A white supremacist salute by Elon Musk at the Trump inauguration celebration showed the true colors of the Trump administration. Trump’s pardons and commutations of such racist group leaders and members as the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers revives Trump’s hopes for an armed body of enforcers to do his bidding.
Inflammatory rhetoric and signaling is a tried and true practice for autocrats and fascists, since they provoke social chaos and resistance that the autocrat can use to justify violent crackdowns. Musk and others, even the Anti-Defamation League that claims to fight extremists and protect democracy, protested that Musk’s Nazi salute was not intended to inflame white supremacists. Yet this practice of saying or doing something inflammatory and then claiming it was only in jest or not intended is what Alexandra Minna Stern calls a hallmark of the U.S. far right strategy. By mocking those who are offended by racist and even genocidal events and statements, the far right gaslights the general public in an effort to cause the confusion autocrats use to demobilize their opponents.
But the white supremacist movement supporting Trump is dead serious. Treated as a domestic terrorist threat both by the FBI and by the West Point Center for Combating Terrorism, the various groups that make up the movement are armed and dangerous. Their recent history of murder and brutal beatings are well-known, and that is very much their value to Trump.
These white racist thugs will be useful to threaten, intimidate, and beat back Trump’s critics and those who wish to halt his illegal behaviors. While in past years the police might have served as protection from this white supremacist violence, that will no longer be the case. Police and other law enforcement has often struggled with white supremacist sympathizers in their ranks. As we witness the end of the rule of law, marked by Trump’s pardons of the January 6 attackers, policing will become less and less effective in protecting the general public from Trump’s thugs. His goal is to weaken and intimidate his opponents, and he has chosen the path of white supremacy to do so.
The lack of major protests and social disturbance in reaction to Musk’s Nazi salute and Trump’s racist anti-immigrant executive orders show that white supremacy is still mainstream American social practice. Democracy in the United States has always been haunted by the specter of white supremacy. As Trump and his billionaire henchmen and signal officers inflame the fires of white supremacy, how can those who would defend democracy respond?
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