Since his election in November, Donald Trump can claim one major national change over the course of his first 100 days in office: the normalization of specific types of hate speech. While the rise in hate crimes and hubris of neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups offers tangible proof of this change, the emergence of far-right mainstream white supremacist GOP political candidates demonstrates just how terrible national discourse has become.

Prior to candidates like Virginia’s GOP gubernatorial hopeful Corey Stewart and South Carolina congressional GOP candidate Sheri Few gaining national attention, personalities like Milo Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter mainstreamed their particular brand of hate speech through unexpected use of a guidebook: Saul Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals.

Absolutist Free Speech or Hate Speech?

Pushing the limits of absolutist free speech in order to mainstream racism, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, xenophobia, and other forms of hate, they (working with the so-called ‘Alt-right’) developed a strategy targeting college campuses in order to gain publicity for their previously abhorred ideals.

Even today Ann Coulter is using the tactics not to actually make speeches (the content of the speeches is secondary) but to raise the ire of left-leaning college students, professors and liberals who otherwise support free speech. Her on again-off again speech announcements in Berkeley exemplify this. She knows the majority of people in Berkeley – particularly on campus – detest her. She knows people will protest.

What separates her from liberal free speech absolutists is intent. While liberals view free speech and non-violent protest as civil rights, personalities like Coulter and Yiannopoulos see them as opportunities to stoke violence and to make money off the publicity.

Just this week two right-wing agitators were criminally charged for shooting a protester at a Seattle Yiannopoulos rally. Evidence demonstrates they plotted the crime ahead of time in social media messages where one of the two stated, “I’m going to the Milo event and if the snowflakes get out off hand I’m just going to wade through their ranks and start cracking skulls.”

Right-wing violent rhetoric has become common place on forums like Reddit and 4chan, on neo-Nazi sites like Stormfront, and in the comment sections of conspiracy theory outlets like Breitbart and Infowars.

Whereas left-leaning protesters (on the whole with minor exceptions) promote non-violence and peaceful protests as counter-free speech, the emerging set of Alinsky “trained” conservatives arrive at rallies prepared to fight. Look no further than Donald Trump rallies over the last year to see the results of this readiness to engage. Virtually every rally had a news story about Trump supporters violently assaulting a liberal protester – sometimes at the goading of Trump himself as he offered to pay their legal bills.

This has continued even after the election at recent Trump rallies.

After Trump’s election, an armed conservative stormed a pizza parlor in Washington, DC after listening to Infowars‘ Alex Jones repeatedly told his massive fan base they were running a child prostitution ring with the assistance of Hillary Clinton.

While violence is now being perpetrated by members of both the far right and left, only one of the two political ideologies represented in those attacks condones and/or promotes violence at some level.

White Supremacy Goes Mainstream

While hate speech and violence aren’t new to political protesting and internet forums, campaigning for government office has mostly been void of outright hate speech in recent years. That all changed with the dulcet dog whistle tones of the Trump campaign – a campaign that succeeded in electing a candidate who ran on demonizing “otherness” across America.

By tapping into the well of just-under-the-surface racial tension, Trump opened a white-hooded Pandora’s box that’s green lit Trump-themed campaigns in at least two states based primarily on white supremacist ideology.

Enter Corey Stewart

In Virginia, a Minnesota-born and educated conservative attorney named Corey Stewart has gone out of his way to let potential voters know he’s explicitly racist. Not only has he repeatedly spoken fondly of the Confederacy, he’s lashed out at New Orleans for their effort to remove white supremacist-connected and Confederate-memorializing monuments across the city.

He began a tweetstorm on Monday as the first Monument was taken down under the cloak of night by masked, bulletproof vest-wearing contractors who literally had their lives repeatedly threatened by racists and white supremacists across the nation. That monument was a tribute to the 1874 white supremacist uprising that resulted in the murder of several members of the newly integrated police force.

Three other monuments – all celebrating the treasonous Confederacy – are also set to be removed following extended local discussion and voting.

