Why The Right Is White, and Vice Versa

Following the President’s defense of Confederate flags and military bases named for Confederate generals, his open criticism of organizations supporting the banning of the flag, and his latest jingoistic venture, claims of “left-wing indoctrination” in schools that teach the history of slavery and systemic racism, preferring instead his newly formulated initiative for “patriotic education” and “pro-American” curriculums, which presumably wouldn’t include expanded histories of slavery, Jim Crow and modern racism, he continues to perplex scores of Americans who figured his white nationalist sympathies couldn’t get any more obvious.

A question: If teaching young Americans about slavery constitutes “left-wing indoctrination,” how would his constant peddling and entertaining of baseless conspiracy theories like “Obamagate” and those of the QAnon movement, defamatory and gross mischaracterizations of the nature of antiracist protests, and fearmongering diatribes against the Democratic Party through accusations of radicalization, extremism, and fraternization with the fictitious, vaguely defined “Antifa” (ask yourself: Should it be alarming that the President of the United States unequivocally condemns antifascism?) not constitute blatant examples of his own right-wing indoctrination? He has suggested many times that Americans would not be safe in a country headed by his rival, Former Vice President Joe Biden, but that all would be well if he himself were to retain power, the same power he used to tear gas nonviolent protestors outside the White House in what The New York Times called “a burst of violence unlike any seen in the shadow of the White House in generations.”

His own indoctrination, which we may more appropriately characterize as politically charged election year mudslinging and propaganda, is understandably ramping up the closer we get to the third of November. I don’t believe there is a person alive who has been able to keep count of the times he has spuriously mentioned the “Radical Left” in 2020 alone. His affinity for this term, as well as his endless accusations of Democrats and Biden being responsible for virtually everything wrong with the country all serve as an expertly placed red (indeed, very red) herring intended to mislead the American public into believing that the nation’s civil divisions are chiefly predicated on the dichotomy of right and left, rather than white and everyone else. When considering this, it becomes incredibly easy to understand why he hesitates to admit that a flag connected to the Confederate States of America, the founding principle of which, in the words of its Vice President, was “the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man,” may hearken back to a harmful and racist history. Or why he refused to criticize Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager who shot and killed two people in Kenosha, Wisconsin for protesting against police brutality following the near-fatal police assault of Kenosha resident Jacob Blake.

I know that many are wont to believe that it is propaganda or “indoctrination” to decry the President as racist or a racist sympathizer. But the treacherous connections between his actions and white nationalist ideals are too numerous to be coincidental.

It is not a coincidence that multiple outspoken racial extremists, including David Duke, former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, strongly support the President’s administration, nor is it a coincidence that the President wants to designate Antifa as a terrorist organization (in spite of it not being an organization) but will not do the same to the Klan, which has incited more extremist terror throughout the history of the country than any antifascist or Black Lives Matter supporters, the two groups that he regularly demonizes as “violent extremists,” nor is it a coincidence that he so ardently defends Confederate symbols that have long been favored by murderously racist white nationalists like Dylann Roof, who murdered nine Black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina.

The greatest evidence of this American misdirection campaign is the President’s rhetoric surrounding the nation’s various protests, which inevitably descends into unilateral condemnation of “violence,” “extremism,” the “Far Left,” “looters,” and very rarely includes any consideration for the causes being protested against. But we shouldn’t expect that kind of consideration. Admitting that racism is a very serious problem in the country or even acknowledging that it exists in the volume that it does would be entirely antithetical to what he seeks to accomplish. Here is the truth: If Trump believed that the nation was embroiled in racial tension and animosity, then he would have to believe that he was at least partially responsible for everything being protested against, everything people are being killed and lynched for. And in admitting publicly that racial tensions were high, he would also inadvertently admit this same culpability.

Thus, everything is politics. After all, you don’t win an election by telling the truth.