It’s getting real; they’re telling us who they are—who are you?

Cross posted from Black Girl in Maine and BGIM Patreon

Just when you think this election season couldn’t get any weirder or more exasperating, leave it to the Trump campaign to kick it up a notch. I had been hearing a buzz online about a Trump rally that was going to be held at Madison Square Garden. Honestly, I didn’t think much about it. I mean, the last I heard, the good folks of New York City aren’t exactly enamored of Trump, despite his being a hometown boy. I am guessing decades of racism and grifting doesn’t exactly make you a popular figure. I wasn’t paying much attention to the buzz of the upcoming rally. I suspect most of you who read my work or share my political leanings were in the same boat. 

Well, the rally was held Sunday, Oct. 27, and before the event even ended, we would all hear about it. It is not enough to say that this rally was horrifically racist and hateful. Nah, those words are not strong enough. First off, we had the speaker who called the sitting U.S. vice president and Trump’s Democratic competitor, Kamala Harris, the “anti-Christ.” Then comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s reference to U.S. territory and colony Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage”—a comment so beyond the pale that in the aftermath, even the Trump campaign is distancing itself from the racist comedian. 

Those two comments alone are horrific enough, but each speaker at this event just built on the previous speakers’ unchecked racism and, frankly, fascist desires. I could go on about the depth of the vitriol and disregard for large segments of the U.S. population, but I won’t. Just know that as best as I can tell, no group was spared except white people. 

As the mainstream media, political pundits, and social media are ablaze with summaries about this heinous event, there were two comments that made my blood run cold that aren’t getting enough attention—in my humble little opinion, at least. 

Starting with Stephen Miller’s comment that “America is for Americans.” In case you need a reminder, Stephen Miller was a senior policy advisor and White House director for speechwriting during the Trump years. Stephen Miller is the epitome of hate; he is so despicable that the universe decided he should wear his evil on the outside and look the part of an hellspawned ghoul even though he is only 39 years old. If you are wondering why his words would make my blood run cold, well ... you see ... almost identical words were said by Adolf Hitler, who said, “Germany is for Germans.” When Hitler said that, he wasn’t including Jewish people, despite them being German citizens. Miller is excluding an even greater number of populations that are citizens when he speaks his version—and Trump’s version—of those words. Stephen Miller was the man at the center of many of Trump’s hateful hijinks during the orange despot’s first term and—unlike many of Trump’s people—he has stayed loyal to the man and managed to avoid landing on the wrong side of the law, which makes him an extra-dangerous man. 

The other comment that isn’t getting enough attention from the this public spectacle were words from Trump’s own very own mouth, while looking in the direction of House Speaker Mike Johnson, when he said, “I think with our little secret we’re going to do really well with the House, right? Our little secret is having a big impact. He and I have a secret. We’ll tell you what it is when the race is over.”

Um, what the fuck is he talking about? 

Are these muthafukkas planning to hijack this election?

Once upon a time, that would have seemed almost implausible (note, I said almost—anyone remember the 2000 election and Bush vs. Gore, which in the end probably was a stolen election or very close to one) but given the world of Trump, nothing is off limits. There is also the fact that Trump did set himself up with a GOP-controlled Supreme Court that might be happy to do his bidding and throw him a presidency.

Guy gives you a lifetime gig, you might repay him by ensuring he gets his job back, and to help him achieve that goal, you start by doing things like giving him broad immunity for crimes committed while in office. It becomes a slippery slope of immorality at that point—one step closer to creating a lovely little fascist state, complete with a dictator.

And a great way to really kick that plan off is by hosting a well-attended hate-fest at Madison Square Garden. 

The thing is, we have literally been here before. February 20, 1939, to be exact. 

I only had vaguely heard about a Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden, but after Trump’s rally, I went digging to learn more. The German American Bund, the American version of the German Nazi Party that trumpeted the Nazi philosophy but with a stars-and-stripes twist, held a very similar event at the Garden in 1939. Some 22,000 American Nazis attended that event; by all accounts, Trump’s little gathering was well-attended as well. 

