I didn’t vote for Donald Trump. Wouldn’t have if you’d have held a gun to my head. But it doesn’t take a die-hard Trump fan to see how abominably he — and his supporters — have been treated by the media, both before and since the election.
Every Trump voter is a mysogynistic, racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, gap-toothed Billy-Bob who can barely read, let alone understand political issues. And every Trump appointee or potential appointee is a slightly more educated version of the above. To hear the MSM tell it, Trump will soon unleash millions of militant Nazis on the U.S.
Already we can see that the handful of media mea culpas apologizing for biased election coverage and promising to do better were nothing but phony virtue signaling. The post-election coverage has, if anything, been even more despicable.
One needs hip waders to get through the BS.
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That said, there absolutely is a foul, racist, and very definitely Jew-hating faction among the alt-right, and these people do feel invigorated and entitled following Trump’s election victory.
They consist not only of white nationalists, who’ve been around forever but have grown stronger and more angry in an era where we’ve all been told that white is a dirty word and that Caucasians should be ashamed even of existing.
But there’s also something more ominous, which for want of a better term I’d call Christian supremacists. These are people who try to pretend that so-called Western values are solely by (and ultimately for) Christians. They claim there’s absolutely no such thing as Judeo-Christian values. On the contrary, in their warped view, the very expression “Judeo-Christian values” is a conspiracy promulgated by anti-Christians. To hell with history and to hell with observable reality; in the view of these people, Christianity was born without other cultural or theological influences, and Christianity has by itself created the only worthwhile influences in Western culture.*
In particular the faux “Christian values” these supremacists tout were never influenced by, you know, those icky Jews.
Again, one needs hip waders to navigate the BS. But just as the MSM’s baloney appeals to a certain mentality, this smug, historically ignorant superiority, appeals strongly to people who’d rather spout holier-than-thou slogans than read history.
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I joined Gab.ai, the brand new (still in beta) social network created by Andrew Torba to be a Twitter killer. The left has typically sneered at Gab, dismissing it as “Twitter for racists.” Torba and his family have been living under death threats.
Gab is actually exactly what Torba says it is: a platform for true, uncensored free speech for all points of view (very much unlike Twitter, which has recently purged hundreds, perhaps thousands, of accounts merely because their owners held right-wing opinions). The only “censorship” at Gab is done by individual users, who have the ability to mute users or words they don’t want to see.
However, Gab’s initial membership is overwhelmingly Trumpist, so right now Gab gives a pretty good look at the range of the alt-right.
And alas, my mute list consists largely of people who spout anti-Jewish rhetoric. I support their right to free speech; I just don’t want the stinky breath of their rantings washing over me.
While they’re a minority, they’re definitely part of the pro-Trump mix.
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For what it’s worth I don’t foresee that either the white nationalists or their cousins the Christian supremacists are likely to turn into marching Nazi hordes. Already (following a creepy report in The Atlantic), Trump himself has slammed the alt-right hard. Other prominent people on the right have spoken out against them. Here’s Paul Joseph Watson, a star in the pro-Trump universe:
While I think he’s optimistic to say that the creeps had nothing to do with electing Trump, it’s great that people in the movement are recognizing these bigots for what they are and disassociating themselves from the worst.
Watson is definitely correct that the “new right” consists of every color and kind of person. (Another of the stars of the movement is Milo Yiannopoulis, a gay Jew banned from Twitter but welcomed elsewhere as a hero-provocateur. Yet another is a black sheriff.) Quite a few “gabs” recently posted have reminded Trump supporters that they have a responsibility to disclaim the views and deeds of the bigoted cretins among them.
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The Jew-haters and racial dividers among the alt-right (and for that matter, among the left, which did so much to create the current climate) are always dangerous because, as a spokesperson for the U.S. Holocaust Museum points out, the Nazis’ Holocaust didn’t begin with killings, but with words.
And of course, with laws. Not likely that Trump, with his Jewish son-in-law, Jewish-convert daughter Ivanka, Jewish grandchildren, and his very non-bigoted views, is likely to implement or even tolerate the most poisonous alt-right creepitude.
Still, we owe it to ourselves, our friends, and our freedom, to make sure that the rising bigots are pushed back — with derision, with strong argument, with cultural marginalization. Even with arms, should it come to that unthinkable pass. If the bigots raise an army, or even a few isolated, terrorizing gangs, we should absolutely be prepared to exercise self- and community-defense against them. But we should never try to “disappear” them by censoring them; we should never sacrifice the First Amendment in their dubious honor.
Do those people have the potential to be dangerous to Jews and others? Hell, yes! But I don’t think we live in a country or a culture that’s going to allow scum like that to rise to the top.
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We should also, while seeing their stories of grave alarm, never let the media turn our eyes away from a much more clear-and-present danger: Jews who want to impose big government, globalism, and disarment on their fellow religionists — and on us all. Those who don’t think that Jews — or anybody else — should be able to take up arms against tyranny or oppression.
Whatever else you can say about Donald Trump’s most unsavory supporters, you won’t find many of them wanting to disarm anybody.
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*I think at this point I’m obligated to note that Christian supremacists don’t in any way represent the mainstream of Christianity or speak for Christians in general. But I’m putting that disclaimer in this footnote because I’m pretty sure that decent Christians, particularly decent Christians who’ve read both the bible and history, already know the creeps I’m talking about don’t stand for them.