Since the collapse of the Russia collusion hoax, and especially since the horrible pair of nearly simultaneous shootings in El Paso and Dayton, Democrats and the Left have shifted to a single, endlessly repeated theme: Trump is a racist, a white nationalist, and a white supremacist.
This despite the absence of any credible evidence for these claims, and despite President Trump’s emphatic denunciations of racism and white supremacy, most recently in his post-Dayton statement.
This is nothing new. Democrats have consistently accused Republican presidents and presidential candidates of racism: Goldwater, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, both Bushes, McCain, Romney — all have been accused of using “dog whistles” and subliminal messages to appeal to the supposedly vast base of white racist voters. However, this litany of slander has now been taken up by the once-mainstream outlets of the media and the press (CNN, The New York Times, etc.), and it has reached an unparalleled intensity and ubiquity.
What is the effect of this rhetorical barrage? Ironically, it is the Democrats, and not the president, who are responsible for the recent rise in the popularity of white racism and theories of white supremacy.
The greatest accomplishment of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s was to marginalize and delegitimize theories of white superiority and the advocacy of white supremacy.
Racism is actually quite a new idea — prior to Darwin’s theory of evolution (Darwin’s "The Descent of Man" was published in 1871), no one conceived of such a thing as a “white” or “Caucasian” race — the word ‘race’ was used for individual nations, like the Irish, the Spanish, or American, not as a marker for a supposed biological category that applied globally, uniting Afghans, Finns, and Frenchmen into a single “white race.” Nazi theorists and American defenders of Jim Crow segregation adopted post-Darwinian racist theories to justify the oppression of African slaves and their descendants, under the label of a “Negro race” (see Richard Weikart, "From Darwin to Hitler" [2004]).
The Civil Rights movement successfully re-asserted the classical Christian anthropology of a single human race, sharing equally in the image of God.
This movement was so successful that by the early 1970’s no one would express blatantly racialist theories in polite company, a welcome shift in society’s norms.
Thanks to the efforts of both Republicans and Democrats in the 1960’s and 70’s, racialist theories were thrust underground, surviving only in cliques of the isolated and uneducated, and sufferers from personality disorders (e.g., the remnants of the KKK or neo-Nazi groups).
These represented, at their nadir, a few thousand misfits with no significant influence on the rest of society.
In recent years, we are seeing more interest in neo-racist theories among young people, even intelligent and well-educated ones, as evidenced by the alt-right, the human biodiversity movement, and other still marginal but now significant clusters. Why is this happening?
To some extent this is a natural human reaction to the successful suppression of a set of ideas. When social censorship effectively bans the expression and defense of certain theses in public, this censorship (as John Stuart Mill noted in "On Liberty") creates doubts about whether the suppressed ideas might not be true. Certainty about the falsity of racist ideas requires that they be seen to be bested in a fair intellectual contest, in which both sides can be freely expressed. Ideally, this should be done in an educational forum, in which the false ideas are defended by a “devil’s advocate.” In this way, it is still possible for doubts about the falsity of racism to be dispelled, while maintaining social disapproval to those who genuinely defend racism as true. Unfortunately, the fever of political correctness on college campuses makes such pedagogical advocacy of false ideas dangerous to an academic career.
Democrats exacerbate this problem by their habit of labeling all of their opponents, even the President of the United States, as true believers in racism and white supremacy.
Such labeling may damage the reputation of the president, but it simultaneously enhances the reputation of racism. If the president and the 63 million people who voted for him truly believe in “white racism” and “white supremacy,” then that position (whatever it is) must have a certain legitimacy and positive social standing. If the Democrats are to be believed, it is no longer the worldview merely of cranks and misfits but of a plurality of the population, and of the holders of some of our nation’s highest and most prestigious offices. Such Leftist misuse of the label of ‘racism’ strengthens the position and status of those who are genuine advocates of white supremacy. Although the Democrats’ intentions may be good, their dishonest tactics have exactly the opposite of their intended effect: they actually legitimize and elevate racism to a new respectability.
Rob Koons is a professor of philosophy specializing in logic, metaphysics, philosophical theology, and political thought. He is the author and editor of six books, including "The Atlas of Reality: A Comprehensive Guide to Metaphysics" (with Tim Pickavance, Wiley-Blackwell, 2017). He has been active in conservative circles, both nationally and in Texas, including the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, the National Association of Scholars, the Texas Public Policy Foundation, the Philadelphia Society, and the Austin Institute for the Study of Family and Culture. To read more of his reports — Click Here Now.