Trump’s rhetorical genius and the problem with labeling him a racist
Some news reports about President Donald Trump’s Fourth of July speeches accused him of pushing “racial division,” but did he? Other news reports thought Trump’s speech extolled America’s patriotism and that criticisms that it was racist were “unhinged and dishonest.”
Is Trump using racism as a campaign strategy? And, if the 2020 campaign is like the 2016 campaign, his rhetorical brilliance may make a clear assessment difficult.
During the 2016 campaign Trump embraced and disavowed white nationalists by amplifying their messages even as he denied that he was a racist.
Trump’s strategy confused those inside and outside of the white nationalist movement. Was Trump one of them? At first, white nationalists weren’t sure.
As white nationalists searched for evidence to support their hope that Trump was one of them, they posted news accounts of his past: the many times Trump had been accused of racist business practices; news accounts of his reputed white supremacist reading habits, alleging that Trump had once kept a copy of Hitler’s speeches by his bedside; and news accounts of Trump’s view of eugenics — especially videos of Trump explaining why he believed in genetic superiority and his “racehorse theory” of his own superior genes. While all of this evidence helped white nationalists believe that Trump thought like they did, they primarily chose to support
Trump’s campaign because he was on the right side of what they called the “National Question.”
White nationalists believe that “diversity” is code for “white genocide” — that a systematic program of increased immigration, political correctness and “white self-hatred” over generations had made a once powerful race (and nation) weak. In Trump’s campaign, they heard their own concerns about the nation voiced, and
they heard a tough-talking candidate promise to thwart political correctness, end illegal immigration, restrict legal immigration, reject refugees and build a wall between the United States and Mexico to protect the white nation. Members of the white nationalist community had no trouble finding evidence to support their hope that Trump held the correct position on the National Question.
Whether or not Trump was a racist continued to be a question in the mainstream media throughout the 2016 campaign, and reporters frequently asked Trump if he was a racist. Each time he was asked if he was a racist, he emphatically denied it. Yet if Trump claimed that he was not a racist and did not want the support of racists, then why did the racists believe that he was one of them and they were fighting together to get him elected?
Throughout the campaign, Trump used paralipsis (I’m not saying; I’m just saying) to cultivate ambiguity about whether or not he was a racist. For example, on Nov. 22, 2015, Trump retweeted SeanSean252 with a
graphic of homicide data delineated by race that purported to show that “Blacks” were responsible for most of the homicides in the United States. The tweet was criticized for being both racist and inaccurate — fact-checkers like FactCheck.org found that “almost every figure in the graphic is wrong.”
Trump responded to the criticism on Nov. 23, 2015, by denying responsibility for the content of the tweet: “I didn’t tweet; I retweeted somebody that was supposedly an expert,” Trump told Bill O’Reilly. “Am I gonna check every statistic? All it was is a retweet. And it wasn’t from me. It came out of a radio show and other places. This was a retweet. And it comes from sources that are very credible. What can I tell you?” Since Trump had merely retweeted someone else, he argued that he could not be held accountable for the content of the message.
This, of course, is the logic of paralipsis: “I’m not tweeting it; I’m just retweeting it.” While Trump denied that his retweet was an endorsement in this instance, back on Aug. 25, 2015, a reporter asked Trump, “Tell us (about) your retweet strategy — do you endorse what you retweet?” At that time, Trump responded, “Well, I do retweets
and, well, to a certain extent, yeah, I think that’s right. Do you want me to say no? I retweet, you know. I retweet for a reason, right?”
Were Trump’s retweets meaningful or not? It was difficult to tell for certain, but white nationalists were thrilled to see Trump amplify their content and to see the issue debated in the mainstream media. A thread about Trump’s retweet on
Storm Front had more than 100 enthusiastic replies, including one poster, “Just Us,” who said that he now understood “the thrill and elation people felt when they saw the Fuhrer speak in person. I understand how they would willingly take a bullet to protect him. Trump has the ability to inspire white men.” It’s impossible to know who “Just Us” is or even if he truly believes what he is saying, or what their gender is outside the chat room. That’s the nature of this kind of content: It’s anonymous or cloaked precisely so the writers, whomever they are, can’t be held accountable. But what’s clear is Trump’s rhetoric strikes a chord with those who believe immigration and diversity are weakening America.
According to an analysis by Fortune by March 2016, Trump
had “retweeted at least 75 users who follow at least three of the top 50 #WhiteGenocide influencers. Moreover, a majority of these retweeted accounts are themselves followed by more than 100 #WhiteGenocide influencers.” Andrew Anglin understood Trump’s retweets as a sign that “our Glorious Leader and ULTIMATE SAVIOR has gone full-wink-wink-wink to his most aggressive supporters.”
While Trump continued to face criticism in the mainstream media for retweeting white nationalists, he simply shrugged it off. For example, when Jake Tapper asked him about his retweets on Feb. 21, 2016,
Trump said, “I don’t know about retweeting. You retweet somebody and they turn out to be white supremacists. I know nothing about these groups that are supporting me.” Once again, Trump’s defense took the form of a denial coupled with a paralipsis.
The consensus interpretation across the white nationalist community was that Trump “owned” Tapper and the rest of the reporters who asked him to disavow them.
Trump routinely took advantage of the ironic wink-winkwink of paralipsis — of saying the thing that he said that he
wasn’t saying — so that it was impossible to tell whether or not he condoned racism or not. Trump’s ironic double-speak was precisely the language of internet trolls like white nationalists. In fact, according to Anglin, “maybe The Donald is the new Hitler. Or ... maybe he is just trolling you?”
So what about Trump’s recent speech at Mount Rushmore? Was that racist? It wasn’t racist in the sense that it denigrated a race of people, but it was racist in that it rejected the concerns that a majority of Americans have about systemic racism. It was, as Anglin wrote on Daily Stormer, a speech designed to make white people feel good about themselves. Trump “stood in front of a monument dedicated to the nation’s heroes and said that he would defend the people, our identity and our history. He condemned white guilt, and called those trying to make us guilty ‘evil.’”
So, was Trump’s speech racist? The racists think so.