David Corn: Donald Trump's Politics of Hate Began With a "Cynical and Evil" GOP Memo

[babylonsister]

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/07/donald-trumps-politics-of-hate-began-with-a-cynical-and-evil-gop-memo/


2 hours ago
Donald Trump’s Politics of Hate Began With a “Cynical and Evil” GOP Memo
Thanks, Newt Gingrich.
David Corn
Washington, DC, Bureau ChiefBio | Follow


Donald Trump’s outburst of nativistic racism—viscerally and putridly displayed by his “go back” tweet-attack on four congresswoman who are people of color and the subsequent and shocking (even for Trump) “send her back” rally in North Carolina on Wednesday night—has been a clarifying moment. It seems the culmination of his years-long effort to fashion a politics of white identity, racial resentment, and hatred, even though a new bottom will likely be hit tomorrow, or the next day, or the following week. And Trump’s bigotry and demagoguery is now in full public view, undeniably the lifeblood of the Republican Party. As Trump rants and fuels the flames of animus and malice, party operatives zap out emails attacking “deranged” Democrats and falsely asserting, “The socialist Democrats continue to make anti-Semitism a core tenet of their unhinged platform.” Trump is leading a crusade of fear, loathing, and lies and preying on prejudice and ignorance. But our racist president didn’t reach this dangerous position on his own. He is following a path—and perhaps turning it into a superhighway—established long ago by the party he now helms.

The few Republicans and conservatives tut-tutting Trump’s rampage of racist rancor ought to know that the history is clear: their party has been exploiting bigotry and acrimony for decades. There was Richard Nixon’s Southern Strategy, which aimed to attract white voters opposed to civil-rights advances. Ronald Reagan famously campaigned against “welfare queens” and hailed “states’ rights”—barely coded language deployed to achieve the same results.

snip//

The pattern is obvious: the guys at the top of the Republican Party have long tried to take advantage of racial conflict and political divisiveness. At times, they have even encouraged it, believing that would help them win elections. And there is no better example than Newt Gingrich.

Decades before Gingrich was a Trump-adoring Fox News bloviator, he was speaker of the House. And before that he was a bomb-thrower. In fact, he became speaker partly because he weaponized hate. Elected in 1978, Gingrich was a back-bencher in the House of Representatives, when the Republicans appeared to be in a permanent minority. His strategy was to blow-up his own party so he could take control and lead it to the majority—and one of his big ideas was that the GOP, in order to succeed, had to create more division within the national discourse.


He established a political action committee called GOPAC to help Republican candidates across the country become more effective campaigners. And in 1990, the group distributed to GOP contenders a pamphlet called “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control,” which encouraged the candidates to “speak like Newt”—that is, to rely upon sharp and divisive rhetoric. It presented a list of 30 “optimistic positive” words to use, including “freedom,” “truth,” and “family.” It also provided a list of “contrasting” words: “crisis,” “decay,” and “red tape.” And this second list recommended going to extremes. Republican candidates, it noted, should call Democrats “shallow,” “radical,” “incompetent,” “pathetic,” “sick,” “bizarre,” and “traitors.” Gingrich’s group was urging GOPers to engage in all-out rhetorical war, going beyond arguing over policies to engaging in the politics of personal destruction. Which was one of Gingrich’s own favorite tools. (The good Newt loved to talk about policy; the bad Newt embraced and relished hostile name-calling and discordant combat.)

snip//

The GOP has made use of race-driven and hate-propelled demagoguery since the early 1960s. But it was mostly done so in a manner that preserved deniability and that would be acceptable at the country club. To a certain degree, Gingrich changed that. But Trump, the owner of several country clubs, has decided that in his world no niceties at all are needed. He has essentially said to the party, “Thanks for the lift, fellows, I’ll take it from here.” And he sees no reason to pretend. His campaign is about race and hate. He is not an aberration. He is the logical outcome of decades of Republican politics. He has exposed the party’s dark soul. And now he is its soul.

[BigmanPigman]

1. Newt...

He is evil. I can't believe the Vatican allows him through their doors. I love watching Murphy Brown reruns since she reminds me how long the same key GOP figures and same BS issues have been destroying our country.

