The dangerous rhetoric of Donald Trump
Op-ed: He didn't name the Jews in his West Palm Beach speech on Thursday. But perhaps he didn't have to
It’s desperation time for Donald Trump.
He’s alienated ever wider swaths of the American voting public — war heroes and immigrants and Muslims and the disabled and women and…
He’s flailing in all directions: His rival is on drugs. The election is rigged.
Much of his party has — belatedly — comprehended his toxicity.
Behind in the polls — though not that far behind — he has little to lose. The shackles, as he put it last week, are off.
And now, one has to ask, is he — in that just-putting-it-out-there-folks style of his — also implicitly submitting, as a factor in what he claims is the deliberate misadministration and corruption of America, those eternal scapegoats, the Jews?
He didn’t name us, in his sour, resentful West Palm Beach speech on Thursday. But perhaps he didn’t have to.
The context was a dump of documents by WikiLeaks that showed Hillary Clinton’s comfortable relationship with Wall Street. The prime focus of Trump’s vitriol was his despised Democratic rival. But to these ears — and I’m not the only one — there were troubling echoes in his conspiratorial talk of a “global power structure” and “international banks” ostensibly working in league with Clinton to destroy America. Troubling echoes, and consequent concern about the message being received by his supporters.
Here’s some of what he said:
“It’s a global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations and political entities.
“Just look at what this corrupt establishment has done to our cities like Detroit; Flint, Michigan; and rural towns in Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina and all across our country. Take a look at what’s going on. They’ve stripped away these towns bare, and raided the wealth for themselves, and taken our jobs away out of our country never to return unless I’m elected president.
“The Clinton machine is at the center of this power structure. We’ve seen this firsthand in the WikiLeaks documents, in which Hillary Clinton meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of US sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers, her special interest friends and her donors. So true.”
Is it much of a stretch to imagine the darkest forces from 80 years ago saying something similar? Is it paranoid to hear reverberations, as I know others do, from 1930s Germany in Trump’s insidious talk of sinister, immoral global mechanisms, brandishing immense financial, political and media influence, secretly plotting the downfall of the nation?
Part of his family and doubtless many of his friends are Jewish. He presents himself as a strong admirer and supporter of Israel, and there is no shortage of supporters, credibly pro-Israel themselves, who vouch for that.
He would doubtless profess horror at the comparisons and insist that they are unfounded, the echoes imagined.
Just as they were with the six-sided star, and the “America First” slogan, and the “raise your right hand” pledge gambit…
