“Trump comments were good. He didn’t attack us… He implied that there was hate on both sides! So he implied the antifa [anti-fascists] are haters. He said he loves us all. When asked to condemn, he just walked out of the room. Really, really good. God bless him.”
– Nazi website The Daily Stormer
By Mark L. Taylor
The Commoner Call (8/14/17)
Donald Trump’s shamefully sketchy response to the Nazi riots in Charlottesville, Virginia that resulted in the killing of a young woman and the injury of at least 19 removes any hint of a doubt that 72 years after the carnage of World War II we have a Nazi president. A minimum of 34 were reported injured during the day. The ‘presidential’ silence in the face of all the torch light marching, bat swinging, brass knuckles, Nazi flag waving, Swastika arm bands, street beatings, intimidation and white nationalist chants and verbal assaults torched away any possible varnish of ambiguity about just what we are facing in this nation.
While many republicans were issuing statements condemning the bullying fascist anti-Semitic display, Trump stepped to the podium to say:
“We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence, on many sides. On many sides. It’s been going on for a long time in our country. Not Donald Trump, not Barack Obama. This has been going on for a long, long time.”
“On many sides. On many sides.”
WTH?
The fact that Trump lumped innocent victims in with the Nazi perpetrators while refusing to condemn the Nazi rhetoric and behavior confirms the obvious: Donald Trump, like his father before him, is a white nationalist and Donald is a Nazi. As the quote leading off this column notes, the Nazi Daily Stormer website couldn’t have been more delighted by Trump’s silence. Silence in the face of Nazi hate is agreement with Nazi hate. Especially when the nominal ‘president’ of the United States fails to speak.
“Their tiki torches may be fueled by citronella but their ideas are fueled by hate, and have no place in civil society. We should call evil by its name. My brother didn’t give his life fighting Hitler for Nazi ideas to go unchallenged here at home.” – GOP Sen. Orrin Hatch
The company they keep
The republican party and all those supposedly adult generals populating the White House and administration better get clear exactly who – and what – they have lent their name and credibility to.
A number of (not all) republicans were quick to challenge Trump’s Nazi enabling:
- “Their tiki torches may be fueled by citronella but their ideas are fueled by hate, and have no place in civil society,” tweeted Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, the most senior Republican in the Senate. “We should call evil by its name. My brother didn’t give his life fighting Hitler for Nazi ideas to go unchallenged here at home.”
- “Very important for the nation to hear @POTUS describe events in #Charlottesville for what they are, a terror attack by #whitesupremacists,” tweeted Sen. Marco Rubio, a competitor for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination.
- “Mr. President – we must call evil by its name. These were white supremacists and this was domestic terrorism,” tweeted Sen. Cory Gardner, a Colorado Republican.
- Why Won’t Trump Call Out Radical White Terrorism? – On November 15, 2015, as the world grappled with the horrors of a multipronged ISIS attack in Paris, Donald Trump, who was then an improbable but officially declared candidate for the presidency, tweeted, “When will President Obama issue the words RADICAL ISLAMIC TERRORISM? He can’t say it, and unless he will, the problem will not be solved!” I raise the subject of this tweet, and the sentiment that motivated it, in light of President Trump’s remarkable reaction to the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, this weekend. “We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides,” he said. Trump, when presented with the chance to denounce, in plain, direct language, individuals who could fairly be described as “white supremacist terrorists,” or with some other equivalent formulation, instead resorted to euphemism and moral equivalence. … Read then Rest
Natl. Security Adviser Target Of Alt-Right Attacks
By Tom Porter
Newsweek (8/5/17)
Amid a campaign against him from sections of the right wing media, president Trump on Friday re-affirmed his confidence in three star lieutenant general and national security adviser HR McMaster.
“General McMaster and I are working very well together. He is a good man and very pro-Israel,” Trump said in a statement Friday night. “I am grateful for the work he continues to do serving our country.”
McMaster has come under attack by conservatives aligned with the White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, including the far-right Breitbart website that Bannon formerly edited.
Contradictory attacks accused McMaster of both being controlled by Jews, and not being sufficiently supportive of Israel. Alt-right journalist Mike Cernovich has shared links to a site called McMaster Leaks on Twitter, devoted to attacks on the general.
The website contained an anti-Semitic cartoon showing McMaster controlled by the Rothschild banking dynasty and investor George Soros, reported Haaretz. Breitbart attacks quoting “administration officials” alleged McMaster opposed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appearing alongside Trump at the president’s recent visit to the Western Wall.
The hate campaign was sparked by reports this week that McMaster was seeking to purge the National Security Council of allies of former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who was forced to resign after it was revealed he held undisclosed meetings with Russian officials. …
*****
Whiteness – Even At Its Worst – Is Always Protected
By Tyler Payton
The HuffPost (8/12/17)
Last night a bunch of white supremacists and Neo-Nazis marched on University of Virginia’s campus holding torches and chanting things like “blood and soil,” “white lives matter,” “you can’t replace us,” and “anti-white.” Participants were also doing Nazi salutes and some fights broke out among the participants and counter-protesters.
I find it interesting (and frustrating) that most news coverage on this event is calling it either a protest, rally or march rather than what it should have been called: a riot. Google “Charlottesville” and see what comes up. I would bet money that you would have to scroll until you find an article or headline that refers to last night’s event as a riot. The same thing is happening on Twitter. I have seen many, many tweets about what has happened, but I have not seen it being called a riot.
The reason this is interesting and frustrating to me is because I know, based on the past three years or so, that if it had been a group of black people protesting for their right to live, it would have immediately been deemed a riot. However, here we have a group of white supremacists and literal Nazis who are starting fights and throwing torches, and this is somehow still only being called a protest/rally/march. While the dictionary definition of “riot” doesn’t necessarily mean that there is physical violence, it obviously carries a much more dangerous and less respectable connotation to us than “protest” or “rally” or “march,” which all carry the connotation (at least to me) of people just exercising their political right.
We have a group of white supremacists and literal Nazis who are starting fights and throwing torches, and this is somehow still only being called a protest/rally/march.
At first thought, it may not seem like such a big deal that different protests are called different things. But I have said it before and I’ll say it again, words are powerful. If they weren’t, political candidates wouldn’t give speeches, commercials wouldn’t have catchy slogans, and you probably wouldn’t be reading this.
So, the difference in what these events are being called is important. This difference highlights the fact that whiteness is always protected, even at its worst. Even when there is violence and racism involved on a large scale, whiteness is still protected. This was showcased by this riot not only in the way that it’s being talked about, but also in the lack of police presence. Judging from photos and videos on Twitter, it seems that there were not many police, and the officers that I saw were not in riot gear. This can be compared to the many instances we’ve seen online of black people protesting and having to face off against swarms of police, many in riot gear and willing to get physical with anyone. …
- Watch Some Intense MSNBC Street Level Fighting By White Nationalist Fascists in Charlottesville: Link to 28-Minute Video