Important, in that it punctures a lot of lazy arguments about Trump-as-white-supremacist, Trump as "KKK candidate," etc.
I would describe this from @slatestarcodex as important but wrong:http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/16/you-are-still-crying-wolf/ …
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But wrong in that it underestimates ways in which Trump's racialized appeals were different, and consciously so, from typical R rhetoric.
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It doesn't take up, for instance, the ways that Trump used overt birtherism to gain attention prior to his presidential campaign.
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Is birtherism identical to white supremacy? No. But it is a xenophobic conspiracy theory about the first black president.
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Which Trump didn't just wink at or tolerate, but deliberately championed. For a long time. That's an important data point, I would say.
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And one that throws a darker light on other forays that could otherwise be explained as "Trump doesn't talk a politician"/"Trump is weird."
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I don't think his racial appeals explain Trump's victory in the way that a lot of ppl on the left do. Or even his primary victory.
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But from birtherism through his "snake" lines about immigrants through the Curiel affair to the way he talked about voter fraud ...
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... he made an appeal to white tribal identity and anxiety a part of his campaign in a way that no modern GOP POTUS candidate has done.
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He's not the KKK candidate, and the world is complicated, which is why he won more minority votes than ppl expected.
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But he approached racial issues in a way that was distinctive, and dark, and should be recognized as such. /finis
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you are the most hilarious person to be saying other writers are wrong
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I mean, it's true that language gets hollowed out, loses its bite & force. But the answer is to refresh it, not try to hoard it.
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There's almost a sense of "you think THIS is bad? just you wait!" Why should we "save up" language for some inevitable atrocity?
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& something bugs me about the "crying wolf" framing. I guess it's that it participates in the logic of normalization.
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... also convinced by your summary of shortcomings, especially entanglement of anti-immigration & white supremacy.
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Feel like
@slatestarcodex's piece is v. useful as an account of why the labels "racist" / "W.S." didn't stick properly, but ...Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. Undo -
That it omits any mention of Bannon or Breitbart disqualifies it in my view. Shame; I often like SSC.
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I like SA but this is ridiculous particularly when you get past point 5http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/16/you-are-still-crying-wolf/ …
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anyone who reads this article and doesn't immediately drop all racist slander is irretrievably brainwashed
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great read, thanks for linking that. Now I have to read rest of site.
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yeah I haven't had a chance to look at anything else there yet
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good stuff!
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