“There You Go Again” – Dare I Say It?

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# “There You Go Again”

When, last Thursday, at a forum hosted by Harvard, Clinton campaign Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri accused the Trump campaign of providing a platform for white supremacists, I was reminded of the times when Ronald Reagan used to say, “There you go again”. Liberals will apparently never tire of promoting fear, mistrust, and anger among both their fellow Liberals and Black Americans toward non-Liberal whites.

The forum, featuring top staffers from both campaigns, has been held after every presidential election since 1972. I gather it’s normally a collegial affair, with both sides giving insights into what went on internally during the campaign, and what their strategy had been. This time, however, according to a CBS News online article. Palmieri erupted when Trump Deputy Campaign Manager, David Bossie, called campaign Chairman, Steve Bannon, “an unbelievably brilliant strategist”. Palmieri heatedly responded: “If providing a platform for white supremacists makes me a brilliant strategist, a brilliant tactician, I am glad to have lost.”

Palmieri was referring to the fact that, prior to joining the Trump campaign, Bannon had been Chairman of Breitbart News, which he called the “platform of the Alt-Right’, a group which most now characterize as representing white nationalists. Although Palmieri’s outburst was initially directed at Bannon, who was not present, when later asked by Trump Campaign Manager Kellyanne Conway, “Do you think I ran a campaign where white supremacists had a platform?”. Palmieri replied “You did, Kellyanne, you did”.

It’s not my intention, or desire, to defend the Alt-Right movement, or even Steve Bannon. But I think a little perspective is in order. In an unusually objective–for the New York Times–article by Christopher Caldwell published on December 2nd, he discusses the Alt-Right, having attended one of their rallies in Washington, D.C. just before Thanksgiving. The rally was led by Richard Spencer, who, according to an article on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s website, first coined the term in 2008 and currently appears to be the leading figure in the movement.

Caldwell states that, when Steve Bannon said, in July, that Breitbart was the Alt-Right’s platform, he “may have meant something quite different” from how the movement is now perceived, that, while the term might have “carried overtones of extremism”, it “was not an outright synonym for ideologies like Mr. Spencer’s“. In spite of the fact that Spencer had been promoting his ideology for years, Caldwell says that, based on the way the term alt- right has been applied in the past, and to whom it was applied, at the time Bannon claimed that Breitbart was its platform, “the Alt-Right did look as if it might be a pillar of Mr. Bannon’s [vision of a] world Tea Party“–right-wing, yes, but hardly white nationalist.

Part of the reason that perception has changed was a speech Hillary Clinton made in August tying Trump to the Alt-Right, which she called an “emerging racist ideology.” Later that day, in an interview, she labeled it a hate group. According to Caldwell, Richard Spencer does not consider Bannon or Donald Trump to be Alt-Right, but is pleased with the fact that Clinton and the media have associated them with the group, believing that it will contribute to the growth of the movement. Indeed, the SPLC article says the group has “worked hard to affix the Alt-Right brand to Trump”.

To be honest, at least in terms of today’s definition of racism, Clinton’s perception of the Alt-Right is probably closer to the truth than Bannon’s apparently was. I do believe she, and Palmieri, were wrong in labeling them as white supremacists. While there are, no doubt, some white supremacists and neo-Nazis in their ranks, neither Caldwell nor the SPLC article refer to the movement itself as white supremacist. The SPLC defines the movement as “a set of far-right ideologies,…whose core belief is that ‘white identity’ is under attack by multicultural forces using ‘political correctness’ and ‘social justice’ to undermine white people and ‘their’ civilization. [They] embrace white ethno-nationalism as a fundamental value.”

It is true that, in much less strident terms, some of the concerns of the Alt-Right are shared by Trump’s constituency–some of them I have mentioned in this space previously: the marginalization and dilution of the culture and philosophy that founded and built this country; the exclusion of non-Liberal whites from the national dialogue(until this election)through the suppression of dissent by Political Correctness; and the constant practice of identity politics by the Left and its minority wards.

But having concerns in common does not mean people agree with one another as to how to resolve them. Democrats and Republicans have common concerns, but nobody is accusing either one of providing a platform for the other. Caldwell says, with reference to the Alt-Right approach, “There is no good evidence that Mr. Trump or Mr. Bannon think in terms like these.” He quotes Ben Shapiro, once a colleague now an ardent critic of Bannon’s, as saying that the fear of Bannon bringing white nationalism to the White House is “overstated, at the very least”, and says that Shapiro does not consider Bannon racist or anti-Semitic.

To say that the Trump campaign provided a platform for white supremacists is just another typical attempt by Liberals to stain their opponents with negative labels and clichés. They do it because they’re unable to make their case intellectually. In this instance, it’s textbook identity politics, something they’ve been doing for many years, and the great irony is that that’s what the Alt-Right is all about.