Well, he’s got the Hitler vote. The neo-Nazi website, Daily Stormer, was out andproud earlier this week: “Heil Donald Trump— the Ultimate Savior.” After endorsingthe Republican presidential front-runnerearlier this year for his call to deport 11million Mexican immigrants, the fomentersof American fascism have now added an apttwist to his slogan, one not far from the truthof the campaign: “Make America WhiteAgain.”Nazis — I hate these guys. Oh, but they’rea tiny minority of pink-faced malcontentsliving in basements with the windows tapedup. Everybody hates them. Add to thatsupporters of the Ku Klux Klan, who’vethrown in with Trump as well. David Duke,a former grand wizard of the Klan, likedeverything he heard from Trump this week,embracing him for standing up for whitenationalism.
And sure, all the little Hitlers probablydon’t amount to a hill of beans. But whatabout the 35 percent of Republican voters, inthe New York Times/CBS News poll, whosay they’re all in with the man sieg heiledby aspiring brownshirts and men in whitesheets?It’s a very ugly political moment, but thereit is: The Republican Party is now home tomillions of people who would throw out theConstitution, welcome a police state againstLatinos and Muslims, and enforce a religioustest for entry into a country built by peoplefleeing religious persecution. This stuff pollswell in their party, even if the Bill of Rightsdoes not.
Trump’s proposal — “a total and completeshutdown of Muslims entering the UnitedStates” — is not just flotsam from the lunaticfringe. Well, it is. But the fringe is huge: Earlypolls show a plurality of Republican votersagree with Trump on banning all Muslims.
And many would go even further.
“Add in every other kind of immigrant andit’s perfect,” tweeted Ann Coulter, who sellsxenophobia as a mean girl provocateur, withmany friends in the far right media universe.
Trump himself doesn’t seem to care aboutcomparisons to the buffoonish (Mussolini),the truly scary (the evil one admired by theDaily Stormer) or the fictional — worse thanVoldemort, as J. K. Rowling tweeted.
He sloughed off the fascism talk byassociating his proposal with the internmentin America of the Japanese during WorldWar II. There’s a winning thought. I waswondering when he was going to get aroundto alienating Asian-Americans, the highestearning,best-educated and fastest-growingracial group in the United States, according toPew.
To review: He s t a r ted wit h “ theblacks,” through his smear campaignon the citizenship of the nation’s firstAfrican-American president. Moved onto Mexicans, war veterans, women wholook less than flawless in middle age, thedisabled, all Muslims and now peoplewhose grandparents were rousted from theirAmerican homes and put in camps.
Which gets us back to his base and theirawful bedfellows in the neo-Nazi bunkers.
Who are these people? His supporters, mostof them, do not see the shadow of the Reichwhen they look in the mirror. They are white,lower middle class, with little educationbeyond high school. The global economy hasrun them over. They don’t recognize theircountry. And they need a villain.
Trump has no solutions for the desperateangst of his followers. Tearing up tradeagreements is not going to happen.
Deporting workers who pick our fruit andhang sheetrock is not going to lift the fortunesof those who will no longer do those jobs.
Barring all Muslims will not make us safer.
What he’s done is to give marginalizedAmericans permission to hate. He doesn’tuse dog whistles or code. His bigotry isovert. But the table was set by years of dogwhistles and code. The very “un-American”sentiment that Republican elders nowclaim to despise has been a mainstay ofconservative media for at least a decade.
Yes, it’s encouraging that what is left ofestablishment Republicans have condemnedTrump’s most odious idea yet. SarahPalin, who stirred the resentment of “realAmericans” against the nefarious Otherwhen her party put her on the ticket in 2008,stands nearly alone in backing Trump’s callto bar entry into our country by adherents ofthe world’s second largest faith.
Still, it’s hard to take seriously HouseSpeaker Paul Ryan’s rare objection toa lunatic suggestion from his party’spresidential front-runner when he says hewould also back Trump should he be thenominee.
“It’s not our party,” lamented Senator JeffFlake of Arizona. “It’s not our country.” As aMormon, the senator has to be familiar with atime when there was an open war on his faith,when Mormons were considered not only un-American but domestic terrorists.
That history is instructive, as we strugglewith Trump’s hysteria and the millions firedup by his hate. But the only way to get rid ofthe goose-steppers drawn to the G.O.P. is tovow to never support the man giving themsomething to march to.
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TIMOTHY EGAN>
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