A neo-Nazi group met in Washington D.C. over the weekend celebrating Trump’s victory. The keynote speaker proclaimed the superiority of whites (though he preferred the word “Europeans”), referenced Nazi Germany and ended his speech by shouting “Hail Trump! Hail Our People!” which was greeted with cheers and Nazi salutes from the crowd.

Since the election, Trump has unleashed Twitter storms against the media, anti-Trump protesters and the cast of Hamilton, but the only comment about the neo-Nazi event and similar outpourings of racist and antisemitic hate around the country came from someone in his transition team who wrote, “President-elect Trump has continued to denounce racism of any kind.” Weak tea from a man whose revels in full-throated condemnations of everything and everyone he’s against. Trump’s racist supporters know a mild statement like that is the equivalent of calling a naughty dog over for a hug. “Come here, you bad dog. Who’s a bad dog? Who’s my bad dog?”

At a meeting with the New York Times Tuesday, Trump went a bit farther and decided to “disavow and condemn” the white nationalists, though he acted like he didn’t know much about them and denied he had anything to do with their current prominence. At the same meeting, he said maybe there’s something to climate change and maybe waterboarding isn’t such a good idea after all. Oh, and after bashing the New York Times at every opportunity, he called it a “great, great American jewel.” That places his comment about the white nationalists as part of a temporary reversal while he was in the room with the Times guys. Someone accused his racist dog of crapping all over their lawn, and Trump gave the dog a light whack across the nose with a rolled-up newspaper.

A few different terms are used to describe the most racist and antisemitic of Trump’s supporters—alt-right, white supremacists, white nationalists. Shades of meaning differentiate the three terms, but they’re all in the same ballpark. Whites should rule the country. Non-whites should be kept in their place, and their numbers should be kept as low as possible. All three terms have well-deserved negative connotations, which is why Steve Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist and the man who brags he created “the platform for the alt-right” at Breibart News, wants to normalize the term “White Nationalism” to a more neutral, even patriotic-sounding “Nationalism.”

In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Bannon claimed, “I’m not a white nationalist, I’m a nationalist. I’m an economic nationalist.” Since I can’t peer into his soul, I can’t say if he’s being truthful, but it hardly matters. He’s made it abundantly clear that he wants the white supremacists and white nationalists to help bolster the Trump administration. However, it matters deeply if he manages to get the term “Nationalism” into the mainstream as a description of Trump’s agenda. “Nationalism” sounds pretty good, even patriotic. Bannon contrasts it with “globalism,” a term which which can be made to sound like it favors the interests of other countries over ours. If “White Nationalism” is normalized to “Nationalism” and is used as a synonym for “Patriotism,” the Trump administration will have a powerful rhetorical weapon against people who oppose them. Remember the phrase “Why do you hate America?” thrown at people who objected to the Iraq War or other policies of the George Bush administration? Remember “My country, right or wrong,” used in the 60s to portray people who questioned anything about the U.S. as traitors? That’s how “Nationalism” can be used against dissent in the Trump era, and its connection to “White Nationalism” can make it a powerful weapon against people who want to protect or increase minority rights.

Words matter. Any student of poetry, advertising and politics knows that. The people who control the political vocabulary control the argument. If we allow “Nationalism” to be used interchangeably with “Patriotism,” if we allow the term to be used to describe how we can “Make America great again,” we’ll be accepting the use of a racist dogwhistle to define what this country stands for.

This article appears in Nov 17-23, 2016.

24 replies on “T.H.R.E.A.T. Watch: Normalizing ‘White Nationalism’ Down to ‘Nationalism’”

  1. Yawn. David, your constant attempt to stir up tempests in tea pots is, at this point, very boring.

    He’s a blow-hard David. Haven’t you ever known any? Lots of smoke and very little fire. He’s already backed off of “lock Hillary up” and climate change denying — both moves entirely expected by those who read him correctly. Further: he will not be turning the USA into a fascist, racist state. His administration will be a typical plutocratic oligarchy, and pretty soon the middle class / working class will realize that no great increase in prosperity or security will be delivered to them through his hands, because increasing wages and entitlements to those who work for a living does not benefit the plutocrats, the class to which he belongs.

    Then, there may be an opportunity for constructive change — IF, four years from now, we find that the sadly neo-liberal, Wall Street accomodating Democratic party has finally taken the latest “WAKE UP” call delivered to them in the form of Trump, and we get a decent candidate from them — like Elizabeth Warren, for example.

    The real story in this country, as in others, can be told through economics — the economy is the BASE on which all else is built, and until we solve the problems with the base, none of the problems with the SUPERSTRUCTURES built on this base, important as they may be in their own right, can be solved.

    Happy Thanksgiving. I imagine you will be giving thanks for the opportunity Trump has provided for you to continue ignoring real issues and indulging in self-indulgent paranoid fantasies, true 21st Century mainline neo-liberal American “Democrat” that you are.

  2. “He’s made it abundantly clear that he wants the white supremacists and white nationalists to help bolster the Trump administration.”

    Prove it Safier. Where, when, what, how? Come on, prove it, or admit the hater you are, that you simply made it up.

  3. He lied?

    “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.”

