Donald Trump Jr.’s practice run
at campaigning for president at some future date masquerading as a book tour
ran into some trouble during an invite by right-wing troublemakers to speak at
UCLA. Trump Jr.’s book, How the Left
Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us, is a typical attempt by the right
to obfuscate the truth about white nationalists and the way they thrive on hate and wish to silence
anyone who disagrees with them. Of course, we should never trust a greasy-haired
gringo who looks like a Mafia thug or conman—and that, apparently, included
those on the lunatic far-extremist-fascist right, who happened to show up at
this tour stop. This loud and boisterous segment of the crowd was unhappy with the
elder Trump’s immigration policies—not, of course, because they were too
racist, but because they were not racist enough. These mindless fanatics were
ignoring the fact that Trump had virtually halted all asylum claims at the
border, had promulgated an order to end “chain migration” and the so-called “diversity
lottery,” and instituted a “public charge” provision—all measures which would
reduce legal immigration by 65 percent. But this wasn’t enough for these
people; they want all immigration to
stop, save presumably that from Europe.
Greasy Don’s talk ended 20
minutes in after he refused to take questions from this group, which then
started chanting “Q and A” so loudly that he and his girlfriend decided to
leave. I wonder if he felt any chagrin in the realization that it wasn’t the “left”
that had driven him out, but those ideologically-diseased people who his father
had unleashed from their locked box during the 2016 campaign. These people are
not just racists—who even if they hypocritically deny that they are neo-Nazis, they
certainly share the same ideology—but they also advocate for international
isolationism and oppose free trade, mainly because they prefer to spend their
leisure hours attacking their “enemies” at home. This is all part and parcel of their “America
First” propaganda, which of course means an America in which only white people
are “counted.” The term has been around for a long time, but it was in the
1920s that “America First” had been completely absorbed into the racial
eugenics theories of the time, and who it was who counted as “100% American.”
As many others have pointed out,
the current “updated” version of the “America First” movement that Trump has
resurrected from its hibernation is little differentiated from its iterations
from the past. It is no “coincidence” that the America First Committee, that
advocated for American isolationism in 1940, did so after the start of World
War II in Europe. Many America-Firsters “sympathized” with the Nazi regime in
Germany (so long as it stayed “over there”), approved its eugenics and racial
theories, were anti-Semitic and believed that a sinister international cabal
(headed mostly by Jews) was conspiring to destroy America. Amazingly enough,
the AFC attracted both conservatives (future president Gerald Ford) and
liberals (future senator Sargent Shriver, writer Sinclair Lewis), and even Walt
Disney; John F. Kennedy was a supporter, and it was known that another
supporter, his father Joseph Kennedy, was willing to “deal” with Hitler to
avoid war by buying him off, which of course never had a chance. Interestingly,
Joe Sr. himself opposed a fascist takeover of the U.S. for a highly personal
reason: he wanted one of his sons to become president.
While the AFC didn’t explicitly
support the Nazi regime in its plank, some of its supporters did, most notoriously
Charles Lindbergh. During one rally in support of AFC goals in 1941, he
advocated for “peace” and “preparedness” by remaining outside the ongoing
conflict in Europe, accusing those who wanted to help Britain really just
wanted to defeat Germany, as if this was a “bad” thing. Like other AFC supporters,
he claimed that if the U.S. minded its own affairs, it would be “impregnable”
from foreign invaders trying to undermine democracy.
However, the problem is with many
AFC supporters, who the “enemy” to democracy was wasn’t always stated in one
voice, and those who did speak did not do the organization any public relation
favors. The organization was accused of being a Nazi front, and German agents
did attempt to infiltrate the group. Obviously some had sincere pacifist
intentions, but some did not. For many AFC supporters, if war would destroy
American democracy, there was no question of who was “responsible.” In speech
in Iowa in September 1941, Lindbergh outrageously implied that by “agitating”
for war against Germany, Jews in America were testing the “tolerance” of
Christian America. The “great danger” to the country as enunciated by Lindbergh
was not unlike that set forth by the Nazis: that it “lies in their large
ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio, and our
government.” FDR, who was convinced that Lindbergh was a secret
Nazi, would say "When I read Lindbergh's speech I felt that it could not
have been better put if it had been written by Goebbels
himself. What a pity that this youngster has completely abandoned his belief in
our form of government and has accepted Nazi methods because apparently they
are efficient.”
