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Trump, GOP Use White Resentment to Con Working-Class Voters
It seems after watching an angry white man walk into a New Zealand mosque and slaughter 50 men, women and children, the mainstream media has finally figured out that white domestic terrorists are a major threat.
People of color have known this for a while. Several months after the Columbine school shooting, Chris Rock joked that when two young white men got onto his elevator, he got off. That was a prescient joke.
However, the Republican Party has coddled white rage and welcomed racists ever since the passage of the Civil Rights Act. This is a point also made by Col (rtd.) Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s former chief of staff when he was Secretary of State. In a Salon interview, he said, “The GOP has scores of racists. Under Richard Nixon’s blessing, the GOP took advantage of disgruntled Democrats in the South.”
The Republican Party has used white racial identity politics and culture war issues to win over working-class voters for decades. And there’s a reason for this.
It’s a grand bait and switch. If you analyze Republican policies, they really don’t favor working-class people. Trickle down economics, union busting and slashing social services left working-class people worse off in the 1980s, but many of them loved President Ronald Reagan. Liberal talk show host…
