi­vid­u­als arrest­ed at the ral­ly, and it states that he was released with­out charges, leav­ing room for the pos­si­bil­i­ty that he “may have been an inno­cent bystander, false­ly named, or oth­er­wise the vic­tim of mis­tak­en iden­ti­ty dur­ing or fol­low­ing a chaot­ic event.”

A few weeks after Boing Boing unearthed that 88-year-old scoop, the New York Times asked Don­ald Trump about the pos­si­bil­i­ty that his father had been arrest­ed at a Klan event. The younger Trump denied it all, telling inter­view­er Jason Horowitz that “it nev­er hap­pened” four times. When Horowitz asked if his father had lived at 175–24 Devon­shire Road—the address list­ed for the Fred Trump arrest­ed at the 1927 Klan rally—Donald dis­missed the claim as “total­ly false.”

“We lived on Ware­ham,” he told Horowitz. “The Devonshire—I know there is a road ‘Devon­shire,’ but I don’t think my father ever lived on Devon­shire.” Trump went on to deny every­thing else in the Times’ account of the 1927 ral­ly: “It should­n’t be writ­ten because it nev­er hap­pened, num­ber one. And num­ber two, there was nobody charged.”

Bio­graph­i­cal records con­firm that the Trump fam­i­ly did live on Ware­ham Place in Queens in the 1940s, when Don­ald was a kid. But accord­ing to at least one archived news­pa­per clip, Fred Trump also lived at 175–24 Devon­shire Road: A wed­ding announce­ment in the Jan­u­ary 22, 1936 issue of the Long Island Dai­ly Press,places Fred Trump at that address, and refers to his wife as “Mary MacLeod,” which is Don­ald Trump’s moth­er’s maid­en name.

More­over, three addi­tion­al news­pa­per clips unearthed by VICE con­tain sep­a­rate accounts of Fred Trump’s arrest at the May 1927 KKK ral­ly in Queens, each of which seems to con­firm the Times account of the events that day. While the clips don’t con­firm whether Fred Trump was actu­al­ly a mem­ber of the Klan, they do sug­gest that the rally—and the sub­se­quent arrests—did hap­pen, and did involve Don­ald Trump’s father, con­trary to the can­di­date’s denials. A fifth arti­cle men­tions the sev­en arrestees with­out giv­ing names, and claims that all of the indi­vid­u­als arrested—presumably includ­ing Trump—were wear­ing Klan attire.

The June 1, 1927, account of the May 31 Klan ral­ly print­ed in a defunct Brook­lyn paper called the Dai­ly Star spec­i­fies that a Fred Trump “was dis­missed on a charge of refus­ing to dis­perse.” That arti­cle lists sev­en total arrests, and states that four of those arrest­ed were expect­ed to go to court, and two were paroled. Fred Trump was the only one not held on charges.

The Klan’s reac­tion to the alleged police bru­tal­i­ty at the ral­ly was the sub­ject of anoth­er arti­cle, pub­lished in the Queens Coun­ty Evening News on June 2, 1927, and titled “Klan Plac­ards Assail Police, As War Vets Seek Parade Con­trol.” The piece is main­ly about the Klan dis­trib­ut­ing leaflets about being “assault­ed” by the “Roman Catholic police of New York City” at that same ral­ly. The arti­cle men­tions Fred Trump as hav­ing been “dis­charged” and gives the Devon­shire Road address, along with the names and address­es of the oth­er six men who faced charges.

Yet anoth­er account in anoth­er defunct local news­pa­per, the Rich­mond Hill Record, pub­lished on June 3, 1927, lists Fred Trump as one of the “Klan Arrests,” and also lists the Devon­shire Road address.

Anoth­er arti­cle about the ral­ly, pub­lished by the Long Island Dai­ly Press on June 2, 1927, men­tions that there were sev­en arrestees with­out list­ing names, and claims that all of the indi­vid­u­als arrest­ed were wear­ing Klan attire. The sto­ry, titled “Meet­ing on Parade Is Called Off,” focus­es on the police actions at the ral­ly, not­ing crit­i­cism of the cops for bru­tal­ly lash­ing out at the Klan sup­port­ers, who had assem­bled dur­ing a Memo­r­i­al Day parade.

While the Long Island Dai­ly Press does­n’t men­tion Fred Trump specif­i­cal­ly, the num­ber of arrestees cit­ed in the report is con­sis­tent with the oth­er accounts of the ral­ly. Sig­nif­i­cant­ly, the arti­cle refers to all of the arrestees as “ber­obed marchers.” If Fred Trump, or anoth­er one of the atten­dees, was­n’t dressed in a robe at the time, that may have been a report­ing error worth cor­rect­ing.

Accord­ing to Rory McVeigh, chair­man of the soci­ol­o­gy depart­ment at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Notre Dame, the ver­sion of the Klan that would have been active in Queens dur­ing the 1920s may not have nec­es­sar­i­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in stereo­typ­i­cal KKK activ­i­ties like fiery cross­es and lynch mobs.

“The Klan that became very pop­u­lar in the ear­ly 1920s did advo­cate white suprema­cy like the orig­i­nal Klan,” McVeigh told VICE in an email. “But in that respect, [its views were] not too much dif­fer­ent from a lot of oth­er white Amer­i­cans of that time peri­od.” In New York, McVeigh added, “the orga­ni­za­tion’s oppo­si­tion to immi­gra­tion and Catholics prob­a­bly held the biggest appeal for most of the peo­ple who joined.”

None of the arti­cles prove that Fred Trump was a mem­ber of the Klan, and it’s pos­si­ble that he was, as Boing Boing sug­gest­ed, just a bystander at the ral­ly. But while Don­ald Trump is absolute­ly right to say that his father was not charged in the 1927 inci­dent, the can­di­date’s oth­er claims—that Fred Trump nev­er lived at 175–24 Devon­shire Road, and more impor­tant­ly, that his involve­ment in a Klan ral­ly “nev­er happened”—appear to be untrue.

The Trump cam­paign did not respond to mul­ti­ple requests for com­ment.

Remem­ber when Don­ald Trump Jr. ‘acci­den­tal­ly’ gave an inter­view to the The Polit­i­cal Cesspool radio show and said he nev­er would have done the inter­view had he known they were a bunch of white nation­al­ists? Well, guess who was inter­view­ing GOP con­gress­men at the Repub­li­can Nation­al Con­ven­tion:

Talk­ing Points Memo Livewire

‘Pro-White’ Radio Host Inter­viewed 4 GOP­ers At RNC About Sup­port For Trump

By Alle­gra Kirk­land
Pub­lished July 25, 2016, 11:00 AM EDT

An unabashed­ly “pro-white” radio host inter­viewed four Repub­li­can con­gress­men about their sup­port for Don­ald Trump last week at the Repub­li­can Nation­al Con­ven­tion in Cleve­land.

