Trump tweets white nationalist propaganda, is endorsed by white nationalists, and appoints white nationalists to positions of power. Why oh why would anyone ever associate Trump with white nationalism!?
No, Trump's victory doesn't represent resurgent racism, white nationalism, or the return of the Klan
Oh, what an unfortunate accident, you left out the stuff about Obama’s response. Understandable, I suppose, since 2008 was a while ago. Here, let me provide…
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/02/26/obama-denounces-farrakhan-endorsement/
No need to thank me, we’re here to help.
No. racialist
so that wall mural pic that headlined the msn page last week that had trump on top a swastika in the middle and had "make America white again " underneath was unwanted attention?
Yes, Obama and Trump both denounced the endorsements of the racists who favored them. That, unlike your point, is clear.
Thanks, but no thanks. I’ll pay attention to Trump’s words and deeds instead of some random asshole with a blog.
Ok, I’ll give it a go.
These three have a bit of an issue; I don’t think the answer the author of the article is looking for is to the right question. That is to say, he answers all of these questions as though the accusation is, “A large percentage of Trump’s support comes from white supremacist organisations/online white nationalists and the alt-right/undefined white nationalists”. And I don’t think that’s the accusation being made, largely for the reasons the author sets out.
One issue is that the author points to examples of polls to support his conclusion on the third question - but in doing so he actually seems to ignore a poll in the articles he cites earlier as his wrongheaded accusation examples.
The author doesn’t call this “nonsense”. To the contrary, he thinks it’s probable. His problem with this idea is that what shouldn’t be done is that these racists shouldn’t be described as ““openly white supremacist KKK supporter” like a verbal tic.”
Which is in itself a problem, because… that’s committing the same problem he wants to stop. “Don’t so quickly rush to lump everyone into the same group, everyone who I’m lumping into the same group”.
His defense of this point is that Duke didn’t endorse Trump; he kept his endorsement free, and merely supported Trump. A fair point.
So what about the problem of Duke supporting Trump? That… isn’t addressed.
How about Trump reacting to the support? Again, a good point; Trump rejects the support (and the theroretical endorsement). Here, though, we have an issue, because Trump is quoted in one of those examples as to his motivation for rejecting it; “Sure, I would if that would make you feel better.” That’s… really not a great motivation. The author later goes on to point out that Trump explicitly called Duke a neo-Nazi and someone who he did not want to associate with, as an example of how the two are not connected. I actually see that as more of a problem. The author says Trump has a history of rejecting Duke, but then says he’d reject him on the basis of just “oh, if it’d make you happy”? The author cites a non-answer he gave and says that actually, if that was given just so he could check the pro/cons of accepting/rejecting it, that’s in itself creepy, but sidelines it by saying that Trump has a history of considering Duke a racist.
That’s not a good thing. If you have a history of saying, repeatedly, that someone is a racist, someone you do not want to associate with, someone you will have nothing to do with - and then give non-answer quotes, that’s worse than if you had had no previous with them.
The author seems to consider this a non-racist speech, considering how it talks about how Lations include both good and bad people - well, no, it does not, given that he talks with certainty about criminals coming across the border with certainty and then he “assumes” there’s some good people too. He also conflates “their best” with “the best”, but it’s not fair to assume anything necessarily into that. He also talks about “they’re sending” - who is sending? Who is selecting these rapists? The rapists, that, by the way, are not included in the language of the other political speeches he includes so as to show their similarity.
Author treats Trump’s plan as the same as prior anti-immigration efforts, and ridicules the idea that they could be different enough - either in terms of the wall itself and defences, the plan to create the wall, the cost/benefit, etc - to make one fine and the other racist.
Based on? He doesn’t bother to say.
Author agrees that this is accurate. Not nonsense. His basis for saying that this can’t be anything to do with white supremacy is by giving an example of two different worldviews which have a reasonable basis for each of their supporters - and then comes up with a silly alternate worldview to compare to for this point. He also assumes here that a general condemnation *must *apply to each point.
