Trump continues to exploit Hillary Clinton’s supposed gaffe: “basket of deplorables”. But some of those deplorables are down-right dangerous. Especially the ones responsible for the the brain-washing of Dylann Roof, the young terrorist who gunned down nine African-Americans at church in South Carolina. It happened just as Trump had began his quest for the Republican nomination, but that was long before most of us had ever heard of the alt-right — the latest incarnation of the toxic mix of white supremacy and fascism. There are alt-right connections to that mass murder that lead directly to one of Trump’s most important “deplorables”, the woman that helped Trump frame his entire campaign.
On the Friday night of September 16th, Trump arrived on the stage at his Miami rally to the music of the Broadway hit, “Les Miserables”, along with a digital banner reminiscent of the Broadway show of the same name, but with words transposed to “Les Deplorables”. Trump is fighting hard to own the “Hillary gaffe”.
The scene according to the Daily News:
"Welcome to all of you deplorables," Trump boomed as thousands of his supporters chanted "Trump! Trump! Trump!" and "We love you!"
The next day Trump was in Texas at the anti-immigrant “Remembrance Project”, yet again charging that illegal immigrants are murderers and rapists.
I transcribed these opening remarks:
I've met many incredible people in the course of this campaign, but nothing has moved me more deeply than the time I've spent with the families of the Remembrance Project.
The most fundamental duty of government is to protect American lives. Anyone who fails to understand this is not fit to hold public office. Every day our border remains open innocent Americans are needlessly victimized and killed . . .
The Remembrance Project was founded by Maria Espinoza, who according to The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hatewatch, has close ties to white nationalists, including Wayne Lutton, on the editorial board of the Citizens Informer, a publication of the Council of Conservative Citizens.
Hatewatch also points out the link between Trump and the Remembrance Project.
This is not the first time Trump and the Remembrance Project have shared space. They did so in California early in his campaign. And though the Remembrance Project is a non-profit and therefore cannot endorse political candidates, many of its members are open supporters of the Trump campaign, including Espinoza herself. Trump’s anti-immigrant comments have helped fuel the nativist movement, and both Espinoza and Trump have held similar nativist campaign positions, like building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico and calling for a ban on all Muslim immigration to the country.
The Social Contract Press is another white supremacist group connected to Espinoza. Below is their journal, the Social Contract, which according to hatewatch “has published a litany of hate speech penned by some of America’s most vile white nationalists”. And there on this cover is Maria Espinoza and Wayne Lutton of the Council of Conservative Citizens.
The Council of Conservative Citizens is the lynchpin in the story I’m telling, and I want to provide you with some context. This group descends from the White Citizens Council which was formed in 1954 in my home state of Mississippi to oppose the Supreme Court’s Brown desegration ruling. It was not only extremely racist, it also became a defacto political party that controlled Mississippi and a few other Southern States during the Civil Rights era. Until the late 1960s, it was very hard for a politician in Mississippi to be elected without its support. The former Governor of my State, prominent Republican operative — and Trump backer — Haley Barbour once created a mini-scandal by saying nice things about the Citizen’s Councils. He walked it back, but it ruined his Presidential chances for good. (Not that he really had any to begin with, but he thought he did).
In the 1980s the group was re-constituted as the Council of Conservative Citizens with its headquarters in St. Louis. It is repugnantly racist and regularly attacks illegal immigrants from Mexico. And it was the Council of Conservative Citizens that Dylann Roof credited in his manifesto with his radicalization into white nationalism. This is what Roof wrote:
The event that truly awakened me was the Trayvon Martin case. I kept hearing and seeing his name, and eventually I decided to look him up. I read the Wikipedia article and right away I was unable to understand what the big deal was. It was obvious that Zimmerman was in the right. But more importantly this prompted me to type in the words “black on White crime” into Google, and I have never been the same since that day. The first website I came to was the Council of Conservative Citizens. There were pages upon pages of these brutal black on White murders. I was in disbelief. At this moment I realized that something was very wrong. How could the news be blowing up the Trayvon Martin case while hundreds of these black on White murders got ignored.
Roof continued in his manifesto about his conversion to the extreme racism of the Nazi edge of the alt-right.
From this point I researched deeper and found out what was happening in Europe. I saw that the same things were happening in England and France, and in all the other Western European countries. Again I found myself in disbelief. As an American we are taught to accept living in the melting pot, and black and other minorities have just as much right to be here as we do, since we are all immigrants. But Europe is the homeland of White people, and in many ways the situation is even worse there. From here I found out about the Jewish problem and other issues facing our race, and I can say today that I am completely racially aware.
