Trump criticizes Baldwin but no time to denounce Richard Spencer and neo-Nazis?
My name is Andrew Joseph Barkett. I was the first-ever CTO of the Republican National Committee. I am currently a Central Committee Member-elect for the Republican Party Central Committee in San Mateo County, CA.
I hereby formally denounce Richard B. Spencer and his particular brand of identitarianism. I also denounce white nationalism, white supremacy, and neo-Naziism in all their forms.
These are racist, intolerant ideologies. They go against the spirit and interests of the United States of America. These beliefs have no place in the party of Lincoln. I denounce Stephen K. Bannon, who as editor of Breitbart.com provided a safe space for these racist and intolerant points of view. While I do not know what Steve Bannon, himself, believes, there is ample evidence that at Breitbart.com he intentionally provided a forum for, and as a member of President-elect Trump’s campaign team, planned a strategy that relied upon, the support of white nationalists, identitarians, white supremacists, and Neo-Nazis. I demand that President-elect Trump remove Bannon from his position as “chief strategist” immediately and unconditionally.
The failure of President-elect Trump and his team to denounce these instigators and proponents of racism, white nationalism, identitarianism, and xenophobia has allowed their particular ideologies to thrive. While it is legal for them to believe what they believe, it is not ethical to tolerate their views within the President-elect’s transition team. I want the Republican party to represent the interests of all Americans, but I would rather lose elections than fail to denounce hateful people and ideologies or stand by as the fascist ideologies of the 1930s and 1940s enjoy a resurgence.
I call on all Republicans to denounce these people with me and to demand that President-elect Trump denounce, by name, Richard Spencer, Steve Bannon, the “white nationalist” movement, the Neo-Nazi movement, and the “identitarian” movement. I demand that President-elect Trump acknowledge, publicly, that Spencer and Bannon have tolerated and promoted racist beliefs.
I further call on President-elect Trump to explicitly and consistently request that people not say “Hail Trump” nor “Heil Trump” and not use the Nazi salute in support of the Trump administration nor in support of its policies, officers, or agents, so long as such incidents continue to occur.
Abraham Lincoln and many, many loyal Americans lost their lives in or as a result of the Civil War to help perfect our Union. Specifically, they fought to marginalize explicit racism and intolerance. Both of my late grandfathers fought in WWII to defend the United States against the racist ideologies of the Japanese Empire and the Third Reich.
I demand that President-elect Trump and all Republicans honor their legacy with me.
Update
This was originally posted to Facebook the evening of 11/21. Since then…
It’s starting to work, but we need to keep his feet to the fire. Need even more attention on this issue. Trump has partially condemned one of these groups. http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-alt-right-steve...
I worded my original statement carefully to require that he condemn people and movements by name (which he has not done) as well as to require that he acknowledge Bannon had enabled the alt-right, by firing him.
***Without naming the groups, the people in the groups won’t be forced to acknowledge that Trump is condemning them. They will understand that he’s just saying this because he has to. If he really condemns them, he has to do it by name.***
He needs to say that he specifically condemns the “white nationalists,” the “identitarians,” the “neo-Nazis,” “Richard Spencer,” “Steve Bannon,” and the “white supremacists.” He must use their names and these terms and unambiguously denounce and condemn them.
Trump also said of Bannon: “If I thought he was a racist or alt-right or any of the things, the terms we could use, I wouldn’t even think about hiring him.”
Bannon, himself, said that he wanted to make Breitbart “the platform for the alt-right.”
Demand that Trump follow through on his promise. He implied that if he thought Bannon was ‘alt-right’ he’d fire him. Bannon acknowledged that he purposely turn Breitbart into a platform for the alt-right. Trump should treat someone who purposely supports the alt-right the same as someone who considers himself “alt-right.”
Help me get this out to a lot more people. Post it wherever you can. Ask people with blogs to post it. If I can generate enough buzz, I can keep up this line of attack. There is a window here as this story has a couple of media-days left in it, to drive a wedge into the alt-right and splinter parts of it off.
