Fascism in a calmer tone

Apparently it’s what turns xenophobic demagoguery Presidential

I wasn’t going to write about this until I saw the dangerous normalization that was going on and wanted to address it.

To get this out of the way first; it’s disgusting that people are lauding Orange for simply pointing out a woman that he made a widow. He okayed the mission over a dinner that included his son in law and Steve Bannon, as well as recently fired anti-Muslim conspiracy theory fan Mike Flynn. He didn’t bother to keep track of what was happening with the mission, and it proceeded despite numerous problems along the way, causing the deaths of 25 civilians including 9 children under the age of 13. The raid failed to take out its intended targets, and so far failed to uncover any actionable intelligence. Orange responded by falsely blaming the Obama Administration, and laying all responsibility for the failed raid on the military. Chief Owens’ father has demanded an investigation into what happened, and asked Orange not to use his sons death. Orange lied about the results of the raid during the speech. Gesturing at this woman is not anything worthy of praise. People should be horrified that given everything that has happened, he was trying to use Chief Owens’ death this way.

People are crediting him for finally noting a few incidents in the outbreak of hate crimes that has been growing since his election. It would be laughable to credit him for finally doing the bare minimum after shouting down anyone who had even asked him about them, but it’s simply dangerous when people ignore that he directly followed that by talking about nationalism sweeping across the country. He then made thinly veiled threats about how all countries in the world, friend and foe, would see that America will do what it wants. He presented the rest of the world as a threat to the country and talked about how immigration policies over the last few decades are responsible for the downfall of America. This wasn’t even a subtle dogwhistle attacking the increase in immigration from non-white countries. He called the rest of the world a bunch of parasites and that letting them into America has been one of the biggest mistakes we’ve made.

He talked about the need to reduce immigration and deport millions of people in the country, and instead focus on the (white) citizens of this country. He repeated his blatant lies about crime and violence in this country and the need for increased militarization of our country and our police force. He repeated the old, racist, “war on drugs” rhetoric at a time that law enforcement and politicians from both parties are calling for an end to it along with prison reform. Orange’s response to the racist brutalization of mass incarceration is to increase oppressive police tactics and make it harder for people to resist state power or hold power accountable. He relished in the fact that while he spoke ICE agents were raiding communities and pursuing mass deportations against people who were guilty of nothing more than coming to work here without proper documentation.

This was a speech completely based around building fear and demonizing non-white people. He falsely presented Mexico as the source of drugs, violence, and all of societies ills. He made sure to bring the families of people who had been killed by someone who happened to be an immigrant for no other reason than to turn people against immigrants. He reiterated his plans for VOICE, a government sponsored hate group that will highlight crimes committed by immigrants. His entire goal is to increase the fear that white Americans will have towards non-white Americans, so that there will be less outcry and complaint as he turns an even more militarized force loose on non-white communities.

Then, as if to make sure that nobody took what he said about anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim hate crimes sweeping the nation seriously, he continued to falsely claim that the only terror threat we faced came from groups like Da’esh. He referred to the members of militant groups who claim to be Muslims as “savages”. He falsely claimed that most terror threats facing our nation come from immigrants, while completely refusing to talk about the White Supremacist/Neo-Nazi terrorists who are behind the acts that he briefly touched upon at the beginning of the speech. The idea that he would be praised for talking about terrorist threats and attacks against Jews and Muslims in this country while he reduces focus on the domestic terrorists behind them is ludicrous. He demonizes Muslims and immigrants, he hires anti-Semites while making anti-Semitic dogwhistles, he tries to rescind protections for transgender students, and while all this is going on attacks on those groups are increasing. Three transgender women have been murdered in Louisiana in the last week. Anyone who claimed that he was trying to unify people or denounce this hate should be ashamed of themselves.

That speech was ugly. That speech was hate. That speech was xenophobia. That speech was racism. That speech was violent. That speech was fascism.

That speech should be denounced.

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