White supremacists were mainstreamed into conservative politics through Trump’s nativist agenda

Evidence

As Islamophobia intensified after 9/11, so too did White nationalism. Mirroring the rise of White nativism in the early twentieth century that afflicted Jews and Catholics, recent demographic changes coupled with a gradual increase of racial minorities in elected office have triggered collective angst among conservative White Americans. Due in large part to President Donald J. Trump’s nativist policy agenda, White supremacists previously on the fringes of conservative politics were mainstreamed, triggering a resurgence of anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, and xenophobic discourse. An ecosystem of White nationalist organizations known as the Alt-Right is now playing the role of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s and 1930s. Tellingly, the Alt-Right frequently invokes Christian identity in its warnings that America is under threat by Jews, Mexicans, African Americans, and Muslim savages. Other groups, such as the Army of God, the Creativity Movement, and Christian Identity groups, explicitly cite Christian theology to justify their hate, intolerance of, and violence against racial minorities. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 1028

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels the pattern in the reader’s chapter on Victorian-era gendering of noise/silence where industrial wealth created the class that then condemned — structural parallels between mainstreaming and moral panic dynamics. — connects to: Trump’s conduct consecrates the white male supremacy entrenched in traditional values — Wendy Brown, In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise…, 293; White Christian nationalism drives right-wing populism in America — Philip S. Gorski and Samuel L. Perry, The Flag and the Cross: White Christian…, 178; The 2016 Trump era mainstreamed conspiracy-peddling anti-immigrant and white-supremacist groups — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 30 (+1 more)