The beginning of Roof’s brainwashing was the Council of Conservative Citizens. The same group that Maria Espinoza of the Remembrance Project cozies up to.
These alt-right groups are like gateway drugs that lead to hard core Nazi and KKK violence. Dylann Roof is the perfect poster-child for Steve Bannon’s alt-right America — the same Steven Bannon that ran Breitbart News and now runs Trump’s campaign.
Breitbart News’ Milo Yiannopoulos, however, finds the alt-right Nazi Memes to be good fun:
Just as the kids of the 60s shocked their parents with promiscuity, long hair and rock’n’roll, so too do the alt-right’s young meme brigades shock older generations with outrageous caricatures, from the Jewish “Shlomo Shekelburg” to “Remove Kebab,” an internet in-joke about the Bosnian genocide. These caricatures are often spliced together with Millennial pop culture references, from old 4chan memes like pepe the frog, to anime and My Little Pony references.
Tell me. Do you find this fun?
In typical Breitbart & Trump fashion, Milo blames the left for this right-wing racist vulgarity:
If you’re a Buzzfeed writer or a Commentary editor reading this and thinking… how childish, well. You only have yourself to blame for pompously stomping on free expression and giving in to the worst and most authoritarian instincts of the progressive left. This new outburst of creativity and taboo-shattering is the result.
Notice that “1488” carved into Pepe’s eyelids? Now look at what Dylann Roof wrote in the sand in this selfie:
"14 words" is a Nazi slogan, it refers to this statement: "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White Children”. “88” stands for the eighth letter of the alphabet time 2. I.E. “Heil Hitler”
Here’s another picture referencing the “14 words”. Note the sign.
The organizer of this event was wearing a "Donald Trump 16" hat according to The Washington Post in its report of this "White Lives Matter" protest in Houston, Texas.
So to recap my story line.
On June 16, 2015 Trump announced his candidacy with this attack on Mexican immigrants.
When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're not sending you. They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.
His message was shaped with the help of Maria Espinoza of the Remembrance Project. And she is tight with a number of white supremacists, including Wayne Lutton of the Council of Conservative Citizens. The same group that created the propaganda that radicalized Dylann Roof.
On June 17th, the day after Trump opened his Presidential run with an attack on Mexico for sending rapists, Roof went into the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston and killed nine people simply because they were African Americans. I’m not saying that the two events are directly connected, they aren’t. Roof was in a mentally unstable haze prior to the killing and there’s no proof — that I know of — that he saw Trump’s announcement.
The connection, rather, is through the maze of alt-right groups that supported Trump’s rise and poison our nation with their naked, ugly racism. Groups that Trump proudly claims as part of the “Les Deplorables”.
Why did Dylann Roof do what he did? We don’t have to guess. He told us in his manifesto:
To take a saying from a film, “I see all this stuff going on, and I dont see anyone doing anything about it. And it pisses me off.”. To take a saying from my favorite film, “Even if my life is worth less than a speck of dirt, I want to use it for the good of society.” I have no choice. I am not in the position to, alone, go into the ghetto and fight. I chose Charleston because it is most historic city in my state, and at one time had the highest ratio of blacks to Whites in the country. We have no skinheads, no real KKK, no one doing anything but talking on the internet. Well someone has to have the bravery to take it to the real world, and I guess that has to be me.
What did Donald Trump say after this terrorist massacre?
The tragic events that occurred on Wednesday evening should be our nation's primary focus for the foreseeable future. This is a time for healing, not politics.
How very odd. Trump who pretends to be so concerned about innocent Americans being wantonly killed. Trump who went on to exploit every other terrorist incident of the next 18 months. But he had no outrage, no meaningful comment on this — and he couldn’t even call it a hate crime. Did he think a strong statement would alienate the alt-right groups he was hoping to rally to his cause?
Flash forward to Trump’s “Les Deplorables” rally on Friday night. The one where he proudly claimed “Les Deplorables” and then said HIllary’s bodyguards should be disarmed.
I think that her armed bodyguards should drop all weapons. They should disarm, right? Immediately — what do you think? Yes? Yes? Take their guns away! She doesn't want guns. Let's see what happens to her.
This is an incendiary statement in today’s America. As Dylann Roof illustrates, words have real-life consequences. But Donald Trump doesn’t care, not as long as he can get his emotional kicks playing the bully.
Who will be the next Dylann Roof that listens to Trump’s alt-right supporters and says, “someone has to have the bravery to take it to the real world, and I guess that has to be me”.