One of the more provocative questions facing our country, I’m convinced, is what’s going to happen with the rednecks after Hillary Clinton crushes Donald Trump in the fall?
Will some migrate to ISIS?
Will they form a far-right Tea Party of sorts and carry flags bearing the image of Gov. George Wallace?
Will they return to their man caves and sulk in beer and hatred?
Any number of things could happen, but, for now, this group has found its collective, frightening and powerful (to a point) voice, primarily at and through Trump rallies.
It is something to behold. I haven’t seen one myself, to be sure, but, like everyone else, I’ve seen the clips. And now The New York Times has assembled a chilling, 3 minute, 11 second video called “Unfiltered Voices From Donald Trump’s Crowds” that captures some of the most nauseating, revolting moments from a year’s worth of Trump appearances and rallies. The reporters and editors simply gathered inside and outside rallies, mingled with those in attendance and let the cameras and microphones record.
Being a reasonable and open-minded person, I’ve wanted to give Trump supporters the benefit of the doubt, at least at arm’s length, but I can’t do it any more. This video shows who’s at the core of the Trump movement — angry white men who feel the political system they, or maybe their parents, were comfortable with has passed them by. Many still have trouble accepting the fact that Americans elected a black president, and they are apoplectic at the prospect of Hillary Clinton being elected president.
Here’s a sample of what you hear and see in the NYT video:
Voices inside a Trump rally: “Build the wall! Build the wall! Fuck those dirty beaners!”
A young man wearing a Trump T-shirt leaving a rally and walking by some Trump protesters says: “Fuck political correctness. Fuck political correctness.” Then, as he moves along, accelerates his step and appears to grab his crotch as an exclamation point.
Inside a Trump rally, a man in a “Make America Great Again” cap sports a T-shirt that says in large white letters, “Fuck Islam.” He’s being escorted out of the rally, apparently because of the T-shirt. Once outside, he lingers so he can greet other attendees who emerge later. He grins as a young man with a ball cap and a gray muscle shirt walks past and says, “Thanks for not taking the shirt off.”
At another rally, we hear a man yell at a protester being escorted out, “Get out of here, you fag.”
At another rally — one that has been widely viewed — a young black protester being led out is sucker punched by a white man in a cowboy hat, vest and long-sleeved red shirt. (The assailant looks like he came in straight from a cattle drive.)
At one rally, Trump proclaims, “Our president has divided this country so bad.” Then, the next words you hear — from an audience member near the NYT videographer — are “Fuck that nigger.”
You see and hear some terrible things being said about Hillary Clinton. At one rally, a voice clearly says, “Hang that bitch” after a reference to her.
Then, there’s a young man — looks like a teenager — holding up a homemade T-shirt, which says, “Trump that Bitch.”
…Another amazing thing about this video is that never, during the entire length of it, do we see a single Trump supporter admonishing any of the frothing-at-the-mouth, over-the-top lunatics. Maybe those standing nearby are afraid. There sure is a lot of angry machismo on display. But I think it’s more likely they simply agree with the sentiments being expressed and have no reason to object.
Coincidentally, New York Times columnist Charles Blow, who is black, has a piece today in which he manages to come up with the words that capture the frustration and anger at the root of his paper’s “unfiltered voices” video.
There is a portion of the population that feels threatened by unrelenting change — immigration, globalization, terrorism, multiculturalism — and those people want someone to, metaphorically at least, build a wall around their cultural heritage, which they conflate in equal measure with American heritage. In their minds, whether explicitly or implicitly, America is white, Christian, straight and male-dominated.
Blow goes on to allege that more restrained Trump supporters can be lumped in with those who scream vulgarities and engage in hateful displays.
“If you support Trump, you are on some level supporting his bigotry and racism,” Blow says.
“You don’t get to have a puppy and not pick up the poop.”
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
Where does The Sermon on the Mount / Beatitudes fit with this crew??
Jim:
The video is appalling and scary. And Trump says not a word to discourage the vicious language and actions.
God help us!!
Laura
“The resentment that he has exploited to win their votes will remain and grow, as it will among like-minded populists in Europe who feel overwhelmed by globalization and especially immigration. At some point, it will hit his followers that they’ve been sold out by a huckster who coveted their votes only for the sake of his colossal self-regard. And that, all along, he had nothing real to offer.”
The New Yorker magazine, July 11, 2016, P. 28.
