Alt-Right D.C. rally. November 19, 2016. video November 20.
NYTimes editorial November 21, 2016
Donald Trump Rages, at the Wrong Target
Millions of Americans are justifiably frightened by the tide of racism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia that has swept the country since the election of Donald Trump, whose campaign stoked these views and who named Stephen Bannon of Breitbart News his chief strategist in the White House.
The multiracial cast of the hit Broadway musical "Hamilton" spoke to that fear in an impassioned but respectful way on Friday when it implored Vice President-elect Mike Pence, who attended the show, to take seriously the administration's responsibility to work on behalf of all Americans and to "uphold our inalienable rights."
Mr. Trump raged on Twitter, falsely accusing the cast of harassing Mr. Pence and demanding an apology. Mr. Trump's itchy Twitter finger, however, fell silent when 200 or so white nationalists of the "alt-right" movement gathered on Saturday at the Ronald Reagan federal building — a few blocks from the White House — to celebrate his election with a very public coming-out party filled with racist and anti-Semitic filth.
Mr. Trump, who brought this group out of the shadows during the campaign, has a duty to unequivocally denounce its toxic propaganda.
As The Times's Joseph Goldstein reported on Monday, members of the movement held 11 hours of speeches and panel discussions. The conference culminated Saturday evening in a speech by the movement's leading ideologue, Richard Spencer, who accused the news media of attacking Mr. Trump during the campaign to protect Jewish interests.
Speaking of political commentators, he said, "One wonders if these people are people at all, or instead soulless golem" — creatures of fable that were set in motion by rabbis in time of danger.Mr. Spencer quoted Nazi propaganda — in German — and reinforced his often-stated view that America belonged to white people: "America was, until this last generation, a white country designed for ourselves and our posterity. It is our creation, it is our inheritance, and it belongs to us."
This speech echoed remarks Mr. Spencer made earlier last week in an interview with NPR, when he said that his goal was to make the United States a "big empire that would accept all Europeans" and be a "safe space" for white Americans, Slavs, Celts and so on.
He went on in that interview to say that legal immigration — the lifeblood of the United States — was the most damaging kind, apparently because the country does not have a racial test that favors whites. He declined to condemn the Ku Klux Klan, a group that promotes racial terror, because people wearing white robes are merely "expressing themselves" or getting in touch with their "identity as a European."
The young, suit-and-tie white supremacists who traveled to Washington had no idea a year ago that their views would be getting a hearing in mainstream political discourse, much less finding sympathy in the White House.
But Mr. Trump ensured that outcome by playing to white nationalism during the primaries, then choosing as his campaign chairman Mr. Bannon, who managed the alt-right's most visible platform.The country now finds itself at a particularly dangerous moment, with advocates of discrimination and hate emboldened as they have not been for decades.
Given the danger of violence and bigotry these groups pose, why would Mr. Trump, who was so offended by the "Hamilton" cast's plea for tolerance, remain silent?
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NOvember 22, 2016
