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Weekend reading: Trumpism Is at War with the Idea of a Citizenry of Equals

The regime’s latest racist fury is tied to the Right’s much broader attempt to redefine citizenship and national identity in service of an exclusionary white nationalist vision.

My new piece:

steady.page/en/democracyameric…


Trumpism Is at War with the Idea of a Citizenry of Equals

Steady
in reply to Thomas Zimmer

Thomas Zimmer
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Thomas Zimmer
• •
The grotesquely racist campaign against Somali immigrants; the attack on birthright citizenship; a national security strategy shaped by far-right talking points: These are not separate policy initiatives, but manifestations of a worldview defined by white nationalism as its organizing principle.
in reply to Thomas Zimmer

Thomas Zimmer
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Thomas Zimmer
• •
They are actualizations of the Right’s defining project: To vanquish the very idea that America should aspire to be a nation defined by equal citizenship in a pluralistic, multiracial society - and to fight instead for white Christian male supremacy at home and in the world.
in reply to Thomas Zimmer

Thomas Zimmer
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Thomas Zimmer
• •

They are tied to a much broader rightwing attempt to reconceptualize national identity and drastically narrow the boundaries of who gets to belong.

In this piece, I dive into the visions of blood-and-soil nationalism that rightwing intellectuals and politicians have outlined.

in reply to Thomas Zimmer

Thomas Zimmer
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Thomas Zimmer
• •
I focus on speeches by JD Vance and Missouri senator Eric Schmitt, in particular: Outside of the most extreme rightwing fringes, you’ll rarely encounter such aggressive affirmations of white Western supremacy. To them, America is not merely changing. By pluralizing, it is dying.
in reply to Thomas Zimmer

Thomas Zimmer
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Thomas Zimmer
• •
This is the context for the Trump regime’s attack on birthright citizenship. It is, at its core, not merely a policy dispute or a disagreement over constitutional interpretation. It is a battleground for what this nation should be, what its identity, its defining aspiration should be going forward.
in reply to Thomas Zimmer

Thomas Zimmer
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Thomas Zimmer
• •
Vance, Schmitt, Miller and their ilk want to abolish birthright citizenship because they understand precisely that what is enshrined in the 14th Amendment is fundamentally incompatible with their blood-and-soil nationalism.
in reply to Thomas Zimmer

Thomas Zimmer
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Thomas Zimmer
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No tiered citizenship in America: That is what the 14th Amendment declares.

But a polity that excludes anyone who doesn’t fit certain ethno-religious criteria or relegates them to lesser status is exactly the vision that animates the Trumpist Right.

in reply to Thomas Zimmer

Thomas Zimmer
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Thomas Zimmer
• •
They are turning the assault on egalitarian pluralism and equal citizenship into policy that is being carried out in the streets by masked agents of the state, spurred on by the crudest, vilest state propaganda.
in reply to Thomas Zimmer

Thomas Zimmer
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Thomas Zimmer
• •
No one gets to claim ignorance; there is no plausible deniability for anyone. We even got a preview of what this white nationalist regime would attempt to do in the fall of 2024, when the Right’s leaders tried to incite a pogrom against Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio.
in reply to Thomas Zimmer

Chris Espinosa
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Chris Espinosa
• •
Plutocrats decry communism because it defines away the wealthy few, and socialism because it redistributes the wealth of the wealthy few. But the point of democracy is to give power to the needy many over the wealthy few, so, no, they don’t like that either.
This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)
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