In con­ver­sa­tions with James Edwards, host of the “Polit­i­cal Cesspool” pod­cast, Rep. Rob Bish­op (R‑UT), Rep. Tom Cole (R‑OK), Rep. War­ren David­son (R‑OH) and Rep. Ted Yoho (R‑FL) praised Trump’s fam­i­ly and con­trast­ed the GOP nom­i­nee with Demo­c­ra­t­ic oppo­nent Hillary Clin­ton. The inter­views were first flagged by Media Mat­ters..

Edwards pro­motes a “pro-White,” “Amer­i­ca first” brand of pol­i­tics that calls for the white birthrate to be revived to “above replace­ment lev­el fer­til­i­ty.” Though he insists he isn’t a white nation­al­ist, he spoke at the white nation­al­ist Amer­i­can Renais­sance con­fer­ence in May and is asso­ci­at­ed with a large net­work of writ­ers and activists who pro­mote white nation­al­ism.

He’s praised Trump for his anti-immi­grant rhetoric and land­ed the Trump cam­paign in hot water in March, when he broad­cast an inter­view with Don­ald Trump Jr. after attend­ing a Ten­nessee ral­ly as a ful­ly cre­den­tialed mem­ber of the press. Trump Jr. lat­er said that he would “nev­er have done” the inter­view with Edwards had he known of his beliefs.

Edwards touched on his views on race dur­ing his inter­view with Yoho, ask­ing if the main­stream media dis­tort­ed Rep. Steve King’s (R‑IA) claim last week that white peo­ple con­tributed more to civ­i­liza­tion than any oth­er “sub­group.”

“The took it out of con­text, absolute­ly,” Yoho replied.

“I took it as a breath of fresh air that he did not apol­o­gize,” Edwards said. “To me any com­pli­ment of the found­ing stock of this nation is imme­di­ate­ly decried as racist or xeno­pho­bic or what­ev­er the buzz­word of the day is.”

“I appre­ci­ate you bring­ing that up,” Yoho said.

At the GOP con­ven­tion, Edwards also called it a “pleas­ant sur­prise” to see a tweet from anti-immi­grant hate group Vir­ginia Dare broad­cast on the screens at Quick­en Loans Are­na.

...

“At the GOP con­ven­tion, Edwards also called it a “pleas­ant sur­prise” to see a tweet from anti-immi­grant hate group Vir­ginia Dare broad­cast on the screens at Quick­en Loans Are­na.”

Yes, what a pleas­ant sur­prise that the RNC splashed a VDare tweet across the con­ven­tion’s giant tweet tick­er. Ok, maybe it isn’t sur­pris­ing at this point. Or pleas­ant. But if you’re a white nation­al­ist radio host like James Edwards, the whole expe­ri­ence of inter­view­ing mul­ti­ple con­gress­men at the con­ven­tion and see­ing a VDare tweet must have been at least a some­what pleas­ant sur­prise. The sec­ond white nation­al­ist tweet that was pro­mot­ing right in the mid­dle of Trump’s speech was pre­sum­ably less sur­pris­ing at that point. But still pleas­ant for the white nation­al­ists in atten­dance.

So what’s next for the Trump cam­paigns white nation­al­ist out­reach efforts? How about a ques­tion and answer ses­sion with the pro-Trump “r/The_Donald” Red­dit forum that’s known for being an cesspool of racists and big­ots:

Talk­ing Points Memo News

Trump To Take Ques­tions From Inter­net Hotbed For The Unhinged Alt-Right

By Kather­ine Krueger
Pub­lished July 27, 2016, 5:50 PM EDT

Don­ald Trump is set to host a free­wheel­ing inter­view Wednes­day night on one of the internet’s most ded­i­cat­ed com­mu­ni­ties for Trump fan­dom, and one that’s also become a major online haven for the alt-right.

The GOP nom­i­nee is sched­uled to appear on the social net­work­ing site Red­dit for an Ask Me Any­thing (AMA), an open-to-all inter­view where anony­mous inter­net users can ask the appoint­ed per­son any­thing they want to, on the site’s Trump-themed group, r/The_Donald. Trump will then choose which ques­tions to answer in real time start­ing at 7 p.m. ET.

The r/The_Donald com­mu­ni­ty page, known as a sub­red­dit, boasts near­ly 200,000 sub­scribers and referrs to Trump as “our God Emper­or” and “the Nim­ble Nav­i­ga­tor” in a post pro­mot­ing the AMA. In Feb­ru­ary 2016, the sub­red­dit had its best traf­fic month ever, report­ing more than 50 mil­lion page views. The page was thrust into the nation­al spot­light ear­li­er this month as the appar­ent source of Trump’s infa­mous defense of his tweet call­ing Hillary Clin­ton the “most cor­rupt can­di­date ever” inside a Star of David: an image of the same five-point star shape on the cov­er of a “Frozen” col­or­ing book.

Users perus­ing the page are greet­ed by posts fan­ta­siz­ing about the acci­den­tal death of FBI Direc­tor James Comey for his han­dling of the Hillary Clin­ton email probe, mak­ing racist jokes about Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma and his fam­i­ly, and lam­poon­ing the “main­stream media” and pseu­do-con­ser­v­a­tive “cucks” for any per­ceived slight against their pre­ferred pres­i­den­tial can­di­date. Oh, and memes. Lots and lots of con­ser­v­a­tive memes.

All that atten­tion has vault­ed the community’s proud­ly polit­i­cal­ly incor­rect posts onto the front page of Red­dit, a dis­tinc­tion that dri­ves even more eye­balls from vis­i­tors across the site, which has raised more than a few eye­brows about the group’s inten­tions.

While land­ing an appear­ance from the Don­ald him­self has been the group’s biggest vic­to­ry to date, its sched­ule for upcom­ing AMAs is a ver­i­ta­ble who’s‑who of alt-right cru­saders: online harass­ment enthu­si­ast Milo Yiannopou­los, fresh off his life­time Twit­ter ban, con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist Alex Jones and con­ser­v­a­tive pun­dit Ann Coul­ter.

...

Although the com­mu­ni­ty is intend­ed as a gath­er­ing place for avowed Trump back­ers, the page’s mod­er­a­tors are noto­ri­ous for ban­ning users who vio­late their rules, with oth­er pages sprout­ing up among banned users. Last month, the sub­red­dit was rocked by its biggest user-based con­tro­ver­sy to date when mod­er­a­tors were forced to ban a user going by the name “CisWhiteMael­strom,” who’s been cred­it­ed with the subreddit’s explo­sive growth, a mete­oric rise that was well-doc­u­ment­ed by New York Mag­a­zine.

That user ran aground with a post that fel­low mod­er­a­tors decid­ed went a bridge too far by boast­ing he could get away with rap­ing “ille­gals.”

