Another DEI woke Trump rightist failure. One fact of life: If you love
Trump, you're stupid as a stone.
It�s No Mystery Why Racists Have Fallen in Love With Trump�s Republican
Party

The KKK did not choose to support Donald Trump because he was a
Republican�but because they agreed with the ideas that he and other far-
right politicians spout.

In 2020, The Daily Show ran a segment in which statements by Republican
leaders, including Donald Trump, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-
Ga.A), Senator Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), and various Fox News personalities were
juxtaposed with those made by Ku Klux Klan leaders like former grand wizard
David Duke and former imperial wizard Bill Wilkerson. Fired Fox News
commentator Tucker Carson, for instance, screeches manically that, because
of immigration, �eventually there will be no more native-born Americans.�
Immediately following that comment comes former grand wizard Duke saying,
�We�ve got to start protecting our race.�

Donald Trump is then shown at a rally (with several Black people behind him
wearing �Blacks for Trump� T-shirts) saying about Covid treatments, �If
you�re white, you have to go to the back of the line. Discriminating
against white people!� Again, there�s a cut to Duke stating, �There is
racial discrimination going on right now in this country against massive
numbers of white Americans.�

All too sadly, it didn�t take much effort then, nor would it now, to
demonstrate that the racist �great replacement theory� that contends white
Americans are being radically displaced by immigrants underlies an ever-
fiercer defense of so-called Christian nationalist identity. And in our
time, that defense has been essential to the rise of what has become the
Trumpublican Party and the fierce growth of white racism that�s gone with
it.

That Daily Show segment ended with the ultimate irony of Ted Cruz claiming
that �the Democrats are the party of the Ku Klux Klan.�

No surprise there. Despite the all-too-obvious convergence of the
perspectives of the Republican far right and the white supremacists of the
Klan, as well as other avowed racists, Republican party leaders continue to
vehemently deny any identification with the KKK or its views. In the
process, they regularly issue obligatory statements rejecting bigotry,
racism, and anti-Semitism, while passionately disavowing Duke and others
like him�all disingenuous and empty gestures of the first order.

Recent Republican behavior paints a very different picture. Earlier this
year, for instance, Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) got thoroughly
twisted in knots trying to defend his statement that �my opinion of a white
nationalist, if somebody wants to call them a white nationalist, to me, is
an American.� Eventually, he had little choice but to (largely) retreat
from that stance�at least officially.

Typically though, whatever they may claim, Representatives Greene and Paul
Gosar (R-AZ) had no problem hanging out with racists and neo-Nazis�until,
at least, they got caught doing so. In February 2022, they both spoke at
the America First Political Action Conference that brought together
Islamophobes, hardline nativists, and others on the far right. The
gathering was organized by prominent white nationalist and Holocaust denier
Nick Fuentes.

Yeah, the very same Fuentes who would have dinner with Donald Trump and
Kanye �Ye� West at Mar-a-Lago that November.

Like Trump after that feast, when busted, Greene stated, �I do not know
Nick Fuentes. I have never heard him speak. I have never seen a video. I do
not know what his views are, so I am not aligned with anything that is
controversial.� Despite Trump�s dubious assertation that he didn�t know
Fuentes either, he certainly knew his old pal Ye and the controversies
generated by a number of his antisemitic statements.
Endorsed by Duke

In 2021, it was Gosar and Greene along with Representatives Matt Gaetz (R-
Fla.) and Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.) who attempted to launch an America First
Caucus that would champion �uniquely Anglo-Saxon political traditions.� A
secret paper, uncovered by Punchbowl News, discussed the forming of that
caucus and the rationale behind it (addressing the supposed threat of �mass
immigration� to �the long-term existential future of America as a unique
country with a unique culture and a unique identity�). No need even to say
�white,� of course. After the document was revealed and some Republican
leaders criticized the initiative, all parties involved backed down (at
least in public).

