“Make no mistake,” writes New Yorker editor David Remnick, “white supremacists are now at the forefront of American politics.” That platitudinous “make no mistake” put us in mind of Joe Queenan’s observation years ago in these pages. The phrase is “an underhanded way of clinching an argument without having to prove your point,” Queenan wrote. It’s “a variation on the beloved old chestnut ‘Take it from me.’ ”
Remnick’s remark is, of course, ludicrous—white supremacists have no credibility whatsoever in American political life. Whatever one makes of Donald Trump’s claim that there were some “very fine people” among the neo-Nazi demonstrators in Charlottesville in mid-August, that crowd of roughly 500 people has no political influence. No one in Congress views “white nationalists” as a constituency; ordinary Americans have no sympathy with Klan wannabes and Hitler-saluting doofuses.
But the observation is cleverly worded: What does it mean for a group to be “at the forefront of American politics”? That it has real influence? Boasts large numbers of adherents? Or does it just mean that liberal journalists talk endlessly about it? If so, white supremacists are indeed at the forefront of American politics. So are adherents of the ideologically incoherent alt-right movement, and for much the same reason: Liberals just can’t stop writing about them. And now, thanks partly to the president’s perverse handling of the Charlottesville protests, these liberals have all the excuse they need to write and broadcast more stories about the rising tide of white bigotry and the burgeoning power of the alt-right movement.
Exaggerating the importance of white supremacists is an old habit in the mainstream media—memorably parodied by the Onion under the headline “Klan Rally 70 Percent Undercover Reporters”—as is the practice of drawing superficial comparisons between conservatives and racist agitators.
But the old habit has turned into an obsession. Hence the unceasing stream of stories in the New York Times and Washington Post and on CNN and NPR about the allegedly serious threat posed by white nationalists to the Republican party. Hence, too, the nonstop coverage of anything having remotely to do with any memorial to any Confederate general. The obsession has reached such a state of mindless frenzy that ESPN pulled a play-by-play announcer off a University of Virginia football game for no other reason than that his name is Robert Lee.
Expect the fixation on white supremacist symbolism to intensify now that Trump has shown Steve Bannon the door. Bannon, until last week the president’s chief political strategist and the imagined architect of Trump’s November victory, had evidently caused one too many problems for his boss. He had been the source of innumerable leaks and abetted several major feuds within the administration and contributed much to the general dysfunction of this White House. Now, having lost the argument over foreign policy with his rivals and got himself fired, Bannon has rejoined Breitbart News, the alt-right media organization he headed before signing onto the Trump campaign in 2016.
Breitbart, an enthusiastic pro-Trump organ, has lately begun posting harshly critical articles about the president. The site attacked the president’s daughter Ivanka for praising anti-Trump protesters in Boston, criticized the president for failing to act on illegal immigration, and portrayed his new policy on Afghanistan as a betrayal of his “America First base.” Predictably, mainstream news outlets gave lavish coverage to this mildly interesting turn of events as though it were an ideological war of world-historical proportions.
Enough. Whether a pugnacious website attacks the president or praises him simply doesn’t matter. What matters a great deal, however, is the disingenuous way in which established news organizations treat “white nationalists” as though they were part of the conservative movement and its intellectual disagreements. Donald Trump makes that easier with his disinclination to offer the kind of full-throated condemnation these fringe actors deserve. But Trump himself was never part of the conservative movement, and while he managed to win the (often reluctant) support of Republicans across the country, he did so in part because of precisely the kind of distorted, caricaturish coverage now on display.
We understand why liberal journalists would rather talk about the supposed resurgence of white supremacy than other, thornier political topics. It’s a splendid way to tar your rivals. It’s also more fun to write about the alt-right and the Klan than Iran and tax reform. The subject of white supremacy admits of no nuance or subtlety and places the reporter or commentator solidly on the side of goodness and morality. Fair enough.
We reject the premise. Racism still haunts American society, and there are still enough white supremacists to make trouble. But racial animosity is not the defining issue of our time. The real dispute remains what it was before Trump was elected and what it will be after he’s gone: whether government should direct every part of human life, whether the judgment of elites should overrule the habits of ordinary people, and whether strength abroad is worth the costs at home. These are questions well worth debating, and they have nothing to do with controversial memorials or narrow identities or idiotic racial theories. They are, and will continue to be, at the forefront of American politics.
