{"id":33938,"date":"2024-05-25T12:04:00","date_gmt":"2024-05-25T19:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=33938"},"modified":"2024-05-25T12:04:01","modified_gmt":"2024-05-25T19:04:01","slug":"trumps-unified-reich-video-was-a-message-not-a-mistake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2024\/05\/25\/trumps-unified-reich-video-was-a-message-not-a-mistake\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s \u2018Unified Reich\u2019 Video Was a Message Not a Mistake"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Margaret Sullivan\/Guardian UK<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Trump\u2019s\u2018The 2017 white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia? Trump saw \u201cvery fine people on both sides\u201d. (photo: Steven Hirsch\/AP)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

24 may 24<\/strong> (RSN.org)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

You\u2019ll hear no apology, no disavowal, no expression of regret for what he did. And certainly no promise that this will never happen again<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019ve been here before. Donald Trump says or does something outrageous, and then walks it back slightly. But his message as a would-be authoritarian \u2013 or far worse \u2013 gets through.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The latest iteration was a video shared this week on his Truth Social account that (by featuring would-be headlines) promised a \u201cunified reich\u201d if Trump wins a second term as president.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The word \u201creich\u201d, of course, is closely tied to Adolf Hitler, who called his Nazi empire the \u201cThird Reich\u201d. You don\u2019t have to be a student of world history to understand that instantly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite the outcry in some quarters \u2013 including the Biden White House \u2013 about the video, the Trump campaign took no immediate action to remove it. It stayed up for 15 hours, amid mild excuses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That approach was all too familiar. Send the message and then downplay it as unimportant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After Trump hosted the prominent antisemites Nick Fuentes and Kanye West at Mar-a-Lago, he characterized the dinner as \u201cquick and uneventful\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2017 white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia? Trump saw \u201cvery fine people on both sides\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few years later, during the fall of the 2020 presidential campaign \u2013 following the social justice protests that roiled American cities \u2013 Trump issued some instructions to the white supremacist Proud Boys group. His words should have been disqualifying: \u201cStand back and stand by.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unsurprisingly, the extremist group took it as intended; this was clear encouragement from the then president. They celebrated on social media \u2013 and stood by.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because with Trump, there\u2019s always more of this horror to come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His campaign speeches these days ring with Nazi rhetoric as he claims that immigrants are \u201cpoisoning the blood of our country\u201d and that his political opponents are \u201cvermin\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And, yet, he slams any Jewish American who supports Biden. Last month, he opined that any Jewish person who would vote for his rival \u201cdoesn\u2019t love Israel\u201d and \u201cshould be spoken to\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He always gives himself just enough of an out, as when he claimed he didn\u2019t know who the Proud Boys were, or that a junior campaign staffer didn\u2019t notice the \u201cunified reich\u201d reference when posting the video.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But these halfhearted walk-backs don\u2019t deny the message.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They are signals \u2013 dog whistles \u2013 that indicate Trump is more than willing to associate himself with some of history\u2019s most despicable characters and movements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHow many times will we have to debate if the Nazi imagery is intentional or accidental?\u201d wrote<\/a> Amy Spitalnick, CEO of the non-profit Jewish Council for Public Affairs. \u201cIt is never accidental,\u201d responded Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a scholar of authoritarian \u201cstrongmen\u201d throughout history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the most part, exhausted Americans yawn. They shrug off the latest outrage as regrettable but harmless, just another case of Trump being Trump. The Wall Street bigwig and Republican mega-donor Ken Griffin even told Bloomberg News recently that he might change his mind and support Trump because the former president would \u201cexude a level of strength\u201d that would help to stabilize the world in trying times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u201cstrongman\u201d pose, in other words, is working: an authority figure is the one to deal with a chaotic world. Just don\u2019t look too carefully at where the chaos originates. As Trump claimed during the 2016 campaign, the world is in crisis and \u201cI alone can fix it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Much of the mainstream media covered this week\u2019s \u201cunified reich\u201d posting as if this were just part of a typical campaign. \u201cTrump\u2019s latest flirtation with Nazi symbolism draws criticism,\u201d one headline<\/a> in the Hill put it. Yes, and so did President Obama\u2019s decision to wear a tan suit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite all of Trump\u2019s misdeeds \u2013 the criminal indictments, the abhorrent words, the sordid relationships, the clear plans to dismantle democratic guardrails \u2013 he rolls on undaunted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the \u201cunified reich\u201d video, as with all the earlier outrages, you\u2019ll hear no apology, no disavowal, no expression of regret. And certainly no promise that this will never happen again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It will<\/em> happen again. After all, it\u2019s working.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Margaret Sullivan\/Guardian UK \u2018The 2017 white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia? Trump saw \u201cvery fine people on both sides\u201d. (photo: Steven Hirsch\/AP) 24 may 24 (RSN.org) You\u2019ll hear no apology, no disavowal, no expression of regret for what he did. And certainly no promise that this will never happen again We\u2019ve… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33938"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33938"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33938\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33939,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33938\/revisions\/33939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}