In a post about the deci­sion to ban “CisWhiteMael­strom,” user “TehDon­ald” said he also pri­vate­ly divulged plans to start pro­mot­ing a white suprema­cist-run, alt-right sub­red­dit on r/The_Donald.

“Hav­ing a mod­er­a­tor of the largest pro-Trump sub­red­dit pro­mote peo­ple that Trump him­self would dis­avow does noth­ing to help Trump,” the mod­er­a­tor wrote. “It does, how­ev­er, give cred­i­bil­i­ty to the left wing nar­ra­tive that Trump’s cam­paign is built on racism.”

As a Dai­ly Beast reporter flagged Wednes­day after­noon, r/The_Donald also has some inter­est­ing ques­tions for users to apply to mod­er­ate the page. Among them: “Is there a dif­fer­ence between white nation­al­ism and white suprema­cy?” and “Was 9/11 an inside job?”

““Hav­ing a mod­er­a­tor of the largest pro-Trump sub­red­dit pro­mote peo­ple that Trump him­self would dis­avow does noth­ing to help Trump,” the mod­er­a­tor wrote. “It does, how­ev­er, give cred­i­bil­i­ty to the left wing nar­ra­tive that Trump’s cam­paign is built on racism.””

That’s the spin from the sub­red­dit mod­er­a­tors last month when they were try­ing to clean up the mess “CisWhiteMael­strom” cre­at­ed. And it high­lights one of the more dis­turb­ing aspects of this entire elec­tion cycle: Is giv­ing cred­i­bil­i­ty to the left wing nar­ra­tive that Trump’s cam­paign is built on racism actu­al­ly hurt­ing Trump? If so, some­one might want to inform the Trump cam­paign about that since one of its core strat­e­gy appears to be try­ing to ensure every­one knows the cam­paign is at least very, very wel­com­ing to racists.

Maybe the forum can ask Ann Coul­ter about these nuances and poten­tial pit­falls of Trump’s cam­paign strat­e­gy dur­ing her upcom­ing sched­uled Q&A event. She might have some insights regard­ing what Trump is think­ing.

When Don­ald Trump start­ed the laugh­able black vot­er “out­reach” phase of his cam­paign last weeks it was quick­ly point­ed out that nature of Trump’s appeal — which seemed to be designed to offend the black com­mu­ni­ty by describ­ing them all poor, unem­ployed and une­d­u­cat­ed with “noth­ing to lose” if they vote for Trump — was actu­al­ly intend­ed as out­reach towards white vot­ers who tra­di­tion­al­ly vote GOP but may not be com­fort­able the lev­el of aggres­sive­ly race-bait­ing that’s become a trade­mark of the Trump cam­paign (these are pre­sum­ably tra­di­tion­al GOP vot­ers who could­n’t pick up the GOP’s tra­di­tion­al­ly loud racist dog-whistling in years past).

But it’s also worth not­ing that this black vot­er out­reach ploy was­n’t just out­reach for white vot­ers uncom­fort­able with vot­ing for an open racist. By fram­ing the entire out­reach effort using the worst kinds of stereo­types of the black com­mu­ni­ty it was simul­ta­ne­ous ongo­ing out­reach to the white nation­al­ist vot­ers that form the core of Trump’s base. So it was lit­er­al­ly ‘black vot­er out­reach’ that was on one lev­el designed to appeal white vot­ers uncom­fort­able with Alt-Right Trump, and on anoth­er lev­el white vot­ers most enthu­si­as­tic about Alt-Right Trump. For a cam­paign that’s basi­cal­ly run­ning the Ann Coul­ter play­book this year it’s a pret­ty effi­cient strat­e­gy.

So with that strat­e­gy in mind, it’s worth not­ing that anoth­er kind of simul­ta­ne­ous out­reach of that nature just took place, although it was­n’t quite as simul­ta­ne­ous­ly as the above exam­ple where the exact same speech was used to con­vey the oppo­site mes­sage to two dif­fer­ent groups. But it was close. First, we start with the Trump cam­paign’s lat­est denun­ci­a­tion of David Duke’s fawn­ing sup­port;

The Chris­t­ian Sci­ence Mon­i­tor

Trump denounces robo­calls from David Duke’s cam­paign: Why now?

Spokes­peo­ple from Don­ald Trump’s cam­paign quick­ly and explic­it­ly dis­avowed a robo­call from David Duke link­ing the for­mer Ku Klux Klan leader to the Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee.

By Gre­tel Kauff­man, Staff
August 30, 2016

Don­ald Trump’s cam­paign denounced a robo­call from US Sen­ate can­di­date and for­mer Ku Klux Klan grand wiz­ard David Duke on Mon­day, call­ing Mr. Duke’s self-asso­ci­a­tion with Mr. Trump “absolute­ly dis­gust­ing.”

In the robo­call, Duke urges lis­ten­ers to “stand up and vote” for both him­self and Don­ald Trump.

“I’ll tell the truth that no oth­er can­di­date will dare say,” he says. “Unless mas­sive immi­gra­tion is stopped now, we’ll be out-num­bered and out-vot­ed in our own nation. It’s hap­pen­ing. We’re los­ing our gun rights, our free speech. We’re taxed to death. We’re los­ing our jobs and busi­ness­es to unfair trade. We’re los­ing our coun­try. Look at the Super Bowl salute to the Black Pan­ther cop killers.”

Trump’s spokes­peo­ple were quick to dis­tance the Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee from Duke and his call, telling Politi­co that the Trump cam­paign has “no knowl­edge of these calls or any relat­ed activ­i­ties” and “has con­tin­ued to denounce David Duke and any group or indi­vid­ual asso­ci­at­ed with a mes­sage of hate.”

But Trump has not always been so clear in his dis­avow­al of Duke and oth­er mem­bers of the alt-right move­ment. In Feb­ru­ary, after Duke, a radio host, told his audi­ence that vot­ing for any can­di­date oth­er than Don­ald Trump “is real­ly trea­son to your her­itage,” Trump refused to explic­it­ly con­demn the endorse­ment.

Instead, in an inter­view with CNN’s Jake Tap­per, Trump respond­ed that he did­n’t know any­thing about David Duke or the Ku Klux Klan, adding, “You wouldn’t want me to con­demn a group that I know noth­ing about.” (While Trump may not have known any­thing about David Duke in 2016, he was famil­iar with him in 2000, when he said in a state­ment that Duke and oth­er mem­bers of the Reform Par­ty were “not com­pa­ny I wish to keep.”)

Short­ly after his vague com­ments, which were met with sharp crit­i­cism from both Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans alike, Trump offi­cial­ly denounced the endorse­ment, say­ing, “David Duke endorsed me? OK, alright. I dis­avow, OK?”

