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Tag: presidential race

Concerns about the alt-right

There used to be just conservatives. Then there came the neo-conservatives, a largely American variation on the theme that venerates free markets, but marries it with an interventionist foreign policy. Neo-conservativism got a black eye after the interventionism its proponents advocate led to the quagmire in Iraq. In a resurgence of old-fashioned conservatism, stalwarts proudly adopted the self-deprecating paleo-conservative, a blatant rejection of the neo-conservative moniker.

In recent months, a new term has come into common usage in American politics: alt-right. The contraction of “alternative right” is a sort of whitewashing umbrella for a range of ideological streams that were, until recently, considered well outside the mainstream. White nationalism, itself a whitewashed term for white supremacy, is chief among these. While not precisely defined, alt-right has also been said to encompass the anti-immigration and xenophobic nativism that has been articulated by Donald Trump, the Republican candidate for U.S. president. Populism is a term also associated with the alt-right, although Bernie Sanders’ challenge to Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination was also defined as populist.

The banality of the term “alt-right” – it almost sounds like something you do with a computer keyboard – masks the mainstreaming of terrible ideas. Concurrent to, and not the least bit unrelated to, the rise of alt-right as a term is the rise of Trump as a political phenomenon. The Republican standard-bearer has said, on an almost daily basis, things that would eliminate any other candidate in history from contention. Yet his supporters dismiss (or embrace) his hateful, ignorant and, seemingly as often as not, outright false statements. The litany is endless. Last week, he suggested that Clinton’s secret service details should disarm and “see what happens to her.” This unsubtle allusion to violence is not at all uncommon in Trump’s rhetoric. That he remains a contender for the presidency is alarming. That he is rising in the polls, almost tying Clinton in aggregates and leading her in many polls, suggests that Americans are seriously considering taking a dangerous political turn.

Trump idolizes “strongmen.” He has reveled in the admiration of Vladimir Putin, the Russian leader who has undone that country’s nascent steps toward democracy. He is unequivocally a solo act, openly insisting that he will run roughshod over Congress and the judiciary, the institutions that the founders of the United States set up as checks and balances on the presidency. He has stated that the electoral system is rigged against him and predicted rioting in the country should he lose. The image he projects of America is of a third-world economy, and the vision of political violence he purveys is more suited to an unstable dictatorship than to the reality of American government.

It is in the nature of human beings to take for granted what we have the moment we possess it. Readers of a certain age remember The Jetsons, with its incredible futuristic gadgets, a cartoon we can now watch on a device we carry in our pocket that contains all the accumulated knowledge of humankind, and we have the ability to speak face-to-face with almost anyone in the world instantaneously, in real time. And yet, when this gadget alerts us that we have a message or a call, we are as likely to respond with a weary, “Oh, what is it now?”

Likewise, perhaps, with democracy. In its modern incarnation, democracy was born 240 years ago in what is now the United States of America. In the span of human history, this is the blink of an eye. About Trump, many commentators, most recently this week in the Washington Post, have said, “This is how fascism comes to America.”

On numerous occasions over the years, we have used this space to condemn flippant use of such terms as fascism, warning that overuse will dull sensitivity to the seriousness of the language and its threat. We are less reticent to condemn the use in this case. The rise of Trump and the “alt-right” ideologies he empowers are cause for very real concern.

Posted on September 23, 2016September 21, 2016Author The Editorial BoardCategories From the JITags alt-right, Clinton, nationalism, neo-conservative, paleo-conservative, presidential race, racism, Trump, white supremacism

We have our own issues

American politics, these days, attracts global disbelief and revulsion. The contest pits against each other two of the most unpopular candidates since polling began. One of them, the Republican nominee Donald Trump, is endorsed by the country’s leading white supremacists.

There is no question that Trump has tapped into something. Most of his supporters are not now and never have been members or supporters of the Ku Klux Klan or similar fringe groups. They are, in fact, a large and mainstream enough group that he won the nomination of the Republican party and now stands just a couple of points behind Democrat Hillary Clinton in polls, with at least two in five Americans saying they intend to vote for him. Among white Americans, if they alone were the electorate, polls say Trump would win a landslide.

Leaving aside his nonchalance about the fact that David Duke, the former imperial wizard of the KKK, and other of America’s most prominent racists think he would make a top-notch president, Trump has legitimized a host of barely more discrete forms of bigotry, chauvinism and hatred. People who strive for human respect have responded with two approaches. They have condemned the most overt examples of Trump’s racism, while acknowledging that many Americans are experiencing economic and social displacement that could justify their scapegoating of other groups or otherwise find reason to support a candidate whose policy positions are nothing more than accumulated Twitter tantrums.

If Trump wins, there will be more issues to address than this space can accommodate. If he loses, there will still be a divided country where parents have to explain to their children why it is inappropriate for them to express ideas that have been so effortlessly articulated by one of the two leading candidates for the highest office in the country.

Incongruously – or is it? – we are also in a time when the United States is engaged in a deep public reflection on race. The Black Lives Matter movement, which is partly a result of the murder of young African-Americans by police officers but also of broader systemic racism, has opened an overdue public discussion. Decades after legal racism was upended, there remain serious issues that the country needs to confront. Small gestures like that by Colin Kaepernick, a football player who is refusing to stand for the national anthem as a protest against discrimination, have aroused outrage but also raised legitimate awareness. Can you love your country and still condemn aspects of its nature?

Israelis, perhaps foremost among others, have faced this question for decades. And Canada is also engaged in a discussion around race. While we, too, have a history of racism against people of African descent, this history is different from that of the United States in myriad ways, including the absence of slavery in our history. But our past includes racist and antisemitic immigration policies, social and systemic antisemitism, racism and mistreatment of women, degradations of many varieties and, in something we are only beginning to come to terms with, treatment of indigenous Canadians that was intended to erase their cultural identities. And these are not the only areas where our society fails to live up to our ideals.

It is certainly tempting to look at what is happening to our south and feel superior. It would be more productive as a society for us to acknowledge that, while we see fault in others, we will be a better country when we keep our gaze closer to home, and use our stones for repairing, not throwing.

Posted on September 9, 2016September 7, 2016Author The Editorial BoardCategories From the JITags antisemitism, Clinton, politics, presidential race, racism, Trump
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