    David, there are no penalties for lying, so why not?

    Stop bullying him.

  4. And then there is the other side to this. Wake up America!

    The Washington Post published excerpts from Mitchells Enhanced Interrogation:

    [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] said the terror attacks were good, but the practical way to defeat America was through immigration and by outbreeding non-Muslims. He said jihadi-minded brothers would immigrate into the United States, taking advantage of the welfare system to support themselves while they spread their jihadi message. They will wrap themselves in Americas rights and laws for protection, ratchet up acceptance of Sharia law, and then, only when they were strong enough, rise up and violently impose Sharia from within. He said the brothers would relentlessly continue their attacks and the American people eventually would become so tired, so frightened, and so weary of war that they would just want it to end.

    Syrianly?

  7. White supremacists spit in the face of our WW2 veterans and all true Americans. Trump is their new messiah, their new fuerher. CW13, What, Again and Dan Hyde are just the apologists and prevaricators and enablers that the KKK and the white supremacists have always depended upon to convince good people to ignore their calls to violence. Nice work, guys. Your parents must be so proud. You represent the most callous, cruel and ultimately unpatriotic behavior that my Republican family decried. Stand up like men and declare that you despise these white supremacists, or shut up and slink into the shadows where cowards hide. You shame the American principles and the values that real men and women fought and died for.

  8. “CW13, What, Again and Dan Hyde are just the apologists and prevaricators and enablers that the KKK and the white supremacists have always depended upon to convince good people to ignore their calls to violence.”

    FU you POS.

  9. Give me a break Paul. National security was the reason for my post. We are sleeping at the wheel on this stuff. Stop giving these racists air time. It’s what they want.

    How did you deduce any of that rant from my post? That is shameful.

    Happy Thanksgiving.

  10. Thanks for the bulletin from the Democratic Party, but your commentary is redundant, Paul Stapleton-Smith, and a distraction from the real issues, which are economic, not racial.

    Trump knows how to play to the preferences of an audience, but just as in his real estate businesses, just as in his “reality” shows, his real goal is to manipulate the system to make money and accumulate power. He got what he wanted out of playing his audiences during the campaign (the votes needed to give him the presidency), though he has very little in common with the majority of those who voted for him. He will not forward their agenda, he will forward the agenda of his economic class.

    And that’s the big news that is being missed while Democrats bitch and carp about Comey and identity politics: suppression of wages, reduction of entitlements, elimination of educational opportunities that used to exist, further reification of income inequality and rigid class divisions that dole out insecurity and impecunious circumstances to the many while preserving unimaginable privilege for the few. The “Democratic” party has not kept its eye on the ball, and while their attention has been diverted by transgender bathrooms and white supremacist conspiracy theories, the means to live a decent, secure life and educate their children have slipped from the grasp of many of those whose interests FDR and LBJ would have known how to protect.

    Wake up.

  11. POS – Smith

    I’m the son of a WWII vet. My father in the lead B-29 fire bombing runs over Japan, was in the sky when Baby Boy detonated. I know exactly what he would think of you.

  14. Yo Paul, haven’t you learned yet not to tangle assholes with me. You know you’re gonna lose. Like when you told me I was over reacting when I said how many thousands of people could die if terrorists targeted the N.Y.C. subway system. I spent 14 years riding the subway. Turns out you’ve never even been in N.Y.C. You never had the balls to come back me. If you can’t run with the big dogs, stay off the porch.

  17. Sigh. The history books will call this period The Rising of the Trolls. Yet another pernicious side effect of Chump’s “victory”. (BULLETIN TO THE TROLLS: You can grab your cojones and puff up your fat, hairy bellies all you want, but he didn’t really win. Despite massive voter suppression by the Republinazis, not to mention her own pathetic excuse for a campaign, Clinton got millions more votes than Chump, but thanks to an antiquated electoral system that was established precisely for the purpose of protecting wealthy white male privilege, Chump may indeed usurp the Whitey House for a few years.

    But, really, Chump is not the problem–he’s merely a symptom of our profoundly dysfunctional political culture. Yes, no doubt that the Clintonistas are part of the corporate political establishment that has robbed and disempowered working people of all races. And no doubt that economics were a central factor in this election, which is why Bernie Sanders–or even better, Elizabeth Warren–would have been far, far better candidates for the Dumbocrats to run in this election, with their core messages of economic inequality and proven records of challenging the obscene greed and power of Wall Street.

    Sadly, voters are so desperate for change and yet so ignorant of political reality that they chose a man who by any measure is an enemy of economic equality. Even more disturbing is that the worst elements of our society–misogynist, racist, nativist, violent, assholes–will interpret this happenstance as a mandate for their oppressive agenda.

    Thankfully, this is probably the last gasp of the Angry White Man. Surely, inexorably, the world will become a more egalitarian place, and fearful, hateful worldviews will die out, one cowardly old white guy at a time.

    But, yeah, sure, unity, blah blah blah, so here’s an olive branch for the Angry White Trolls: Happy Thanksgiving, dickweeds.

