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US-POLITICS-EXTREMISM
Nazis, racists, bigots: Extremism on US ballot in 2018
WASHINGTON, July 29, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Arthur Jones is an avowed Nazi.
John Fitzgerald says the Holocaust is a myth. Rick Tyler wants to “make
America white again.”
Their fringe ideas are reminiscent of another age, but the unapologetic men
who espouse them are all on US election ballots in 2018.
Extremism and bigotry, even outright white supremacy and anti-Semitism,
have found new lives in 21st century US politics and the era of President
Donald Trump, beyond just the toxic rhetoric of a few little-known cranks.
They have received more exposure this year on the national stage than at
any time in recent memory. And the mainly conservative proponents of hate
running for office are proving to be a major embarrassment for the Republican
Party.
In Illinois, Jones, who called the Holocaust “the biggest, blackest lie in
history” and once ran a newspaper ad with a large swastika in the middle, is
the Republican candidate for Congress, after he won the party primary by
running unopposed in a largely Democratic district.
Russel Walker, running for a seat in North Carolina’s state house,
proclaims “there is nothing wrong with being a racist” and that Jews are
“descendants of Satan.”
In Wisconsin, Paul Nehlen, the leading Republican running to fill the seat
in Congress currently held by retiring Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, has
emerged as a leader of the alt-right movement, someone who critics warn wants
to provide white nationalists and anti-Semites a stronger foothold in US
culture and politics.
And the campaign website for Tyler, a Trump supporter running for Congress
in Tennessee, depicts the Confederate flag flying atop the White House. One
of his campaign billboards read: “Make America White Again.”
Experts say there is an unprecedented number of openly bigoted candidates
this year, and that their chief enabler may well be the president of the
United States himself.
“Trump’s unorthodox use of racism-related and anti-Muslim stuff — all of
that bigoted language — has opened a door in politics that wasn’t there
before,” Heidi Beirich, who as an expert at the Southern Poverty Law Center
(SPLC) has been tracking hate groups since 1999, told AFP.
“We’ve always had a smattering of neo-Nazis… but this is ratcheting the
situation up much higher than it was before.”
– No more ‘taboos’? –
Overt bigotry by a candidate would spell his or her “death knell” up until
recently, Beirich said. But in today’s hyper partisan political environment,
such rhetoric may no longer be a deal breaker.
“By blowing through those taboos, and winning the presidency, Trump has
shown a path to electoral success that people assumed wouldn’t work,” she
said.
This bigotry has spread into public life. Several incidents caught on video
showing white people calling the police on African-Americans going about
their business have gone viral.
One, which showed two young men dragged out of a Starbucks coffee shop in
handcuffs, helped spark a national dialogue about race.
The racial and ethnic divides are on clear political display in places like
Virginia, where the Republican Senate nominee, the anti-immigration county
supervisor Corey Stewart, is under fire for his provocative associations.
Stewart has praised Nehlen as “one of my personal heroes,” and has appeared
with Jason Kessler, the man who organized a deadly white supremacist rally in
Charlottesville last August.
However Stewart has since disavowed both men, and the move may have swayed
some voters. On June 20 he won the Republican Senate primary.
Last week he found himself on the debate stage with Democratic Senator Tim
Kaine — Hillary Clinton’s 2016 vice presidential nominee — where Stewart
insisted “there’s not a racist bone in my body.”
But he maintained he is a vigorous defender of Virginia “heritage,” and
strongly opposes the removal of any Confederate monuments.
Extremist candidates tend to flourish when they and their supporters feel
unrepresented and ignored by the mainstream US parties, either the GOP or
Democrats.
In 2016 Trump appealed to millions of such blue collar voters, unemployed
coal miners or factory workers or farmers whom Trump labeled the “forgotten
man.”
They felt betrayed by globalization and US trade agreements, worried about
illegal immigration, and mindful that their communities were changing.
Stewart says Democrats had the chance to reach those voters. But their
failure to do so helped contribute to a scenario where far-right candidates
can thrive.
Democrats “abandoned the working guy,” Stewart told CNN. “They slammed the
door in their face, and now it’s president Trump and the new Republican Party
that is supporting working Americans.”
The GOP has disavowed several extremist candidates, including Jones and
Nehlen.
But the SPLC’s Beirich says Trump’s embrace of controversial Republicans
like former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, who ran concentration camp-like jails
for undocumented immigrants and is now running for Senate after being
pardoned by Trump, is dog-whistle messaging to his party’s fringe elements
that there is space for them in political discourse.
BSS/AFP/MRI/1213 hrs