Critics not relieved by Trump’s disavowal of white supremacists
Detractors and supporters agree alt-right politics are emboldened
By Bill Barrow and Jonathan Lemire
ATLANTA — Donald Trump’s disavowal this week of white supremacists who have cheered his election as president hasn’t quieted concerns about the movement’s impact on his White House or whether more acts of hate will be carried out in his name.
Members of the selfdeclared “alt-right” have exulted over the Nov. 8 results with public cries of “Hail Trump!” and reprises of the Nazi salute. The Ku Klux Klan plans to mark Trump’s victory with a parade next month in North Carolina. Civil rights advocates have recoiled, citing an uptick in harassment and incidents of hate crimes affecting blacks, Jews, Muslims, Latinos, gays, lesbians and other minority groups since the vote.
The president-elect has drawn repeated criticism for being slow to offer his condemnation of white supremacists. His strongest denunciation of the movement has not come voluntarily, only when asked, and he occasionally trafficked in retweets of racist social media posts during his campaign.
Further, Trump has named Stephen Bannon, the conservative media provocateur who shaped the final months of Trump’s campaign, as a White House chief strategist who will work steps from the Oval Office. Bannon’s appointment has become as a flashpoint for both sides. ‘In the same lane’
Trump’s detractors and his “alt-right” supporters broadly agree on one thing: It may not even matter what Trump himself believes, or how he defines his own ideology, because his campaign rhetoric has emboldened the white identity politics that will help define his administration.
“Those groups clearly see something and hear something that causes them to believe he is one who sympathizes with their voice and their view. ... Donald Trump has to take responsibility for that,” said Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, a black Democrat. He was among 169 members of Congress who signed a letter opposing Bannon’s White House appointment.
White nationalist leader Richard Spencer said he believes Trump, Bannon and the “alt-right” are “all riding in the same lane.” Spencer explained that neither Trump nor Bannon is a movement “identitarian,” Spencer’s preferred term for his racially driven politics. But Spencer said Trump’s election validates Spencer’s view that America must reject multiculturalism and “political correctness” in favor of its white, Christian European heritage. Campaign ties ‘unique’
Spencer’s group, the National Policy Institute, drew headlines for their recent gathering where some attendees mimicked the Nazi salute as they fêted Trump.
Spencer said the salutes were “ironic exuberance” that “the mainstream media doesn’t get.”
But at the Anti-Defamation League, which tracks incidents of anti-Semitism, Oren Segal said it is part of a disturbing postelection atmosphere tied to Trump’s 17-month campaign.
Before, Segal said, it wasn’t “surprising” for the ADL to get calls about a swastika, the Nazi insignia, defacing public or private property. “What’s surprising now,” he said, “are the references to the campaign” in the incidences. “‘Make America White Again’ ... ‘Go Trump’ with the swastika,” he said. “That is unique.”
As part of his prolific Twitter use, Trump has retweeted white nationalist accounts. In February, he declined to repudiate former Klan leader David Duke during a CNN interview only to come back days later and offer an explicit condemnation.
Segal called Trump’s answers when questioned an important step to “allay any illusions” white supremacists have about their place in a Trump administration.
But Ben Jealous, a former national president of the NAACP, went a step further, saying Trump should “pull a George Wallace.” The segregationist Alabama governor ran for president on white identity politics but years later publicly apologized for his views.
Trump “shouldn’t just disavow the worst behavior of others,” Jealous said, “but take accountability for the worst behavior he’s engaged in him himself.”