The Politics of Hate

“Not surprisingly, Mr. Trump’s politics of hate is now metastasizing into violence. He incites people—not all people to be sure, but enough. On social media in particular, one sees how he gives his supporters permission to express dark and ugly sentiments that existed before but were generally kept hidden from view.

“Max Boot, a Republican Trump critic who was a foreign policy adviser to Marco Rubio’s campaign, says that he has never experienced as much anti-Semitism as he has since the start of the Trump campaign. There are no filters anymore, no restraints, no cultural guardrails. Now, under the sway of Trumpism, what was once considered shameful asserts itself openly. As we contemplate this, it is worth recalling that the membrane separating what the Scottish novelist John Buchan called ‘the graces of civilization’ from ‘the rawness of barbarism’ is thinner and more fragile than we sometimes imagine.”

—Peter Wehner, “The Man the Founders Feared,” New York Times, 19 March 2016

• • •

Wehner wrote this in the spring of 2016—before Trump was even elected. Eight years later … it’s worse. It’s so much worse. Contrast and compare to this piece, also in the Times:

“It stands to reason that threats of violence kept more Republicans from voting to impeach Trump in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack. In fact, Romney confirmed as much. In all likelihood, threats have also worked to suppress the growth of a meaningful anti-Trump faction within the Republican Party. It’s hard, under normal circumstances, to take a stand against the leader of your political party. It is even more difficult, as well as frightening, to do so when the cost of your opposition is a threat to your life or your family.”

— Jamelle Bouie, “Trump Is Playing With Fire,” New York Times, 12 January 2024

• • •

I have a dream, indeed. In this house, Dr. King, we hold that dream ever close to our hearts.

 

 

A Ferocious Enemy

If one really wishes to know how justice is administered in a country, one does not question the policemen, the lawyers, the judges, or the protected members of the middle class. One goes to the unprotected — those, precisely, who need the law’s protection most! — and listens to their testimony. Ask any Mexican, any Puerto Rican, any black man, any poor person — ask the wretched how they fare in the halls of justice, and then you will know, not whether or not the country is just, but whether or not it has any love for justice, or any concept of it. It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.

—James Baldwin, No Name in the Street (1972)

• • •

Breaking news: “Memphis police officer took photos of brutally beaten Tyre Nichols and shared one with others, documents show”

From CNN: “The sharing of the photo was just one allegation among many laid out in the internal documents, which accuse the officers of a slew of misconduct and policy violations before, during and after the interaction with Nichols on January 7. Taken together, the police documents accuse the officers of pulling over Nichols without telling him the reason for the stop, using excessive force, turning off or otherwise obscuring their body-worn cameras, ‘laughing and bragging’ about the beating and then misleading investigators.”

 

Tyre Nichols: We Can’t Go On Like This

I watched the videos last night, because I thought it is important to bear witness. I am both furious and heartbroken. Tyre Nichols—age 29, beaten, kicked in the face, punched, tasered, sprayed with pepper spray—yelled “Mom! MOM!” and I began to cry in my living room. His mother, RowVaughn Wells, has handled this like a queen. I could not have done so as gracefully as she has.

While they were waiting for the film to be released, MSNBC’s Ari Melber was interviewing Maya Wiley. I can’t remember what he said or asked but she took a long breath and then said, “Well, we know that driving while black is dangerous.” Then she went on to cite some statistics that were stunning. (Here’s the video; the segment starts at 33:58 but 37:42 is where we hear from Wiley.) She cites Sandra Bland, pulled over because she was changing lanes without signaling. Melber says: “You know the crime here was when the officers showed up.” One of the officers said it was “Reckless driving,” but Wiley reminds us “the Memphis Police Commissioner said there was no evidence of reckless driving, no evidence for even stopping the car. There is no evidence”—here she slowed down—“of evidence to substantiate the stop.” Then she went on to say she wanted the audience to know that “Black people are not only more likely to be stopped for traffic violations in the absence of them uncovering any evidence of wrongdoing—any weapon. People who are white, when they’re stopped, are more likely to be found with evidence of a crime or a weapon.”

I don’t even know what to say. When I brought this up on Facebook the next day, a friend of mine commented, “The other day I watched a video of a middle-class, middle-aged black lady standing outside of her car in a parking lot. A cop was arguing with her and had obviously decided to cuff her and reached for her hands and she was snatching them away and still arguing, and Jamie—he PUNCHED her. As hard as he could, with his whole body behind it. Punched her in the head. This is going to be my drumbeat as people reel from the shock of this one. It’s not isolated. It happens all the time.”

