Working Class “Deplorables” Are Our Only Hope Against Elite White Supremacists
White supremacism isn’t just a strong word for prejudice—it’s better described as a faith. You don’t talk religious people out of their faith just by offering them something more logical than what they and their favorite people have been believing for their entire lives. And white supremacism, as Dallas-based historian Michael Phillips demonstrates (in an article titled “The Elite Roots of Richard Spencer’s Racism,” written several weeks prior to the punch that made Spencer into a household meme) is a faith shared by many members of America’s ruling class.
Phillips’ article is a powerful account of white nationalism among America’s educated elites, and is worth reading for that alone. But the most timely and surprising part of the piece is when he quotes liberal journalists—particularly those at Mother Jones—who show respect and even affection toward Richard Spencer and, by extension, the neonazis of America’s upper class.
Phillips quotes articles that describe Spencer as “dapper,” “tidy” and “restrained,” and detail the expensive food that he orders during the interview. He offers this take on the phenomenon:
Bourgeois reporters seem shocked to meet a racist who is apparently one of them, not some cartoonish working-class stereotype, drinking a Budweiser in a t-shirt and mangling English like Archie Bunker.
But while Spencer may startle the press, he represents a common and longstanding (if overlooked) phenomenon: the well-educated and financially comfortable bigot.
Phillips’ article seems to gives these reporters the benefit of the doubt, but I think that something more disturbing is going on than the naivete he suggests. While many people in this country have never encountered wealthy, Ivy-educated white supremacists (many Americans don’t know a lot of rich people in the first place), I don’t think that alone explains certain reporters’ fixation on Classy Nazis.
In late November in 2016, Mother Jones’ Kevin Drum wrote an article called “Let’s Be Careful With the White Supremacy Label.” If you look at the url for the article, you can see what was apparently its original title: “Let’s Please Kill the White Supremacy Fad.” In Drum’s view, the intentional sorting of black Americans into a lower class and white Americans into a higher class is a “fad” started by Ta-Nehisi Coates, rather than a real thing that continues to happen.
People like Drum don’t deny America’s history, but they do believe that the white supremacist policies that force black Americans into a lower caste happen on a macro level. In their belief system, America is no longer influenced in any major way by the belief that white Americans are superior to black Americans.
Not all liberal reporters share Drum’s extreme beliefs on the subject, but many of them seem to share Drum’s basic belief that racism is an exceptional, aberrational thing in an America that is “already great because it is good.” In their belief system, racism mostly comes from the votes of poor people—from people who have few resources and minimal power beyond voting.
This odd belief isn’t just reflected by a few reporters; it was also reflected in Hillary Clinton’s unsuccessful presidential campaign against Donald Trump. She appealed to “the good Republicans.” She reminded us that America was “better than this,” while prominent democrat Chuck Schumer bragged that she could win the election by picking up votes from suburban Republicans, even if it meant losing the votes of poor white Democrats.
Clinton seems to have believed that, by appealing to Good Republicans, she could restore us to a mythical Golden Age when we were a multiracial yet monocultural land of hardworking, friendly, conservative Americans. It’s hard to forgive her campaign for losing to Trump, but her dream of being the president that Bobby Kennedy never got to be seemed to come from a genuine and positive place.