It should come as no surprise that President Trump had to be dragged into finally criticizing the white nationalist violence that broke out at the Aug. 12 Charlottesville rally. But he then muddied the waters with his retweeting a message from a right wing conspiracy theorist and then with his assertion that both sides in the melee were at fault.. However, what's almost certain is that Trump doesn't want to alienate certain segments of his support base, one of which is discussed below, which he has been egging on to such physical confrontations since his campaign for the presidency began, and his opponents should know that by now.
It so happens that I got into an online shouting match on Facebook a few months ago with a couple of Jewish Trump supporters who strongly supported the alt-right Proud Boys in a campus clash at Berkeley with the far Left AntiFa earlier this year and then at Charlottesville. Now personally I also have no use for AnfiFa, which is a radical left organization; but for Jews to actually applaud a group at the other extreme that has ties to white nationalism and worse as the Charlottesville events confirmed is lunacy, especially in view of the fact that some of the participants there were chanting antisemitic slogans!
As might be expected, the response by the Jewish sympathizers of the Proud Boys to my original criticism of both them and that organization was at that time a salvo of ad hominems against me and of non-sequitur attacks on Hillary Clinton and former President Obama. But if after Charlottesville they can still stand by their advocacy of such a hateful ideology along with its proponents, that says a lot more about them than it does about white nationalism--and Trump.
4 comments:
Rick,
Regarding "egging on to such physical confrontations since his campaign for the presidency began," I'll never forget "in the old days they would have carried him out on a stretcher." What candidate for the Presidency talks like that?
Ideological conflicts are getting so complex and unhinged from reason, reality and language that I can't tell what they're for or against. "Fascism" is just cheap name-calling by people who are ignorant of history and have never seen or lived under the real thing. Trump is so many things to so many people that I'm not surprised that some Jews align with him. But WHY?
Alan,
Thanks for your response The first thing that comes to my mind about Trump and why he draws so much attention is that is he is so malicious. Equally troubling is that he comes across as extremely ill-informed. It makes me almost long for the good old days under Dubya who was stupid but not nasty.
As for ideology, note that Trump's extremism has even alienated many of his fellow right-wing Republicans. I don't think fascist is necessarily off the mark in describing him. In fact he reminds me very much of the character Buzz Windrip from "It Can't Happen Here".
Rick
Amazing blog and very interesting stuff you got here! I definitely learned a lot from reading through some of your earlier posts as well and decided to drop a comment on this one!
Thanks for your kind words. I'm very glad that you enjoyed my posts.
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