There’s a war brewing. It’s a battle of ideologies and the trenches are social media. Through various sites, those on the far right are pushing race hatred as they spew outlandish, and often unsubstantiated claims. The aim is to start a race war.
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Republicans have been instigating a race war since the 1960s. They were once “The Party of Lincoln”, but as the Civil Rights Movement sought to upset the status quo of White dominance, Republicans began to speak out, and the modern Conservative was born. They couched their racism with terms like “Law and Order” and protecting your freedoms while depicting people of color in dehumanizing images.
Religious bigotry became a huge engine to push racism. In the 1980s, the rise of the Moral Majority saw a parallel rise in racial intolerance as the Evangelical movement sought to demonize Muslims and immigrants.
This brings us to today’s Republican Party. Try bringing up the January 6th insurrection and Republicans will invariably turn it around to, “What about Black Lives Matter ?” They will even go as far as to falsely assert that those who stormed the Capitol weren’t rabid Trump supporters, but Antifa, and that they would feel safer among the violent insurrectionists than if the protesters were members of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Any mention of the accomplishments of the Biden administration will certainly be countered by complaints about the Southern border. That will certainly morph into an argument about Replacement Theory and the alleged demise of the White race.
Yes, racism is alive and well in the GOP. And it’s only getting worse thanks to the twisted path forged by Donald Trump.
MAGA
The Make America Great Again movement was born out of racism. It was the hatred of President Obama, a Black man, that spurred on White supremacists with a desire to bring the nation back to a time when White made right. They found their champion in someone who spent years making racist remarks, namely Donald J. Trump.
Even before his ride down the golden escalator, when he announced his presidential bid with the most vile racist remarks, Trump was already the darling of the alt right White supremacists. He spent eight years trying to delegitimize President Obama’s presidency by spreading the bitherism lie. With his speech calling Mexicans rapists, Trump solidified his support with this twisted segment of the population.
During his four years in the White House, Trump continued to spout his racist remarks and policies by enacting a ban on Muslims from entering the country, defending White supremacists at Charlottesville, launching a horrible immigration policy of separating families at the border as they sought to enter America, creating a rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans by blaming them for the coronavirus, and condemning NFL players and the Black Lives Matter movement that was protesting systemic racism in law enforcement.
All of these actions only led to a tighter relationship between Trump and White supremacists. His continued actions are only adding fuel to an already volatile situation that threatens to erupt into an all-out race war. This was made all the more dangerous by the election of several Trump MAGA-lytes in the 2020 Congressional elections. It only becomes more of a possibility as the 2022 midterms threaten to have even more members in the House and Senate. This process has been made even easier through gerrymandering, favorable election laws aimed at decreasing minority access to the polls and the installation of Trump-friendly officials who can overturn election results they find “suspicious”.
With more allies, it will be easier to spread propaganda and misinformation, making the prospect of a race war even more likely .
Media
Speaking of propaganda and misinformation, there have been no greater purveyors of division than right wing media. Social media and television have been at the forefront of causing strife while feeding their followers a steady stream of BS. From Fox to Breitbart to any number of pop-up websites, there is no shortfall avenues for misinformation.
Social media, primarily Facebook, has been blamed for the spread of right-wing misinformation. The algorithm they use to determine ad revenue has been the source of an abundant conspiracy driven campaign aimed at the proliferation of distorted facts and outright lies. The more “clicks” or “likes” a story received, the more it would be promoted. Many of these stories were from the very right-wing media outlets mentioned earlier. This led to an explosion of misinformation that too many on the right were only too eager to embrace.
A primary scare tactic of those seeking to promote interracial violence is Replacement Theory. According to this biased trope, Democrats are seeking to open the Southern border to allow illegal immigrants into the country. These illegals would somehow gain the right to vote, would overwhelm the current population, and the White race would become the minority in America.
As a result, those on the right are being encouraged to exercise their Second Amendment rights to preserve their way of life. Right-wing media is only too happy to fan the flames, presumably in the name of patriotism, but actually as a less than subtle way to increase viewership.
The Courts
The past five years have witnessed a dramatic change in the legal system. With Republicans in control of the White House and both houses of Congress, the judiciary was transformed on multiple levels, most noticeably with the makeup of the Supreme Court.
With the help of then Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), those on the right were not only able to get three justices appointed to the Supreme Court, but they also appointed a huge number of judges to the appeals courts and district courts. Presumably, this would make it easier to promote a Conservative agenda because of the judges’ right wing bias.
Republicans are using this to limit minority access to the polls, challenge Roe v Wade and promote a more lenient policy towards gun rights.
Nowhere was this more lenient treatment of “Second Amendment Rights” more apparent than in the recent Kyle Rittenhouse trial. While there was never an argument over whether Rittenhouse fired the fatal shots, legal experts agreed that the verdict was correct under Wisconsin’s lax gun laws.
With his acquittal, minorities feel it will embolden vigilantes to take matters into their own hands should there be more protests over systemic racism. The right could then take measures to ensure forced compliance by minorities, thereby pushing the country closer to an all out race war.
The Pandemic
The coronavirus has not only witnessed deaths on an epic proportion, it has also seen a dramatic rise in violence against Asian-Americans on a scale that hasn’t been seen since World War II. When Donald Trump labeled the pandemic the “China virus” and the “Kung flu”, he invited those on the right to take out their anger on those he blamed for COVID. It opened the floodgates to unprecedented assaults on anyone of Asian descent.
Yes, even a pandemic became a rallying cry for racial violence.
Are We There Yet?
We are closer to an all-out race war than any time in the past 50 years, perhaps even since the outbreak of the Civil War. The reactionary right wants to turn back the clock to a time before a Black man was president. They want to limit voting rights among the minority population. They want the segregated suburbs of the 1950s to come back. And they demand greater latitude in access to firearms in order to attain this.
Yes, Republicans are promoting a race war.
Will it happen?