The Same Subject Continued
More on the clear white supremacist ideology oozing from the Trump administration.
To follow on from my previous post (What’s Different Now About Views of ICE?), here are some additional examples of how very specific ideological symbols, terms, and messages are coming from the Trump administration. We are seeing the normalization of white supremacist notions, dare I say, right in front of our noses.
Let’s start with the Department of Homeland Security, which houses ICE. Note this tweet from a few days ago.
The term “remigration” is a term taken from the European nativist far-right and refers to foreign populations leaving (i.e., re-migrating) the place to which they have come.
In regard to the term “remigration,” I would point the reader to this piece from February at InfoMigration: ‘Remigration’: How a word threatens to change migration views in Germany.
Most recently, remigration gained traction in far-right rhetoric through Alternative for Germany (AfD) leader Alice Weidel who called for “large-scale repatriations” and claimed remigration as a centerpiece of the party’s campaign platform. Remigration was effectively repurposed to push an exclusionary agenda.
Philipp Adorf, an academic scholar at the Institute for Political Science and Sociology at the University of Bonn, traced AfD’s remigration agenda in 2021, and explained that “the term has been in use within nationalist circles for some time.” Similar proposals have surfaced in Austria’s Freedom Party (FPÖ) political manifesto, reinforcing the idea that remigration is part of a broader European far-right strategy.
The President is joining in on Truth Social with similar language.
Indeed, Trump’s Truth Social feed (I read through it, so you don’t have to!) is full of a remarkable amount of nonsense, much of which in the last several days has been blatantly xenophobic, mostly aimed at Somali immigrations in Minnesota. I will leave that for another post.
Let me also include a tweet from the Department of Labor.
The focus on “Western civilization” is another buzzword utilized in the political language of white supremacy. I assure the reader that they are not simply extolling the reading of the Western canon. And clearly, “Americanism” is not the celebration of single wrapped cheese slices.
Some online have noted this quote from Halford_E._Luccock in 1938:
When and if fascism comes to America it will not be labeled ‘made in Germany’; it will not be marked with a swastika; it will not even be called fascism; it will be called, of course, ‘Americanism’.
And just to make sure you get the message, the font definitely gives off Germanic vibes.
It has also been noted that there are 11 stars around Honest Abe’s head, which is the number of CSA states. There is the plausible deniability that 2 are behind his head (to make 13 for the original 13 states), I suppose.
So, again, what has changed with ICE and immigration enforcement in general? The presence of clear language and symbolism from those in charge explicitly indicates that they are driven by white supremacism and xenophobia.
This is a chilling and important shift. I think it behooves the opponents of this ideological approach to be clear-eyed about what is going on and not dismiss these signals, which are well beyond dog whistles at this point. Likewise, Republicans who voted for this administration because they saw no alternative given the binary choice that they had back in November need to come to terms with what they may still be supporting.
See also Paul Waldman and Joseph Dye at Public Notice: This is what a white supremacist administration looks like.
A dozen Republican congresspeople could stop basically all of this by joining with any of their Democratic counterparts. All they need is simple legislation that specifically claws back power from the Executive, like modifying or repealing one or more of the laws that Trump is using to operate without oversight. It doesn’t even have to end what’s going on, just provide some modicum of oversight.
Not only would they be doing a bare minimum service to the country, but it looks increasingly like anybody not from an R+20 district would be vastly improving their re-electability.
But we all know that fighting against the corrupt grifter is harder than joining the corrupt grift so the zero-courage caucus will continue to roll over.
Apropos to the subject of MAGA ideology, Thomas Edsall’s column in NYT (gift link, Merry Christmas) this morning asks what will happen when Trump leaves the scene? Can MAGA form an enduring coalition? He provides a review of several authors on the subject. One sees MAGA as a coalition of four ideologies, condensed by me:
I would note that explicit in three and implicit in the fourth is hatred of liberals. I have to ask – what did we ever do to these people that was so terrible? We made it bad to say the N word or the F word in public and asked them to wear masks in a pandemic. (OK, liberals didn’t do the mask thing, but anyone they hate is to them a liberal. Which, come to think of it, is at the heart of the issue, they label everything they don’t like as “liberal”.)
For those who see the internet at the heart of this, I elided a lot of names above, people most of us have never heard of and would have no audience back when there were gatekeepers.
Edsall sees Vance as working to unite these factions, but perhaps failing, and in any case lacking in charisma. I would note that while Vance lacks broad appeal, he does carry on Republican traditionalism by being backed with a lot of 0.1% money. Edsall’s column is somewhat long, but a useful effort to understand the chaos on the right.
@ptfe:
Absent Trump’s signature, they need more than a dozen. They need enough to get a veto-proof majority, in both houses.
@gVOR10:
From your link:
I am curious what Field means by “real” here. Last year, I had pointed out a Twitter account that has a mid-sized follower count who kept blasting out that P2025 was fake news because Trump said he didn’t even know what it was.
Is that would Field means? That it was a thing, but Dems were trying to tie someone else’s can to Trump’s tail?
My guess is that Project 2025 didn’t get enough attention outside politics junkies, but maybe there was more emphasis than I remember.
ETA: I decided to glance at that account after posting.
1.) I had remarked in the referenced post that she chose a profile pic with scary eyes. Don’t recall the exact words, but similar to the controversial Michelle Bachmann magazine cover from way back when. Well, more recently, she posted a selfie birth announcement. Same eyes.
2.) I am disturbed to report that she and I likely have many acquaintances in common. Pretty sure we graduated from the same high school, though some years apart.
This issue is not a new thing. There have been many canaries in the coal mine over the past decade (or so). But they were largely dismissed. Oh well.
@Kurtz:
Besides the above, today NYT(no gift, not worth reading) also has a fluff interview of their Executive Editor by their “assistant managing editor for standards and trust” (that’s gotta be a job for an independent minded idealist – or a total suck up). Amongst other subjects they address are “Reporting on President Trump” and “Reporting without a personal point of view”. That last seems to be taught at J school as don’t hint at even the most obvious conclusions. So for NYT, and others, Dems said Project 2025 was important, Trump said he didn’t even know what it was, end of story. And NYT famously never uses the word “lie”.
Project 2015 is a bit more of an issue now only because the head of Heritage, the group that wrote it, came out in support of Tucker Carlson’s racism. As Epstein is a story only because of sex trafficking and blowing up boats is an issue only because of murder. The public do love a morality play. Hmmm, maybe that’s messaging advice for Dems.
@gVOR10: LGM is talking about RFK Jr. and the common journalistic practice of printing the lie in the headline, which everyone reads, and burying the debunk several paragraphs in*. It quotes a Bluesky by Gil Duran that is perfect for what I was trying to say above,
* The classics of the genre were the NYT deep dives with headlines about investigating corruption in the Clinton Foundation, with “we didn’t find any” in paragraph thirty.
I don’t know what “Americanism” is, but I know it’s some Nazi shit.
Even “America will prevail” would have been Nazi shit in that context, so this is double-secret but-not-very-secret super Nazi shit wrapped in a Germanic font that even Nazis didn’t use, but just looks cool to poorly educated Americanism Nazis.
Also, 11 words in the Department of Labor and Racial Purity’s post — did they realize we have all learned about the 14 words, and so just shifted to the 11?
Aside: we probably don’t have time to organize it for this year, but for next year’s War On Christmas we need to spread the word that “Happy Holidays” is a Nazi dog whistle since HH is secretly “Heil Hitler”. Try to create a split in the Far Right culture war crowd by getting the Nazis to start saying “Happy Holidays”