Trump’s unwillingness to denounce the white supremacists who
came to Charlottesville bent on violence has been part of his
political strategy from the start.
Remember,
weeks after he began his campaign by alleging that Mexican immigrants were
criminals and rapists, two brothers in Boston beat up and urinated on a
58-year-old homeless Mexican national, subsequently telling police “Donald
Trump was right, all these illegals need to be deported.”
Instead
of condemning the brutality, Trump excused it by saying “people who are
following me are very passionate. They love this country and they want this
country to be great again.”
During
campaign rallies Trump repeatedly excused brutality toward protesters. “You
know what they used to do to guys like that when they were in a place like
this? They’d be carried out on a stretcher, folks.”
After
white supporters punched and attempted to choke a Black Lives Matter protester,
Trump said “maybe he should have been roughed up.”
Trump
was even reluctant to distance himself from David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan.
Since
becoming president, Trump’s instigations have continued. As Representative Mark
Sanford, a Republican from South Carolina, told the Washington Post, “the
president has unearthed some demons.”
In
May, Trump congratulated body-slamming businessman Greg Gianforte on his
special election win in Montana, making no mention of the victor’s attack on a
reporter the night before.
Weeks
ago Trump even tweeted a video clip of himself in a WWE professional wrestling
match slamming a CNN avatar to the ground and pounding him with punches and
elbows to the head.
Hateful
violence is hardly new to America. But never before has a president licensed it
as a political strategy or considered haters part of his political base.
In
his second week as president, Trump called Wayne LaPierre, CEO of the National
Rifle Association to the White House.
Soon
thereafter, LaPierre told gun owners they should fear “leftists” and the
“national media machine” that were “an enemy utterly dedicated to destroy not
just our country, but also Western civilization.”
Since
then the NRA has run ads with the same theme, concluding “the only way we stop
this, the only way we save our country and our freedom, is to fight this
violence of lies with a clenched fist of truth.”
It’s
almost as if someone had declared a new civil war. But who? And for what
purpose?
One
clue came earlier last week in a memo from Rich Higgins, who had been director
for strategic planning in Trump’s National Security Council.
Entitled
“POTUS & Political Warfare,” Higgins wrote the seven-page document in May,
which was recently leaked to Foreign Policy Magazine.
In
it Higgins charges that a cabal of leftist “deep state” government workers,
“globalists,” bankers, adherents to Islamic fundamentalism and establishment
Republicans want to impose cultural Marxism in the United States.
“Recognizing in candidate Trump an existential threat to cultural Marxist memes that dominate the prevailing cultural narrative, those that benefit recognize the threat he poses and seek his destruction.”
“Recognizing in candidate Trump an existential threat to cultural Marxist memes that dominate the prevailing cultural narrative, those that benefit recognize the threat he poses and seek his destruction.”
There
you have it. Trump’s goal has never been to promote guns or white supremacy or
to fuel attacks on the press and the left. These may be means, but the goal has
been to build and fortify his power. And keep him in power even if it’s found
that he colluded with Russia to get power.
Trump
and his former consigliere Steve Bannon had been quietly encouraging a civil war
between Trump’s base of support – mostly white and worried – and everyone who’s
not.
It’s
built on economic stresses and racial resentments. It’s fueled by paranoia. And
it’s conveyed by Trump’s winks and nods haters, and his deafening silence in
the face of their violence.
A
smaller version of the civil war extends even into the White House, where
Bannon and his protégés are doing battle with leveler heads.
National
security advisor Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster fired Higgins. Reportedly, Trump was
furious at the firing.
McMaster
was quick to term the Charlottesville violence “terrorism.” Ivanka Trump
denounced “racism, white supremacy and neo-nazis.” Reportedly, chief of staff
John Kelly pushed Trump to condemn the haters who descended on Charlottesville.
Let’s
hope the leveler heads win the civil war in the White House. Let’s pray the
leveler heads in our society prevent the civil war Trump and Bannon want to
instigate in America.
ROBERT B. REICH is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at
the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center
for Developing Economies. He served as Secretary of Labor in the Clinton
administration, for which Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective
cabinet secretaries of the twentieth century. He has written fourteen books,
including the best sellers "Aftershock", "The Work of
Nations," and "Beyond Outrage," and, his most recent,
"Saving Capitalism." He is also a founding editor of the American
Prospect magazine, chairman of Common Cause, a member of the American Academy
of Arts and Sciences, and co-creator of the award-winning documentary,
INEQUALITY FOR ALL.
