It’s
reckoning time. A few weeks in and even those of us who thought it
couldn’t be bad – well, it can. It is.
How could it be any worse? Flagrant racism, bumbling autocracy, Twitter
diplomacy – and God Knows What to come.
Is
Trump a fascist? Perhaps that depends on your definition of fascism. If you
count it to mean “bigoted autocrat with a fondness for executive rule” then he
is. If you count it to mean mass exterminations and martial law well then, no,
not really. Although it’s still early days.
But
a fascist fan base – well, that’s
much clearer. We all know that Trump was endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan,
something that’s pretty disturbing in itself. But it goes deeper than that. The
Alt-Right communities that spurred his success online have certainly got roots
in neo-Nazi thought – less “alt” right than “far” right.
They
may have ways of hiding it, though. And here’s how.
Take
the idea of “human biodiversity” floated by some prominent bloggers. At first it
sounds like a term from the left: an inclusive approach to human difference,
perhaps? But human biodiversity is
really just a new way of dressing up eugenic racism – an unpleasant bit of
pseudo-science aimed at dividing and “classifying” humanity into clear,
well-defined groups based on skin colour, population difference and racial
hierarchy. (Or “racism in a lab coat”, as the Baffler magazine put it).
Because
Twitter and the like have hate speech policies in action, many online
hatemongerers found a novel way to spread their ideas: using three parentheses
on either side of a name to indicate someone of Jewish origin. This social
media answer to the “Juden” Nazis used to paint on the doors of Jewish families
ultimately proved, like Trump’s words, largely unpoliceable (there is nothing
obviously offensive about parentheses, to either human or algorithm – so
they’re nearly impossible to remove systematically from the platform).
This
“closed captioning for the Jew-blind” as one white supremacist gleefully put
it, successfully “outed” a number of online journalists in targeted hate
campaigns which sought to mock Jews or expose supposed Jewish collusion in
controlling media or politics. It served as a flagging device for other
anti-Semites, and led some writers to
experience death threats, anti-Semitic cartoons, home phone calls and
delightful memes (like the photo of the gates of Auschwitz with the “Arbeit
Macht Frei” slogan replaced by “Machen Amerika Great.”)
The
offenders have since developed their dark “netiquette” further with a kind of
Turing replacement-code where innocuous words – “googles,” “skypes,” or
“yahoos” for example – stand in for racial slurs. The result are tweets like
“Chain the googles / Gas the yahoos” or “If welfare state is a given it must go
towards our own who needs. No Skypes, googles, or yahoos.”
Such
obvious race-hate is an ugly thing to encounter anywhere, but it’s far more frightening when the techniques it
employs are adopted by those seeking political power. Trump is well-known for
his attacks on opponents, but what’s less well observed is the underhand
meanings implicit in some of those attacks. He tweeted a meme about “Crooked
Hillary” which featured her face and the words “Most Corrupt Candidate Ever!”.
This slogan appeared in a little coloured star which at first sight looks like
standard desktop publishing style. The star, though, was the Star of David, and
a giant pile of atop a giant pile of money: the insinuation is not so very
subtle.
Elsewhere
he talked repeatedly of “global special interests”, another dog-whistle term
that sounds conveniently vague to the outsider but is all too specific for
those in the know (as Will Drabold put it in Mic, “Donald Trump says "global special interests."
Anti-Semites in the alt-right hear "Jews."”). Always keen to attribute his sources, he once
even openly retweeted something from WhiteGenocideTM, a user fond of white
nationalism and neo-Nazi imagery, in an unintentionally surreal message that
manages to mix petty jibing with a nod to the swastika brigade:
@WhiteGenocideTM: @realDonaldTrump Poor Jeb.
I could've sworn I saw him outside Trump Tower the other day!
It
got over nine thousand Likes.
The
extent, the potential, the possibilities are still unknown to us. But someone who
can retweet someone calling themselves White Genocide is either exceedingly
stupid or at least sympathetic to fascists. Right now it looks like both could
be possible.
