Imagine America 2021: A nation scarred by the ravages of Coronavirus – from China, but also not Chinese – with only the white, Christian nationalists and their cult-leader-turned-Führer Donald Trump left to pick up the pieces. Now come back to reality. Close the tab open to Salon’s “Trump’s darkness: White supremacy, Christian nationalism and the coronavirus.” Better yet, exit the browser entirely and delete the history. Donald Trump may not be the most pious man in the nation, but he’s no Antichrist – and Coronavirus isn’t his Armageddon.
Ridiculous as it may seem, that is precisely the nightmare that appears to plague many a progressive American – at least if Salon contributor Chauncey DeVega is to be believed. White people are all racist. Donald Trump is a bigot – the worst in history. All of Trump’s supporters are white supremacists – even if they’re not white – and especially those church-going “Christian nationalists.” Hell, even Coronavirus seems to be racist, from this guy’s point of view.
Führer Trump?
In case you missed the previous not-so-subtle hint, the author makes a point to portray the president as the new Hitler. Coronavirus is “imperiling the lives of people held in Trump’s concentration camps,” he writes. “Motivated by racism and nativism,” DeVega adds, “the Trump regime continues to blame the coronavirus on China, and to refer to a global pandemic as the ‘Chinese flu’ and, at least in private, ‘Kung-flu.’” Remember, progressives don’t like it when people focus on the fact that this virus came from China. As Liberty Nation’s Mark Angelides recently explained, the leftist media lambasted the president for uttering the words “Chinese virus” just days after using the same term in multiple headlines. Mark cited a few examples, but DeVega goes on to provide his own contradiction:
“Trump continues to obsess over his beloved racist wall along the U.S.-Mexico border as if it could somehow stop the coronavirus from entering the United States. Facts do not matter to the epistemology of white supremacy: The coronavirus was brought to the United States from both China and Europe, definitely not across the Rio Grande.”
So it’s from China, but it isn’t Chinese? And to be clear, those European cases occurred primarily due to the open border policies across the European Union and travelers who had been to – wait for it – China. As for Trump’s racist obsession with Mexico, pay no attention to the closing of the Canadian border – both by the United States, as reported by LN’s Sarah Cowgill, and later Canada. “After much posturing and virtue-signaling,” Mr. Angelides wrote at the time, “Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has decided to join the xenophobes and close his nation’s borders to prevent further infections of COVID-19.” Evidently, facts do not matter to the epistemology of progressivism, either.
Racism, Racism Everywhere
Crisis is an opportunity to the “global right” and racial authoritarians like Trump – and none has served the white nationalist cause quite as well as Coronavirus. Trump cultists, the author alleged, are “using this crisis to engage in terrorism and other acts of political violence – along with other, deeper machinations – to advance their goal of undermining multiracial, pluralist democracy.” That DeVega would accuse Trump supporters of being fascists and engaging in political violence is laughable when it’s leftist organizations like the ironically named Antifa and Black Lives Matter that have instigated the most political violence and property damage in America since the 2016 election got their panties all in a twist.
The author goes on to detail a white supremacist plot that was foiled by the FBI. Then there are the ever-present internet bigots who wonder amongst themselves from the relative safety of online anonymity if it would be possible to weaponize Coronavirus against Jews, Muslims, and other people who aren’t exactly like them. These, of course, are all Trump supporters in DeVega’s mind – and all Trump supporters are internet bigots and white nationalist terrorists.
But remember how the president is the head of an authoritarian regime that hates nonwhites? Well, the author turns it around in yet another contradiction. You see, white supremacy “must be understood as a set of cultural scripts, those stories that individuals and societies tell themselves about human worth and ‘normal’ social hierarchies.” See? It’s systemic. “In that script,” DeVega writes, “the coronavirus pandemic is a crisis where whiteness and ‘white’ people are under siege and Donald Trump is a religious and political savior.” For those riding the Trump Train, Coronavirus is merely a metaphor or representation of a general racial paranoia about a country they imagine as imperiled by changing demographics. “The coronavirus is also seen as an imposition on the ‘freedom’ of white people in the form of ‘big government’ and ‘political correctness’ – code words laden with racial resentment and hostility toward ‘elites’ – and as a threat to continued white privilege.”
So there you have it: All previous points about a racist government aside, now white people hate the government because it’s prejudiced against them instead of minorities.
Trump: Harbinger of Doom?
Ready for some more “facts” from the progressive perspective? “White Christian conservatives are Trump’s most stalwart supporters. He enjoys a 99 percent level of support among them. This is the very definition of a cult.” (It is not actually the “very definition” of a cult, but to correct it at this point probably wouldn’t do much good.) This cult of religious racists apparently ties the idea of “America” to some imagined past in which America was all Christian and all white.
That might be confusing for some anti-religious progressives out there, and understandably so. Trump is not anyone’s religious leader. No one looks to him as a spiritual savior. And no, Christians do not believe that at any point in American history was the nation made up entirely of white believers.
Was calling Trump supporters cultists too subtle for you? Not to worry; DeVega didn’t stop there. “Last Sunday was Easter,” he writes. “On that most important of days to Christian believers, some right-wing evangelicals chose to show their loyalty to Donald Trump, rather than their faith in Jesus Christ.” In what way did these false teachers turn away from the Lord? By holding church services rather than remaining locked down.
But Donald Trump offers no salvation to his followers, the author explains. “Just as white supremacy damages all of society (including white people), Donald Trump and his movement offer no redemption or salvation to his supposed Christian followers. Only darkness. Only death.” What a morbid way to end an article …
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Read more from James Fite.
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