Time after time, key Republican figures have leaned into the ethos and
ideological aims of white nationalism. It�s no wonder that America�s
racists, including the KKK, have fallen in love with the modern
Trumpublican version of the Republican Party. Once upon a time, of course,
and for decades thereafter, the Klan was deeply linked to the Southern wing
of the Democratic Party�the Dixiecrats, as they were then known�but began
to switch to the GOP as presidential candidate Barry Goldwater and then
presidents Richard Nixon (with his infamous �Southern strategy�) and Ronald
Reagan exploited white feelings of resentment toward the civil rights
movement and the national Democratic Party�s support for racial equality.

In a research paper published by the American Sociological Review, David
Cunningham, Justin Farrell, and Rory McVeigh argue that the Klan played a
small but meaningful role in the transition of the Democratic South from
blue to red. In a number of areas, there was a correlation between the rise
of Klan activity and the Southern shift to the Republican Party.

It should be noted that, from 1989 to 1992, David Duke even served as a
Republican in the Louisiana State Legislature. Like most white Southerners
then, he had been a registered Democrat until, in the late 1980s, he joined
a regional shift to the GOP. National party leaders did denounce Duke, but
local Republicans were far more ambiguous in their dealings with him. He
also ran for the U.S. Senate as a Republican and for president in the 1988
campaign, first on the Democratic and then the Populist Party line. That
year, he formally switched to the Republican Party, clearly showing which
party at any moment best reflected his white nationalist ideology.

The day after Donald Trump accepted the Republican nomination for president
in 2016, Duke announced a run for the Senate in Louisiana, saying, �I
believe my time has come. The people of this country, the patriotic,
decent, God-fearing people of this country are now right with me.� He
promptly also backed Trump, claiming that voting for anyone but him for
president would be �treason to your heritage.� And Trump would prove to be
in no rush to disavow him (though, in the end, he finally did).

Duke�s time, of course, hadn�t come and he got few votes. Still, more
recently, the Klan and the GOP got new life when Republican presidential
candidate Vivek Ramaswamy thought it a good idea to liken African American
Representative Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) and Black scholar Ibram Kendi to
what he called �the modern grand wizards of the modern KKK.� Klan leaders,
he added, would be �proud� of her. He claimed that all he wanted to do was
�provoke an open and honest discussion in this country,� presumably about
race, a subject in which he had previously never shown the slightest
interest.

Ramaswamy is Hindu and of Indian background. His color and his faith put
him at odds with the hardcore evangelicals and white nationalists of the
GOP base who have supported Trump. He has tried to argue, aware of that
constituency�s prejudices, that he also adheres to Christian values and
believes in Jesus.

He now claims that he�s personally never met a white supremacist and that
racism in the United States mainly comes from the political left. Like
other conservatives, he contends that racism is an individual flaw, rather
than systemic, structural, and institutional. Despite a plethora of public
rallies by avowed racists, a horrifying series of racist-driven mass
murders, and a Homeland Security Department report forecasting that white
supremacist extremists �will remain the most persistent and lethal threat
to the Homeland,� Ramaswamy dismisses the danger of white supremacy as a
kind of myth. As he put it, �I�m sure the boogeyman white supremacist
exists somewhere in America. I�ve just never met him. Never seen one, never
met one in my life, right? Maybe I�ll meet a unicorn sooner. And maybe
those exist, too.�

Sorry, Vivek. For the Black people who were gunned down in Charleston,
S.C., Buffalo, N.Y., and Jacksonville, Fla.; the Jews murdered in
Pittsburgh, Pa.; and Latinos slaughtered in El Paso, Tex., white supremacy
is no joke.

While being roundly criticized by Democrats and civil rights leaders,
Ramaswamy mostly heard crickets from fellow Republicans. In interviews, no
one ever seems to have asked him about how his pledge to support Donald
Trump, should the latter become the Republican presidential nominee, puts
him in the position of offering his stamp of approval to a candidate who
was actually endorsed by Duke (twice!).

