NYT: "Either Trump Is Himself A White Supremacist Or He Is A Fan & Defender Of White Supremacists"

Chris Menahan
InformationLiberation
Sep. 18, 2017

This is the type of top-notch commentary and analysis you can only get from The New York Times.

African-American writer Charles Blow wrote a column on Monday defending ESPN host Jemele Hill's claim that "Trump is a white supremacist who has largely surrounded himself w/ other white supremacists."

Thanks Twitter: #TrumpsAWhiteSupremacist is trending! Read my column on it here. https://t.co/PmkUBf748l
— Charles M. Blow (@CharlesMBlow) September 18, 2017

Blow bloviated:

Was what Hill said untrue, as Trump's tweet suggests, or is Trump in fact a white supremacist who has surrounded himself with white supremacists and whose party courted white supremacists?

Two of those points can be quickly put to rest. First, there is no question that Trump has hired someone who was at least a booster of white supremacists: Steve Bannon. In a sinister act of double signaling, Bannon was hired as the Trump campaign's chief executive on the same day that Trump started his fake outreach to black voters in Milwaukee.

Also, while the Republican Party clearly stands for more than white supremacy and the promotion of that intellectually fallacious concept, the party has often turned a blind eye to the racists in its midst and done far too little to extricate them.

The Republicans in the Senate unanimously signed on to a resolution condemning "white supremacists" which many pointed out was a direct attack on free speech.

Did the Democrats do the same after five cops were killed at a Black Lives Matter rally in Dallas?

No they didn't. In fact, Obama had invited racist Black Lives Matter activists to the White House just a few months before the attack. He also responded to the shooting by lecturing the police about how racist they are.

These are two completely different worlds.

But then the question remains: Is Trump himself a white supremacist?

This question is almost unanswerable in the absolute, but there is mounting circumstantial evidence pointing in a most disquieting direction.

[...]Is Trump patriarchal and misogynistic? Definitely. But, what of white supremacy?

It is clear that Trump is hero among white supremacists: He panders to them, he is slow to condemn them and when that condemnation manifests, it is often forced and tepid. Trump never seems to be worried about offending anyone except Vladimir Putin and white supremacists.

What does that say about him? How can you take comfort among and make common cause with white supremacists and not assimilate to their sensibilities?

I say that it can't be done. If you are not completely opposed to white supremacy, you are quietly supporting it. If you continue to draw equivalencies between white supremacists and the people who oppose them -- as Trump did once again last week -- you have crossed the racial Rubicon and moved beyond quiet support to vocal support. You have made an allegiance and dug a trench in the war of racial hostilities.

Hill may have pushed into the realm of hyperbole with a few of her statements -- it was Twitter after all -- but I judge the spirit of her assessment to be true.

Either Trump is himself a white supremacist or he is a fan and defender of white supremacists, and I quite honestly am unable to separate the two designations.

Is Blow a black supremacist?

He's a fervent defender of the Black Lives Matter movement which is loaded with black supremacists. While he might claim he's not a black supremacist, Trump claims he's not a white supremacist, so that's meaningless. Blow is followed by black supremacists on Twitter and many black supremacists are fans of his.

Either Charles Blow is himself a black supremacist or he is a fan and defender of black supremacists, and I quite honestly am unable to separate the two designations.

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