Lambchop by Nancy OhanianI don't think the theme of Suzanne Gamboa's report for NBC News yesterday-- 'White supremacy' was behind child separations-- and Trump officials went along-- would surprise many people. Like someone missed the fact that Trump's top domestic advisor, Stephen Miller is a deranged neo-Nazi, even if the media doesn't like using those words? Gamboa put it more politely just referring to Miller, as Señor Trumpanzee’s "senior adviser and immigration policy architect [as he] called for a show of hands among senior officials on separating children from parents [now looked at as] 'a damning display of white supremacy' and a repeat of crimes against humanity seen through history. In a meeting of 11 senior advisers, Miller warned that not enforcing the administration’s 'zero tolerance' immigration policy 'is the end of our country as we know it' and that opposing it would be un-American, according to two officials who were there." The Trump Cabinet, damning itself for eternity, voted with Miller who "saw the separation of families not as an unfortunate byproduct but as a tool to deter more immigration. According to three former officials, he had devised plans that would have separated even more children. No one who attended the meeting argued on the children’s behalf or on the humanity or morality of separating the largely Central American families."Have you watched A French Village (subtitles) on Prime? It's really an excellent-- if horrifying-- depiction of life in this fictional village occupied by the Nazis during World War II, especially for Jews and other minorities. And there are plenty of French characters like Stephen Miller. Would you take your life into your hands to resist or would you collaborate-- and how much?Two years ago NBC ran a precursor by Noah Berlatsky: The Trump effect: New study connects white American intolerance and support for authoritarianism He wrote that a new study "suggests that the main threat to our democracy may not be the hardening of political ideology, but rather the hardening of one particular political ideology. Political scientists Steven V. Miller of Clemson and Nicholas T. Davis of Texas A&M have released a working paper titled "White Outgroup Intolerance and Declining Support for American Democracy." Their study finds a correlation between white American's intolerance, and support for authoritarian rule. In other words, when intolerant white people fear democracy may benefit marginalized people, they abandon their commitment to democracy."White people who say they did not want to live next door to immigrants or to people of another race are more supportive of the idea of military rule, or of a strongman-type leader who could ignore legislatures and election results. MAGA!!
Trump's bigotry and his authoritarianism are not separate problems, but are intertwined. When Trump calls Mexicans "rapists," and when he praises authoritarian leaders, he is appealing to the same voters.If You Support by Chip ProserMiller and Davis' paper quotes alt right, neo-fascist leader Richard Spencer, who in a 2013 speech declared: "We need an ethno-state so that our people can ‘come home again’… We must give up the false dreams of equality and democracy." Ethnic cleansing is impossible as long as marginalized people have enough votes to stop it. But this roadblock disappears if you get rid of democracy. Spencer understands that white rule in the current era essentially requires totalitarianism. That's the logic of fascism.Trump's rise is often presented as a major break with the past, and as a repudiation of American values and democratic commitments. But in an email, Miller pointed out that white intolerance has long served as an excuse for, and a spark for, authoritarian measures."People are fond of the Framers’ grand vision of liberty and equality for all," Miller says, "but the beauty of the Federalist papers can’t paper over the real measures of exclusion that were baked into their understanding of a limited franchise."Black people, Asians, Native Americans and women were prevented from voting for significant stretches of American history. America's tradition of democracy (for some) exists alongside a tradition of authoritarianism (for some). The survey data doesn't show people rejecting American traditions, then, Miller says, so much as it shows "a preference for the sort of white-ethnocentrism that imbued much of the functional form of democracy for the better part of two centuries."The Founders supported democracy as long as it was restricted to white male property holders. Today, our understanding of democracy is more expansive-- at least in theory.In practice, the GOP has increasingly been embracing a politics of white resentment tied to disenfranchisement. "Since Richard Nixon's ‘Southern Strategy,’ the GOP has pigeon-holed itself as, in large part, an aggrieved white people's party," Miller told me.Trump's nativist language made the GOP's sympathies more explicit, leading to further erosion of support among non-white voters. George W. Bush won 35 percent of Hispanic voters in 2000; Trump won only 28 percent. His showing with Asian-American voters was only 27 percent-- worse than any winning presidential candidate on record.White people continue to decrease as a percentage of the U.S. population; at some point, it's going to be impossible to win a national, democratic American election with a platform that alienates people of color. The GOP, seeing their coming demographic apocalypse, has pushed voter ID laws and other barriers to voting to try to prevent black and other minority voters from getting to the polls. In Wisconsin, Republican Governor Scott Walker even attempted to delay elections for state seats that he believed Democrats would win."The GOP has dug itself into such a hole on this that the most practical effort to stave off these impending losses is to disenfranchise the votes of the same ethnic/racial outgroups against whom GOP messaging has been stoking animosity," Miller tells me. A party built on demonizing and attacking marginalized people is a party that will have to disenfranchise those same people if it is to survive.Blaming authoritarianism on partisanship suggests that both sides are equally to blame for the erosion of democratic norms. But greater commitment to abortion rights and free healthcare in the Democratic party isn't a threat to the foundations of democracy. The growing concentration of intolerant white voters in the GOP, on the other hand, has created a party which appears less and less committed to the democratic project. When faced with a choice between bigotry and democracy, too many Americans are embracing the first while abandoning the second.
You can imagine that self-selected groups Americans reacted differently to the nationwide protests over the extrajudicial murder (lynching) of George Floyd. A new PRRI survey found that Republicans didn't change their opinions at all, while normal people were profoundly impacted:The CEO of PRRI, Robert Jones, wrote that "In the wake of the killing of George Floyd by a police officer, the attitudes of Democrats and religiously unaffiliated Americans have shifted significantly, but there has been no movement among Republicans and white evangelical Protestants. For example, approximately eight in ten Republicans and seven in ten white evangelical Protestants continue to say that the recent killings of Black men by police are isolated incidents, rather than part of a pattern of how police treat African Americans-- views that are unchanged since PRRI began asking this question in 2015.”The survey found that "a majority (56%) of Americans believe that recent killings of unarmed Black men are part of a pattern of how police treat African Americans, compared to 42% who say these are isolated incidents. These views are consistent with views in 2018 but the inverse of views from 2015, when a majority (53%) believed these events were isolated incidents. Republicans are about as likely today as they were in 2015 to say the killing of Black men by police are isolated incidents rather than part of a pattern of how police treat African Americans (78% vs. 82%), Democrats are about half as likely as they were in 2015 to agree with this sentiment (17% vs. 32%). Among white Democrats, this shift is even bigger (19% vs. 43%)." White evangelicals are nearly as racist as Republicans in general, their attitudes having remained unmoved over the last five years, with 72% in both 2020 and 2015 agreeing that the killing of Black men by police are isolated incidents."
