"Economic nationalism" lie a fig leaf for racism & xenophobia

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Hate That Doesn’t Hide
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/18/opinion/sunday/hate-that-doesnt-hide.html?smid=tw-nytopinion&smtyp=cur

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When you look at the sum of his behavior, it’s obvious that Mr. Trump is actually not equivocating. He is actively demonstrating that his loyalties lie with only some of the American people.

There are other forms of equivocating. Back in November, pundits began attributing Mr. Trump’s win to “economic anxiety,” because they were unwilling to face the blatant racism that fueled his popularity. Look where that thinking has brought us. Everyone who says, “This is not America” or “This is not us” is being willfully ignorant of both the past and the present. We all need to acknowledge that yes, this is indeed us, the very worst of us. There are people who think it is a problem that the white supremacists from Charlottesville are being publicly identified and fired from their jobs, as if those who would eradicate all of us who are not Aryan deserve empathy. They do not. A white newscaster cries because talking about race makes her uncomfortable because discomfort is most likely the worst thing she can imagine.


Heather Heyer’s mother just brutally unmasked Trump’s racism and cruelty
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2017/08/18/heather-heyers-mother-just-brutally-unmasked-trumps-racism-and-cruelty/

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Meanwhile, Trump’s chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, is strutting around extolling the political brilliance of Trump’s Charlottesville response. Bannon did a media tour yesterday boasting that Trump’s escalating defense of Confederate statues is a political winner for him. Now Bannon adds to this in a brash email to The Post:

“This past election, the Democrats used every personal attack, including charges of racism, against President Trump. He then won a landslide victory on a straightforward platform of economic nationalism.”

The idea that Trump won a landslide is an absurd lie, and the idea that Trump has any kind of agenda of “economic nationalism” to speak of is laughable. There are no trade or infrastructure plans (something progressives would actually like to see) in sight. The only real policies Trump has embraced that fit under what Bannon describes as “economic nationalism” are stepped-up deportations, slashing legal immigration and the thinly disguised Muslim ban. Indeed, it’s telling that Bannon defends Trump’s Charlottesville response by pointing to the alleged power of his alleged “economic nationalism” — it validates suspicions that this was always intended largely as a fig leaf for xenophobia and racism.