Donald Trump isn't the anti-Christ, He is White Jesus

Why do white, right-wing Christian evangelicals support Donald Trump? The answer is quite simple. Their agenda is his agenda. Trump and the Republican Party are working to take away women's reproductive rights and to extend special "conscience" protections to "Christians" who feel that their faith should somehow supersede the law. They view the poor, the disabled, and others as "useless eaters" and are working to protect white privilege and the power of white right-wing Christians in all areas of American life. Trump is also a petit-fascist and an authoritarian. This vision of the world is embraced by right-wing Christians.

Too many pundits and other members of the chattering class prefer to make riddles out of the obvious: They obsess about evangelical leaders offering "mulligans" for Trump's "sins" and other assorted examples of right-wing Christian hypocrisy.

While the answer to this supposed riddle is nothing more than crude realpolitik -- the context, logic and implications of right-wing Christian support for Trump remain important.

Consider the following.

As shown by his words, deeds and actions, Donald Trump is evil. Right-wing Christian evangelicals continue to support him despite their obsession with the mythological figure known as the anti-Christ.

Writing at the History News Network, Ed Simon explores this theme:

A Conversation With Garrett Graff About Nuclear Warfare, America's Secret Bunkers, and How Elites Will Survive While the Public Dies

Garrett Graff is the guest on this week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show. He is the author of numerous books including his most recent, Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government’s Secret Plan to Save Itself--While the Rest of Us Die.

Graff's work has also appeared in such leading publications as WIRED, Esquire, and the New York Times. In addition, he has also been a guest on such major news networks as CNN, ABC, MSNBC, the BBC, and NPR.   

In this very timely episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show, Garret and Chauncey discuss nuclear warfare and how America's leaders thought they would survive an attack by the Soviets, hidden bunkers such as Raven Rock, the beloved 1980s movie WarGames, and how a lost security badge led to a much bigger story about America's shadow government.  

In this week's episode, Chauncey DeVega wonders what happens when hip-hop music and culture get old and also shares his choice for the movie most deserving of this year's Best Picture Oscar. And of course, Chauncey warns the American people (and the world) that although it is now known that Donald Trump tried to fire Robert Mueller back in June--and is now fully obstructing justice--in the final analysis nothing will change. Why? Because the Republican Party and Trump's fascist foot soldiers loathe democracy and only care about winning...and the Democratic Party is weak and has no courage.

This episode with Garrett Graff can be downloaded from Libsyn and also listened to here.

The Chauncey DeVega Show is available on Itunes, Spotify and at Stitcher.

White Identity Politics, the Government "Shut Down" and the Republican Party

Last weekend as the federal government was barreling towards a shutdown, Donald Trump sent off a series of emails to his supporters claiming that the Democrats were to blame because they supposedly cared more about protecting "illegal aliens" than about the American people.

On Saturday, the day after the shutdown began, Trump's re-election committee released an ad proclaiming:

President Trump is right: Build the wall. Deport criminals. Stop illegal immigration now. Democrats who stand in our way will be complicit in every murder committed by illegal immigrants.

Of course, none of Donald Trump's and the Republican Party's claims about "illegal immigrants" and crime are true. As a group, immigrants in American commit less crimethan the general public. Undocumented immigrants also commit less crime than almost any other demographic group in the country. As a whole, immigrants to America -- documented and otherwise -- are a net cultural, social and economic gain for the country.

Trump and the Republicans' attempts to connect Democratic support for the "Dreamers" -- people brought to America as children, who have known no other country as their home -- with murder and gang violence, is one more example of how the American right has sought to incite violence against any groups or individuals it perceives as political enemies.

In total, Republican lies about the recent (and short-lived) government shutdown should be a reminder of the enduring power that white identity politics still possesses -- often in surprising ways -- in America.

White identity politics is a social and political force that harms sick children, threatens to ruin the lives of people who have contributed to American society for decades, and can even be mobilized to hold the federal government hostage in exchange for a wall on the Mexican border.

White identity politics has several elements. They include racial resentment, a sense of entitlement, a belief that the political and social concerns of whites (especially white conservative Christian heterosexual men) are "natural" and "normal" while the political and social concerns of nonwhites (and other groups) are illegitimate, and a belief that whites are the "real Americans" and that white people as a group must have a superior position over others.

By definition, white identity politics are an expression of white supremacy.

White identity politics has an especially powerful hold over today's Republican Party and the conservative movement as a whole.

A Conversation with Carol Anderson About White Rage, Hatred of Barack Obama, and the Rise of Donald Trump

Carol Anderson is the guest on this week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show. She is Professor of African American Studies at Emory University and the author of the New York Times bestselling book White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide.

During this week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show, Carol and Chauncey discuss white rage and the election of Donald Trump, the demonization of Barack Obama and Black America by white conservatives, the many ways that white rage and white racism hurts white people, and how white supremacy has damaged American progress.

