Editor’s note: This commentary is by Tal Birdsey, of Ripton, who is the co-founder and head teacher at the North Branch School in Ripton and author of “A Room for Learning: The Making of a School in Vermont” and the forthcoming “Hearts of the Mountain: A Teacher, Adolescents, and a Living School.”
[P]resident Donald Trump’s recent tweets and comments targeting “the squad”—the group of four members of Congress, all women of color, who have vocally challenged his administration’s immigration policies — achieved a previously unimaginable depth of despicableness.
In the series of comments in mid July, the president wrote, “So interesting to see ‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly……and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”
By the end of the week, the president had achieved his goal: tens of thousands of his supporters, targeting Omar, viciously chanting, “Send her back.”
Yes. This is happening. In the year 2019.
This president is now openly embracing racist and white-nationalist rhetoric and wielding it against duly elected civil servants. Not only is such discourse below the dignity of the president’s office, such false and incendiary attacks threaten the delicate fabric of our democracy.
He, and his party, are not unhappy about it. He is standing on stage, leading the chorus, proclaiming who loves America and who does not, basking in the hatred he is eliciting, because he believes he is winning.
The facts are irrefutable: Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts are American citizens. Only Omar was not born in the United States. She immigrated from Somalia in 1990. She has been an American citizen longer than Melania Trump. The four congresswomen love our country enough to run for public office. They are part of our representative democracy — a diverse group of engaged public servants representing the constituents who elected them, representing the views of tens of millions of Americans.
It would perhaps not be a surprise to hear the kind of comments made by Trump on a neo-Nazi website thread or from a Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard. To hear them from the leader of our country is enough to know we are in rapid descent to a very dark place.
Tragically, our president does not understand this, or care. What he does care about, wittingly or not, is how to play into America’s long, vile history of race-baiting and xenophobia, of demonizing immigrants, the poor, non-Protestants, or persons of color.
The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 were an early landmark of xenophobic immigrant hatred, making protest against the government a jail-able offense, making it more difficult for immigrants to vote and easier to have them deported. After a rise in German and Irish immigration in the 1840s, virulent anti-Catholic sentiment rose, spearheaded by the nativist and xenophobic “Know-Nothing Party,” which became a legitimate political power and fomented riots and once even tarred-and-feathered a Catholic priest. In a political cartoon published in 1891, the character of Uncle Sam stares down at a “horde” of immigrants, and a scroll by Uncle Sam’s feet reads, ”Mafia in New Orleans, Anarchists in Chicago, Socialists in New York.” The judge says to Uncle Sam: ”If Immigration was properly Restricted you would no longer be troubled with Anarchy, Socialism, the Mafia and such kindred evils!”
The taunt “go back to where you came from” has long been understood as a rhetorical palimpsest for “immigrants not welcome.” In short, it means, “we” hate “you.” Throughout our history immigrants have been labeled: ”German socialist,” ”Russian anarchist,” ”Polish vagabond,” ”Italian brigand,” ”English convict,” ”Irish pauper.” Vermont’s own Calvin Coolidge warned in the 1920s that the country was becoming “a dumping ground” and that, “America must remain American.”
“Go back” signage from every era attests to racist sentiment coursing through our collective history: “Irish need not apply.” “We don’t serve Mexicans.” “Japs keep moving.” More recently, in 2017, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum joined a standing ovation for Baptist minister Dennis Terry, who had said that those who don’t believe that America “was founded as a Christian nation” ought to “get out! We don’t worship Buddha, we don’t worship Mohammad, we don’t worship Allah!”
In these times it bears repeating: Our country was not founded as a Christian nation; our citizens do worship Allah and the Buddha.
