Politico (3/24/16) fits Donald Trump into the ethnic stereotype of a “Latin American strongman.”
Donald Trump is an objectively terrifying candidate. He’s a racist, a xenophobe and a misogynist (in a surprisingly underrated manner). He dabbles in antisemitism and mocks his opponents like a middle school bully.
However, in their effort to critique Trump in a way that is “relatable” and generates clicks, corporate media all too often turn to lazy orientalist tropes and patriotic schlock to “other” him without having to do the messy work of ideological analysis, or running the risk of offending America’s nationalist sensibilities:
- Donald Trump Tweets Like a Latin American Strongman (Politico, 3/24/16)
- Trevor Noah: Donald Trump Is Basically an African Dictator (Crooks and Liars, 1/27/16)
- America Would be Trump’s Banana Republic (Washington Post, 7/21/16)
- ‘Lock Her Up’ Is the Chant of a Banana Republic (Washington Post, 7/20/16)
- Who Said It, Donald Trump or a Chinese Communist? (Foreign Policy, 6/10/16)
- What Hugo Chávez and Donald Trump Have in Common (Reuters, 3/31/16)
- “Donald Trump has the home-decorating taste of a Third-World dictator. This is not a coincidence.” (Business Insider, 7/18/16)
- Trumpmenbashi: What Central Asia’s Spectacular States Can Tell Us About Authoritarianism in America (The Diplomat, 3/22/16)
- “[Trump] sounded like some two-bit dictator of some country that you couldn’t find on a map.” (Politico quoting Elizabeth Warren, 7/22/16)
- Donald Trump’s Un-American Acceptance Speech (Slate, 7/22/16)
The first instinct of many in the US press and political class is to treat Trump as if he’s some foreign entity, an exotic outsider who can only be referenced with regard to Less Civilized Countries. This tic was again found in President Barack Obama’s speech Wednesday night at the DNC, when he called Trump “un-American.” Several pundits followed suit, praising this sentiment as clever and effective. Trump was something foreign, without precedent, that could only be understood in the context of things outside The Greatest Country on Earth.
But, as some on the left have noted, Trump is as American as apple pie. The Intercept‘s Glenn Greenwald, when asked about Putin’s “influence” on Trump in an interview Thursday with Slate (7/28/16), noted no outside influence was necessary:
Trump comes from this recognizable, identifiable ideological tradition in the United States. I don’t know if you read Michael Brendan Dougherty’s article in The Week about Samuel Francis. It is really fascinating and probably the best explanation of Trump I have seen. Trump comes from this ideological position of Charles Lindbergh, Father Coughlin, America First, this Buchananite mindset. Buchanan is always an advocate of not going to war with dictators, let’s get along with them, let’s trade with them, let’s have them serve our interest.
The Nation’s Greg Grandin (7/22/16), after dozens of the liberal and neocon pundits lamented Trump’s convention speech as uniquely “dark,” noted:
Claims that Trump is unique mostly have to do with his refusal to leaven his nastiness with appeals to universalism. After all, Reagan could mock the 1964 killing of civil-rights activists by launching his 1980 campaign at the spot where they were murdered, in Philadelphia, Mississippi, talking about “states’ rights”; Bill Clinton could, just before Super Tuesday 1992, campaign in front of Georgia’s notorious Stone Mountain Correctional Institution, “where he stood next to conservative Southern Democrats Sam Nunn and Zell Miller, as well as Dukes of Hazzard star Ben Jones (recently heard prominently defending the Confederate flag), posing for photographers in front of a group of black inmates.” George H.W. Bush ran ads with Willie Horton and Republicans rebuilt their party around the Southern strategy and “welfare queens.” Yet even as they dog-whistled racism, they still, apparently, appealed to the better angels of our nature, a balancing act that somehow makes those politicians more organically rooted in the history of America.
Brooklyn College political science professor Corey Robin capped off this point: “What do the ‘we’ve never seen anything like Trump’ and ‘Putin is electing Trump’ memes have in common? They both exonerate American history.”
And exonerating Americans is exactly the point of this line of criticism. It’s a popular attack because it nominally positions one as anti-fascist while flattering elites and satisfying America’s insatiable desire for moral superiority.
Embraced by corporate media as harmless feel-goodism, this “liberal patriotism” doesn’t feel good to everyone. Aside from the implication that the US is uniquely civilized, it whistles past America’s own history of racism, normalizes the Democrats’ more subtle brand of immigrant deportation and war-mongering, and propagates xenophobic assumptions about “Third World” disfunction and serves to stoke Cold War panic with Russia.
The theme was also present during this week’s DNC: Bill Clinton putting the burden on Muslims to prove their loyalty, championing LGBT rights increasingly in the context of militarism, drowning out calls of “no more war” with the jingoistic go-to chant of “U-S-A, U-S-A.” Liberals, seeing a weakness in Trump’s disjointed message, have decided to outflank Trump from the right, with little regard for ideological collateral damage.