Since then, Duke has con­tin­ued to link him­self and his ideas to the Trump cam­paign. In July, when Duke announced his own cam­paign for US Sen­ate, the for­mer Klan leader said he was “over­joyed to see Don­ald Trump and most Amer­i­cans embrace most of the issues I’ve cham­pi­oned for years.”

Despite Trump’s pub­lic dis­avowals of Duke and the alt-right move­ment, the Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date has found a core fan­base in its mem­bers. But now, as Trump strug­gles to win over col­lege-edu­cat­ed whites, he has begun to adjust some of his cam­paign strate­gies to appeal to a broad­er range of con­ser­v­a­tives. As the Chris­t­ian Sci­ence Mon­i­tor’s Patrik Jon­s­son report­ed ear­li­er this week:

As the New York mogul has dri­ven some of his base away – includ­ing, sig­nif­i­cant­ly, sub­ur­ban white women – he has had to reach deep­er and deep­er into the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment for fans. He has land­ed on a strain of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics that may be as vex­ing as it is appar­ent­ly ascen­dant. That became obvi­ous as Trump strug­gled to ease his tough immi­gra­tion rhetoric this week – key to the alt-right’s sup­port – while not seem­ing to ease it.

...

“Trump’s spokes­peo­ple were quick to dis­tance the Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee from Duke and his call, telling Politi­co that the Trump cam­paign has “no knowl­edge of these calls or any relat­ed activ­i­ties” and “has con­tin­ued to denounce David Duke and any group or indi­vid­ual asso­ci­at­ed with a mes­sage of hate.””

Ok, so we had anoth­er “I don’t know any­thing about all this sup­port from David Duke, but I total­ly denounce it” inci­dent for the Trump cam­paign, albeit a lit­tle more time­ly this time around. And that’s a pret­ty clear and open denounce­ment of his white nation­al­ist base, which means a white nation­al­ist embrace must be just around the cor­ner. And it was. It was just Don­ald Trump Jr. doing the white nation­al­ist hug­ging on his father’s behalf:

Lit­tle Green Foot­balls

Don­ald Trump Jr. Retweets Noto­ri­ous White Suprema­cist Anti­semite Kevin Mac­Don­ald
The rot­ten apple doesn’t fall far from the rot­ten tree

Charles John­son
Tues­day, August 30, 2016 at 5:29 pm PDT

So today, the son of the Repub­li­can Party’s nom­i­nee for pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States, Don­ald Trump Jr., retweet­ed one of the most noto­ri­ous anti­se­mit­ic white suprema­cists in the coun­try, psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor Kevin Mac­Don­ald.

The retweet is still vis­i­ble in his time­line as I write this, but here’s a screen­shot because Trump Jr. tends to delete these things when he’s exposed.
[see screen­shot]
Notice how many retweets and likes MacDonald’s tweet received — a direct result of the high vis­i­bil­i­ty he gets from Trump Jr.’s endorse­ment.

Trump Jr. has report­ed­ly been tak­ing a large role in his father’s cam­paign, and this isn’t his first asso­ci­a­tion with the white suprema­cist move­ment. Ear­li­er this year, he gave an inter­view to vile racist/antisemitic radio show The Polit­i­cal Cesspool, and sub­se­quent­ly the host of that show was invit­ed by the Trump cam­paign to attend the Repub­li­can Nation­al Con­ven­tion and was giv­en press cre­den­tials.

Also, last month we exposed Trump Jr. fol­low­ing — and “lik­ing” tweets by — two of the worst and most active “alt-right” freaks on Twit­ter. Short­ly after we pub­lished our arti­cle, Trump Jr. unfol­lowed both of these accounts, and then blocked me on Twit­ter. All of this with­out ever renounc­ing them, or even mak­ing any kind of state­ment, even though I con­tact­ed him direct­ly and asked for one.

This retweet of Kevin Mac­Don­ald is anoth­er step fur­ther for Trump Jr. though; this is basi­cal­ly the equiv­a­lent of retweet­ing David Duke. And in fact David Duke is also a huge fan of Mac­Don­ald, prais­ing his anti­se­mit­ic books on the dan­gers of Jews.

“This retweet of Kevin Mac­Don­ald is anoth­er step fur­ther for Trump Jr. though; this is basi­cal­ly the equiv­a­lent of retweet­ing David Duke. And in fact David Duke is also a huge fan of Mac­Don­ald, prais­ing his anti­se­mit­ic books on the dan­gers of Jews.”

Yes, the day after Trump denounces David Duke’s sup­port, Don­ald Trump Jr. retweets Kevin Mac­Don­ald. It was the kind of sub­tle mes­sag­ing we’ve come to expect.

So, as we can see, we’ve now hit a point where bla­tant white nation­al­ist dog-whis­tles (that aren’t real­ly dog-whis­tles since every­one can hear them) are now the cen­tral mes­sage of the GOP’s ‘black vot­er out­reach’, while retweet­ing white nation­al­ist is appar­ent­ly the new dog-whis­tle. The new shock­ing­ly loud dog-whis­tle.

In what is bound to be the first of many loath­some acts from the Repub­li­can Jew­ish Coali­tion — which has Shel­don Adel­son sit­ting on its board — now that Don­ald Trump is set to thrust the nation into an era of white nation­al­ism and the rise of the “Alt-Right”, the RJC wants the Anti-Defama­tion League inves­ti­gat­ed for par­ti­san­ship, some­thing that could threat­en the ADL’s tax-exempt sta­tus. Why? The RJC feels the ADL could be in a “com­pro­mis­ing posi­tion” as a result of its focus on the anti-Semit­ic imagery and rhetoric employed by Trump’s cam­paign and sup­port­ers:

Talk­ing Points Memo Livewire

Repub­li­can Jew­ish Coali­tion Warns ADL In ‘Com­pro­mis­ing Posi­tion’ On Trump

By Esme Cribb
Pub­lished Novem­ber 9, 2016, 5:35 PM EDT

The Repub­li­can Jew­ish Coali­tion sug­gest­ed Wednes­day that the Anti-Defama­tion League went too far in its crit­i­cism of Don­ald Trump’s cam­paign and sup­port­ers dur­ing the 2016 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion.

RJC exec­u­tive direc­tor Matt Brooks told the For­ward that the non­prof­it group could be in a “com­pro­mis­ing posi­tion” as a result of its focus on the anti-Semit­ic imagery and rhetoric employed by Trump’s cam­paign and sup­port­ers.

“I think it bears watch­ing,” Brooks said, “and I think that the ADL has put itself poten­tial­ly in a com­pro­mis­ing posi­tion going for­ward, in terms of its abil­i­ty to inter­act with the incom­ing admin­is­tra­tion.”

He called for an “exam­i­na­tion” of the ADL’s activ­i­ty.

“I under­stand that they are an impor­tant watch­dog on these things, but it seems to me that at crit­i­cal times in the course of this cam­paign, a pat­tern emerged where the ADL put their thumb on the scale,” Brooks said.

