Trump Continues His Ethnic Cleansing Tour

We haven't seen racially themed hate speech like this since the heyday of Jim Crow.

AP Photo/Evan Vucci

by Justin Rosario

With just a month left until the election, Trump, as predicted, is ratcheting up his hate speech to levels we have not seen since the heyday of Jim Crow and the fight over segregation. That no one has been killed yet is, frankly, a miracle as Trump continues to target Haitian immigrants to the delight of his base of rabid white nationalists.

Not content to just lie about them, Trump has started to call for ethnic cleansing. Somehow, this is not the main story of the election as the press writes it off as “dark rhetoric” and quickly moves on. It remains a mystery why so much of the country is unaware of how dangerous Trump is.

“Send them back!”

I’m skipping over Trump calling Kamala Harris “mentally disabled.” As disgusting as that was, it was the least dangerous among the litany of disgusting things Trump vomited out last week. His eliminationist rhetoric about immigrants, on the other hand, was the stuff of impending genocides:

It wasn’t enough for Trump to earlier claim immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of our country, or to accuse them falsely of eating the pets of local residents. Trump dialed up the fear by painting migrants as violent criminals who will murder you in your home.

“They make our criminals look like babies. These are Stone. Cold. Killers. They will walk into your kitchen, they’ll slit your throat,” Trump warned in his speech. 

Trump really had fun when he once again whipped up his cult of hatemongers over the Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio:

“Do you think Springfield will ever be the same? I don’t think. The fact is, and I’ll say it now, you have to get ’em the hell out, you have to get ’em out, I’m sorry,” Trump said. “Get ’em out. Can’t have it. Can’t have it. They’ve destroyed it.”

The crowd roared its approval as soon as Trump said, “Get ’em out,” and then began chanting, “Send them back.”

But why settle for destroying the peace and tranquility of one city when you can destroy two? Trump is now targeting a different group of Haitian immigrants in a different city. This time in Charleroi, Pennsylvania:

Former President Donald J. Trump vilified the migrant population of a small western Pennsylvania industrial town during a rally in the swing state on Monday, likening a group of Haitians who have made it their home to those in Springfield, Ohio, another place that was not well-known until he put it onto the political map.

“Has your beautiful town changed?” Mr. Trump asked, amplifying remarks he has previously made about Charleroi while speaking at a rally in Indiana, Pa., about 50 miles away. “It’s composed of lawless gangs.”

To cap all of this hate speech off, Trump called for the police to end all crime, you know, the imaginary crime from the imaginary lawless gangs, by going on a lawless rampage of their own:

In what was seen as an extreme display of demagoguery even by his standards, Trump drew cheers from an audience in Erie, Pennsylvania, with a picture of an out-of-control crime spree that he said could be ended “immediately” with one “real rough, nasty day”, or “one rough hour”.

“You see these guys walking out with air conditioners with refrigerators on their back, the craziest thing,” Trump said. “And the police aren’t allowed to do their job. They’re told, if you do anything, you’re gonna lose your pension.

“They’re not allowed to do it because the liberal left won’t let them do it. The liberal left wants to destroy them, and they want to destroy our country.”

We’ve seen what it looks like when the police decide to have a real rough, nasty day. It was back in the summer of 2020 when police departments all across the country rioted in the streets. Do you think “riot” is too strong a word? What else would you call it when the police, the people who are supposed to uphold the law, start attacking unarmed and non-violent protesters and journalists for the sole reason that the public had the unmitigated gall to demand an end to police brutality?

Remember, Trump wanted the military to shoot protesters. He desperately wants the police to act as his enforcers. Trump is a dictator waiting for a chance to mete out violence on anyone who speaks out against him. 

It’s going to get worse

Trump needs to keep the cameras on him. For weeks after Biden stepped aside for Kamala Harris, Trump was enraged that the press wouldn’t stop talking about her. Kamala this! Kamala that! Why aren’t they talking about me?!

And then the debate happened and even though Trump humiliated himself in front of the nation, his ranting and raving about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio was so vile and so over the top that the press had to stop talking about Harris and focus on the horrific racism Trump and Vance were spewing. 

Just like that, the cameras were pointing back at Trump. So he doubled down. And tripled down. And he’s going to keep doing it because anything that keeps the cameras pointed at him is a net positive as far as Trump is concerned. That’s why two weeks ago, Trump went all in on antisemitism. That’s why last week he went all in on ethnic cleansing. 

What will it be this week? Open calls for vigilante murder? Mass executions? Gas chambers? Mass sterilization? There are plenty of dark places Trump still has left to go that will thrill his base of white nationalists and keep the press transfixed. I promise you, we’re going to get there because we’re in a game of chicken now. Trump is seeing how far he can go before the press says “enough.” 

Except they never will. There are no lines Trump can cross that the press will not immediately erase behind him. And therein lies the danger or normalizing the abomination that is the modern Republican Party. Once you’ve become comfortable normalizing the rhetoric, it’s a simple step to normalizing the actions. And then the New York Times will be publishing headlines about how rounding up all the Haitians for execution is just good for the nation because of course it is. Haven’t they been telling us that immigrants aren’t really people anyway? True American patriots celebrate the cleansing of America’s shores of blablabla.

We’re somewhere between Stage Four and Stage Six and the American press is deeply complicit.

Keep that in mind as you get ready to vote if you haven’t already. We only get one shot at this and then the black stain of white nationalism will forever taint this nation’s soul. 

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