The White Nationalist in Chief’s Return to Power
No president in the post-civil-rights era has been as racially aggressive as the now-47th president.
There is a straight line from the 2017 “unite the right” rallies in Charlottesville to the far-right-led “Stop the Steal” movement to lies about Haitians eating cats and dogs to Donald Trump’s first day in office upon his return to power. No president in the post-civil-rights era has been as racially aggressive as the now-47th president. Nearly every day since he squeaked his way back into the White House, operating under what can properly be called Trump’s White Nationalist Manifesto, his effort to prevent immigrants of color from entering the country and to roll back the rights of people of color already here has been evident. With the white nationalist ideologue Stephen Miller by his side, Trump is acting to address “anti-white feeling,” i.e., a far-right narrative with no basis in fact, but one that excites his MAGA base.
In just one week, the autocrat’s playbook of threats, lawlessness, dishonesty, and disregard for democratic norms wreaked havoc across the nation and around the world. As always, authoritarian politics in the United States are tethered to white nationalism. At this moment, Trump is the white nationalist in chief.
Trump’s recent presidential actions have sent a clear message to his supporters that he has never left the side of the “very fine people” that back him. Beyond his pardons and commutations for over 1,500 January 6 insurrectionists, he returned a portrait of Andrew Jackson, removed by President Joe Biden, to a prominent place in the Oval Office. Jackson, a hero to Trump, led and personally participated in massacres of Native Americans, as well as profited from selling and enslaving Black people.
Trump pledged to re-rename military bases after segregationists, enslavers, and traitorous Confederate generals—an intention that newly installed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth seems likely to support. Hegseth has called for restoring North Carolina’s Fort Liberty to its original name of Fort Bragg, named after Confederate General Braxton Bragg, a slaveholder who is considered “one of the worst generals” in US history. And Trump issued an executive order (EO) directing the secretary of the interior to re-rename Denali, the highest peak in the United States, Mount McKinley to honor President William McKinley, another president with a dishonorable record on race, most notably ignoring the vigorous pleas of Black leaders like the journalist Ida B. Wells as the lynchings of African Americans and racist terrorism grew at the end of the 19th century.
In just a few days, Trump has positioned himself as the greatest defender of whiteness in the nation.
Beyond such symbolic acts, Trump signed a number of EOs that will dramatically change people’s lives for the worse, such as ending birthright citizenship. This is textbook “great replacement” theory: Trump and his MAGA base want to slow or stop the expanding population of Black, Latino, and Asian people in the United States. And that extends to his deportation blitz, which makes no pretense of being nonracial or objective. The raids to capture undocumented Black and Brown people have become spectacles of humiliation not dissimilar to events in The Hunger Games or other dystopian fiction.
Trump’s executive order to end all DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) programs and initiatives is a direct attack on the civil rights, human rights, and social justice gains that were won by immense sacrifice over two centuries by communities of color and other marginalized groups. In a cruel and calculated move, Trump has destined thousands of federal DEI employees who care deeply about justice and fairness to lose their jobs and careers.
Of course, Trump is not doing all this on his own. He has had near-total backing from Republicans in the Capitol, and fearing retribution, these elected officials have abandoned any responsibility to hold him accountable for his actions. It is also no accident that, like every business or endeavor that Trump has run, his administration is overwhelmingly white and male.
As for Trump’s supporters who do not fit that profile, they are awakening to the real Trump, not the faux Christian or fictional “successful” businessman that swayed many. Unable to run for office again, he no longer needs to pretend he cares about the Black community—or any community that isn’t white, wealthy, or far-right MAGA—or its votes.
The second coming of Trump will be one long slog through the bowels of racial animus and juvenile reprisals. Permanent resistance is the way forward.
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Between the reemergence of right-wing red-baiting and Donald Trump’s use of the chilling National Security Presidential Memorandum–7 to criminalize left political organizing, we’re seeing McCarthyism reborn before our eyes.
This assault on democracy cannot be ignored or wished away. Resisting it requires bravery in the face of threats and repression, a steadfast commitment to the truth, and the unwavering belief that we can—and will—overcome this darkness.
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Onward,
Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editor and Publisher, The Nation