Asked whether he inter­pret­ed those com­ments to be a threat to the orga­ni­za­tion’s tax-exempt sta­tus, Oren Segal, the direc­tor of the ADL’s Cen­ter on Extrem­ism, said the group will con­tin­ue to call out anti-Semi­tism where it sees it.

“Peo­ple have attacked ADL on the right and on the left for many years based on our poli­cies,” Segal told TPM. “Our con­sis­tent record of speak­ing out against big­otry and anti-Semi­tism and hatred is as rel­e­vant today as it has ever been and that’s not going to change. We’re not going to stop speak­ing out on effects that they have because once we do we cease to be an orga­ni­za­tion.”

An ADL task force pub­lished a report in Octo­ber iden­ti­fy­ing a small cohort of self-des­ig­nat­ed Trump sup­port­ers, white nation­al­ists and con­ser­v­a­tives it said was respon­si­ble for the major­i­ty of anti-Semit­ic Twit­ter attacks on jour­nal­ists over the course of the 2016 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion.

In Novem­ber, the ADL released a state­ment blast­ing the Trump cam­paign for air­ing a clos­ing ad that invoked “sub­jects that anti-Semi­tes have used for ages.”

...

“I think it bears watching...and I think that the ADL has put itself poten­tial­ly in a com­pro­mis­ing posi­tion going for­ward, in terms of its abil­i­ty to inter­act with the incom­ing admin­is­tra­tion.”

So the Repub­li­can Jew­ish Coali­tion thinks the ADL should get inves­ti­gat­ed and pos­si­bly lose its tax-exempt sta­tus because it dis­cov­ered an abun­dance of anti-Semi­tism ema­nat­ing from the Trump cam­paign and point­ed that out. Or, at a min­i­mum, it should­n’t point out Trump’s exten­sive ties to anti-Semi­tes in the future. That’s not treach­er­ous­ly pathet­ic or any­thing. No, not at all.

Does Don­ald Trump have mul­ti­ple per­son­al­i­ty dis­or­der? If so, one of those per­son­al­i­ties is appar­ent­ly very, very, non-anti-Semit­ic. And also very non-racist. At least it thinks it is. And it decid­ed to hold a press con­fer­ence:

Talk­ing Points Memo
Livewire

Trump: ‘I Am The Least Anti-Semit­ic Per­son You’ve Ever Seen’

By Esme Cribb
Pub­lished Feb­ru­ary 16, 2017, 2:11 PM EDT

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump said Thurs­day that he finds ques­tions about whether his admin­is­tra­tion has incit­ed anti-Semit­ic acts “insult­ing” and that he is “the least anti-Semit­ic per­son you’ve ever seen.”

“Sit down,” Trump told a reporter dur­ing a press con­fer­ence. “Num­ber one, I am the least anti-Semit­ic per­son you’ve ever seen in your entire life. Num­ber two, racism, the least racist per­son.”

...

“Qui­et, qui­et, qui­et. See, he lied that he was going to get up and ask a straight, sim­ple ques­tion, so, you know, wel­come to the world of the media,” Trump said.

He said that he finds charges of anti-Semi­tism “repul­sive.”

“I hate even the ques­tion because peo­ple that know me, and you heard the prime min­is­ter, you heard Netanyahu yes­ter­day, did you hear him,” Trump said, refer­ring to a joint press con­fer­ence he held Wednes­day with Israeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Netanyahu.

“Bibi, he said, ‘I’ve known Don­ald Trump for a long time.’ And then he said, ‘For­get it’,” Trump said. So you should take that instead of hav­ing to get up and ask a very insult­ing ques­tion like that.”

Trump lat­er claimed that his “oppo­nents” are com­mit­ting anti-Semit­ic acts to fuel out­rage against him.

“Some of the signs you’ll see are not put up by the peo­ple that love or like Don­ald Trump. They’re put up by the oth­er side and you think it’s like play­ing it straight, no, but you have some of those signs and some of that anger is caused by the oth­er side,” he said. “They’ll do signs and they’ll do draw­ings that are inap­pro­pri­ate. It won’t be my peo­ple. It will be the peo­ple on the oth­er side to anger peo­ple like you.”

“What are you going to do about it?” anoth­er reporter asked.

“I’m work­ing on it,” Trump said.

“Some of the signs you’ll see are not put up by the peo­ple that love or like Don­ald Trump. They’re put up by the oth­er side and you think it’s like play­ing it straight, no, but you have some of those signs and some of that anger is caused by the oth­er side...They’ll do signs and they’ll do draw­ings that are inap­pro­pri­ate. It won’t be my peo­ple. It will be the peo­ple on the oth­er side to anger peo­ple like you.”

Wow, so Trump’s non-anti-Semit­ic, non-racist alter­nate per­son­al­i­ty just charged that any dis­plays of anti-Semi­tism are actu­al­ly the work of his polit­i­cal oppo­nents try­ing to whip up anti-Trump anger. Or, to put it anoth­er way, Trump just told his legion of anti-Semit­ic white suprema­cist/Alt-Right sup­port­ers that he will blame any future dis­plays of anti-Semi­tism they do on their polit­i­cal oppo­nents. Or, to put it anoth­er way, Trump just pub­licly incen­tivized anti-Semi­tes to let their anti-Semit­ic flags run high and proud. More so.

Some might con­sid­er pro­vid­ing polit­i­cal cov­er and encour­age­ment for acts of anti-Semi­tism a rather anti-Semit­ic thing to do. But not Don­ald Trump. As the old adage goes, ‘keep your friends close, and your ene­mies clos­er. Maybe you should even sur­round your­self with them and make them your clos­est advi­sors’.

And in oth­er total­ly non-anti-Semit­ic Trump Team news...

Fol­low­ing Don­ald Trump’s bizarre press con­fer­ence last week — where a ques­tion about a wave of bomb threats against Jew­ish cen­ters prompt­ed Don­ald Trump to declare him­self the least anti-Semit­ic and racist per­son you’ve ever seen — Trump got a do-over dur­ing a vis­it to the Nation­al Muse­um of African Amer­i­can His­to­ry and Cul­ture on explain­ing he’s going to do about the appar­ent rise in anti-Semi­tism since his elec­tion. He kept his answer much sim­pler this around, declar­ing anti-Semi­tism “hor­ri­ble” and “painful” in a fair­ly short, stilt­ed state­ment. And while this was­n’t actu­al­ly progress for soci­ety in any mean­ing­ful way, he did man­age to avoid going on an extend­ed rant about him­self. So it was sort of progress for Trump:

The New York Times

Trump Calls Anti-Semi­tism ‘Hor­ri­ble’ and ‘Painful’

By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS
FEB. 21, 2017

WASHINGTON — Pres­i­dent Trump said Tues­day that anti-Semi­tism is “hor­ri­ble” and “painful,” react­ing pub­licly for the first time after draw­ing crit­i­cism for fail­ing to con­demn inci­dents and threats tar­get­ing Jew­ish peo­ple and insti­tu­tions over recent weeks.

