As reported by ABC News – and to the surprise of almost no one – a Trump KKK parade is being planned in North Carolina for December 3. The North Carolina Klan Parade is being organized to celebrate Donald Trump’s election as president of the United States, presumably because the KKK members feel that Donald Trump is their kind of guy.
And perhaps he is. Despite the Trump campaign’s belated and half-hearted denunciation of their support, KKK members certainly have every reason to believe Trump is one of them. During the campaign, Trump has done everything but wear a white sheet.
Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke called Trump’s victory “one of the most exciting nights of my life” https://t.co/9IkxwXWCU8
— New York Post (@nypost) November 12, 2016
The Trump KKK Connection
The Donald Trump KKK parade – which will undoubtedly be followed by a memorial anti-Semitic barn dance – hardly comes out of the blue. Early on in the Republican primaries, the KKK – in the person of David Duke – offered its wholehearted support of Trump.
Moreover, Trump himself was very reluctant to reject that support, pretending in an interview that he didn’t know who David Duke was, even though earlier videos showed he did. Of course, Donald Trump has a habit of saying things in earlier videos that contradict what he’s saying now.
ABC News notes that KKK members – including David Duke himself – erupted with unbridled racist joy when Trump unexpectedly won the 2016 election. It seemed all their antebellum fantasies were about to come true. And perhaps they are if Donald Trump’s comments over the last year are any indication.
Early Racist Statements By Trump
KKK parade plans aside, we already have plenty of evidence of Donald Trump’s racism. Going all the way back to the early 70s, we find Donald Trump attempting to block housing integration in rental properties. Eventually, the Justice Department had to defeat him twice in court to force desegregation in Trump corporate rental practices.
In 1989, Donald Trump suggested to Bryant Gumbel in an interview that a college educated black man has far more of an advantage in the job market than a college educated white man. This absurd notion – refuted by every employment study before and since – is just one example of the delusion Trump and so many right-wing whites embrace.
Violence erupts at protest against former KKK leader David Duke at La. historic black college https://t.co/Pm9X1ozJlt Trump surrogate, KKK!
— John G. Kays (@Johnnybluecoat) November 3, 2016
Trump at the time, like Ronald Reagan, liked to use euphemisms like welfare recipients, welfare queens and strapping young bucks when talking about black people. The fact that most welfare recipients – then and now – are white doesn’t seem to trouble his thinking. In fact, a quote from one of Trump’s employees at the time illustrates his racism even better than a Trump KKK parade.
“Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys wearing yarmulkes…Those are the only kind of people I want counting my money. Nobody else…Besides that, I tell you something else. I think that’s guy’s lazy. And it’s probably not his fault because laziness is a trait in blacks.”
While some might assume that Trump couldn’t have actually said the above and that this must be liberal propaganda, Donald Trump himself in a 1997 Playboy interview confirmed the accuracy of this quote.
Trump Racism in the 2016 Election
The short-term memory that so many people seem to suffer from these days makes the 2016 campaign a bit of a blur. In some ways, that might be a blessing. Even ignoring misogyny and other reprehensible positions taken by Donald Trump, the number of times that Trump made racist statements during the campaign made the Trump KKK parade almost inevitable.
The KKK is planning a victory parade for Trump in North Carolina https://t.co/WPyMYt7GvT pic.twitter.com/scl60u9eOS
— VICE News (@VICENews) November 11, 2016
Like numerous 20 th century demagogues, Donald Trump has tapped into the fears of poor and working-class Americans and harnessed their prejudices for his own purpose. And this purpose was to get himself to the White House.
Muslims
One of the principle examples of this is Trump’s demonization of Muslims. Most rational people recognize there are extremists in any faith, from Irish Catholic IRA bombers to – not coincidentally – Bible thumping KKK members, who are willing to commit atrocities in the name of their faith. Very few people hold Catholics or Protestants in general responsible for the actions of these specific groups or individuals.
The President-elect just restored his webpage calling for a ban on all Muslims entering the country. https://t.co/RgyKHElqqd
— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) November 10, 2016
But as Hitler found, it’s much easier to make scapegoats of small minorities than it is large minorities. In the case of Muslims, Trump – with the assistance of Fox news and others – has managed to convince many white, Anglo-Saxon Americans that a handful of terrorists attacking buildings or train stations are representative of all Muslims.
Thus, we have Donald Trump’s plan to essentially ban Muslim immigration into the United States. He’s also made it very clear he’s fine with torturing terrorist suspects – note the word “suspects” – and killing their families, including men, women, and children.
Mexicans
And of course, Donald Trump has also demonized Mexicans and Hispanics in general. His description of them as rapists, drug dealers, and murderers again applies a stereotype derived from a handful of cases and individuals to a much larger population.
Trump’s imprisonment and deportation scheme for Mexicans living inside the United States will create a humanitarian crisis of almost global proportions. The dislocation of millions of people and the imprisonment of countless more is not something one expects to see in the United States. But now we will.
The construction of a wall along the Rio Grande will be a physical representation of Donald Trump’s racism, as well is that of a significant proportion of voters in the United States. Barriers like this, from the DMZ in Korea to the Berlin Wall, represent the divide between dictatorship and freedom.
Black People
Trump’s opinion about black people in the United States has already been illustrated above, but his campaign rhetoric and actions made his views even clearer. His desperate attempt to win over black voters by visiting a Detroit church and telling them that they had nothing to lose by voting for him was both condescending and incredibly racist.
Senator John McCain during his 2012 bid against Barack Obama actively tried to tamp down on racism among his supporters. But Donald Trump has done nothing whatsoever to discourage the racist chants, signs, and T-shirts of his fervent and highly bigoted followers. On the contrary, he’s encouraged them.
So perhaps Donald Trump deserves the Trump KKK parade. As disgusting – and deplorable – as most people might find such an event, it’s clear that Donald Trump will be actively serving the interests of this specific demographic group.
[Featured Image by Andrew Renneisen/Getty Images]
