The president needs to read bell hooks.
At his raucous and accusatory press conference yesterday, the president used every opportunity to deflect questions about Russia and blame “The Media” for the cascade of bad news coming from his administration. The president scanned the room looking for a “friendly reporter.” He called on Jake Turx from Ami Magazine, a weekly publication for the Orthodox Jewish community.
The New York Times describes what happened next:
“Despite what some of my colleagues may have been reporting, I haven’t seen anybody in my community accuse either yourself or anyone on your staff of being anti-Semitic. We understand that you have Jewish grandchildren. You are their zayde,” which is Yiddish for “grandfather” and often a word of great affection.
At that Mr. Trump nodded slightly, and said, “thank you.”
“However,” Mr. Turx continued, “what we are concerned about and what we haven’t really heard being addressed is an uptick in anti-Semitism and how the government is planning to take care of it. There’s been a report out that 48 bomb threats have been made against Jewish centers all across the country in the last couple of weeks. There are people committing anti-Semitic acts or threatening to——”
At that, Mr. Trump interrupted, saying it was “not a fair question.”
“Sit down,” the president commanded. “I understand the rest of your question.”
As Mr. Turx took his seat, Mr. Trump said, “So here’s the story, folks. No. 1, I am the least anti-Semitic person that you’ve ever seen in your entire life. No. 2, racism, the least racist person.”
Notice how Trump took a question about antisemitism, which is on the rise in America, and turned it into an accusation that he was an antisemite.
Trump also directed Turx to revisit the comments of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who just the day before had to defend the president against a similar question. “I’ve known President Trump for many years,” Netanyahu said. “I’ve known the president and his team for a long time. There is no greater supporter of the Jewish people and the Jewish state than President Donald Trump.” Again, the question about antisemitism gets refigured as an accusation that the president is an antisemite.
Trump really wants the world to think he’s not an antisemite. In so doing, he’s clearly misunderstanding the difference between being an antisemite and antisemitism as an ideology of hate.
This distinction reminds me of a bell hooks essay in which she argues that those who care about justice are better to say “I advocate feminism” rather than “I am a feminist.” This argument is more than just a semantic distinction. Portraying feminism as an identity (I am a feminist) misconstrues the nature of power relations that feminism seeks to undo. hooks’ point is clearly much more concerned with liberation than anything coming out of the Trump White House. The underlying claim about possessing a feminist identity, however, has lessons for thinking about the president’s response. The claim of being “the least racist person” is absurd, but its danger comes in characterizing racism as an identity rather than an ideology that permeates all elements of American politics, society, and culture. Racism and antisemitism are not identities that one can just slip on like a white robe (although the increasing numbers of people who voluntarily don these robes are alarming in themeselves). Rather, antisemitism as an ideology of hate permeates culture and impacts the way people understand the world. On the campaign trail, our well-meaning president spoke of a “global power structure” that had clear links to antisemitism. He posted–then quickly took down–a photo of Hillary Clinton with a pile of money and a star of David calling Clinton the “most corrupt candidate ever.”
Trump may well be the least antisemitic person in the history of the world, but that observation clearly misses the important role that antisemitism plays in his unlikely political career. Senior Advisor Steve Bannon advocates a white nationalism that colludes with antisemitic sentiments. The White House is full of end-of-culture conspiracy theorists who view the United States and the Middle East as engaged in an ideological battle for the future of the world. This dovetails seamlessly with a Republican Party that has spent fifty years pushing against the advances made to improve the life chances of minorities. Voting rights and the final threads of the social safety net are just the policy elements of a Republican worldview singularly focused on protection of the white race. Ten thousand character witnesses like Netanyahu cannot obscure the ideologies of racism and antisemitism that permeate Trump’s White House.
Leave a Reply