  18. Actually Paul, you’re ascribing some lofty ideals to a group that has done every dirty deal in the world to keep and maintain power over the darkies. There was a lot more angst fighting the germans than there was fighting the Japanese because the germans were so like us, people like the Drumpfs were sympathizers, afterall weren’t most of their “hate laws” based on the U.S. model? Men like Jesse Owens were paraded around like sideshow exhibits, treated to toasts and then told they had to go sleep in the barn because blacks weren’t allowed in the swanky places.

    Don’t worry, those guys and these guys will still stand idly by as Drumpf carves out a bigger chunk for himself. Actually, they’ll caw about like jaybirds about how they “got their country back” as the water slowly rises and they realize they weren’t invited into the boat, chained instead to their tarnished anchor called pride.

  20. Here you go, David Safier and Paul Stapleton-Smith: one example of a real “THREAT.”

    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/24/us/politics/wilbur-ross-commerce-trump.html?ref=politics&_r=0

    “President-elect Donald J. Trump is expected to select as commerce secretary Wilbur Ross, a billionaire investor who became known as the king of bankruptcy for buying, restructuring and selling off steel makers and other fading industrial companies, officials on the transition team said on Thursday. […] Mr. Ross, 78, an economic adviser to Mr. Trumps campaign whose fortune is estimated by Forbes to be $2.9 billion […] has […] pressed for cutting the corporate tax rate to 15 percent, from 35 percent, and reducing taxes and regulations on energy companies.”

    But will these sorts of developments get any coverage in Safier’s blog or in comments from Stapleton-Smith and his ilk? That would be about as doubtful as Safier’s blog or PCDP / DGT comment stream regulars providing honest discussions of the outsourcing of subs in TUSD or ESI’s donations to Foster and Juarez.

    While the politicians they endorse are busy betraying those who should form their natural constituencies, they will keep creating distractions and whipping up concern over the fake “issues” they promote as news.

  21. And in case you thought this was a change in operating procedure from the previous administration that promised “Hope and Change,” here’s another quote from the same NYTimes article on Wilbur Ross:

    “If confirmed by the Senate, Mr. Ross would succeed another wealthy campaign donor at the helm of an agency charged with promoting American commercial interests and trade around the world. Penny Pritzker, President Obamas commerce secretary, is a billionaire entrepreneur who was an early financial backer of Mr. Obama and is an heiress to the Hyatt Hotels fortune. Unlike Mr. Trump and Mr. Ross, Ms. Pritzker has been a leading proponent of forging new free-trade agreements. One of her top priorities was the completion of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.”

    Whether the economic powers are globalists or protectionists, their agenda, once they get their hands on the latest “I advertised improvements to the masses which I will not or cannot deliver” politician / front man in office, is to benefit their class. Cf. the takeover of Obama’s supposedly progressive education program by the charter-backing-hedge-fund-managers and standardized-test-promoting-corporate-set. Race to the Top was no better, as federal education policy, than No Child Left Behind. What a surprise.

    What is desperately needed in the media and the blog-o-sphere is honest and effective coverage of WHO BENEFITS (capital and the financial industries: those, for example, who were responsible for the 2008 financial crisis and were never held to account) and AT WHOSE EXPENSE (at the expense of those who do the labor that produces the economic value abstracted, expropriated, concentrated, and manipulated by a parasitic class of unprincipled financiers), but we won’t get that from these Democratic party hacks, who are too busy covering up who really benefits from their own political party’s machinations and too busy manufacturing fake characteristics supposedly distinguishing Rs from Ds. Much of the agenda of both R- and D-affiliated media outlets can be explained by the need to disguise the fact that both mainstream parties have betrayed the interests of those who work for a living in order to benefit the class that uses its obscene accumulation of abstracted and expropriated assets to fund their campaigns. This billionaire-campaign-funding class wants profits increased, taxes decreased, public services privatized, financial industries and polluting manufacturing industries deregulated, wages suppressed, and benefits / entitlements undermined, and until the American public organizes itself to use its democratic institutions to say “NO” to this exploitation of the majority of citizens in the country — rather than to change the flavor of exploitation periodically from globalist to protectionist and back again — that is what capital and the financial industries will continue to get, from candidates like the Clintons, or from Mr. “Hope and Change” Obama, or from candidates like the Bushes, or from Trump.

  22. Well, 3 days have come and gone and once again Paul has nothing to say. He went after Dan Hyde, What, Again and yours truly with his usual fancy vocabulary that impresses no one. Remember Paulie Walnuts in the Sopranos? I call him Paulie No Nuts. Cause that’s what he has, You have a lot of nasty things to say about people you don’t even know. However when it comes time to back it up you’re nowhere to be found. Go hide behind your stupid camera. Probably isn’t film in it anyway.

  23. Such vitriol! I wish the first post, that says that Trump is lots of smoke and very little fire was true. He is surrounding himself with people that can and will produce a great deal of fire if they receive their confirmations. It may be more productive to figure out how to put that fire out (or how to try to block those confirmations) than to fight every single other person or organization trying to do the same thing.

  24. Betts, to many if not all of us in the left (as opposed to mainstream neoliberal) wing of the Democratic party, what is going on now in the liberal media looks a lot like what went on in the conservative media after Obama was elected.

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