White supremacist ideas, once relegated to the margins of American society, have increasingly infiltrated mainstream political and cultural spaces, shaping debates, influencing policy, and fueling polarization.
During the Video Conference: The normalization of white supremacy: From the margins of everyday life to the centers of American powerorganized as American Community Media (ACoM), they talked about how white supremacist narratives and ideologies have become normalized in public discourse and even influencing the creation of new laws.
But how have extremist and exclusionary ideas gained legitimacy in American politics, religion, and public life?
Sanford F. Schram, associate professor of political science at Stony Brook University (SUNY) and co-author of Hard White: The Mainstreaming of Racism in American Politicssaid the immediate cause was the election of the first non-white president in US history, Barack Obama, but white nationalism was already gaining ground in mainstream politics.
“John GaNS notes in his book “When the Clock Break” that figures like Pat Buchanan, during the Reagan era, began to influence the Republican Party with a watered-down version of what Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke had been promoting.”
He noted that ultimately, the Tea Party emerged as a reaction to Obama, and Trump carried this ideology to the White House, in a growing wave of racial resentment, especially regarding immigration.
“Now, the new generation of young people, especially on the internet and on social networks like Twitter, spread neo-Nazi memes as if it were the latest thing.”
He noted that white nationalism has a long history, but has become more prevalent in mainstream politics than during the Trump era.
Heath Druzin, journalist and host of the Extremely American podcast, covers the normalization of extremist and paramilitary movements, as well as Christian nationalism said that in the darkest corners of the internet, there are an alarming number of people who have some sympathy for Hitler right now, and who have no problem saying so openly.
“We’ve gone from a meme that said something like “everything I don’t like is Hitler,” making fun of people for comparing things they didn’t like to Hitler, to thinking, “Hey, maybe Hitler isn’t bad.”
He said that shows how much this normalization has intensified, and recalled when in 2015, Trump said that immigrants brought drugs, crime, were rapists, and some, he assumed, were good people.
“That kind of speech in politics has become much more acceptable. Social media also has a lot to do with it, because a lot of people start saying things that they wouldn’t say face to face or in public. They get a lot of approval online because they can be anonymous and don’t have to deal with negative reactions in person.”
So he said we now see political leaders saying things that, under other circumstances, they wouldn’t dare say, and there are online forums where they feel comfortable expressing them.
“All of this has accelerated enormously. We are seeing ideas that would be abhorrent to any traditional politician becoming quite acceptable, in a way that, ten years ago, would have surprised even most.”
Matthew D. Taylor, PhD, researcher at the Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies (ICJS); Author of the book The Violent take it by Force said that one of the most significant changes in the last ten years, starting with Trump’s first campaign in 2015, is the incorporation of a new group of radical Christian actors into these movements.
“The fastest growing and most dynamic form of Christianity, both in the United States and in the world, occurs at the intersection of nondenominational governance. That is, minimal oversight and regulation, combined with charismatic spirituality.”
He explained that when we talk about charismatic in the Christian context, we are not referring to a magnetic personality, but to the connection with supernatural dimensions of experience, trying to recover what they understand as the supernatural spirit of the early church.
“So we can think of this as a kind of non-denominational wing of Pentecostalism that is growing by leaps and bounds around the world, with very rapid growth in the United States.”
He noted that Trump has managed, in a unique way, to integrate this coalition into the broadest circles of the far right.
“This coalition, while multi-ethnic, also harbors many ideas of Christian supremacy, many ancient narratives that have built a kind of mythology that has united the right around the idea of Trump as a kind of quasi-messiah coming to liberate the United States and, in some cases, Israel, and to reconfigure the world order.”
He noted that these narratives have activated the MAGA coalition in a very particular way, both in its most racist and most Christian supremacist aspects, and we are seeing how these ideas are intertwined in current politics.
Devin Burghart, executive director of the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights (IREHR) said that to understand this wave of far-right activism it is necessary to understand the different political currents that drive it.
“For more than 30 years, these movements have expanded exponentially. When I started, there were some radical activists, today only in a segment of the movement, we have COVID denialism and the anti-vaccine movement.”
He specified that during the height of the pandemic, they were able to track 2.4 million activists across the country, easily exposed to these ideas, sharing the paranoid thinking and participating in the racial resentment that has become so common today.
“This type of activism not only builds momentum for the movement at the grassroots, but also has a real and important influence on politics.”
He claimed that in a 2022 report, they documented 875 state legislators who had joined one or more far-right groups. “It ranges from paramilitary groups and COVID deniers to anti-Semitic organizations and QAnon-inspired organizations.”
He stressed that this has consequences when state legislators give their approval to these groups; and by becoming members, on the one hand, they make it easier for ideas that were previously relegated to the margins to be directly incorporated into the public debate and become public policies.”
He highlighted that today, two states have passed laws against geoengineering based on the same conspiracy theories that were previously considered ridiculous.
“So those ideas, once marginal, are now integrated directly into the public debate and are becoming popular.”
What’s more, he pointed out that in a 2024 analysis, they found that almost 1,000 state legislators would join those groups.