Even if, all appearances to the contrary, it turns out that somehow racial hatred had nothing to do with the killing of six Asian-Americans and two others in Georgia last week, then at least the nation can no longer look away from the wave of violence against Asian-Americans in this country; one report has found that anti-Asian hate crimes rose 150% from 2019 to 2020. Many observers associate this violence with the scapegoating of the Asian community for the coronavirus pandemic — a retrograde tendency of irrational blame that many are right to point out has a long and sordid history in this country, perhaps most ignominiously in the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.
But even as racism still clearly finds a place in the hearts of many Americans, and must be treated as a societal problem to be attacked and scourged away on many fronts, there can be no credible discussion of ending violence against Asian-Americans, or African-Americans, or any other minority group in America, that does not include the elephant in the room: the elephant of a GOP that has become a de facto white supremacist political party.
This recent rise in anti-Asian animus has a clear relationship to the bigotry and slander of our former president, who repeatedly insisted on calling the coronavirus the “Chinese virus” or “kung flu,” even as other politicians, leaders, and activists warned of the violence this could incite. The former president did not care. Indeed, it’s fair to say that he welcomed the division that such language brought, that he saw it as yet another way to supercharge the white identity politics that he had mastered and thrived on. Donald Trump, more than any other single person, created a permission structure for the bigoted and the ignorant, amplifying whatever baseline attacks the Asian-American community would have endured in the absence of his hateful rhetoric, even as the hate crimes mounted and those of Asian descent paid the price for what the president cold-bloodedly saw as a re-election tactic.
The GOP politicians who stood by while the former president fomented hate and prejudice are complicit in this violence. And even now that he’s out office, the core of white supremacism that binds the party together was on full display in last week’s congressional hearings on anti-Asian violence. Texas Representative Chip Roy was less concerned about such violence, and far more about the GOP’s supposed right to continue the racist incitement, making the preposterous argument that Democrats were trying to limit Republicans’ ability to criticize China (he also appeared to speak approvingly of lynching as a form of punishment). Another GOP representative, Tom McClintock of California, tried to turn the hearings into an indictment of Democrats for impugning the United States as a promised land for minorities, remarking that, “If America was such hate filled, discriminatory, racist society filled with animus against Asian Americans, how do you explain the remarkable success of Asian Americans in our country?” The idea that some Asian-Americans might have succeeded despite such obstacles seems not have occurred to the man, nor that suggesting Asian-Americans are a uniformly affluent and contented model minority group is in itself pretty racist. This is to say nothing of his apparent lack of awareness of laws like the late 19th century Chinese Exclusion Act, or past acts of violence and oppression that scarred the lives of generations of Asian immigrants. Is it really possible he isn’t aware of the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II?
The unwillingness to simply engage and accept the reality of violence against people of Asian descent in America puts such Republicans on the wrong side of justice and history, as does the willingness of many to continue using the same inflammatory language so beloved of their former president and current warlord-in-exile. But beyond this reflexive defense of the United States as a nation devoid of substantial racism — a defense that serves to excuse and defend white supremacism in all its modern manifestations — the GOP also lends legitimacy to racist violence through its own increasing willingness to countenance violence for political ends. From the wholesale unwillingness to hold Donald Trump accountable for inciting violent insurrection against the country, to looking the other way as GOP lies about a stolen election fuel a growing far-right nationalist terror movement against Americans and our government, to its unswerving support for any murderous-minded insurrectionist's or bigot’s right to buy a gun, the Republican Party increasingly sees violence as an essential tool to help it maintain a grip on power. As its deathly embrace of an inexorably dwindling white base means that the party has come into increasingly direct conflict with basic principles of democracy and majority rule, the GOP is helping to legitimate a “by any means necessary” resistance among ordinary Americans. Indeed, at this point, it seems misleading to insist on separating out strands of terroristic right-wing violence from GOP complicity. As John Stoehr observed last week in the wake of the Atlanta shootings:
I would argue that most shooting massacres that we have witnessed since the assault weapons ban expired in 2004—Sandy Hook, Charleston, El Paso, Parkland, and now Atlanta—are in ways large and small a reflection of this violent impulse to stop whatever it is that democracy is producing, and that cannot be stopped through normal, legitimate and non-violent means. I would also argue that the Republicans knew instinctively what they were doing when they scorched the earth to prevent democracy from putting a stop to the violence. They have created conditions in which domestic terrorism is now a normal part of life.
Yet, as essential as this observation is, I would not stop simply with the Republican Party’s courting of violent methods and incitement of murderous anti-democratic and racist extremist elements. It’s just as important to recognize the superficially non-violent means embraced by the Republican Party that end up legitimizing the violence and empowering racist Americans at the expense of minorities. Escalating GOP attacks on the right to vote might appear to be the “legal” way that the party looks to privilege its overwhelmingly white voters over their fellow Americans, but at its base is the same belief in the fundamental inferiority of non-White Americans — a white supremacist attitude that inexorably requires violence to keep them in their place.
The GOP’s massive ongoing campaign across multiple states to make it ever harder for minority voters to cast a ballot, or have their votes count, also means that these voters are denied the political power necessary to protect themselves against racist violence: it makes it less likely that hate crime laws will be passed or diligently enforced, less likely that the politicians who are supposed to represent them don’t engage in racially inflammatory rhetoric that gets people killed. In a stark sense, as Asian-Americans, African-Americans, and others are bullied, injured, and killed by racist violence, the GOP is seeking to make it more difficult for those Americans to use their government to protect themselves from such violence. This is to say nothing of the way that voters suppression prevents these voters from having enough influence on American government to change it, and our society, enough to finally dismantle white supremacism and the countless social, economic, and psychological harms it inflicts.
I recognize that ideals of bipartisanship have great momentum and staying power in American politics, but we are increasingly at a point where Democrats’ refusal to clearly and openly call out the Republican Party’s transformation into a white nationalist, authoritarian party does more harm than good. Such refusal helps normalize obscene levels of bigotry and violence, and denies the American people the benefits of seeing the full stakes of our very real political divisions.