Dur­ing a vis­it to the Nation­al Muse­um of African Amer­i­can His­to­ry and Cul­ture, Mr. Trump said he had been remind­ed of the need to com­bat big­otry and intol­er­ance “in all of its very ugly forms.” He spoke one day after 11 bomb threats were phoned in to Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty cen­ters around the coun­try and a Jew­ish ceme­tery in Uni­ver­si­ty City, Mo., was van­dal­ized.

“The anti-Semit­ic threats tar­get­ing our Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty and com­mu­ni­ty cen­ters are hor­ri­ble, and are painful, and a very sad reminder of the work that still must be done to root out hate and prej­u­dice and evil,” Mr. Trump said.

The state­ment came after weeks in which the lead­ers of major Jew­ish orga­ni­za­tions com­plained pri­vate­ly to mem­bers of Mr. Trump’s inner cir­cle, includ­ing his son-in-law Jared Kush­n­er, about the president’s seem­ing unwill­ing­ness to speak out force­ful­ly against anti-Semit­ic inci­dents. His fail­ure to do so stoked con­cern among some Jew­ish lead­ers that Mr. Trump, whose pres­i­den­tial cam­paign drew the sup­port of racist and anti-Semit­ic groups includ­ing the Ku Klux Klan, was at best will­ing to stay silent about such actions and at worst qui­et­ly con­don­ing them.

The com­ment on Tues­day was a rare con­ces­sion to the demands of out­side forces by a pres­i­dent who prides him­self on defy­ing expec­ta­tions. Despite the ques­tions that arose dur­ing his cam­paign, Mr. Trump has nev­er proac­tive­ly deliv­ered a state­ment con­demn­ing anti-Semi­tism.

“The president’s sud­den acknowl­edg­ment of anti-Semi­tism is a Band-Aid on the can­cer of anti-Semi­tism that has infect­ed his own admin­is­tra­tion,” said Steven Gold­stein, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Anne Frank Cen­ter for Mutu­al Respect. “When Pres­i­dent Trump responds to anti-Semi­tism proac­tive­ly and in real time, and with­out pleas and pres­sure, that’s when we’ll be able to say this pres­i­dent has turned a cor­ner. This is not that moment.”

The White House was crit­i­cized by Jew­ish groups last month when it issued a state­ment mark­ing Inter­na­tion­al Holo­caust Remem­brance Day that did not men­tion the six mil­lion Jews who per­ished, instead includ­ing a gen­er­al men­tion of “the deprav­i­ty and hor­ror inflict­ed on inno­cent peo­ple by Nazi ter­ror” and “those who died.” Pressed on the mat­ter lat­er, Sean Spicer, the White House press sec­re­tary, defend­ed the state­ment as “inclu­sive” of all of those tar­get­ed dur­ing the Holo­caust, includ­ing Gyp­sies, priests and homo­sex­u­als, and called crit­i­cism of it “pathet­ic.”

Con­cern mount­ed among Jew­ish lead­ers after a news con­fer­ence last week, when Mr. Trump react­ed angri­ly to a ques­tion about his response to an increas­ing inci­dence of anti-Semit­ic acts around the nation. The pres­i­dent called the query insult­ing and demand­ed that the ques­tion­er, who works for a Jew­ish pub­li­ca­tion, sit down. The Anti-Defama­tion League denounced the president’s reac­tion “mind-bog­gling.”

Mr. Trump, who was crit­i­cized dur­ing his pres­i­den­tial cam­paign for being slow or half­heart­ed in con­demn­ing hate speech, has been par­tic­u­lar­ly stung by accu­sa­tions that he is anti-Semit­ic or has nur­tured the rise of such sen­ti­ment. Such accu­sa­tions have been lev­eled against both the pres­i­dent and his chief strate­gist, Steven K. Ban­non, a for­mer head of Bre­it­bart News, a web­site that has cul­ti­vat­ed a white nation­al­ist fol­low­ing.

Mr. Trump’s daugh­ter Ivan­ka Trump, who con­vert­ed to Judaism to mar­ry Mr. Kush­n­er, an obser­vant Jew, wrote in a Twit­ter post on Mon­day: “Amer­i­ca is a nation built on the prin­ci­ple of reli­gious tol­er­ance. We must pro­tect our hous­es of wor­ship & reli­gious cen­ters. #JCC” JCC is the abbre­vi­a­tion for Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty cen­ters.

Mor­ton A. Klein, the pres­i­dent of the Zion­ist Orga­ni­za­tion of Amer­i­ca and a strong sup­port­er of Mr. Trump, said, “One of the issues here is that Pres­i­dent Trump and Steve Ban­non are very upset and very frus­trat­ed that so many Jew­ish orga­ni­za­tion­al lead­ers have accused them of being anti-Semit­ic, which is very unfair and sim­ply inac­cu­rate.”

He added, though, that “Pres­i­dent Trump need­ed to, him­self — not through a state­ment by his daugh­ter that didn’t even men­tion anti-Semi­tism — speak up against this kind of hatred and urge law enforce­ment to do all they can to find these per­pe­tra­tors and hold them account­able.”

“I wish he had gone fur­ther,” Mr. Klein said of Mr. Trump’s state­ment. But he added that the pres­i­dent was resis­tant to accept­ing coun­sel about how he should respond to del­i­cate issues.

The pro­lif­er­a­tion of anti-Semit­ic inci­dents in the Unit­ed States and the president’s fail­ure to address them pub­licly were fre­quent top­ics of con­ver­sa­tion in Jerusalem over the week­end, where the lead­ers of Amer­i­can Jew­ish groups gath­ered for meet­ings, accord­ing to atten­dees who described the pri­vate dis­cus­sions on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty.

On Tues­day, sev­er­al orga­ni­za­tions issued state­ments prais­ing Mr. Trump’s com­ments.

“We appre­ci­ate that Pres­i­dent Trump spoke direct­ly to this mat­ter,” said Nathan J. Dia­ment, the exec­u­tive direc­tor for pub­lic pol­i­cy at the Union of Ortho­dox Jew­ish Con­gre­ga­tions of Amer­i­ca. “The words of a pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States car­ry great weight, and it is impor­tant that Mr. Trump addressed the Amer­i­can Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty and all our fel­low Amer­i­cans at this time.”

Mark Potok, a senior fel­low at the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter, which tracks anti-Semit­ic activ­i­ties, said Tues­day that the wave of threats was “real­ly wor­ry­ing,” espe­cial­ly because of the “ten­den­cy on the part of this admin­is­tra­tion to com­plete­ly over­look ter­ror­ism and polit­i­cal vio­lence from the domes­tic rad­i­cal right.”

