Hatred

Trump came into power through hate speech. He wants to be re-elected, and to do that, he needs his electoral base, which includes white people who are moderately or radically racist.

As a liberal, I am convinced that all political groups, even the most extreme, have the right to demonstrate publicly and express whatever they like. Yes, even the Nazis with their racist, xenophobic and anti-Semitic ideology. Yes, let them go out into the streets with their swastikas and their fascist salutes. Better to see their faces than to have them hiding in the catacombs. Better to know how many there are and what their objectives are. Better to see them preach their damned hatred so that people know that they are there among them, these jerks that want a country of and for white people. They do not tolerate blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Jews and Muslims.

This is the United States in the 21st century. The far-right comes out of the dark in order to stop being a minority alternative and become part of the American mainstream. And this time around, they have a great ally: none other than the president of this country himself. Donald Trump came into power through hate speech. He wants to be reelected and to do that, he needs his electoral base, which includes white people who are moderately or radically racist. That is why he continues using the same rhetoric of hatred, which explains his faltering, contradictory and shocking statements surrounding the events in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Groups of white nationalists gathered in that city, including members of the historic Ku Klux Klan and the Nazi party of this country. The objective of the march was to “unite the right” so that it could transform itself into a predominant option in the United States. The police protected them. The photos of black police officers taking care of the white racists were incredible. But there was also a counterprotest. Provocation turned into fights. A white supremacist grabbed a car and crashed into another vehicle, running over several people. Heather D. Heyer, a 32-year-old woman who was “a passionate advocate of the disenfranchised,” was killed. A helicopter that was monitoring the protests crashed as well, which caused the deaths of two police officers.

Americans expected their president to take a clear position condemning the violence provoked by the white supremacists, including the neo-Nazis. However, Trump rejected the violence on both sides. Following the flood of criticism he received, he halfway corrected himself and condemned the white supremacists. But he couldn’t contain himself, and a few days later, he denounced “both sides” again, affirming, as incredible as it may seem, that not all the far-right demonstrators had been neo-Nazis and that there were “fine people” among them.

This is where I would like to recommend the documentary on Netflix called “Get Me Roger Stone.” It is about the history of one of the main operators behind Trump’s political career. Stone, a great Nixon admirer, uses hatred as an instrument to conquer and exercise power. Since the 1980s, it was Stone who saw great potential in Trump reaching the White House.

One of Stone’s creeds is that “hate is a more powerful motivator than love.” Therefore, the voters need to be mobilized by searching for those buttons that make them hate. In the documentary, the sinister character presents his rules. It is the worst of politics: tricks, lies, hoaxes and so on. Like Trump, his main motivation is narcissistic: to not go unnoticed. “It is better to be infamous than never to be famous at all,” he declares.

“Get Me Roger Stone” is magnificent testimony about how the Republican Party has changed during the last five decades, from those liberal and profoundly anti-communist gentlemen from the postwar period, to the religious conservatives who are becoming increasingly more racist. From Eisenhower to Trump, to put it in terms of two paradigmatic presidents.

Thus, it is no wonder that the most radical right-wing people are now crawling out of the catacombs with the objective of becoming a real and predominant option in politics. It is true that the U.S. is increasingly polarized. But it is the right that has become the most radical. The Roger Stones of this country have gotten away with it. Trump is just a vehicle for this project, a vehicle designed to spread hate as a way of conquering and exercising power. By the way, the negotiations between Mexico and the U.S. to try to save the North American Free Trade Agreement have started. God help us all.