[Scurrilous]

2. K&R

[Blue_true]

3. The people that we see slobbering at Trump rallies.

Are the same people that called then Senator Obama a monkey outside McCain/Palin rallies. They questioned whether President Obama belonged, Trump saw that and his own racism had him craft the birther shit.

Trump is in it for Trump. He does not give one shit if everything is burned down as long as he gets what he is after. He is total evil and the rightwing evangelicals backing him are just as bad. They have no core morality and we need to treat them as what they are, pure evil.

[malaise]

4. I love David Corn

He's a genuine progressive

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

5. Yeah, which is why for the life of me I don't get Democratic politicians who still want to

pretend there's still any decency left on the rotting hateful carcass of this fucking death cult.

[JDC]

6. I proudly told Newt to fuck off in the ATL airport in the 90s

Walked right by him and said FU Newt. He stopped, then kept on going. I'd gladly do/say it again.

[Wounded Bear]

7. K & R...for truth...

Many of us have been seeing this all along. The M$M has allowed and supported it.

[zaj]

8. Was hoping this was about something new.

This is a good reminder of the devisiveness that the GOP choose years ago.

[FakeNoose]

9. "Chump is the least racist person we know"

[IthinkThereforeIAM]

10. I am glad someone else noticed (finally) what Gingerich did...

... and a result of Newt's efforts got us a GOP congress filled with, "business man first, statesmanship last". I recognized his somewhat carefully worded hate decades ago.

[zentrum]

11. Wish they'd

...teach real history in our schools.

What a horror show it's been.

[Ponietz]

13. Teachers saddled with insurmountable debt have little hope or vision to give

This was, perhaps, the most devastating plank in their long-term strategy, though hate radio and Fox News are close behind.

[BaronChocula]

14. Don't forget how Reagan

contributed divisiveness to the forum. Reagan loved the New Deal and Big Government until those New Deal programs were extended to black people. That's when Reagan made his shift, portraying Government as the culprit that took dollars away from hard-working Whites and wantonly distributed it to idle, lazy Blacks. It's how we ended up with Tea Partiers (white, of course) on the dole blaming government spending on minority recipients of the same benefits they were receiving. The basis of the GOP and racism are hypocrisy. It's why they work so well together.

[Grasswire2]

15. wouldn't there be more peace for more people if America was a union of two countries...

....instead of the constant and tedious and harmful fighting of each side for dominance?

[DeminPennswoods]

16. Then there's Pat Buchanan

Remember his "Culture Wars" rant at the RNC in 1992? Americans were appalled. Before that Buchanan was a speech writer and aide to Nixon.

Years ago, I saw a documentary about great battles. This particular show was focused on the American Revolution and how, near the end of the way, the British tried to stave off defeat by stoking a civil war in the southern colonies among the Scotch, Irish settlers inland and costal settlers.

[Hortensis]

17. "Language: A Key Mechanism of Control." Yup.

Language is enormously powerful, and weaponized language has brought down many nations. Not learning the real meanings of terms so that manipulators can tell us what they want us to believe they mean, our own facile embracing of "alternative-truth" meanings because they please notions of the moment, is a tremendous weakness. A mental dropping of the pants and bending over.

Liberalism, on which our party's and nation's founding ideology are based, may be the most weaponized of all in our time, but that's only because even most liberals haven't learned what it is or that it is the foundation for all they value most in our nation. Heck, many don't even know they're liberals because Newt told them long ago what it was and they knew they certainly weren't among those contemptible people.

Or populism, which apparently has a nice "peopley" sound to many but actually refers to a potentially gravely dangerous phenomenon fueled by fanning some of the most potentially destructive traits in people; our hair should have stood up in alarm when journalists like David Korn identified both left and right-wing national populist movements. But few knew what that meant or could lead to.

Neoliberalism isn't new liberalism; it isn't liberal at all. In today's world it's most analogous to hard-core, laissez-faire RW economics, the kind of thinking behind the Republicans giant tax heist. But the word itself sounds like liberals (i.e., Democrats) support economics of massive greed and exploitation, making it a very effective weapon for perverting the understanding of the ignorant.

And so on.

If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate; if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion. Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything.

Confucius something like 2500 years ago

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it." Joseph Goebbels, and many evildoers

[JHB]

18. Yup. And he kept beng relected by promising to protect Cobb County, GA, from...

...The People's Republic of Escape From New York.

At least, that's what it sounded like if you listened to him.