Let’s not kid ourselves. Racism and bigotry are his central organizing principles
by digby
Greg Sargent is on a roll and this piece today is no exception. He points out that Trump’s “birthright citizenship” move is just another aspect of his white nationalism:
Trump, by moving to reverse what was originally intended as a bedrock guarantee of citizenship to those born here regardless of their race or the heritage of their parents, is again confirming fealty to a racialized vision of American citizenship, as Adam Serwer argues. When Trump recently said, “I’m a nationalist,” he prefaced this by suggesting this was a taboo thing to say, which is a way of dog-whistling, “I’m a racial nationalist, and I’m not afraid to say so,” while actually speaking aloud only the uncontroversial half of that notion.
By reviving ending birthright citizenship, Trump has again confirmed — as he did with his “s—hole countries” remark — that his animating impulse is to stall or roll back the country’s evolving racial and ethnic mix. As Garrett Epps has noted, stripping away citizenship is also the stuff of autocrats and tyrants. But it’s worth recalling that this position is hardly confined to Trump. When he floated it during the campaign, multiple other GOP contenders joined him.
Also, the Muslim ban, the Wall, the vote suppression and more.
This is his central organizing principle. He believes in it. It brought him to political prominence with the birther smear and it fueled his rise in 2016. He’s anything but a genius but he has a feral instinct for bigotry and racism. It’s who he is too, always has been.
His nationalism is white nationalism, and his lame dog whistle shows that on a primitive level he understands that.
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