In looking to learn more about that gathering, I found a short documentary that was produced during the first Trump term in the aftermath of the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va.

it’s called “A Night at the Garden,” and here is a brief description of it: The film shows about six minutes of the rally, including the American Nazis marching into the hall in the party’s brown uniforms, reciting the pledge of allegiance and listening to the national anthem before giving Nazi salutes. It also includes a piece of a speech by Fritz Kuhn, the leader of the German-American Bund (the American wing of the Nazi party), in which he rails against the "Jewish-controlled media" and says it’s time to return United States to the white Christians who he says founded the nation. 

As I watched the brief film, after watching numerous pieces of footage from the Trump rally, it really hit me: Whoever coordinated that Trump rally was familiar with the 1939 rally. No, people weren’t in brown uniforms, but the overall message and tenor is very much one that is about reclaiming America’s white Christian roots. In the words of Jay-Z, it’s a takeover, or at least an attempt at a takeover. To make white men “great” again and to put the rest of us in our places. These people aren’t really trying to hide who they are, in fact, they have become even more brazen and emboldened, no doubt helped along by the growing disenfranchisement that growing numbers of white men are feeling. White men who never had to prove their value and who no longer are reaping all the benefits that used to accrue naturally to them. Hell, their own women are growing tired of their shit as reports are that the younger generations are less interested in sex and marriage than ever before. Giving rise to the incels who feast regularly on the inane teachings of Andrew Tate and others of that ilk, whose podcasts make them feel their masculinity only to learn that offline, women are not interested in them. 

We are about a week out from this election and by poll accounts, it looks to be a tight race, as I have written before. Many people who are not fans of right-wing extremism, for myriad reasons, are tired of the status quo and are either planning to vote third party or sit this election out. Even in safe states, people are choosing to vote their conscience because they don’t think Kamala Harris is different enough from a Republican, but unless you have ranked-choice voting, can we really count on any state being safe with this kind of thinking? 

Far be it from me to tell you what to do, but as George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” 

The freedoms we currently enjoy are relatively recent, even down to a Black woman being able to espouse her views without fear of retaliation. I am not terribly old, but I grew up and came of age in a world where being gay was not something you were allowed to be proud about. People were closeted for their safety and protection; I experienced the world of being turned away from places to live because my partner was of a different race—ot maybe it was just because I was Black. I experienced being told that I was not a good fit for a job because I was Black. Thirty years ago, people didn’t couch it in hidden language. I had a boss who, when he got mad at Black employees, would call them Black-ass mothafukers. The world of my teens and early 20s has largely disappeared; instead, I live in a world where as a Black woman, white men work for me and it is my name signed on their checks. Little Shay never could have imagined such a day, and the odds are that, depending on your age, you can’t even grasp why I am writing this. 

Trump and ilk have made it clear that in their vision of the world white, cis-gendered, straight Christian men are preferred, along with the oligarchs like Elon, who are eager to blur lines in unprecedented ways. 

This moment isn’t happening in a vacuum. It is the result of decades of conservatives staying on task and looking at the larger picture so that they could eventually dismantle all the progress they angrily watched unfold over the years. As I have written before, the GOP has a unity that the rest of us lack. This moment isn’t just about Trump; it is the culmination of decades of work that started in earnest during the Reagan years. Trump was just the vehicle to getting them closer to the dream, which is what makes it disheartening that while leftists, progressives, and liberals don’t exactly have the same goals. We share enough overlap that we should be on the same side, but the fact is that we can’t even agree that maybe stopping this man from achieving his white man Christofascist state by electing Kamala Harris is in our collective best interest. 

I am not prone to being an alarmist and I don’t think living in a perpetual state of fear and anxiety is helpful to movement building, but that rally wasn’t just another crazy Trump moment. It may have been our last opportunity to peek into the future of what life under Trump—a man many of his ex-administration people have explicitly told us cannot be allowed win again—might look like when he is supported by some of the richest people on the planet. 

