I realize this is the holiday season. But no matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to shake the awfulness I feel from something I saw shared on TikTok a couple of weeks ago.
Eddie Huang of Huang’s World sat down for an interview with jared taylor, who identifies as a ‘white nationalist’, for his show. I’m attaching the video as well, but this is the relevant transcript that I can’t get out of my head:
Eddie Huang: I want to know how it is you voted for Donald Trump when you’re so into facts, because his entire campaign was not based in facts. It was all based in propaganda and emotion.
Jared Taylor: I voted for Donald Trump for one reason only. His policies, if implemented, would slow the dispossession of Whites in the United States.
The candor and accuracy of his statement hit hard. He said ‘the thing’ out loud: the thing that is the most likely reason behind the silence of so many when asked why they continue to support trump AND a party that is openly trying to topple our democracy.
I spent much of 2021 begging, pleading, and hoping to find answers as to why so many of the white republicans I know continue to support the gop.
The lone answer I received pointed primarily to financial policies as the primary reason for the continued support by so many. Though not happy that anyone would value a few more dollars in the bank more than basic human decency and our collective humanity, I was grateful to have at least received some kind of response.
Finances, however, can’t be the only motivator for continued gop support when you examine their history of grossly self-serving expenditures and dramatic increases to our national debt. Sure, they may appear to be helping your stock portfolio in the short term, but it’s going to come crashing down one way or another. And many of these ‘financial supporters’ know that.
So I ask again. Why the continued support? With Mr. Huang’s and Mr. taylor’s help, I see a potential reason why that’s the case.
Whenever he was given a chance to show compassion, empathy, or inclusivity, trump chose the opposite path. The ‘Child Separation’ policy wasn’t an immigration strategy. It was a policy of cruelty to people he deemed inferior and unworthy.
For God’s sake, there is no effective strategy that should ever include taking a child from a family that’s searching for a better life; then allowing that stolen child to be adopted by others after the separation.
That one policy was a mere drop in the bucket of the innumerable ways in which, trump and his Presidential advisers (with known white nationalist affiliations and goals) sought to exclude and punish minorities while openly rewarding the white republicans from states he won in 2016.
I once believed that trump, and the overtly racist policies that accompanied him into the White House, was our punishment for electing our first Black President: Barack Obama. I had a feeling that white gop America was going to make the rest of us pay dearly for having the audacity to believe that America was ready to shed its shameful ways.
But I was wrong.
The passage of time has provided a bit more clarity. It’s not that we were being punished for having a Black President. We were being punished for having a President that provided a seat at the table for all those who’d hitherto been excluded from even entering the room. From the cabinet to director-level positions, we saw men – and women – of all races and backgrounds being given policy-making power the likes of which had never been seen.
Sadly, those “seats at the tables” cost us dearly. Many whites probably felt that the promotion of these individuals, long overdue and in no way an over-representation, was a harbinger for the ultimate decline of their political power in America. Never mind the fact that they’d previously held a sinfully disproportionate amount of power, any loss wasn’t acceptable.
Few apart from taylor want to openly admit it, but trump came along and gave a full-throated voice to this fear in a way that hadn’t resonated as strongly before. When the ‘unite the right’ participants in Charlottesville chanted, “Jews will not replace us”, it could have applied to any minority: Asians, Blacks, Latinos, it didn’t matter. The message was clear, and the subtle endorsement from trump (“fine people on both sides”) further sealed the deal.
I could go on, but hopefully you get the gist. And though I hate people like taylor, and all they represent about the white supremacist leanings of my country, I respect him for telling the truth about his support for trump. So the next time you hear anyone justifying the trump presidency, the 1/6 insurrection, or gop efforts to disenfranchise minority voters in every state that trump lost, know that they are lying.
For the record, I don’t want to replace anyone. I just want my rightful place at the table, and in society at large. And I want it without fear of retribution, violence, or authoritarianism from fearful whites.
That shouldn’t be too much to ask for, right?