I am heartbroken. When they pulled him out of the car they were all shouting at him, contradictory things—“Turn around!” and “Get on the ground!” It was awful. And it must stop.

 

The Politics of Hatred

On 3 February 2020, a year ago, I wrote:

Last night I saw a segment on Chris Hayes’s All In with A. C. Thompson of ProPublica and Brandy Zadrozny of NBC. There are no clips that I can find anywhere. I had to pull up the entire program so I could rewatch it and think about it.

But it was was a really good outline of the radical extremists we’re facing in this country and I wanted to be able to talk about it. Radical extremists. This isn’t new. What is new is the idea of a second civil war right out in the mainstream. Our MAGA relatives are all over it, cheering it on.

Thompson said there are a whole spectrum of far-right characters, such as the Boogaloo Bois, who identify as libertarian; the Proud Boys, which he called “an ultra-nationalist street gang”; Qanon (he sort of dismissed this as “just” conspiracy theorists); and the militia types like the Oath Keepers, which are really dangerous because they’re well-trained, often military or law enforcement types. In all cases, their political identity evolves around violence. Thompson also noted that groups that were BLM (pro-police) and previously reluctant to engage have now been radicalized by the events of January 6, 2020.

Zadrozny reminded us that it’s easy to ridicule Qanon but then filled in a lot of violent fantasy detail on that group,* underpinned by their idea of “the storm”—a judgment day when all the people they hate will be marched out and executed publicly. She reminded viewers that this also is not new. Remember the “Jounalist / Rope Tree” T-shirts? Remember the violence at trump rallies? She named other things that were clues, and said journalists who have been reporting this story were absolutely not surprised by anything that happened on January 6th.

When asked for concerns, where it goes from here, Thompson said, “My honest and worried prediction is that there will be an act of mass-casualty terrorism over the next year and that we need to be prepared for that. … There are a lot of people who seek to do harm to this nation, and it’s very easy to get a gun or build a bomb.”**

This is really sobering commentary, and I urge you to seek it out if you have access.

• • •

This was really interesting to read in light of what has happened—and not happened—in the last year.

It also makes me nervous.

I have been called a “hater” to my face more than once by people who have known me for a long time and should know better. And yet … the real haters, to my eyes, are the people-groups mentioned in this commentary—particularly the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys. (Qanon, while not specifically engaging in violence that I know of, yet, has certainly inspired it: remember the young man who showed up at a DC pizza parlor with an AR-15, ready to shoot up the place for harboring child sex trafficking that he’d “learned” about on Qanon websites?)

Those people attacking the Capitol last year, they sure looked hateful to me. But even since that violent day, violence seems to be lurking just below the surface of every public interaction. I’m thinking, say, of those people in Franklin, Tennessee, last August, who harassed medical personnel who spoke at a school board meeting, for example, screaming and banging on their cars as they tried to drive away. I’m thinking of the people who show up at school board meetings sporting yellow stars on their clothing, the sort that Jews were forced to wear by the Nazis. I’m thinking of the spate of bomb threats to historically black colleges and universities that started on 1 February and still continues, which is being investigated as a hate crime. I’m thinking of the hater who took Jews hostage at a synagogue in Dallas, Texas, last month. I’m thinking about trump, speaking at a rally and stirring up the ignorant—that’s hateful.

I actually think calling someone a hater because she doesn’t agree with your politics is pretty hateful too. I’m not proud of being called a hater—it makes me kind of sick, frankly—but I do know where I stand. (On the side of truth/facts, just to start. Democracy. Justice. Kindness. Antiracism. Voting rights. I could go on.)

However, I am angry. And I’ve said this before.

On the same day I watched  the interview discussion of radical extremists, Congresswoman Katie Porter was interviewed about what she’d experienced in the Capitol on January 6, 2021. She related a story, now familiar, of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez coming to her office to hide from the mob overrunning the Capitol: Porter welcomed her in and said, “Don’t worry, I’m a mom, I have everything we need.” And AOC responded, “I hope I get to be a mom; I’m afraid I’m going to die today.”

This made me weep out loud in my living room. Not tearing up. Crying. Sobbing.

This is why my rage level is through the roof. It’s the politics of hatred, people.

* They have now also moved into COVID resistance, characterized by alternative treatments such as ivermectin, which have proven to be harmful, and the straight-up crazy stuff like drinking their own urine.
** As we have seen over, and over, and over in this country, to our great sorrow.