Doubling Down on Racial Politics: Trump Continues to Play the Only Card That Works With His Supporters
From the beginning of his candidacy, Donald Trump has been wildly attractive to the white supremacist faction of the far right.He had groups like the white supremacist American National Super PAC running robo-calls throughout the primaries. There was more than one avowed white supremacist named as a Trump delegate to the Republican convention. Former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke enthusiastically endorsed him and Trump didn’t exactly rush to distance himself from it. The icing on the cake was the recent hiring of Steve Bannon, the Alt-right former chief executive of Breitbart media which was a clear indication of Trump’s white nationalist bona fides.
This is not surprising since Trump began his campaign with a crusade against Latino immigrants, tagging them as killers and rapists in his announcement speech. His most popular policy always provokes the chant “build that wall, build that wall!” at his rallies. And his undocumented immigrant deportation plans and ban on Muslims were energetically applauded by his most fervent white supremacist followers.
He has, perhaps surprisingly, been a bit more subtle with his anti-Semitism and straight up racism against African Americans by employing more of the standard right-wing dog whistles in those cases, tweeting out racist crime statistics and pictures of money overlaid with a Star of David, for instance. But ironically, to his white supremacist fans all the overt nativism and xenophobia serves as a dogwhistle to them, signaling his solidarity when it comes to blacks and Jews. And he is, of course, King of the Birthers.