By Mark L. Taylor
The Commoner Call (8/21/17)
It has been encouraging to see a few prominent republicans condemn Donald Trump’s “Many sides. Many sides” defense of white supremacists and Nazis in the wake of the Charlottesville attacks.
Utah republican Sen. Orrin Hatch spoke out forcefully about the Nazi torch lit display on a tweeted message: “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.”
Former republican 2016 presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio piled on, stating, “Very important for the nation to hear @POTUS describe events in #Charlottesville for what they are, a terror attack by #whitesupremacists.”
Colorado GOP Sen. Cory Gardner said, ““Mr. President – we must call evil by its name. These were white supremacists and this was domestic terrorism.”
There were other republican statements of varying degrees and courage and all that is well and good, but the republican party has a long history of “dog whistle” racism going back decades from GOP campaign consultant Lee Atwater’s manipulation of subtle racist messaging and Ronald Reagan’s 1980 states rights campaign speech on a Confederate battle flag festooned stage in Philadelphia, Mississippi, just seven miles from where the brutalized bodies of three KKK-murdered civil rights workers had been found in 1964 to the infamous and overtly racist Willie Horton campaign ad of H.W Bush.
The tapeworm of the white supremacy upon which Nazi ideology grows runs deeply through the bowels of the republican party.
For decades now, the republican party and their conservative, corporate and Koch brothers dark money sponsors have been salting the moral soil of this nation with subtle racist messaging and assumptions. The tapeworm of the white supremacy upon which Nazi ideology grows runs deeply through the bowels of the republican party.
Behind the nice words of denial
Behind the recent words of tolerance and condemnation of racism by contemporary republicans there is a long, tawdry history of race-based legislation covering everything from the selective enforcement of drug laws to the widespread assault on voting rights and racialized gerrymandering of congressional districts. An important business partner in predatory Pay Day lenders many minorities depend upon are republican politicians.
While Nazis march free and beat counter-demonstrators under the eyes of law enforcement, Standing Rock Dakota Access Pipeline Protesters were shot with rubber bullets and doused with pepper spray and water in freezing temperatures then caged in dog kennels by militarized police. While police snipers sitting atop armored vehicles patrolled Ferguson, Missouri police in Charlottesville casually looked on.
From Camden, New Jersey to the Rosebud Reservation of South Dakota, republican-authored race-based laws and regulations have been sprinkled like legislative IEDs throughout the daily life of minority communities across the nation. The human cost, misery and smothered dreams of generations of minority youth has been too tragic to fully comprehend.
Muzzled aspirations
In the name and cause of short-term political expediency, the republicans have dutifully muzzled the aspirational potential of the nation. The common good has been butchered and offered up to the corporate gods and the insatiable one percent.
While it is wonderful to see a small group of republicans now standing up to Trump’s comments the Nazi white supremacy we saw invading the University of Virginia has been nurtured in the republican party crucible of casual cruelty. Trump is nothing more than a grotesque viral symptom of institutional and political racism that is fully branded – and owned – by the republican party.
To be sure, through their feckless political malpractice, the democratic party has played an enabling role in a lot of the abusive legislation. Their abandonment of the lower and working classes and their steadfast refusal to turn away from Wall Street interests has facilitated a national disparity of income that now approaches the levels seen in Russia, it is the republicans and the right wing that has written the script for the rise of America’s out-in-the-open republican Nazi movement.
The republican Trump nay sayers have some big decisions to make if they want to stem the tide of American Nazism. They will will either speak against the Nazis or become the Nazis.
As for the Democrats, they will either need tofind a way to address the legitimate and spiraling economic challenges herding the gullible to white nationalism or they will be accomplices to a truly staggering national tragedy.
(Commoner Call commentary and cartoons by Mark L. Taylor, 2017. Open source and free to use with link to www.thecommonercall.org )