The escalating tempo of mass shootings, both related to white nationalists and not, constitutes a mortal indictment of both the Republican Party and President Trump. To consistently oppose stricter, meaningful gun regulations based on a theory of the Second Amendment that was literally invented out of whole cloth in the recent past, while Americans are gunned down by the thousands, at this point signifies that the GOP has given up on the most basic ideas of governance: that legislators should advance the health and safety of their constituents, and address violence that subverts a free and open society that at its most basic requires our ability to go about our daily business without undue fear of being slaughtered.
Beyond this, increasing right-wing violence is contiguous with the anti-minority, anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies that have taken hold of much of the political right in the United States. As Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo remind us:
We don’t make ourselves safer by collectively agreeing to delude ourselves about what is happening. These far-right, white supremacist massacres constitute the violent, militarized version of an ideology we can hear every night on Fox News and other right wing media outlets. Indeed, we can hear it routinely, in some of its most intense and inflammatory versions, from the President of the United States.
The basic terms are familiar: immigrants (focused on Muslims and Mexicans and others from Latin America) are invading our country and replacing white Americans through their high birth rates. They bring an alien culture, crime, violence, etc. Their invasion is being abetted by elites (often Jews) who are themselves betraying America. The tide can only be turned by individual, radical, violent action. The rubric they use is ‘The Great Replacement’, though the concept is customized for use against Muslims or immigrants from Spanish-speaking countries in different regions and contexts.
Indeed, it is specifically President Trump’s cultivation of an atmosphere of hatred and dehumanization towards those he has identified as the country’s enemies, an atmosphere that activates and enables these killers, that should most absorb our collective fury and desire for a change to this evil and anti-democratic dynamic. In just the past few weeks, the president has made racist attacks against minority members of Congress; stood by while his supporters rabidly chanted to send one of those members back to her country of origin; ridiculed a minority congressman after his home was robbed; and denigrated an American city with a large African-American population as not fit for human occupation. He has made clear that he intends to center his 2020 re-election effort on overt appeals to white supremacist sentiment. And beyond this, he has denied the prevalence of white nationalist terrorism, as he has done consistently throughout his term in office.
Donald Trump did not invent white supremacy, and he alone is not responsible for the escalation of its violent manifestations over the past decade. But he is the single greatest enabler of it, and arguably the lynchpin to what is beginning to appear to be a self-perpetuating torrent of violence by right-wing extremists. At The Intercept, Mehdi Hasan states the case as plainly as it can be put: “The president may not be pulling the trigger or planting the bomb, but he is enabling much of the hatred behind those acts. He is giving aid and comfort to angry white men by offering them clear targets — and then failing to fully denounce their violence.” And as Hasan also notes, just last week, officials at the Washington National Cathedral concisely captured the president’s role in this wave of white supremacist violence:
These words are more than a “dog-whistle.” When such violent dehumanizing words come from the President of the United States, they are a clarion call, and give cover, to white supremacists who consider people of color a sub-human “infestation” in America. They serve as a call to action from those people to keep America great by ridding it of such infestation. Violent words lead to violent actions.
It does not matter whether or not the president intends to incite violence by his words, or simply to incite hatred that propels his base to the polls. White supremacism and white nationalism are not ideas that can be easily kept hemmed into the realm of words and policies. They are rooted in ideas of racial inferiority and hatred, and of perpetual threat by anyone who isn’t white; violence is not some unfortunate byproduct, but a logical consequence of this dehumanization on non-whites.
I can’t do better than to quote never-Trumper Jennifer Rubin at this point on the inevitable conclusion to the facts that confront us:
For decades now, Republicans have insisted mass murders with semiautomatic weapons are not reflective of a gun problem. I can no longer comprehend how such a ludicrous assertion is remotely acceptable. But in one sense they are right: It’s not merely Republicans’ indulgence of the National Rifle Association that puts Americans’ lives in jeopardy; it is the support and enabling of a president that inspires white nationalist terrorists — and even denies white nationalism is a problem.
In sum, we are awash in hate crimes and white nationalist-inspired mass murders. We have a president whose words inspire and bolster perpetrators of these heinous acts. That makes Trump not only a moral abomination, which no policy outcome can offset, but a threat to national security. Those encouraged by his words in recent years kill more Americans than Islamist terrorists. If that is not justification for bipartisan repudiation of this president and removal from office at the earliest possible moment I don’t know what is. Those who countenance and support this president for his white-grievance mongering are not merely “deplorable” but dangerous.
This moment requires an all-out governmental mobilization against white nationalists, but this will not happen so long as Donald Trump remains president, because, as Oliver Willis points out, he can’t condemn what he agrees with. I understand the default impulse for Democrats to “call on” the president to repudiate white nationalism, but at this stage, we know enough to know that such efforts are pointless. Far better to tell the truth: that the president is complicit in these acts of violence, and that there is no choice but to work to remove him and the party that enables him from office. On this front, it is promising that various Democratic presidential candidates, including Pete Buttigieg, Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, and Beto O’Rourke, have not hesitated to tie the Donald Trump to the El Paso massacre. The president and the GOP are beyond redemption at this point; there is no use begging those who sympathize with or endorse white nationalism to do the right thing. The sooner we understand that neither the president nor the Republican Party will abandon their core principles, the better. The way forward is to defeat the Republican Party politically, by never allowing them to escape the stain of their bad acts and philosophies, and by offering an alternative way forward: through a vision that holds all life as precious, that identifies white supremacism as the horror show that it is, that prioritizes dismantling the social and political networks that promote radicalization of white nationalist and other right-wing terrorists, and that idealistically and pragmatically makes the case that there are no litmus tests — whether racial, religious, or otherwise — for who counts as a real American, or as a fellow human being who deserves our respect and compassion.