This post from Daily Kos (7/27/16) provided an almost satirical look at this trend:
This current wave of liberal jingoism reached its nadir when, after Trump made a flippant (and clearly inappropriate) joke about Russia hacking into Clinton’s emails on Wednesday, some pundits unironically called Trump “treasonous.” But as Vox’s Dylan Matthews (7/28/16) noted, Trump can’t be tried for treason because, despite what many pundits say to the contrary, “Russia is not our enemy.” (Emphasis in the original.)
But one could hardly tell watching the fever pitch of late from liberal quarters, indulging in what a recent Nation editorial (7/27/16) called “Neo-McCarthyism.”
As FAIR has noted before, the instinct to explain the seemingly inexplicable rise of Trump by blaming a foreign influence–or likening it to something from non-white or Slavic countries–is as lazy as it is subtly racist. Trump is Trump. Trump is American. His bigotry, his xenophobia, his sexism, his contempt for the media, his desire to round up undesirables, all have American origins and American explanations. They don’t need to be “like” anything else. They are like us. While acknowledging this may be uncomfortable, doing so would go a lot further in combating Trump than treating him as anomalous or comparable only to those poor, backwards foreigners.
Adam Johnson is a contributing analyst for FAIR.org. Follow him on Twitter at @AdamJohnsonNYC.
Come back to Twitter, Adam!
I thought I’d reach back into the 19th C–there’s so many quotes from all periods–anyway, here’s John C. Calhoun giving his reasons not to annex Mexico after the so-called Mexican War
“I know further, sir, that we have never dreamt of incorporating into our Union any but the Caucasian race—the free white race. To incorporate Mexico, would be the very first instance of the kind of incorporating an Indian race; for more than half of the Mexicans are Indians, and the other is composed chiefly of mixed tribes. I protest against such a union as that! Ours, sir, is the Government of a white race. The greatest misfortunes of Spanish America are to be traced to the fatal error of placing these colored races on an equality with the white race.”
Here’s a quote from the Feb 2, 1862, Texas Declaration of Secession:
In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon the unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of the equality of all men, irrespective of race or color–a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of the Divine Law.
And finally here is Alexander Stephens talking about the new constitution of the Confederate States of America:
“Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”
Just to be clear, I just wanted to post some examples form our history that illustrate exactly what the author is saying: Trump is as American as apple pie. I was reading somewhere how a certain individual in Texas has control over content in that state’s high school history textbooks. I guess these quotes above would not make her cut.
Never thought of it this way. Good article, Adam Johnson!
I have to say though, I don’t really see it as much as xenophobic and subtly racist, as I do see it as an “it can’t possibly happen here” attitude. As Corey Robin said, it exonerates America’s own dirty history. Not saying that if Trump gets elected he wouldn’t take some cues from various despots from world history, but it does come off as positioning America as being somehow morally superior to other nations.
The history of liberals/socdems finding every conceivable way to dig their heads in the sand during times when anti-fa is most needed continues. For shame…
It’s good to hear from you :)
I don’t get why they do that despite history showing that never works. Any thoughts on why they do that?
Perhaps, for one, the reductionist liberalism of good vs. evil… In the United States & Britain, this has been particularly useful since Reagan & Thatcher to justify arms sales and military intervention in the Middle East. Further back, leading into WWII, the destruction by the German Social Democrats of the rising communist forces and their later direct cooperation with the Right wing featured the same sort of blind innocence justified by reactionary ideology… Here, the similarity between our conservatives and our liberals is exposed: both are impassioned by capitalist hegemony, and will commit to any thought, even shockingly racist historical revisionism, to uphold the status quo.
Well said.
Mr. Johnson,
I heard President Obama in his speech Wednesday night refer to Donald Trump as a “homegrown demagogue.” What did you hear?
Exactly how is Trump racist? Is it because he wants to do something about illegal immigration?
So your conclusion is he is racist because he likes the idea of actual borders??? Is that it? If so, I am assuming you leave the doors on your house open at all times of day and night and let total strangers that you don’t know just come into your house and help themselves.
Or is because he recognizes Radical Islamic terrorism as an existential threat to this nation and wants to put a temporary halt to immigration from countries that are known supporters of terrorism? How is that racist?
You’re good at accusing, but your facts are missing.
It’s paradoxical to say “halting immigration from countries that are known supporters of terrorism.” That would include our allied members in NATO, as well as ourselves.
Reminds me of a recent global poll that showed the US is the most feared country on Earth. If that doesn’t indicate a “terrorist” nation, I don’t know what does.
Very true. I wish the FAIR comments had an “upvote” function.
Thank you, Greg. So do I.
You should have read the article and also clicked the blue words with little lines under them! They take you to other pages on the Internet with more Facts™!
Exactly how is Trump racist?
_____________________________________
By regularly saying racist things.