I’ve watched this election from the start noticing the parallels on both sides of the fence to the 30’s in Germany and the demands for a strong leader to trample the rights of the other and put them in their place. Sadly, this piece by the Times simply exacerbates the polarization by creating a chimera of the opponent that clearly indicates that they cannot be reasoned with, they must be destroyed, Indeed, it would seem that this piece underlines my argument that biased “journalism” must bear the lion’s share of the blame for the polarization that created the monsters seen in the video.
Like most of what we see in the Times, only one side of the story is told. Are there such people supporting Trump? Absolutely, but I can assure you had The Times been interested in journalism instead of hateful propaganda a similar film, perhaps showing even more exaggerated behavior could have been made of those supporting Hillary and Bernie. But then, such a story might have suggested the need for some personal reflection on both sides of the fence instead of ginning up The Time’s desired emotion of crushing the other.
While you’re frothing at the mouth watching The Times video, ask yourself how many of Trump’s supporters have violently attacked participants at Hillary’s and Bernie’s rallies as their supporters have attacked those at Trump rallies? Where are the pictures of Trump supporters mobbing their rallies, trashing their cars, and beating them up? But The Times wasn’t interested in stopping the violence committed against Trump supporters, or showing the violent acts committed against them, if anything, they were interested in increasing it.
Where are the Trump supporters who gunned down police officers in cold blood, blocked interstate highways and burned and looted their own communities? Don’t tell me I can’t associate those folks with your candidates because Hillary’s convention featured the “mother” of Michael Brown, the thug who tried to kill a law enforcement officer in Ferguson after robbing a store (a woman, by the way, who attacked and robbed the woman who actually raised Michael). When this same convention asked for a moment of silence for fallen police officers it was loudly disrupted with boos and cat calls. Was that in the Times video?
Here locally the idiot CEO of my county, mayor of KCK, Mark Holland, a Star endorsee, took a few seconds in comments that were supposed to honor a fallen police captain to falsely accuse the police of murdering innocents. You may not be aware of that since only one of our generally useless media outlets in Kansas City, Fox 4, covered the outrage it caused among members of law enforcement (while failing to point out that he had been banished from all ceremonies involving Captain Melton. When asked what innocent lives he had in mind, the moron Holland couldn’t think of any.
I spent a large portion of my graduate career trying to identify who it was that might make “the good Nazi”, that true chimera willing to blindly hate someone else for their beliefs, faith, or religion. I pondered through Adorno’s massive studies on the Authoritarian Personality and the writings of the Frankfort School, men who stood in between the horrors of Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Russia and pronounced a pox on both their houses in other masterpieces like Adorno’s Negative Dialectics, Horkheimer’s Dawn and Decline, and Neumann’s Behemoth.
In the end, I found that we all are. Until you can look at a vulgar, hateful, one-sided piece of shit like that produced by The Times and recognize it for what it is you will simply become the mirror image of that you detest.
Precisely.
Read this for a more sympathetic, more truthful, and more useful description of the people who support Trump:
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/trump-us-politics-poor-whites/
Editor’s note: The Laura who is in agreement with John is not Laura Hockaday, who weighed in above. Both viewpoints are welcomed.
Which is exactly the kind of dialogue that is the death knell to the demagogues. Kudos to jimmycsays for fostering such conversations.
“ Are there such people supporting Trump? Absolutely, but I can assure you had The Times been interested in journalism instead of hateful propaganda a similar film, perhaps showing even more exaggerated behavior could have been made of those supporting Hillary and Bernie. ”
Sorry – not buying “both siderism” in this instance. There are a multitude of national and international news organs covering the election – had any like behavior occurred at a Clinton campaign stop/rally, we would have been inundated with footage of same 24/7. You will notice that when the Bernie Bros misbehaved, we did see footage of that.
Don’t believe for an instant that Faux News hasn’t been at every Clinton campaign stop looking to record exactly this type of behavior.
As for the NYT being left-leaning…if that were true the paper would have rid itself of the obvious GOP shill David Brooks.
We do have films of them, only at Trump rallies assaulting trumps supporters, vandalizing their vehicles, blocking roads, etc. No where at a Sanders rally, or a Clinton rally will you find similar film of Trump supporters attacking Clinton supporters, vandalizing their cars, or blocking the roads to their rallies.
Those films were available to any journalist writing an objective news piece, but the Times was not writing an objective news piece, they were ginning up hatred, polarization and violence.
You lost me at “We do have films of them…”
Too much like the debunked Center for Medical Progress videos for my taste; when a legitimate news organ films like contemptible behavior, then we can talk.