My Letter to Rachel Maddow:
Dear Rachel,
I am one of your biggest fans, and I am very appreciative of how you provide so much in-depth analysis of issues and events. But I have been disappointed this week in how you have contended that there is a difference between current white nationalists and mainstream national politics when there is little if any daylight between them. On Tuesday night’s program and again on Wednesday night you said you were trying to “wrap your head” around the meaning and implications of President Trump providing license to the marginal fringe (of white nationalists), wondering if Trump’s expressed support was empowering them.
Please note that Trump had already empowered them and they have empowered him.
How so? A leader of the Alt-Right, Steve Bannon, is in the White House. Bannon previously headed Breitbart.Com, which in 2016 he was widely reported to have claimed as a platform for the Alt-Right. Bannon ran the last part of Trump’s campaign and was then installed as the top policy strategist in the White House. How can you get into a more mainstream place?
There are fellow travelers with Bannon in the White House—Stephen Miller and Sebastian Gorka, who have dallied with groups and people under the broad Alt-Right umbrella. One analyst calls them and Bannon “white nationalist-adjacent.”
What is the Alt-Right? They are white nationalists, a nice term for white supremacists. It includes Neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan.
White nationalists/white supremacists, Neo-Nazis, the KKK, and their sympathizers came to rally–and apparently to raise hell–in Charlottesville last weekend. I am sure that I am not telling you anything new; however, I am suggesting that you look at these facts from a different angle.
Trump ran a white nationalist campaign, skewering everybody who was not European. This approach created the core of his support. The major narrative explaining Trump’s election was that his voters were concerned about jobs they had lost or were afraid of losing. On the other hand, many of us were arguing that Trump’s support was about white supremacy and that his supporters were less concerned about losing jobs than about their loosening grip on controlling America. A report based on surveys conducted before and after the 2016 election supports our contention.
According to this study, it was not economic anxiety that elected Trump. Those who reported being in fair or poor financial shape were almost twice as likely to support Clinton, compared to those who were in better financial shape. It was cultural anxiety more so than economic anxiety that drove white, working-class voters to Trump. White voters who say they often feel like a stranger in their own country and who believe the U.S. needs protecting against foreign influence were 3.5 times more likely to favor Trump than those who did not share those concerns.
White nationalists, through Bannon and perhaps others, have already been functioning in mainstream politics at least through President Trump. For example, more than a few observers argue that Bannon had a significant influence on Trump’s dark inaugural address as well as various policies since then.
White nationalists certainly think that they are connected to the White House. Neo-Nazi David Duke, the former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan who endorsed Trump during the presidential campaign, had this to say about the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville:
“This represents a turning point for the people of this country. We are determined to take our country back. We are going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump. That’s what we believed in. That’s why we voted for Donald Trump because he said he’s going to take our country back.”
Duke’s words reflect the views of a white nationalist movement that sees President Trump as its champion.