Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

Submission Preview

Scholar Matt Sears: Someday MAGA hats will be shameful secrets, like Klan robes

Rejected submission by aristarchus at 2019-02-18 01:24:00 from the Closet-racists-gonna-hate-being-put-back-into-the-closet dept.
Science

Interesting interview at Salon [salon.com]:

Scholar and Washington Post columnist says those who wear MAGA hats are "morally accountable" for Trump's actions

Some snippets:

Last week during a rally in the border city of El Paso, Texas, before thousands of his most adoring fans, Donald Trump showed America and the world--again--who he really is. Trump worked his audience up into a fever pitch as he lambasted and threatened the news media and free press. For Trump and his movement, they are the "enemy of the people." This is a fundamental principle of authoritarianism. One of Trump's MAGA hat-wearing supporters responded to the president's incitement by physically attacking a BBC cameraman named Ron Skeans.

During the same speech, Donald Trump lied about his imaginary wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and about "illegal immigrants" who come to America in order to commit crimes against white people. He spun vainglorious stories out of whole cloth about his "accomplishments" and "greatness."

Donald Trump's values and beliefs may appear incoherent, but they are not a buffet or à la carte meal from which a person can pick and choose from. Rather, they are a nasty, incestuous knot that cannot be easily untangled. Ultimately, to wear Donald Trump's MAGA hats or his other regalia is to share and endorse his racism, sexism, nativism, bigotry and anti-social behavior. To utter the words "Make America Great Again" with no sense of irony or foreboding is to announce one's betrayal of human decency and distrust of democracy.

Trumpism and the American right have birthed a type of new McCarthyism and anti-intellectualism in America. As a professor who studies literature and history, and also writes for a popular audience, how has that impacted you?

I don't know if it is "anti-intellectual" per se, in the spirit of what we saw in fascist Italy or with the Khmer Rouge, the latter being an obvious and odious example. But there is certainly a kind of battle royale taking place between different kinds of intellectuals in America and the West.

There are people like [white nationalist leader] Richard Spencer who try to give themselves an air of academic respectability. These types try to claim that their positions are actually well-thought out, well-researched and well-sourced. They are trying to piggy-back on academic prestige.

There is the so-called "intellectual dark web." These are all academics or academic-adjacent people. Jordan Peterson and Brett Weinstein, even Steven Pinker increasingly, and people like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris can be included in that group.

This is a battle for the soul of public discourse and who gets to claim expertise on certain areas. Given my expertise and public voice, I am part of a public debate and fight over keeping or getting rid of "traditional" ideas of Western civilization and arguments and beliefs such as “The West is Best.”

I have a scenario. In a few decades finding your parents' or grandparents' MAGA hats or other regalia will be the equivalent of someone in this moment discovering their relatives' Nazi paraphernalia. Nazism and Trumpism are, of course, not yet the same thing. Is this too extreme a comparison?

I think it’s similar. But I think a better analogy would be like finding a Ku Klux Klan hood or robe. I’ve made the comparison before. Every time I watch a documentary about the civil rights movement and all the hateful violence they faced I wonder what the white people who were doing those horrible things were thinking. What was going through their minds?

What was going through their what?


Original Submission