While Donald Trump is frequently called a fascist and is even compared to Adolph Hitler, some angry democrats are engaging in their own racist and eliminationist rhetoric in the wake of his impending return to the presidency. Their reaction to Trump’s victory reveals that intolerance and bigotry are not unique to Trump and his followers.
“Fuck ‘em. I hope they are all deported. And I can’t wait until Netanyahu gets the green light to turn Gaza into a parking lot.”
“Can’t wait for the next Muslim ban. Fuck them. They get the president they deserve.”
“I hope every woman who voted for Trump and lives in a no abortion state gets what they wanted. To bleed out in a parking lot due to a miscarriage and no doctor will help you because THAT’S what you voted for. Y’all deserve it.”
“To the black men in Georgia that voted for Trump next time a cop has their knee on yall necks PLEASE LEAVE US BLACK WOMEN OUT OF IT!”
“Good morning to all my Arab Americans, dearborn Michigan, Palestinian supporters and Gaza pearl clutchers!
Black Americans, Black Women & Black Men are done! We won’t donate to your causes or feel sorry about any bombings! We had your back but you turned your back on us!”
These are just a few of the missives that angry democrats posted on social media after Kamala Harris was defeated in her campaign against Donald Trump. While every Trump utterance is examined for proof of racism and other forms of bigotry, liberals suddenly became very illiberal after the campaign ended. Many of them literally wished death upon Black men, Latino men, Arabs and anyone they hold responsible for Trump’s return to the white house. The white people who still form the base of his support are somehow exempt from these attacks.
While disturbing, these behaviors are not entirely unexpected. Instead of telling their voters how a Harris administration would benefit their lives, her campaign engaged in a propaganda effort, amplifying former Trump officials to attest to his fascist beliefs or resuscitating old stories about his alleged affinity for Hitler and Nazi ideology.
If Trump and his supporters are in fact comparable to Nazis then no scorn or condemnation of them is too harsh. But these opinions did not indicate any level of political maturity or analysis. The tit for tat expressions which wished suffering upon others are akin to the worst sloganeering of the MAGA hat wearing Trump followers who are so despised, the “deplorables” as it were. The people who think of themselves as being more enlightened actually took the time to consider and publicly share their violent sentiments as they wished bombings on civilians or death from abortion bans.
Much of the blame falls on the Democratic Party itself which, absent any intention of legislating programs that would help their voters prosper in their material lives, has instead chosen to stoke hatred against republicans. Emotions are substitutes for policy, as the administration which billed itself as the “most progressive since FDR” allowed covid era stimulus payments, expansions of unemployment insurance, freezes on student loan payments, eviction protection, and SNAP and Medicaid benefits to lapse. There was no action on the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act or on the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act which would restore enforcement provisions to the Voting Rights Act. The federal minimum wage didn’t go up and, as Joe Biden promised, Medicare for All was never on the agenda. In the absence of tangible policies to run on, they had nothing but a bipartisan vote to make Juneteenth a national holiday and then tapped into fear mongering against republicans.
The end result is not only anger and sadness that Trump will again be president but also a kind of mass psychosis that endlessly repeats that he is a liar who received five draft deferments for bone spurs while never mentioning that Biden also received five draft deferments as a student and a medical exemption for asthma. Trump’s lies are endlessly dissected but not Biden’s campaign promise that he would not permit oil drilling on federal land but did just that in 2023 when he approved the Willow Project in Alaska.
Black democrats are particularly confused. Every four years they are barraged with appeals to vote for the “Black party” and send the republicans, the “white party” down to defeat. The Republican Party has received the majority of votes from white people in presidential elections since 1964. It is the home of open and unfettered white racist sentiment and action, so the feelings of doom are understandable. But the duopoly trap creates political passivity, encouraging voter participation only in presidential election years while giving a myriad of reasons for telling Black people not to demand anything other than a democrat sitting behind the big desk in the oval office while promising little else in return.
In such a system, everyone becomes an enemy. If a democratic presidency is the one and only prize, then every issue that argues against support must be ignored or opposed and anyone raising issues such as the US-funded genocide in Gaza is also an enemy. Palestinians who refuse to support the genocidal Democratic Party which is killing their people are now called the enemies of Black people. Latino support for the democrats falls every election cycle but still, a majority of voters in that group voted for Harris, approximately 53%. No matter. If the media say that Latino men are voting for Trump then liberals conclude they must all be punished by the deportations they claimed to oppose before the election. Of course, only citizens can vote and by definition cannot be deported. The anger defies logic.
It is noteworthy that there is a great deal of punching down, but very little punching up. The Democratic Party clearly failed its voters after raising more than $1 billion and still losing to the man they spent so many years vilifying as a liar, buffoon, criminal, and evil incarnate. The not-so-enlightened liberals rarely even questioned how the debacle came about, much less showed anger at the candidate, or the party, or the process by which an unpopular and frail president face planted in a debate before being taken out of the election by rich donors, and replaced by a Vice President without a vote – a Vice President who did not even earn one delegate in earlier primary elections. Liberals also did not challenge the questionable strategy of chasing a handful of “never Trump” republican votes and spending millions of dollars on concerts with celebrities. One would think that the mental energy needed to conjure up a destroyed Gaza might also manage to ask hard questions of the woman at the top of the ticket.
Apparently, Trump is not the only authoritarian in U.S. politics. Democratic voters also believe in a hierarchy that tells them to act like children abused by an unstable parent who demands their silence. Politics is now about feeling superior to others rather than being able to cogently argue against them or defend one’s own position. It is not about asking their betters anything, including why they lost.
It seems that the U.S. is full of mean and angry people. Of course, their own government engages in austerity meant to grind them down economically and to deprive them of any political recourse. But the people don’t have to accept this treatment. They don’t have to become the angry mob.
The truth is that people in this country have been dehumanized to the point where they lack empathy for others. They also have been kept uninformed and ignorant. Even the liberal professional class, which holds itself up as the best among the population, is just as indoctrinated as thousands of Trumpers on January 6th. Its members do not know how to activate themselves politically, how to struggle with like minded people, or how to make political demands. Seeing oneself as the good group is thought to be enough.
Or perhaps these enraged liberals know what they are up against. Despite the celebrity endorsements and happy talk, maybe they know that their party is controlled by an oligarchy that will fight them tooth and nail. They only feel safe spewing vitriol on social media.
Margaret Kimberley is the author of Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents. You can support her work on Patreon and also find it on the Twitter, Bluesky, and Telegram platforms. She can be reached via email at margaret dot kimberley at blackagendareport dot com
In this week’s segment we talk about jails and prisons in New York City and State and the end of city control of the infamous Rikers Island jail. But first a Washington DC activist analyzes how the…
Afeni is an activist and lead organizer with Herb and Temple in Washington, DC. She joins us from Oakland to discuss politics in the U.S. and how the people can fight the fascism produced by the…
Our guest is Melanie Dominguez, Organizing Director, New York with the Katal Center for Equity, Health, and Justice. She joins us from New York City to discuss the federal takeover of Rikers Island…
The late Charles Rangel served as a member of the Congressional Black Caucus for more than 40 years. But the goals of Black politics and electoral politics are not necessarily the same.
“In theory and in practice, then, Zionism is a degraded repetition of European imperialism.”
