We have had plenty of warnings up to this point. But the slaughter of fifty men, women, and children by a white supremacist at two mosques in New Zealand last week should be a wake-up call that at various levels —governmental, law enforcement, and across society at large — both Americans and the populations of other Western countries have either looked away or failed to acknowledge the rising threat of right-wing terrorism. And remarks by President Trump both before and after this horrific act remind us that this president seeks to downplay the threat of white nationalism even while stoking the fires of authoritarianism and racist violence.
The day before the Christchurch killings, the president suggested to Breitbart News that his supporters — specifically Bikers for Trump, law enforcement, and the military — might have a point at which they will turn violent against opponents of the president. The White House denied that this was the intent of his comments, but there is little ambiguity in his discussion of “tough people” who support him who would make things “very bad, very bad” for his enemies. That the president’s rhetoric was cloaked in a sort of plausible deniability only adds weight to the malign intent behind his words: he knows that this sort of violent innuendo must not be stated outright, but yet he feels compelled to signal it to certain of his backers.
The next day came his reaction to the New Zealand rampage. In an exchange with reporters, Trump stated that he doesn’t consider white nationalism to be a mounting global threat, and attributed the issue to “a small group of people that have very, very serious problems, I guess.” He had nothing to say about the fact that the killer cited Trump as a symbol of a resurgent white nationalism. Some commentators have already noted the connection to the president’s reaction to the white riot in Charlottesville, when he noted that there were “fine people” among the neo-Nazis, latter-day secessionists, and anti-Semites who brought disgrace and death to that Virginia city. When faced with the most heinous actions committed by white supremacists, the normally emotive president becomes as demure as a parson’s wife.
But what happened after the president’s initial comments to reporters is equally chilling. As summarized by Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo , the president “proceeded to give a meandering speech about foreign ‘invasion’, i.e., immigrants ‘rushing our border’, calling them ‘murderers and killers’. In other words, moments after denouncing the massacre he went on with a lie-laden screed much of which was indistinguishable from the attacker’s manifesto.” The president essentially provided two things: justification for the killer’s actions, and ample evidence of a fact that can no longer be denied: that there is no clear line between the president’s attitudes on immigration and those of the most far-right, xenophobic ideologies of our time, up to and including the encouragement of violence as a response.
The good news is that many people have been making these basic points for a long time now, and still others have taken up the cry in the wake of the New Zealand attacks. Yet there is an insufficiency in the response of both close observers, and of the public at large, that I find chilling if not outright horrifying. First, it boggles my mind that a president can essentially incite violence, whether against his opponents or against a population such as immigrants or African Americans, and not immediately inspire mass revulsion and calls for his resignation. This opinion piece by David Leonhardt makes the case for Trump’s culpability on this front (the title is pretty blunt: “It Isn’t Complicated: Trump Encourages Violence”) — yet despite its fairly shocking presentation of facts, what feels equally shocking is Leonhardt’s basic acceptance that this is a state of affairs that is in any way acceptable.
Now, I’m not saying that Leonhardt’s only path to credibility here is for him to end with the admonition that we all join him on the barricades outside the White House; indeed, I quote his peroration in full to help you make up your own mind as to how credible my take is:
It isn’t very complicated: The man with the world’s largest bully pulpit keeps encouraging violence and white nationalism. Lo and behold, white-nationalist violence is on the rise. You have to work pretty hard to persuade yourself that’s just a big coincidence.
These are harsh, condemning words — so why am I left with such unease that they still somehow miss the gravity of the moment? Well, on the one hand, it is simply surreal to say that a president is encouraging violence without adding, in the same breath, that this renders him unfit for the presidency. I am wondering if many of us have lost track of a small but essential truth: violence is the enemy of democracy; it is, in fact, arguably the one thing that must always be excluded from a democracy if that country is to remain viable. It is not just one thing among many that the president has got wrong; it is, rather, an embrace of democracy’s kryptonite, the elevation of raw power over rule of law.
Somewhat paradoxically, the quite accurate argument made by Leonhardt and others also leaves me uneasy because it suggests a lack of continuity between outright terrorism and killings that threaten our polity, one the one hand, and a whole range of white nationalist attitudes that bend and warp our society in malign directions. Violence is at one end of the continuum, but the reality is that the assumptions and attitudes of this retrograde mindset make violence its logical outcome. Once you have determined that one race stands above others, de-humanization of everyone else, and the discounting of their lives as possessing worth, is a logical consequence. Again, this is a well-established and profound point: the problem I am sensing right now is that American society and politics is maintaining a false distinction between actual calls for violence, and an ideology that legitimizes violence. This ideology is found not just in the words of Trump, but is now embedded in the Republican Party as a whole, which among other things has normalized the idea that voter suppression, ID laws, and various other disenfranchisement strategies are somehow not clear manifestations of white supremacism, but simply hardball tactics to win elections.
Leonhardt’s use of experts and studies to bolster his case against Trump — quoting political scientist (and Hot Screen fave) Steven Levitsky on the dangers of normalizing violent rhetoric, citing studies about the increase in extremist violence — also curiously got under my skin, which I admit makes zero sense on a first pass. The facts, after all, bolster his case against both Trump and right-wing violence. So what’s my problem?
I think it may be this: that the outrage and immorality of the situation are so overwhelming that the mustering of statistics and expert opinion seems somehow adequate to the primal emotions, overwhelming stakes, and clear moral calculus of our moment. Yes, the statistics about an upsurge in right-wing violence are useful in that they provide objective evidence of dangerous movements in our country, and around the world; but the struggle we are in is moral, and fundamental. It is about making an overwhelming case for tolerance, equality, and mutual commitment to democracy. These are not arguments to be won with statistics. These are arguments that require a powerful articulation of moral clarity, and of a humane and inspiring vision for our society.