In this week's episode, Chauncey DeVega offers his thoughts on the new movies Phantom Thread, The Commuter, and Hostiles. Chauncey also has fun discussing Donald Trump's porno lady sex, hatred of sharks, and why Trump has a habit of attracting white supremacists and other human garbage to his administration. On a very serious note, Chauncey shares an email about Trump and the Republican Party's war on disabled Americans as part of the crusade to kill and abuse the "useless eaters". To close out this week's show, Chauncey shares a story about a heroic man who lost his life while helping our animal friends.

This episode with Professor Carol Anderson can be downloaded from Libsyn and also listened to here.

The Chauncey DeVega Show is available on Itunes, Spotify and at Stitcher.

White Supremacists Know That Donald Trump Shares Their Political Dreams and Goals

Donald Trump is a white supremacist. The evidence in support of this conclusion is overwhelming. His infamous comments last Thursday suggesting that Haiti, El Salvador and the many countries of Africa are "shitholes" -- and that immigrants from a predominantly white country such as Norway are preferable -- is just the most recent example of Trump's racism.

Too many voices in the mainstream news media remain in denial, or are simply dishonest, about this fact. Instead of stating the obvious about Trump's racist attitudes, beliefs and behavior, they suggest that "we can't know what is in his heart," ask rhetorical questions ("Is Donald Trump a racist?") and offer evasive qualifiers: "Is Donald Trump making the country's racial tensions worse?" In a moment better suited for a "Saturday Night Live" skit, reporters ask Donald Trump if he is a racist -- as though he or most other racists would admit to that in public.

Predictably, the mainstream media will send more reporters to ask Trump supporters in the so-called heartland whether they still support him after these most recent hateful and bigoted comments. The answer will almost always be yes.

However, there is one group of people who are honest about Donald Trump. White supremacists know that Donald Trump is one of their tribe. The Daily Stormer, the white supremacist website founded by neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin, described Trump's comments last week as "encouraging and refreshing," because they suggest that "Trump is more or less on the same page as us with regards to race and immigration."

A Conversation with George Ciccariello-Maher About Being Targeted by a Right-wing Witch Hunt

George Ciccariello-Maher is the guest on this week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show. He is a political scientist and activist who is a visiting faculty member at New York University. Professor Ciccariello-Maher was formerly at Drexel University before he was forced out of his position by a coordinated right-wing campaign of harassment which included death threats and other violence.

Professor Ciccariello-Maher was targeted by the right-wing mob in this new era of McCarthyism because of a series of online posts and other comments which discussed toxic white masculinity and mass murder by guns in the aftermath of the Las Vegas Massacre. He further inflamed the mob by also mocking the delusional myth of so-called "white genocide" that is circulated by white supremacists across the right-wing echo chamber including Fox "News".

During this week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show, George and Chauncey discuss white identity politics, the right-wing's assault on higher education, as well as the rise of Donald Trump and what this moment reveals about enduring white supremacy and white male rage. George also shares what it was like to go on "Fox News" and defeat Tucker Carlson.

In this week's episode, Chauncey DeVega continues to caution people to remain focused on the real issues instead of being mesmerized by Donald Trump's extremely bad and shameful second week of 2018--a week which included revelations about hush money to a porn star, saying that nonwhite people come from "sh@!hole" countries, the release of the very damning Fusion GPS testimony, and public incompetence during a public meeting on immigration. To close out this week's podcast, Chauncey discusses the connections between "white trash" and Trump's "sh@!hole" slur of nonwhite immigrants.

This episode with Professor George Ciccariello-Maher can be downloaded from Libsyn and also listened to here.

The Chauncey DeVega Show is available on Itunes, Spotify and at Stitcher.

White Privilege, Laziness, and How Donald Trump is America's "White Trash" President

For black and brown Americans, Barack Obama's two terms in office were a rebuke to a society where nonwhites have long been marked as second-class citizens. For black people in particular, the literal presence of Obama's family in the White House represented a high point in the long, black freedom struggle. In the long arc of history, for centuries black Americans were owned, murdered, abused and raped by whites as human property, and yet a black American had become the most powerful man on the planet.

Of course, Obama's ascent did not heal the centuries of harm done to black Americans by white racism. But that next chapter in America's history -- where one more "first" for a black person was demolished -- was still symbolically intoxicating because it validated a belief in this country's ability to change for the better.

For many millions of other Americans, the overwhelming majority of them white and conservative, Obama's presidency represented a personal insult. The very presence of an intelligent, graceful, educated and accomplished black man in the White House -- as president, instead of as a maid, janitor or butler -- rocked them to the core of their being. If a person inherently connects being a "real American" with whiteness, then a black president is unthinkable. Such a reality forces a cognitive dissonance that cannot be easily reconciled. What was understood to be the natural order of things for white America was turned upside down.