Covering up the country of origin label
I’m glad at least some progressives, like FAIR and The Nation, are pointing this stuff out. The progressives I know have always been against McCarthyism and jingoism. But then it seems like the whole political spectrum on foreign policy has been turned upside down in this election. You have Hillary, who laughs about destroying Libya and argues for essentially starting WWIII by setting up a no-fly zone over Syria; while Trump voices skepticism of NATO expansion and supporting hundreds of military bases abroad. What’s frightening, is that in his own, 5th grade mentality kind of way, he actually makes more sense on these issues than the Democrat.
Let’s not forget the latest absurdity; that he’s Russia’s “Siberian Canditate.” It’s sickening how far the Establishment has gone to get their Chosen One (Hillary) elected.
@ TeeJae: What’s sickening about trying to prevent a sociopath from becoming President”
If you want to see a sociopath, look up the interview that Hillary Clinton had on 60 Minutes. When she was asked if she had any regrets about her Libya policy, Hillary said gleefully, “What’s there to regret? We came. We saw. He died.” And she threw her head back and laughed about it!
Her policy turned the country into a playground for ISIS. Thousands have died. Thousands more have fled the chaos in ramshakle boats trying to cross the Mediterranean, many dying on the way. This was a country that had the highest standard of living in Africa before the war -a country that African migrants went to work in, because a few months in Libya could help them save enough to build a mansion back home. And now it’s completely destroyed. And Hillary laughs about it!
Describing the interview doesn’t do it justice. You have to see the gleam in her eyes as she’s talking about the destruction of an entire nation, just giddy with laughter.
I haven’t seen this kind of sociopathic lust for war since Insane John McCain was running.
Hillary is both directly and indirectly responsible for the deaths of millions of innocents. Trump (as far as I know) is not responsible for killing anyone. Who’s the sociopath?
You assume that Trump was joking about Russian hackers accessing Clinton’s emails. Why? Because he said so? Trump has said and meant enough things that were similarly outrageous, and been caught in enough lies, that he doesn’t deserve the benefit of the doubt on such things.
Unfortunately, Trump does speak for a great many Americans or he wouldn’t have as many followers as he does. A lot of people think poor people are the problem, complaining about welfare and immigrants, when it’s just the opposite – it’s the wealthy and powerful who are the problem. Whether it’s big corporations who want to pillage the planet with little to no regulations, or the wealthy looking to accumulate more wealth at the expense of everyone else by keeping the systems the way they are, that’s what’s preventing America from being for all of its citizens. Despite a history of racism and violence (eradicating Native Americans, bringing over slaves, causing the extinction of abundant species), we are, little by little, progressing to a point where America truly is a great nation. We just need to get over this hurdle that is Trump, which looks to be the last grasp of White America holding onto whatever that represents. I just watched that documentary on JFK, Jr., and I couldn’t help but lament the drastic effect the deaths of JFK, RFK and JFK, Jr., who would have been President someday, had on this country. We never would have had Nixon, Reagan, or the Bushes, that sent us decades backwards. And Trump wouldn’t exist in its present form. We’ll get there eventually to the place the Kennedys would have taken us to.
“A lot of people think poor people are the problem, complaining about welfare and immigrants, when it’s just the opposite – it’s the wealthy and powerful who are the problem.”
The saddest thing about this is that a whole bunch of the people blaming the poor usually are poor themselves! I’m guessing it a mentality of “I’m better than the other guy.” or “One day, I’ll become rich too and I wouldn’t want to have to take care of the poor either.” What do you think?
Actually, it’s the result of a tried-and-true tactic of the Power Elite to divide and distract the citizenry using its propaganda arm, the mainstream media.
In other words, if you (the oligarchy) can convince the people to point their torches and pitchforks at each other, they won’t point them at you.
According to the 2008 Sloan Survey of Online Learning,
enrollment in online colleges grew more than 12 percent from the year
prior. For people with families or full-time jobs, attending classes on a campus may
be difficult or even impossible to accomplish. Essay writing is a requirement for everyone who undergoes an academic training.
Smart pens are also a great way to write your information out, and then send it to a
computer for review before printing the information out.
This is followed by the sentence which is a further elaboration of the attention getting sentence.
However, they forget that essay writing is the most important part
of the curriculum.
I’m not a rich person, I am however tired of the status quo of our political system, that’s why I am voting Trump, I am ready for a change. Trump may not be the right man for the job, but he could not possibly be as bad as what we have had for the last two presidential terms, he is not a career politician. We know that hillary is a liar and a thief, and the libertarian candidate can not win unless hillary and Trump are struck dead by a lightning bolt
Have you considered Jill Stein? http://www.jill2016.com
May not be a career politician but he tanked a lot of his businesses and lied so much that Hillary looks like an amatuer.
Also, if you think Trump would somehow be better than the last two presidential terms, I’d hate to see how you handle getting a wrong order at a restaurant:
“I got pickles on my sandwich!” [Takes knife out and commits harakiri]