I do agree that you believe that Coates called trump a white supremacist, I just disagree with your opinion on that, and feel that that perspective is what is causing the hostility towards Coate’s main arguments. Lantern was trying to use your opinion as his cite.
If I say that white supremacists have latched onto the trump campaign because he has not done enough to discourage them from doing so, am I calling trump a white supremacists?
If I say that WS’s voted for trump because they believed that he would make an environment where they would be more enabled to publically express their disdain for what they feel are inferior races, is that calling trump a ws?
If I say David Duke is a white supremacist, and he fully endorses trump, is that calling trump a ws?
If you answer yes to any of those, then I understand, but fundamentally disagree with your conclusion, and I do not feel that coates made any statement much stronger than that tying trump’s personal beliefs to any sort of white supremacist movement.
It is not what he believes in his heart of hearts, as if that matters in the slightest, it is what he allows and enables that coates (and I ) are concerned about.
What you are saying is not unreasonable but it is almost the opposite of what Coates has explicitly written. You are seeing nuance where it doesn’t really exist.
If one sees nuance, and the other doesn’t, is it the one that sees nuance that is blind? It’s a long article, covering many points, making more than a few assertions, with the only one that is really challenged here is the one that I do not believe that he made, that trump himself is a white supremacist.
Now, some of his people, like steve bannon, are absolutely white supremacists. And that he has them in key positions in his campaign and in his administration (until very recently) does mean that the voters handed the country over to the interests of white supremacists, without invoking the idea that trump himself is.
From Coates
This is the point made throughout the article, that white supremacists see trump as someone who will not beat them down the way nearly any other candidate or officeholder would. That trump enables their behavior by not condemning it.
The article does also make some points about trump’s personal relationship with race, and casts trump in an unflattering light in those regards, but I don’t know that it goes much past the idea that he is a casual racist, just going along with the easiest flow. He didn’t necessarily keep blacks from moving into his apartments because he was a racist, he kept them from moving in because he knew his tenants were racist, and would object to living with black people. He spends time in the article showing that trump has an uneasy at best relationship with minority communities not to show that trump himself is a racist, but to show why others would look to trump to validate their own racism.
My TL;DR interpretation of the coates article, if we are insisting on simplifying, is that white supremacists enabled the rise of trump to power, and the rist of trump to power enabled white supremacists.
I’m not sure if the discussion about whether or not Trump qualifies as a white supremacist is particularly useful. His rhetoric enables and assists white supremacists, and whether this is the aim of his rhetoric or just a side effect is not nearly as important as the fact that he’s using this rhetoric.
I would answer no to all of those, but I do think it’s calling Trump a white supremacist to say, immediately after a sentence ending with the phrase "white supremacist, “But every Trump voter felt it acceptable to hand the fate of the country over to one.” One what? One white supremacist. I see no other way to read that sentence.
The key question though is how much? Yes every now and then Trump will say stuff which is racist and which will make white supremacists happy. And he should certainly be attacked when he does it. However most of the time that’s not what he has been talking about. This is a typical rally:
This has been the kind of stuff he has mostly been talking about for two years. This is what the average voter is hearing. And there is a lot of stuff in his economic message that can be attacked. But if the Democrats spend most of their energy shouting “Trump is a white supremacist!” , many of these voters will tune them out and his message will largely go unanswered.
The knowledge that a vote for trump is a vote enabling white supremacists, is what I thought he was getting at. That even though you disagree with a voter that is voting for trump because that voter is a racist and thinks that trump will create a better environment in which he is to flourish, you still agree with him on voting for trump. You are handing your vote to a white supremacist, giving him the fate of the country.
I actually read the “one” as a passive voice weasel word, that avoids implicating any individual person, but instead individuals of a group that are represented by the antecedent of white supremacist.
I can see how it can be interpreted to apply to trump, but I don’t think that that is the right interpretation, and if you are going to use that “one” to represent trump, why does that “one” not represent steve bannon, a self identified white nationalist who was extremely influential in the campaign, and many thought behind many of trump’s early executive movements.
That’s fine; that’s a strategic question (i.e. what rhetorical strategy should the Democrats use?), which is certainly valid, but I don’t think is really the point of Coates’ article.