From the outset, Trump has chosen to summon our nation’s darker impulses. He blatantly promoted the falsehood that Barack Obama was not an American. He used anti-immigrant racism as the basis of his 2016 campaign, labeling Mexican immigrants “rapists” and insisting that the wall would make America safe and pure again. Over and over, using racist dog-whistles and character assassination, he has preyed upon racial and economic anxieties to conjure a cult of believers who will support anything he says. As he revs up his 2020 campaign, it is now almost imaginable that he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and his base would not blink.
Equally insidiously, the president has managed to associate, in the minds of his followers, dissent against his policies as evidence of “hatred” of America. The president tells his supporters: “They hate us. They hate America,” and his supporters believe it. The same strategy was employed during the Vietnam War with the pro-war phrase “America: Love it or leave it,” a way to dismiss those who questioned that disastrous war. Criticism of the government was falsely equated with lack of patriotism. If you were against the war you were not with “us” and therefore, one of “them.”
Similarly, the president has used the technique of demonization with regard to the press, calling it the “enemy of the people.” It should be noted that the term “enemy of the people” was used by Mao Zedong in China and in the former Soviet Union. In a speech delivered to the 20th congress of the Communist Party of the USSR on Feb. 25, 1956, Nikita Khrushchev said: “Stalin originated the concept ‘enemy of the people.’ This term automatically made it unnecessary that the ideological errors of a man or men engaged in a controversy be proven. It made possible the use of the cruelest repression, violating all norms of […] legality, against anyone who in any way disagreed with Stalin, against those who were only suspected of hostile intent, against those who had bad reputations … The formula ‘enemy of the people’ was specifically introduced for the purpose of physically annihilating such individuals.”
Trump’s strategy is to claim the power to define who is and is not a citizen. It is to claim the power to make citizens into non-citizens. It is to eradicate certain fellow Americans — their voices, their beliefs, their human value — to make them disappear, to annihilate them.
Following the president’s recent tweets, Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham doubled down by calling the congresswomen in question “communists.” A few days later the president’s spokeswoman, Kellyanne Conway, affirmed the president’s position. “What the president is doing is, we are tired — sick and tired — of many people in this country,” she said. “Forget these four. They represent a dark underbelly of people in this country…” His administration and his party stand behind him and are therefore complicit.
But it gets worse. The Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi, white nationalist website, is celebrating Trump’s turn toward outright racist xenophobia. “This is the WHITE NATIONALISM we elected him for,” wrote Andrew Anglin, Daily Stormer founder. On GoyTalk, a right-wing podcast, the hosts celebrated the comments as a return to form on the part of Trump. “Trump’s racist again! He won me over,” one of the hosts said. To which a co-host said, “He’ll win me over when he actually strangles her [Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez] on stage.”
So, it’s come to this: neo-Nazis get warm and fuzzy feelings when the president of the United States slanders non-white U.S. congresswomen in blatantly racist language, tells them to get out, while his cheerleaders urge him to outright violence or chant “send her back!”
It is indisputable that persons of color, Muslims, immigrants, women, LGBTQ citizens, “Communists,” “socialists,” “liberals,” “radicals,” the press, and now even members of Congress — all of these groups are under direct attack by the president of the United States by both his words and deeds. And the dark truth is that the opinions expressed in this letter could get me branded an enemy of the people or “un-American” by the president of our country, simply because I disagree with him.
Yet we should remember Benjamin Franklin’s words: “It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority.” One would expect that the president of our country would understand this elemental truth, that the freedom to question, petition, critique, or voice contrary views is fundamental to our democracy and our fumbling progress towards a more perfect union.
Our nation is brilliantly diverse — particularly with respect to race, religion, creed, sexual orientation, and ethnic and national background. It should go without saying, but still must be said: Any president and his or her administration should always seek to honorably and respectfully represent all Americans, no matter which “side.”
In the meantime, we should be mindful of the words of James Baldwin: “I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.” This is the essential freedom we must safeguard. We must remind ourselves that none of us is better than another. All of us have a place here. May we find our way back to the place where dissent and egalitarianism is embraced and tolerance, decency, and civilized discourse reign.