Over the course of those eight years, many white conservatives became lost in the fever swamps of white supremacist paranoia, consumed by an existential dread about some vague notion of black or brown power, manifested in their archenemy and political demon Barack Obama. For too many people, Obama seemed to represent the displacement and obsolescence of white America and the birth of some undiscovered country where nonwhites rule and whites are made to kneel at their feet in submission.

The American News Media Can't Get Enough of the Political Freak Show That is Trump's "White Working Class" Voters

From the safety of their redoubts in such great American cities as New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, the corporate news media continues to send its brave reporters out into the hinterlands of TrumpLandia. Following Trump's shocking win in November 2016, the media elite has been insatiable in its curiosity and desire to better understand the "white working class," who supposedly swept the president into office. The fixation on these strange and seemingly unknowable people -- at least unknowable to the media elite -- will continue unabated in the year 2018.

In one of the last expeditions of 2017, the Associated Press profiled Trump supportersin Sandy Hook, Kentucky. What did reporter Claire Galofaro discover about these denizens? They still view Trump as their hero and savior:

Everyone in town comes to [Steven Whitt's] diner for nostalgia and homestyle cooking. And, recently, news reporters come from all over the world to puzzle over politics — because Elliott County, a blue-collar union stronghold, voted for the Democrat in each and every presidential election for its 147-year existence. 

Until Donald Trump came along and promised to wind back the clock. 

“He was the hope we were all waiting on, the guy riding up on the white horse. There was a new energy about everybody here,” says Whitt.

“I still see it.”

These Kentuckians apparently retain an attachment to Trump that is emotional -- fueled by rage and a desire for vengeance for the pitiable life circumstances they find themselves stuck in:

Despite the president’s dismal approval ratings and lethargic legislative achievements, he remains profoundly popular here in these mountains, a region so badly battered by the collapse of the coal industry it became the symbolic heart of Trump’s white working-class base. 

The frenetic churn of the national news, the ceaseless Twitter taunts, the daily declarations of outrage scroll soundlessly across the bottom of the diner’s television screen, rarely registering. When they do, Trump doesn’t shoulder the blame — because the allegiance of those here is as emotional as it is economic. 

It means God, guns, patriotism, saying “Merry Christmas” and not Happy Holidays. It means validation of their indignation about a changing nation: gay marriage and immigration and factories moving overseas. It means tearing down the political system that neglected them again and again in favor of the big cities that feel a world away. 

On those counts, they believe Trump has delivered, even if his promised blue-collar renaissance has not yet materialized. He’s punching at all the people who let them down for so long — the presidential embodiment of their own discontent.

They believe Donald Trump is a victim. They have also been fully brainwashed by Fox News and the right-wing echo chamber. One man interviewed in the story, a registered Democrat named Wes Lewis, says he trusts Trump for his "values" and believes he will keep his promises. "If the factories and mines don’t come back," Lewis will blame Democrats. "If there isn’t a wall on the Mexico border, he says, it won’t be because Trump didn’t try. If investigators find his campaign colluded with Russians, it’s because so many people are so determined to bring him down. . . . The people against Trump are, by extension, against people like him, too, Lewis figures."

These dispatches from TrumpLandia make for entertaining reading, combining crude anthropology with the cheap thrills of a political freak show. But this genre of writing, like the mainstream media that produces it, reflects the same errors in logic and reasoning that helped Donald Trump to win the White House.

Sociologist Randy Blazak Explains the Connections Between White Supremacy and the So-Called "War on Christmas"

Randy Blazak is the guest on this week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show. He is a tenured sociologist and criminologist who has taught at Portland State University as well as the University of Oregon. He is the author of numerous books and articles and has had his work featured on NPR, CNN, the Discovery Channel, BBC, and the New York Times. He is most well-known for infiltrating white supremacist hate groups such as the neo-Nazis in an effort to help the public understand the threat embodied by such organizations and individuals. Professor Blazak is also heavily involved with human rights organizations such as the Oregon Coalition Against Hate Crime.

During this week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show, Randy and Chauncey discuss how Trump and the American right-wing wing's obsession with the nonexistent "War on Christmas" is part of a larger white supremacist agenda, why young white men are so angry and attracted to Trumpism and other white supremacist so-called "alt-right" organizations, if Trump himself is a white supremacist, and the lies and confusion about "white working class economic anxiety" that helped to usher in American fascism under Donald Trump.  

In this week's episode, Chauncey DeVega tries to make sense of the maelstrom of chaos and confusion that is the first week of 2018 where the book "Fire and Fury" has distracted too many people from substantive politics, a white supremacist planned a mass murder spree against black folks on anAmtrak train, Trump continues his fascist assault on the Constitution and an independent legal system, and the radical right-wing keeps on winning while so-called progressives and liberals (and too many other Americans) are stuck in a condition of learned helplessness.

And to close out this week's podcast, Chauncey shares two uplifting stories about our animal family members and their human friends.

This episode with Professor Randy Blazak can be downloaded from Libsyn and also listened to here.

The Chauncey DeVega Show is available on Itunes, Spotify and at Stitcher.