Election 2016
A United States of Hate Has Exploded Under Trump
The Trump administration has ripped the lid off a Pandora’s Box of racial, right-wing hate as the Southern Poverty Law Center reveals
By Steven Rosenfeld / AlterNet
February 15, 2017
▻http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/united-states-hate-has-exploded-under-trump
Donald Trump’s campaign and presidential election has brought racism in America out of the shadows in a manner not seen in decades, with Muslims becoming the top target of attacks and violence, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s annual survey of domestic hate groups and extremists.
The trends were tied together by a common thread, he said, the modeling and license given by Donald Trump’s campaign and his administration’s early actions against immigrants and Muslims. Potok said America has become a nation where bastions of angry, aggrieved, economically struggling men—usually white—feel freer than they have in decades to lash out at anyone unlike them.
“I think what has happened is that the Trump campaign, in many ways, has kind of ripped the lid off Pandora’s Box, and all of these different kinds of hatreds have escaped, and it’s pretty damn near impossible to get them back into the box,” he said. “One of the things that was most remarkable about the hate crime, the bias incidents we saw immediately after the election, was they targeted virtually every minority out there—Jewish people, immigrants, Muslims, LGBT people, Latinos, and also a non-minority, women. That was quite specific to Trump and his attitudes towards women and the kinds of ideas that he promoted.”
Within 24 hours of Trump’s victory, there was an burst of “celebratory” incidents in which his supporters exulted in preying on others.
“We actually counted 1,094 different hate crimes and lesser bias incidents in just the first 34 days after the election,” Potok said.
“The alternative right is simply a Machiavellian rebranding of what is really white supremacy or white nationalism for the purposes of public relations,” he said. “These are people who generally favor suits and ties over Klan robes and swastika armbands, and there are some kind of unique traits of the alternative right in that it is a very youth-oriented edge of the white supremacist world. It is very much aimed at young people and colleges, and is very internet savvy by its use of that means. But at the end of the day, the alternative right is fundamentally about the idea that civilization and cultures that are healthy are simply expressions of race—that everything healthy is based on race. In other words, that America, that most of the European countries, are countries that were created by and for white people, and that is the way it ought to stay or the state to which we ought to return.”
“We are talking about false equivalencies,” Potok continued. “I don’t claim that the country never had a radical left that engaged in real violence. Obviously, we did. That was certainly true in the ‘60s and the early ‘70s. But the idea that there is a substantial radical left in this country, committing or intending to commit major crimes and major terrorism, is frankly utter hogwash. It’s baloney. It’s simply false. And unfortunately, we have seen on any occasions, under the prior [George W.] Bush administration, top officials of the FBI testifying to Congress that so-called eco-terrorists, groups like the Animal Liberation Front and the Earth Liberation Front, are the most serious domestic terror threat that we face in the United States. Nothing could be further from the truth. I don’t know how they can justify making a claim like that. It’s ridiculous. To back up what I’m saying, these groups, the ALF and the ELF and like-minded groups, have never killed a single person.”
In contrast, Trump and his base are promoting white supremacy and using the means at their disposal—including presidential decrees—to achieve that end.
