The Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins is joined by Chauncey DeVega to talk about the overt racism running rampant in the White House.
Farron Cousins:
Chauncey, before we get into just some of the craziness of Donald Trump’s cabinet, and by craziness I mean obviously overt racism, I have to ask you about something that happened this week because I wanna get your opinion on this and that is the comment made by the new Republican candidate for governor in the state of Florida, Ron Desantis, when he came out in one of his first interviews after securing the nomination talking about his opponent, Andrew Gillum, an African American, and he said, “We can’t monkey this up.” I mean, first interview after getting that nomination the guy comes out and says this horribly racist thing. Is that just what this party is now? The Republicans? They just don’t even care anymore.
Chauncey DeVega:
Well, the Republican Party is the country’s largest white identity organization. Conservatism and racism are now fully one and the same. We see that with Trump. Whenever you have a president endorsed by David Duke and a president who says Neo-Nazi, Skinheads and Kluxers are very fine people, after they had that horrible riot where they killed sister Heather Heyer down in Charlottesville. So, I’m gonna say something, maybe a little counterintuitive, maybe surprise folks. Yes, that man called another black man a monkey. It’s a turn of phrase. But you know what it actually signals? It signals to the deep levels of racism and animus in this country where black and brown folk, especially African Americans going back to slavery and before, are associated in our collective subconscious with monkeys and apes is a way of dehumanizing a whole people. I don’t think that he actually had any intent behind what he said. I don’t think he said, you know what? I know this may rile up my white racist Trump voters. Yes, the Republican Party rather we dog whistle and we do overt racism as well, but I think it’s a signal to how sick this society is with racism that that sort of language is just a turn of phrase.
Farron Cousins:
Absolutely. So, let’s move into this Trump administration. You know, recently we had the policy aide, speech writer, Darren Beattie, had to leave the White House because of, uh oh, revealed he was speaking at this basic … Pretty much a almost white nationalist organization, I guess. This Mencken Club. Tell us about that. Like, how did this whole thing get started?
Chauncey DeVega:
Well, it’s no longer a revelation. You know, Donald Trump likes to talk about quote unquote invaders and infestations in terms of black and brown immigrants from Latin and South America. He’s got a white supremacist infestation in the White House. So, the most recent quote unquote revelation, there have been others, is that you have this gentleman Darren Beattie, it’s discovered he’s a speechwriter for Trump, the Trump administration, and he’s palling around with white supremacists. So, this comes out, he quietly steps aside and again, we always have to ask ourselves, what is this an example of? Because, he’s low level hanging fruit. You know, we just had that Unite the Right 2 rally in D.C. We had all these folks running around, so proud of themselves. So resplendent in their victory that they ran off 24 white supremacists. Well, as I’ve written at AlterNet and at Salon and my podcasts are discussed this, you and I have chatted about this, the white supremacists are winning and I don’t use the word white nationalist. That’s their way of repackaging themselves. These white supremacists are winning. They control the White House. Nevermind Steve Bannon’s continual influence. He’s a man going Europe telling Neo-Nazis and white supremacists to be proud of being racist as a badge of honor.
You have Michael Anton in the White House still. Steven Miller, a man who’s embraced by Neo-Nazis and white supremacists who’s literally trying to roll back this country to the 19th century. So yes, we have the low hanging fruit, but we have the king white nationalist/white supremacists, Donald Trump, who is not being held accountable for his bigotry and the reason is that his voters love him because of it, not despite it.
Farron Cousins:
You know, you wrote something recently and it’s such a powerful sentence here. “Racism almost seems to be a qualification for working in Trump’s administration.” A qualification. You know, not just, oops, we hired another one, but it’s almost like at this point, they actually actively seek these kinds of people out. Either that or that is the only thing that they seem to attract, and so yes, working in this administration, if you have some kind of supremacist background or maybe you met with them, you’ve got some photos with them, that’s actually a plus in this administration whereas in the past you would think that would basically be a career killer, but not here. I mean with this administration that almost guarantees you’re gonna get a promotion, unless of course they can throw us a bone every now and then and fire as you point out the low hanging fruit, like a guy like Beattie and say, okay. We solved the problem. This guy that nobody’s ever heard of is gone.
Chauncey DeVega:
Well, here … Always thinking again, what is this an example of? What do we know about the American electorate? What do we know about Trump’s voters? Right? So, we know it’s not working class anxiety, ’cause if this election was about the working class, where all the black and brown folks are more likely to be poor, disadvantaged and challenged in this global economy. Right? So, all the research tells us repeatedly it was about authoritarianism, racism, sexism, and what we call it, social dominance behavior, but as a practical matter, because the Republican Party is now so densely populated by white racists and those who were sympathetic to it and those who agree with white racism, because in my mind that’s all the same. If you vote for Trump and you continue to support him despite his racism and white supremacy, well you’re a racist and white supremacist yourself. The Democrats, because of their electoral coalition, black and brown folks, women, young folks, gays and lesbians and others, well they’re not gonna be able to run as a white supremacist, white identity party. So, as a practical matter, there’s very little damage done to Trump because the electorate is so sorted. So, this racism is now part of the brand name of the Republican Party and Trump’s brand name as well.