On an almost daily basis, I am hearing from people who tell me that they are tired of settling for the lesser of two evils. Many people I hear this from are white people or younger BIPOC folks. In an ideal world, we would not have just two viable choices. In an ideal world, the electoral college would be abolished.

So many things that would promote equity, justice, peace, and care, exist in the ideal world. Sadly, we don’t live in the ideal world. We live in the very real world, where for many decades, people fought for incremental change that often took years or decades to achieve and often required settling for the lesser of two evils along the way. 

As a grandchild of Jim Crow, I grew up hearing what life was like only 10 to 20 years before I was born and how long it took to see clear progress. The Civil Rights movement didn’t instantly happen; we didn’t go from being niggers to receiving full rights overnight or in a few news cycles. Many people lost their lives along the way or were beaten but folks stayed on task. 

I am sorry but I have not heard one credible argument for how allowing Trump a second term directly benefits Palestinians or anyone or a plan on how to make things better if he’s in office again. I have not heard one plan for how we will be building movement in a climate when Trump is talking about having the military deal with the radical left. Trump wants to dismantle the systems and institutions that provide us with some protections and give the police total immunity. This is a man hell-bent on getting his enemies and, if you are reading this and involved in some type of movement world, let me break this down for you: You are at risk of being labeled “an enemy within.” Each time I write now, I wonder if I am risking my life. I am already seeing some left-leaning folks talking about scrubbing one’s online presence in the event Trump is elected. 

Friends, if that man is elected, all our lives will change, and the greatest risk is for marginalized people. Your whiteness won’t protect you, either, if you aren’t the right kind of white. 

For once, we need to agree and coalesce around a single goal of defeating that man. It is not enough to talk about what the Democratic Party could have done. Yes, they should have demanded a ceasefire and stopped selling Israel weapons, but it didn’t happen, and the reality is that regardless of our feelings, the next president will be either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump. I am sorry to tell you that Jill, Cornel or whoever else you like (and some of them have pretty horrid views on certain topics or very dubious friends, too) aren’t going to win and most of us have no appetite to be in direct conflict with the United States government. I don’t know about you, but I once spent one night in the city lockup in Chicago. That was the longest 24 hours of my life. It has been almost 30 years, and I still remember it. I suspect most of us wouldn’t do well in government confinement. 

In this moment, if you are thinking this is all far-fetched, it might be useful to look up how fascism has historically taken hold and how dictators come to power. We are dancing on the precipice and this election will determine exactly whether we get pushed into the deep end of the dictator pool and ensuing madness or do we continue to stave things off and work to save our collective selves. 

Sadly, no one comes to the presidency of these United States with a leftist mindset. Maybe in another 50 years, if the country survives, but for the average American those are not their values. I mean this is the country of rugged individualism; it is also the country founded on genocide. 

An ex-partner who was a member of the Passamaquoddy tribe would often remind me, thanks to the ongoing genocide of his people, that there are fewer than 5,000 members of his tribe left and it was hard knowing that his people were going to die out. This country still struggles to take full accountability for what it did to Native people and Black people, and as much as it would be nice for the U.S. to take accountability for our role in the genocide of the Palestinians, I suspect most of us will not be alive for that moment. Shit, Joe Biden only just apologized for the federal government’s role in Indian boarding schools. Only took 150 years to get that apology. 

Friends, what I am trying to say is that sometimes we must unify for the larger goal, which is our collective survival—and from there we build and we push. As someone with organizing experience and whose work—a.k.a. my day job—is filled with organizers, I am old enough to admit that while once upon a time, I was idealistic. Now I am practical.

We lost a lot of good, experienced organizers after the Trump years. People were burnt out, and many of those people have not returned. I don’t think we have the people to pull off an actual resistance movement in this moment in time and, in the end, I think many people will capitulate to fascism as a mechanism to stay alive—which, in the end, means you won’t be living any values other than survival. Sure, a few will martyr themselves, but most will not. Most of us don’t want to die. 

Or we could rally ourselves and unify now behind a singular goal to stop the wanna-be authoritarian, so we can all keep fighting for what matters instead of fighting to survive under the Trump-Vance regime.