Hate Speech on the World Stage
With the world watching America amidst a pandemic and nationwide protests for racial justice, Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric is deepening tensions.
Donald Trump has used coded language throughout his life. Most Americans became aware of his hateful flatulent word salads once Barack Obama was elected. Others have heard it and witnessed his racism for most of his adult life. After declaring his run for the presidency, his speech has only gotten more inflammatory with each passing day.
Now it’s just balls-out racism.
He began his journey to the White House by declaring Mexicans (used to describe Latinos from South of the Mexican border) rapists and murderers. He’s used every dog-whistle to refer to prominent Black voices. He’s employed nearly every form of divisive propaganda about every minority in America at one point or another. He’s still doing it.
Muslim, Jewish, Black, Latino, Asian, it doesn’t matter. Unless we bow to white supremacy, we will forever be the enemy to him and his supporters. His unfettered hate along with the cheers from the small crowd in Tulsa reiterated what we’re up against. Like Trump, his supporters’ language has only gotten more vile. More hateful. It’s vitriol on a level not seen in decades.
That’s because hate speech is amplified exponentially using the power of the internet and the orange mouth-breather on the world stage.
The far-right echo chamber is vast. Once Trump tweets or says anything, his supporters will adopt and regurgitate his words. Regardless of what he says or how inflammatory it may be, his supporters will devolve into circular reasoning to justify even his most hateful words. If you think Trump will be easy to beat in November, you’re not paying attention to how prevalent his supporters are online and in the real world. Particularly in rural America.
Anti-lockdown crowds; Disgruntled cops; Angry white supremacists; white gangs terrorizing America; all support Trump. His most ardent followers make up a wide variety of different white-centered groups and their numbers are astounding. Their enthusiasm for him can easily lead him to another victory with a minority vote — defying the will of the majority again.
To think otherwise is childish at best and willfully ignorant at worst.
Given the current racial tensions, support for Donald Trump can only grow and his camp is very aware of that. The plan moving forward is to continue fomenting culture wars and deepening the racial divide across the country. As expected, Trump delivered in that regard leaving his supporters foaming at the mouth. They’re flooding the internet paraphrasing his talking points while right-wing media spins his words to justify and normalize the use of hate speech.
All while we laugh at the turnout.
Real America
Most people have lived their entire lives with the idea that America is an equal, just society and are only now learning otherwise. On the other side of the spectrum, we have those that refuse to learn and listen to respond rather than listening to learn. Trump’s ideology and not-so-veiled racism attract reactionaries. Declaring their dreams of going back to a better time condemns the social progress of the last several decades. It’s peak white supremacy.
The level of racism that drives an alarming portion of American society is more obvious than ever. It’s now okay for white supremacists to declare their hate publicly. Whether it’s online, at a local restaurant, or at the corner store. If you’re a minority, you likely have some concerns whenever you leave the house. While many of us have dealt with hate and discrimination most of our lives, the blatant aggression towards minorities is becoming more apparent to civil society each day.
One of the biggest driving factors behind the increased hostility is the sitting President of the United States. Donald Trump has done more damage to the advancement of American society than any other element today. Much of the racial animus we are seeing is driven by the coded language that comes from his administration. Hate groups are acting on his words and have responded to Trump’s putrid vocalizations with mass murder and public attacks on minorities.
Trump’s language at his hate rally in Tulsa — the day after the 99th Anniversary of The Tulsa Race Massacre — only helped solidify his position among those that hate. Despite the small crowd, his team knows precisely what they’re doing because his base is fired up. The event was a failure. Sure. But only on the surface. His rabid base sees it has a huge success because it reinvigorated and reinforced those beliefs that would hand him the presidency in 2016.
It can happen again. His base is well aware of that. The lackluster crowds can be attributed to many things, one of those involved some creative activism. From an increase in COVID cases to planned Black Lives Matter protests outside to teenagers reserving one million tickets to the event, all of those are being used to explain what attributed to the low turnout. Trump supporters all agree that the low turnout wasn’t because of a lack of enthusiasm.
In fact, they’re bragging about having 4 million viewers online for the rally in Tulsa as evidence of their sustained enthusiasm for Trump.
Coming Full Circle
Trump came into the Tulsa rally without missing a beat. Despite the small crowd, the spectacle was there. He almost immediately started using some of the same racist tropes that he began his campaign with. It was another display of bigotry, xenophobia, and blatant racism. And just as if on cue, the crowd cheers louder the more hateful the rhetoric.
Trump brought out the Chinese virus terminology that has made Asian Americans targets for harassment and assault all over the country. He then took it up a notch by referring to COVID-19 as the “Kung Flu” as he took his blatant xenophobia up a notch. Despite the real-life damage and violence that his rhetoric leads to, it doesn’t stop him because it fires up his base.