Farron Cousins:
Well, you know, earlier this week we had, you know, there’s two guys from the viral photo that were wearing the shirts that said, “I’d rather be Russian than Democrat.” Well, it came out this week they admitted they’ve actually been invited to speak at a KKK rally in Columbus, Ohio. Now according to them, they declined it. They’re not gonna do it and they certainly don’t share the beliefs of those people, however, those two gentlemen did say that they have no problem with the KKK liking them, but no, they don’t share their beliefs. They’re just diehard Trumpers and there really is no difference at this point. If you support the man, as you’ve pointed out, then you support these racist people and the racist policies that have come out of this administration because again, it’s not just the people in there. The people are bad enough, but the policies that they are implementing are absolutely discriminatory and they wanna take us back to … You can’t even say the 1950’s. You have to say that the 1750’s at this point, you know?
Chauncey DeVega:
Well, I just spoke to Ian Haney Lopez. Everyone should track down his grade scholar. He has a great book called Dog Whistle Politics. He’s issued a new report. You should get him on the radio show, the TV show, about how the Democrats can counter Trump’s racist narrative, and his conclusion is we need to talk about race and class together, and he and I are in lockstep on this one. You and I’ve talked about this. This is an example of how racism hurts white people. We have the gangster capitalist destroying this country, destroying the environment, destroying the common good, destroying our schools, make a list of all the things that Trump and his ghoulish administration or going after healthcare, getting rid of common sense gun control laws, making it harder for veterans to get care, poisoning the water, killing the animals. You know what? That hurts our white brothers and sisters too. That hurts everybody and the way that Trump and other Republicans and Conservatives can get away with this is they use racism to distract white voters.
Not all white voters, that’s for sure, but these Trumpets, these tens of millions of Republicans, because they’re so insecure about their own group position that they know they’re being ripped off by these plutocrats. They know their lives are being made worse. Obviously they’re being lied to by the right wing, hate medium Fox News, but we need to find a way to communicate. Again, racism hurts white folks too, and one of the ways it does is it empowers authoritarian fascist ghouls like Donald Trump,
Farron Cousins:
You know, you hit on a great point there about Fox News. We are seeing the people on that network and they’ve always to an extent been this way, but in the last few months as they grow more desperate really to defend the president, you know, they try to bring Hillary Clinton out as she’s the greatest boogeyman of all time for them, but that’s kind of falling flat now, you know? There’s not as much behind it anymore. So, it is turning to these horrible immigrants. What they’ve done with the death of Mollie Tibbetts is absolutely, to Borrow Hillary’s term, deplorable. I mean even the family has had to come out now and say stop trying to use the death of our daughter as an attack on non-white people. But, that is exactly what Fox News is doing today.
Chauncey DeVega:
Well, that gets us again to the overlaps, what we’ve said before. You know, on Fox News you have Tucker Carlson who quite literally is parroting and mainstreaming white supremacists talking points you can find on Stormfront and that is not hyperbole. Go to those hate websites and watch Tucker Carlson and listen to what he says. They’re verbatim. So, you have Fox News mainstreaming, we have a lot of research about this, overt white supremacist talking points. You have Donald Trump again on Twitter, his preferred means of communication, and again, I always put the asterisk, don’t be a fool folks and believe that Trump writes these Twitters, these Twitter posts. He has a whole communications team that writes these posts and they’ve even done interviews off the record saying we intentionally misspell words, we’re trying to appear folksy, we wanna relate to people. So, this is part of a concerted campaign. Trump is talking about quote unquote white genocide in South Africa.
Again, not true, but that’s a white supremacists talking point. You get that from Stormfront, Neo-Nazis, David Duke talks about that. You have this tragedy with this poor white sister who’s killed, right, by a man who should be put under the jail if he’s guilty, right? Again, that’s a narrative about white women is victims, is imperiled. Trump recites that all the time when he talks about MS-13 and these criminals coming here to prey on white people. So this stuff is just so obvious and I think the next thing Trump’s gonna do, and people think I’m kidding, he’s already done a version of it, he will be on Twitter or as the more that Mueller coroners him, he’ll start yelling white power or some version of it, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he starts saying anti-racism is anti-white, which is another white supremacist slogan.
Farron Cousins:
Absolutely. Listen, we have to take a quick break. I’m talking right now with Chauncey DeVega, salon.com, ChaunceyDeVega.com, host of the Chauncey DeVega show podcast. I’m Farron Cousins in for Sam Seder, we’ll be right back with more Ring of Fire.