Mr. Potok also wel­comed Mr. Trump’s com­ments but crit­i­cized them as tardy.

“It’s very nice that Pres­i­dent Trump oppos­es these crimes,” Mr. Potok said. “It might have been help­ful if he had done so months or even years ear­li­er.”

...

““The president’s sud­den acknowl­edg­ment of anti-Semi­tism is a Band-Aid on the can­cer of anti-Semi­tism that has infect­ed his own admin­is­tra­tion,” said Steven Gold­stein, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Anne Frank Cen­ter for Mutu­al Respect. “When Pres­i­dent Trump responds to anti-Semi­tism proac­tive­ly and in real time, and with­out pleas and pres­sure, that’s when we’ll be able to say this pres­i­dent has turned a cor­ner. This is not that moment.””

So will Trump’s dis­turbing­ly mild and belat­ed con­dem­na­tion of anti-Semi­tism end the grow­ing con­cerns in the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty over Trump’s endur­ing alliance with the Alt-Right and white suprema­cists? The Anne Frank Cen­ter clear­ly was­n’t won over and only time will tell whether or not the more Trump-friend­ly Jew­ish orga­ni­za­tions con­tin­ue to stand by Trump.

But if you lis­ten to White House spokesman Sean Spicer, all of these con­cerns, espe­cial­ly those of the Anne Frank cen­ter, are total­ly mis­guid­ed. Instead of ques­tion­ing Trump’s affil­i­a­tion with anti-Semi­tes, accord­ing to Spicer, these groups should be prais­ing him for his ‘lead­er­ship’:

Talk­ing Points Memo
Livewire

Spicer: Anne Frank Cen­ter Should Praise Trump’s ‘Lead­er­ship’

By Matt Shuham
Pub­lished Feb­ru­ary 21, 2017, 2:15 PM EDT

White House press sec­re­tary Sean Spicer respond­ed to a harsh­ly word­ed com­ment from the Anne Frank Cen­ter for Mutu­al Respect Tues­day by say­ing he wished the cen­ter had rec­og­nized the President’s “lead­er­ship” in com­bat­ing anti-Semi­tism.

The cen­ter respond­ed to Trump’s denun­ci­a­tion of anti-Semi­tism Tues­day — after rel­a­tive silence from his admin­is­tra­tion on the issue — by call­ing it “a pathet­ic aster­isk of con­de­scen­sion after weeks in which he and his staff have com­mit­ted grotesque acts and omis­sions reflect­ing Anti­semitism, yet day after day have refused to apol­o­gize and cor­rect the record.”

...

“I think he has been very force­ful with his denun­ci­a­tion of peo­ple who seek to attack peo­ple because of their hate, because — excuse me, because of their reli­gion, because of their gen­der, because of the col­or of their skin,” he said. “This is some­thing that he is going to fight and make very, very clear that has no place in this admin­is­tra­tion.”

“But I think it’s iron­ic that no mat­ter how many times he talks about this that it’s nev­er good enough,” Spicer con­tin­ued. “Today I think was an unbe­liev­ably force­ful com­ment by the Pres­i­dent as far as his denun­ci­a­tion of the actions that are cur­rent­ly tar­get­ed towards Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty cen­ters. But I think that he has been very clear pre­vi­ous to this that he wants to be some­one that brings this coun­try togeth­er and not divide peo­ple, espe­cial­ly in those areas.”

“So I saw that state­ment. I wish that they had praised the Pres­i­dent for his lead­er­ship in this area. And I think that hope­ful­ly as time con­tin­ues to go by they rec­og­nize his com­mit­ment to civ­il rights, to vot­ing rights, to equal­i­ty for all Amer­i­cans,” he said.

“So I saw that state­ment. I wish that they had praised the Pres­i­dent for his lead­er­ship in this area. And I think that hope­ful­ly as time con­tin­ues to go by they rec­og­nize his com­mit­ment to civ­il rights, to vot­ing rights, to equal­i­ty for all Amer­i­cans”

Why can’t every­one rec­og­nize and praise the pres­i­dent for his lead­er­ship on this issue, along with issues like civ­il rights, vot­ing rights, and equal­i­ty for all Amer­i­cans? That’s what the White House would like to know. And sure, the snarky answer would be that Trump has­n’t actu­al­ly shown any lead­er­ship, but that’s not remote­ly true. He’s shown ample lead­er­ship in these areas. It just hap­pens to be the kind of lead­er­ship only a white nation­al­ist could love:

Salon

A white nation­al­ist fan­ta­sy: Don­ald Trump’s Amer­i­ca is not “made for you and me”
As the writ­ings of right-wing ide­o­logue “Decius” make clear, Trump’s Amer­i­ca sees only whites as full cit­i­zens

Chauncey DeVe­ga
Sun­day, Feb 12, 2017 07:00 AM CST

Woody Guthrie was one of the Unit­ed States’ great­est folk singers and activists. Most Amer­i­cans can recite the fol­low­ing lyrics from mem­o­ry:

This land is your land, this land is my land
From Cal­i­for­nia to the New York island;
From the red­wood for­est to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.

These beau­ti­ful words were both a slo­gan and a demand.

Don­ald Trump does not share such egal­i­tar­i­an val­ues.

Last week, Trump was the fea­tured guest at the annu­al Nation­al Prayer Break­fast in Wash­ing­ton. where he out­lined a vision of Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism. A twice-divorced man, repeat adul­ter­er, pro­fessed sex­u­al preda­tor who has said he grabs women by their gen­i­tals, liar and fraud, guest star in a porno­graph­ic video and a per­son who is nei­ther pious nor mod­est speak­ing on mat­ters of God and faith might be seen as com­e­dy gold. Like­wise, Trump’s promis­es to tear down the bound­aries between church and state could also be mocked as boil­er­plate right-wing talk­ing points that only res­onate with the igno­rant or the polit­i­cal­ly unhinged.

In this his­tor­i­cal moment, these mat­ters are too seri­ous to be greet­ed with laugh­ter, how­ev­er. Trump’s com­ments at the prayer break­fast are part of a much larg­er and very dan­ger­ous pat­tern.

Don­ald Trump used overt white racism as well as white racial resent­ment to secure his vic­to­ry over Hillary Clin­ton. The nar­ra­tive of “eco­nom­ic anx­i­ety” among work­ing-class whites is large­ly incor­rect. White iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics and gin­ning up fear about “white oppres­sion” won Trump the White House.

Two of Don­ald Trump’s most senior and trust­ed advis­ers are Stephen Ban­non and Stephen Miller, long asso­ci­at­ed with white nation­al­ist caus­es and pub­li­ca­tions.