This seems like a fair point for the author to make, if only because the details, per Snopes, are actually very interesting. Probably worth an article in and of themselves.
The author points to various Jewish (and Israeli) groups that have voiced support for Trump.
That’s not actually answering the question. Considering that the entire article is about people who the author thinks aren’t working to their best interests, I would have thought he’d realise that this was not necessarily a useful case to make.
This is a bit of a tricky one. The author cites a piece which says no at that point, but, interestingly, also points to prior polling and history which says yes. Likewise, the piece talks about how it’s nearly impossible to disentangle economic concerns from other factors enough to point at concerns.
Of course, that works both ways; someone couldn’t reasonably say that Trump voters were certainly unconcerned on average if we can’t disentangle the numbers, either.
Author seems to make fair points here.
Author agrees that this is true; author agrees that this is awful. Not nonsense. Interestingly, as he breaks down this question, the author says he doesn’t actually think that Trump necessarily doesn’t have racist views or motivations, just that it isn’t a Big White Nationalism Evil deal. Again, we have the issue of hypocrisy; the author doesn’t want people lumping Trump in with the KKK, but he’s perfectly happy, seemingly, to lump objections of racism in to shouts of "KKK WHITE SUPREMACY!”.
Oof, this is an unpleasant read. Author goes out of his way to reasonably look into actual data (or closest to it) for Trump-related hate incidents. Author brings in a grab bag of anecdotes about Hillary-related hate crimes. Are the two numbers compared at any point? Do we get a proportional analysis? No. Just ridiculing about “a swastika in a school bathroom”.
The author’s objection to this point is that Trump says much the same about anti-Trump protests. Except he doesn’t actually link those two things.
This big section is, essentially; Trump is a whackjob. Trump says many stupid things. Trump has said stupid things about black people - however, he’s said stupid things about white people, too. Essentially, he’s taking the “I’m not a racist, I hate everyone equally!” joke approach. Which could be fair, if he compared numbers of instances of attacks, or style of attack, or rationality of attacks…
But he does not. That Trump says stupid things about everyone is not a get-out clause unless he says dumb things equally - or, at least, equally with opportunities. Trump could have said that Hillary was stupid and Sanders was stupid and Obama was a stupid n-word - and he’d have said something unpleasant about white opponents and black opponents alike, and still be a racist. We need to go deeper than just “he says bad shit about everyone.” The author does not.
The author here suggests that using context to examine Trump’s opinions often involves weaselling or jumping to conclusions or some other reaching.
How often?
Every time. Whenever the author hears demands to look at Trump “in context”, that’s how he feels. Every time. Again; this is a hypocritical view. “If you take it all together, you feel like this” is a bad way to go about it, say I, taking it all together and feeling like this.
Hooray, done. Well, if nothing else, I note that the OP’s claim that “Here is a list of the talking points that the article shows to be nonsense:” is factually and demonstrably incorrect.
Point? Nonsense, merely rushing to provide assistance! Open minded and fair person like yourself, it simply had to be an inadvertent omission!
Wait a minute… I thought you said they were racialists. Why are you calling them racists? You are confusing me. Please explain, thanks.
No she is not, and neither is Trump.
And neither is Obama, but that didn’t stop Farrakhan from endorsing him or stop Duke from saying this about his candidacy:
“He was a community activist or a black activist. He’s been in the church for 20 years that — and one of the first principles of that church is that they are, quote, “true to Africa,” loyal to Africa. There is nothing wrong with Barack Obama working and having a long career advancing what he sees as the black community interests or the black perceived interests as a group, collective interest, but I did see it as kind of odd that a man of that stripe would become president of the United States. It seems like — I think I should endorse him for president.”
David Duke is a huckster that should be ignored. He knows that his endorsement is poison. The reason he gives these pseudo-endorsements has very little to do the mainstream candidates whose prominence he is parasitizing and everything to do with getting people to talk about David Duke. And the media just plays right along, seemingly with no concern for the consequences.