It didn’t take him long to refer to Black Lives Matter protesters as “very bad people outside” of the rally. He then referred to the protests as “extremism, destruction, and violence of the radical left” while describing the damage done mostly by white supremacist gangs. He referred to the protesters for racial justice as starting “big fires that looked world ending,” again, discounting the damage done by white people and racist gangs
Despite them knowing the truth, his supporters don’t care because their “movement” is based on fomenting hate and nothing else. When Trump says, left-wing radicals are “looting, burning down buildings, and injure police officers,” he’s referring to the destruction, murder, and chaos of far-right agitators that Black people are receiving all the blame for. His administration is a huge part of placing that blame on Black people.
Referring to the mostly Black voices behind the Police Reform movement as “these people who want to defund our police” was no accident. He followed that up with an even more blatant dog-whistle, “our people aren’t as violent, but if they were… I know you,” to loud cheers. Then, after he referred to the nearly all-white crowd as “forgotten men and women,” while pointed at the white folks in his periphery, it was yet another clear indicator of who Trump’s messaging is directed at.
Trump didn’t miss a single opportunity to attack minorities. He brought back the “bad hombre” trope while discussing defunding the police saying, what happens “when a very “tough hombre” is breaking into the window, and you call 911 — a number no longer working?” He then jumped into a tirade about how bad migrants of color are by saying, “ICE stops the roughest toughest meanest people on earth; ICE gets rid of the worst scum on earth.”
He then referred to migrants as “animals who cut up a woman.” He continued arguing that “criminal aliens have more rights than Americans.” He then suggested that this, “will happen in every community in America if we don’t keep them out,” as he pointed into the crowd saying, “you know what to do.” He then mentioned being forced to “provide free healthcare for millions and millions of illegal aliens,” knowing that his words drive hate towards non-white Americans.
White Man’s World
Preserving what they perceive to be a white man’s world is their top priority. If Black and Brown people suffer because of it is of little concern to them. They simply do not care. Republicans are trying to take all of the current outrage against oppressive policing to appeal to Black voters with toothless policies addressing the problem. As long as they allow and support Klannish behavior by Trump and his supporters, they might as well give that up.
It’s easy to see just how impactful Trump’s words can be. Since his rally in Tulsa, Ron DeSantis has come out blaming migrant farmworkers for the explosion in Coronavirus cases in Florida, making Latinos targets right alongside Asian folks who have been under attack by far-right racist sympathizers. There’s no question that the rhetoric from the Oval Office has a direct impact on the real world.
Trump’s rhetoric has also led Rudy Giuliani to make yet another false assertion in declaring that Black people kill more cops than cops kill Black people. A notion that is not only false but one that detracts from the fact that white people kill more cops than anyone else. This is all the same propaganda that has been used against minorities for decades, even centuries. In addition, this follows the same police union rhetoric discounting the fact that cops die in traffic accidents and by suicide more than anything else.
We all know why propaganda like this exists.
It serves to demonize minorities as some sort of threat to white people and the white way of life in America. This is why so many white folks fear diversity and inclusivity. They fear working side-by-side with Latinos and Black folks. To many Americans, minorities represent a threat to the economy, to white comfort, and the “American” way of life. Nothing could be further from the truth. As long as hateful rhetoric is allowed to continue unabated, those views will never change.
The words of so-called political leaders have served to create an environment where blatant racism has become the foundation of just about everything in America. The United States has never had a time in its history where it didn’t have politicians fostering racial hatred. In just the last 50 years, Americans have listened to the normalization of hate speech almost daily. Now, it’s acceptable and hardly receives the backlash that it should.
When you take all of this rhetoric and follow it up with Trump’s talk of “law and order,” who do you think his supporters are thinking of? It sure as hell isn’t the “forgotten” white folks that his clan is thinking about when they think of criminal behavior. That’s precisely the point of such language. This is what Republicans have been a part of since the civil rights era.
Meanwhile, Trump and his supporters despise being called out for racism even after they argue that social progress is a “full-scale assault on American life,” and that we should “expel anyone who disagrees.” He argued that by removing Confederate monuments, civil society is, “trying to desecrate our history” and wants “to demolish our heritage.”
Conclusion
The Trump administration’s foundation is built on hate and his followers clearly support it. No longer is there any room for understanding their point of view. We see where their dear leader is coming from and that speaks for itself. We know his cronies have a goal to divide America by turning every major issue into a culture war. Those that fell for it are far too committed to turn back now, explaining their undying support.
“If I lose an election over that (police reform), there’s gonna be trouble.” — Donald Trump, June 20, 2020
Don’t be complacent. The war against hate is far from over. There are no guarantees Trump will lose. Even if he did, it’s not like all of this was born with him and there is no way this will end with a Biden or Sanders presidency. The worst thing anyone can do is assume it’s all over with Trump out of office. America has always been the way many people are seeing it for the first time and it’s going to take more than electing a new president to change that.
If you have recently found yourself becoming an ally in the movement for racial justice and racial equality, please remember, we need continued pressure to be applied beyond November.
We need a sustained approach by everyone.
Arturo is an anti-racist political nerd. He is an upcoming author, journalist, advocate for social justice, and a married father of three. He is a regular contributor to Latino Rebels. If you’d like to learn more about the issues covered here, see the links below or follow him on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.