In 2016, Duke infamously announced his fierce support for just one
presidential candidate�Donald Trump, of course. In a CNN interview with
Jake Tapper on February 28, 2016, Trump initially pretended, all too
unconvincingly, that he had never heard of him. (�I don�t know anything
about David Duke.�) The next day, after coming under fire, he claimed that
he had been wearing �a very bad earpiece� and had misheard the exchange. He
then stated, �I disavowed David Duke.�

Trump knew just who Duke was, having discussed him in other interviews in
previous years. As early as 1991, he told CNN�s Larry King that support for
Duke�s run for governor of Louisiana was �an angry vote,� even if he then
failed to address the racism at the heart of Duke�s campaign. In 2000, he
did call Duke �a bigot, a racist� on NBC. At the time, Trump was flirting
with running for president on the ticket of the Reform Party but blanched
when he decided it was too extremist for him to be successful. He clearly
grasped that it was in his political interest to distance himself from
Duke�s toxicity, but he�s never been aggressively challenged to explain why
Duke would have endorsed him in the first place.
�Some Very Fine People on Both Sides�

In 2017, Duke was one of the star attendees of that infamous �Unite the
Right� rally in Charlottesville, Va., that brought together hundreds of
neo-Nazis, white supremacists, anti-Semites, and far-right extremists from
around the nation. The gathering, which turned violent, leading to the
murder of protester Heather Heyer and injuries to many others, was
initially called to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen.
Robert E. Lee.

Trump also opposed that statue�s removal. After Heyer�s murder by a white
nationalist in a car, he was forced to make a statement in which he voiced
distinctly contradictory views, both condemning and praising the
extremists. The president famously denounced the �egregious display of
hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides� and added that �you also had
some very fine people on both sides.� By creating such a false equivalency,
he clearly meant to assuage those in his base who also didn�t want
monuments and memorials to Confederates removed.

Duke was thrilled by Trump�s initial statements. He said that the president
�was the only person in the entirety of the U.S. government who pointed out
that all the fault was not with the people who came there to defend the
Robert E. Lee statue, and those who came to defend the right and heritage
of white people.�

Duke also endorsed Trump in 2020 (and will likely do so in 2024). Perhaps
predicting Trump�s future fallout with Vice President Mike Pence, and
seeing Tucker Carlson for who he truly is, he tweeted, �Trump & Tucker is
the only way to stop the commie Bolsheviks! It is the only path to beat
them! #TrumpTucker2020.�

Duke did not make a mistake. He took in Trump�s attacks on immigrants (of
color) and his view that whites are victimized by racism. He undoubtedly
felt all too comfortable with the president�s suggestions that Black-led
cities are dirty and dangerous places. While Republicans might dance around
or denounce the very idea that they were in any way linked to white
supremacists, no less the Klan itself, those groups are all too clear on
where they stand in relation to the two parties.

Unfortunately for Trump, the party�s Klan troubles go further than just a
rhetorical convergence. In August 2023, special counsel Jack Smith charged
Trump with four counts related to the January 6th insurrection under a
series of laws written during the post�Civil War Reconstruction
era�specifically, Section 241 of Title 18 of the U.S. Code, which was
originally adopted as part of the 1870 Enforcement Act to combat the Klan
and other white terrorist organizations. Those laws were put in place to
protect the voting rights and civil rights of newly free African Americans
including, as Reuters reporter Hassan Kanu noted, �the right to have one�s
vote counted,� the very right that Trump and his criminal enterprise sought
to deny.

In the end, the KKK did not choose to support Donald Trump because he was a
Republican but because they agreed with the ideas that he (and other far-
right Republicans) spout. It is finally time to face the rise in the
twenty-first century of a new form of white nationalism and its alignment
with many leaders of the Republican Party, including Trump.

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Clarence Lusane

Clarence Lusane is a political science professor and interim political
science department chair at Howard University, and independent expert to
the European Commission Against Racism and Intolerance. His latest book is
Twenty Dollars and Change: Harriet Tubman and the Ongoing Fight for Racial
Justice and Democracy (City Lights).

Too old.

In When The Clock Broke, John Ganz offers a whirlwind tour of the cranks,
conservatives, and con artists who helped remake the American right at the
turn of the 21st-century.

"Stupid people!"

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Editorial / John Nichols for The Nation
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https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/racist-republicans-donald-
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