The article is asking what the core of Trumpism is. And this is the core of Trumpism: the stuff that has has been spouting with remarkable consistency for 30 years. He believes that trade is a zero-sum game where one country wins and the other loses. He believes that the US has been losing for a long time because of the stupidity of its leaders. He believes he is a great businessman and negotiator who will make the US win again and lift its working class. This is the core message that has to be attacked. And if you misdiagnose Trump as primarily a white supremacist you are less likely to do it well.
Those things might be some part of it, but I think Coates’ point (which I agree with) is that the core (or the biggest part of the core) of Trumpism is white grievance against various changes and advancements in society (which Obama’s 8 years was the biggest symbol of). Trump rose to prominence in politics on birtherism, and his biggest issues were similarly directly related to white grievance – a wall against immigrants, a Muslim ban, and black crime. I think those kinds of issues remain the core, even if more of his rhetoric now focuses on economics. But he doesn’t miss chances, like after Charlottesville, to send the white grievance signals as well.
Every politician, pretty much, talks about jobs and the economy. That’s probably by far the majority of what every Presidential candidate talks about. That Trump talks about these issues most is entirely mundane and expected, and I don’t think it says much about the core of his real message or philosophy.
I look at it like this. Suppose there are 10 Republican candidates – they all talk a lot about jobs and the economy, with some variation in their strategies, but a lot of overlap as well. But one of them spends 5% of his time making speeches talking about how dangerous the Jews are, and how America needs to be defended against Jewish influence. And suppose that candidate is competitive with the other candidates and is winning some primaries. I think it would be ludicrous not to consider that anti-semitism wasn’t a core part of their message and appeal – that’s such an unusual message, out of the ordinary for modern politics, that mentioning it even just once is way, way out of proportion. If 20% of the Republican electorate supports the guy who spends 5% of his time talking about the evil Jews, even if the rest of his positions are pretty standard Republican stuff, then I think it’s entirely reasonable to think that the anti-Jew message is a big part of his appeal.
Trump doesn’t need to use white grievance (or white supremacist) rhetoric more than a tiny bit for this to be a core part of his message. It’s so out of the ordinary in modern politics, that just saying it very occasionally is enough for it to resonate and be the most significant part of his message.
Trump is not an ordinary politician who thinks carefully about what he says. He is spouting random,crazy stuff all the time. And yes occasionally he says racist stuff because he is probably a somewhat racist guy not because white supremacy is a core part of his ideology.
And the trade stuff is not generic “jobs and economy” talk. His attitude towards international agreements, institutions and alliances is way out of the mainstream for US Presidential candidates over the last 70 years.
When it comes to Trump’s core ideology I think it makes sense to focus on things that :
1)he talks about explicitly and emphatically all the time
2)are very different from any other candidate
3)he has been talking about consistently for 30 years
Trade and nationalism seems to fit better than racism and bigotry. The latter is probably part of his appeal but not IMO the central part.
I don’t see how you can interpret “one” to mean a plural. And the reason it’s not Steve Bannon is because people didn’t vote for Steve Bannon. That would only make sense if Trump voters thought they were voting in a figurehead who’d let Bannon run things behind the scenes.
Sarcasm is not a substitution for an argument. When you resort to that, and only that, you only announce that you can’t make an actual counterargument.
This seems to be lost on a lot of Dopers, so I’m going to start repeating this more often. We shouldn’t need rhetorical tricks, and we shouldn’t be fooled by them.
In this particular case, it’s the usual “exaggerate what’s being said, and not try to understand it” version of sarcasm.
We are. No one else has been this racist. No one else ran with the KKK and white nationalists (aka the alt-right). No one else appropriates their images. No one else refused to denounce them or says there both sides are bad. Others ran on birtherism, but Trump kept it up the longest. (And we know it was racism–no one cared about McCain actually being born in Panama.)
And nationalism is just a form of bigotry. It’s the form of bigotry where you think that people are inherently better due to being from the same country as you. So it still a fits. The trade issue is still nationalism–the “we must protect people in our country and screw over everyone else” concept.
Sure, there is one other component–his actual style as a politician, of deliberately attacking everyone and not caring if it offends them. Other politicians would say they were anti-PC, but Trump showed it. But even the anti-PC movement is primarily about not wanting to have to be nice to minorities and treat their feelings as important.
He took the things that were slightly tinged in racism and bigotry, and turned them up to 11 from where the other politicians were. And while it may not have worked for everyone, it worked for a whole lot of people.
Trump was different. He said other politicians wouldn’t, and supported things that other politicians wouldn’t. But that difference was primarily racism and nationalism, and, thus, bigotry.