In a Reader Digest article in 1939, Lindbergh favored keeping America
out of the war, because it would persuade Germany to refocus its efforts on
Russia, since he believed that the Nazis would do the world a “favor” by destroying
the even “greater” danger of Bolshevism (interestingly, Gen. George Patton
suggested redeploying Nazi soldiers for the same purpose to help American
troops in turning on the Russians). At least 20 million Russians were killed by
the Nazis, a number which far-right commentator Pat Buchanan apparently
approves of. Buchanan
has expressed approval of the AFC, writing that "The achievements of that
organization are monumental. By keeping America out of World War II until
Hitler attacked Stalin in June 1941, Soviet Russia, not America, bore the brunt
of the fighting, bleeding and dying to defeat Nazi Germany."
In that same article, Lindbergh also revealed the racism
that also held much in common with the Nazi view: “We can have peace and
security only so long as we band together to preserve that most priceless
possession, our inheritance of European blood, only so long as we guard
ourselves against attack by foreign armies and dilution by foreign races.” His
anti-war stance was in fact rooted in racism: "Our bond with Europe is one
of race and not of political ideology," meaning that if maintaining “pure”
racial stock meant brutal dictatorships, then so be it. Lindbergh would be a racial
eugenics enthusiast his whole life, as well as an anti-Semite; it was noted
that whenever he visited Henry Ford—another notorious anti-Semite—all they ever
talked about were “the Jews.”
It doesn’t
take much to draw a connection between then and now. In 1935, journalist and anti-fascist
activist Dorothy Thompson predicted how someone like Donald Trump could be
elected:
No people ever recognize their dictator in advance.
He never stands for election on
the platform of dictatorship. He always represents himself as the instrument –
the Incorporated National Will. When our dictator turns up you can depend on it that he will be one of the
boys, and he will stand for everything traditionally American. And nobody will
ever say ‘Heil’ to him, nor will they call him ‘Führer’ or ‘Duce.’ But they
will greet him with one great big, universal, democratic, sheeplike bleat of
‘O.K., Chief! Fix it like you wanna, Chief! Oh Kaaaay!’
In an op-ed entitled “It Can
Happen Here,” she might as well have been describing Trump’s most fanatical
supporters:
Whom do they hate? Life,
which has treated them badly. Who is to blame? Some scapegoat is to blame. The
Negroes working in the fields that should be theirs? Or the Jews? Do they not
keep the prosperous shops? Or the Communists … or the trade unionists … Or the
Catholics who have a Pope in Rome? Or the foreigners who take the jobs? These
are to blame. Therefore exterminate them. We are poor and dispossessed. But we
are white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant. Our fathers founded this country. It
belongs to us.
It is perhaps ironic that the
most virulent racist and “America Firster” in the Trump administration is the
Jewish Stephen Miller—even more so that many of his ancestors were victims of
Nazi extermination. I wonder if he blames non-white immigrants for the
Holocaust. Why not? In one of her otherworldly tomes, actress Shirley MacLaine suggests
that the 6 million Jews who died during the Holocaust did so to atone for their
“bad karma” for once being, among other bad actors in history, Roman soldiers
who put to death Christian martyrs; amazing how she gets away with espousing such
beliefs—unless, of course, it is just assumed that she is off her rocker (perhaps
occurring during the spirit transfer in The
Possession of Joel Delaney) and let it go at that. Is Miller off his rocker? There seems little doubt of
that.
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