Don­ald Trump has attempt­ed to ban Mus­lims from enter­ing the Unit­ed States. (To this point, the fed­er­al courts have stopped him.)

Don­ald Trump has ordered that fed­er­al resources be divert­ed away from track­ing white suprema­cist orga­ni­za­tions.

Don­ald Trump has said that “ille­gal immi­grants” from Mex­i­co come to Amer­i­ca in order to rape and kill white peo­ple. He has promised to build a wall to pro­tect the coun­try from these for­eign “invaders.” Trump has also said that a Mex­i­can-Amer­i­can judge was inher­ent­ly inca­pable of treat­ing him fair­ly because of the judge’s ances­try. As House Speak­er Paul Ryan observed at the time, it was the def­i­n­i­tion of a racist com­ment.

Don­ald Trump’s admin­is­tra­tion does not view pro­tect­ing the civ­il rights of non-whites as a pri­or­i­ty. He has threat­ened to unleash the police and mil­i­tary on black and brown peo­ple who live in cities such as Chica­go. Trump’s per­son­al behav­ior is replete with exam­ples of big­otry and racism.

This is a vision of Amer­i­ca as a Her­ren­volk soci­ety where democ­ra­cy, free­dom and oppor­tu­ni­ty are cen­tered around the prin­ci­ple that white peo­ple are the in-group to be priv­i­leged and pro­tect­ed, while non­whites are to be treat­ed as sec­ond-class cit­i­zens. This vision of Amer­i­ca also embraces what white suprema­cists and white nation­al­ists have referred to as “eth­no-nation­al­ism”: the idea that the mod­ern nation-state should be defined by “eth­nic­i­ty,” and that there are cer­tain core val­ues that must be pro­tect­ed at all costs against “out­siders.”

But “eth­no-nation­al­ism” is no more than racist dou­ble­s­peak. It is a some­what more accept­able refram­ing of the white suprema­cist belief that Amer­i­ca and Europe should be “white” by law, habit and tra­di­tion. By impli­ca­tion, peo­ple of col­or (and those who are not Chris­t­ian — espe­cial­ly Mus­lims) are pol­lu­tants to be expunged, by what­ev­er means nec­es­sary, from the white body politic.

Last week, Don­ald Trump dou­bled down on his embrace of these racist Her­ren­volk and eth­no-nation­al­ist val­ues when it was announced that for­mer George W. Bush speech­writer Michael Anton would be join­ing his admin­is­tra­tion. Work­ing under the pen name of Pub­lius Decius Mus, or “Decius” — appar­ent­ly a ref­er­ence to a Roman gen­er­al who sac­ri­ficed him­self for the empire — Anton is best known for writ­ing a pro-Trump author­i­tar­i­an man­i­festo called “The Flight 93 Elec­tion,” whose title alludes to the plane brought down by its pas­sen­gers dur­ing the 9/11 attacks.

Writ­ing for the New York­er, Jonathan Chait elab­o­rates:

Anton describes the gov­ern­ment (pre-Trump) as “the jun­ta.” This can­not be dis­missed as mere rhetor­i­cal exag­ger­a­tion. To Anton, the ris­ing share of the non­white pop­u­la­tion is a for­eign inva­sion: “The cease­less impor­ta­tion of Third World for­eign­ers with no tra­di­tion of, taste for, or expe­ri­ence in lib­er­ty means that the elec­torate grows more left, more Demo­c­ra­t­ic, less Repub­li­can, less repub­li­can, and less tra­di­tion­al­ly Amer­i­can with every cycle,” he writes. He describes the chil­dren of immi­grants as “ringers to form a per­ma­nent elec­toral major­i­ty.” The racial and polit­i­cal impli­ca­tions of this argu­ment are both clear and extreme: Anton believes the white Repub­li­can base is the only legit­i­mate gov­ern­ing coali­tion. Demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­ern­ments are inher­ent­ly ille­git­i­mate by dint of their racial cast.

Race is inte­gral to Anton’s sense of his own per­se­cu­tion. He sees the enthu­si­asm for Trump among avowed white suprema­cists as more rea­son to sup­port Trump: “The Left was call­ing us Nazis long before any pro-Trumpers tweet­ed Holo­caust denial memes,” he argues. “And how does one deal with a Nazi — that is, with an ene­my one is con­vinced intends your destruc­tion? You don’t com­pro­mise with him or leave him alone. You crush him.” It is a fas­ci­nat­ing line of rea­son­ing: There are Nazis sup­port­ing his cho­sen can­di­date, there­fore the left will crush con­ser­v­a­tives like Nazis, there­fore his cho­sen candidate’s tri­umph is all the more nec­es­sary.

If there is a sin­gle pas­sage of the essay that most suc­cinct­ly sum­ma­rizes its case, it is this: “I want my par­ty to live. I want my coun­try to live. I want my peo­ple to live.” Anton equates all these things — his par­ty, his coun­try, and his peo­ple, insist­ing that four more years of a Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­cy will extin­guish all three. This is a text­book exam­ple of the kind of rea­son­ing, the con­vic­tion that a sin­gle elec­tion defeat will ush­er in per­ma­nent destruc­tion, that lib­er­al the­o­rists see as inim­i­cal to demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­ern­ment.

Pre­dictably, “The Flight 93 Elec­tion” man­i­festo is pop­u­lar among white suprema­cists who have praised it online and else­where.

Anton appar­ent­ly now occu­pies a cen­tral advi­so­ry role in the White House and will be help­ing shape Amer­i­can for­eign pol­i­cy.

...

In his role as the white nation­al­ist in chief of the Unit­ed States, Don­ald Trump wants to make clear that Amer­i­ca is a white man’s coun­try and that every­one else per­mit­ted to live here is just a guest, per­ma­nent­ly “on notice.” This is revan­chism of the worst kind, and a des­per­ate effort to turn back the clock to the wrong side of his­to­ry.

Don­ald Trump and his min­ions will soon dis­cov­er that black and brown peo­ple built Amer­i­ca. Indeed, many of them were in the Unit­ed States long before “white” Euro­peans arrived and tried to claim it exclu­sive­ly as their own. The Unit­ed States is a mulat­to soci­ety, not a white nation. In many ways, black and brown peo­ple are the quin­tes­sen­tial Amer­i­cans. What­ev­er Trump may say or do, they are not going any­where.

“Anton appar­ent­ly now occu­pies a cen­tral advi­so­ry role in the White House and will be help­ing shape Amer­i­can for­eign pol­i­cy.”

Michael Anton, a man who appears to view the world in eth­no-nation­al­ist terms, is appar­ent­ly now part of Trump’s inner cir­cle of advi­sors along with Steve Ban­non and Steven Miller. That’s lead­er­ship. Hor­ri­ble, painful lead­er­ship, that’s not going to win over Trump’s crit­ics. But it’s def­i­nite­ly lead­er­ship.