I’ll repeat it for the hundredth time. Not all Republicans are racists.
But here’s the reality: racists are now part of the Republican base. They’re like pro-lifers or Second Amendment supporters or family-value Christians - they’ve been welcomed inside the Republican tent.
Oh, so Duke was the only one of those Malignant-Americans who did so? Well, that’s certainly reassuring! You checked that, right, we can take your word for it?
What is nonsense is that any of them are of any merit in defending the position that Trump’s victory represents a resurgence of racism, white nationalism, or the return of the KKK. That this is what I meant seems pretty straightforward from the title of the thread.
Much of your rebuttal consists of demands for statistical comparisons in defense of Trump, when that sorts of side by side analysis is not asked of those making the claims about Trump. That’s not how it works.
As far as number 5 he does address the endorsement. Read it again. He points out that people aren’t in control of who endorses them, gives examples of other candidates endorsed by deplorable who were not endlessly associated with them by the media, and explains why it’s laughable to think that Trump was trying to dog whistle to the inconsequentially tiny minority of voters sympathetic to the Klan. Remember, Duke only got 5% of the vote IN LOUSIANA, a state that Trump had no chance of losing in the first place. What the media and Trump’s opponents tried to portray as Trump’s dismissal of the nastiness of David Duke and his rhetoric, was Trump’s dismissal of the legitimacy of the *connection *between Trump and Duke that they were attempting to manufacture as part of their narrative. This is clear by all of the other things that Trump has said about Duke, as well as by the fact that the idea that he could gain some advantage by being sympathetic to Duke’s worldview is preposterous, given how widely it is reviled.
You seem to be expecting some sort of proof of Trumps non-racism, when what the article is pointing out is that there is no evidence to begin with:
But thanks for actually reading and responding to it though.
Which is exactly what the commenters at Free Republic would be saying about Islamists and Commies in the Democratic base if had Hillary won, and just as relevant.
Lets us know when an islamist and a commie was appointed as a cabinet member in the last Democratic administration.
Trump’s rise in politics, starting in 2011, was based entirely on a bigoted and fact-free conspiracy theory, birtherism. There is a big chunk of America that still doesn’t think Obama is a legitimate president, for bullshit and bigoted reasons. So at least a significant chunk of Trump’s success is based on this.
Further, he said many racist and bigoted things through his campaign – that Mexican illegal immigrants were rapists (except for some, he assumes, good people); that a judge should step down from his case because of his ethnic background; that Muslims should be banned from entering the country; retweeting false assertions and statistics from white supremacists; asserting that Obama literally founded ISIS; and much more.
I don’t think this was made up:
And what did the site Little Green Footballs found?
The reason why one should be weary of Trump is not only the company he keeps, but the sources he consults to get his racist and bigoted tweets.
But those might not be “racist” they might be “racialist”, which is whole different thing altogether. And not subject to the contempt and derision that would be called for, had they been actually racist.
Or something.
No whitelash?
Let me get this straight… you’ve come here to get Your candidate “whitewashed” for all his shit… and you want us to provide the brushes and paint?
Hell No.
The birther issue embodies nearly perfectly Trump’s race/race-baiting appeal. It isn’t really clear what he actually believes, but he seems willing to use these issues cynically to appeal to those white groups who feeling aggrieved and to encourage their aggrievement that other outside groups are taking advantage of them or victimizing them. Trump picked up birtherism out of seeming nowhere, kept banging the drum and encouraging the flames to go ever with his talk of investigators not even believing what they were finding in Hawaii while never actually revealing anything. And then dropping the matter entirely, first by refusing to talk about and finally by just transparently declaring that Obama was born in the U.S. with no conviction.
To be fair, this was a “bringing the races together” moment since he said that Hillary also literally founded ISIL too. Proving that, with some work, racial harmony and common goals are possible.