In an effort to gain name recognition for his GOP gubernatorial bid, Stewart sent a flurry of tweets supporting the monuments and the Confederacy. One in particular struck a chord:

Nothing is worse than a Yankee telling a Southerner that his monuments don’t matter. — Corey Stewart (@CoreyStewartVA) April 25, 2017



It should be noted that no “Yankees” were involved in the decision to remove the monuments. Moreover, Stewart was born and raised as one of those “Yankees.”

Here are a handful of his other tweets:

It is very clear to everyone but the paid protestors & liberal snowflakes. Washington & Jefferson are next if we don’t stop this madness. pic.twitter.com/xkaQdljX6S — Corey Stewart (@CoreyStewartVA) April 24, 2017

Politicians who are for destroying the statues, monuments and other artifacts of history are just like ISIS. pic.twitter.com/qoGYGe1l5S — Corey Stewart (@CoreyStewartVA) April 25, 2017

Great interview today. I don’t care if it wins me support or if I lose support. Defending history is the right thing to do. https://t.co/aj5f7EFebw — Corey Stewart (@CoreyStewartVA) April 25, 2017



The last tweet is telling as it uses the same wink-and-nod dog whistle tone Donald Trump used in his campaign to defend his attacks on “otherness” as being an American value rather than hate speech aimed at harming marginalized people.

Speaking to a local Fox affiliate following the tweetstorm, Stewart doubled down on his comments arguing, “It’s about our history and our heritage and it’s about political correctness that is being used to shame people who are simply trying to honor their ancestry and heritage here is Virginia.”

The disingenuous nature of framing support of white supremacy as ‘heritage’ and ‘ancestry’ utilizes the same set of arguments Holocaust deniers and neo-Nazis use to memorialize Hitler and his role in World War II. Fallen soldiers from any war can be memorialized without honoring the hatred they defended or the leaders who fought in the name of that hate. U.S. memorials are meant to remember those who fought for the nation.

That doesn’t include white supremacist insurrectionists who rose up to murder people based on skin color no matter how the picture is painted. A modern example of such revelry would be allowing a statue of Timothy McVeigh to be built and placed in the center of Oklahoma City.

While the victims of conflict should be memorialized, the perpetrators of historical violence and hate do not deserve the same honor.

That message seems to have fallen on deaf ears when it comes to another candidate.

Sheri Few

Not to be outdone by a ‘Yankee’ posing as a southerner to garner attention for his long shot gubernatorial campaign, a congressional GOP candidate in South Carolina is waging a similar Confederacy and white supremacy-based election campaign. Republican Sheri Few, running in South Carolina’s fifth congressional district, has based her campaign almost exclusively in neo-Confederate slogans and ‘Alt-right’ mockery of her opponents.

The election is to fill the seat vacated by Mick Mulvaney (who joined the Trump administration).

She began her Confederate-themed campaign with attacks on her Republican opponents for their stance on the removal of the Confederate battle flag.

The Post and Courier reported:

Sheri Few, one of a handful of Republicans vying for the 5th District seat vacated by President Donald Trump’s new budget director Mick Mulvaney, is trying to woo voters that idolize the rebel banner. The Lugoff resident released a political video online criticizing current and former state representatives Tommy Pope and Ralph Norman, who voted to take down the battle flag after Dylann Roof’s racially-motivated murder of nine black worshippers at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston.

In the ad, Few argued “It’s time for people to stand up and stop political correctness.”

The ad was widely criticized on both sides of the aisle for callously using the murder of nine black church members by Dylann Roof at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in 2015.

Commenting on her campaign to the Post and Courier, Few explained, “It’s erasing not only Southern heritage, but American history. That’s what communist dictators do.”

Few subsequently released a second ad featuring her standing in front of an American flag holding a semi-automatic rifle. “Weak politicians are too quick to blame a horrible tragedy on a flag or a gun, or even free speech, and that’s how bad laws are made,” she says in the video.

Few is also on record lamenting the existence of a slave memorial in South Carolina. The Guardian noted:

The South Carolina house voted to remove the Confederate flag from the grounds of the statehouse following the murder of nine church members in June 2015. The flag had originally flown on the dome of the statehouse, but was moved to the grounds in 2001 as part of a compromise that saw the installation of a monument to African American slaves. “So that issue had supposedly already been settled,” Few said. “So then there’s this huge monument to African Americans that is still on the statehouse grounds. “And, you know, why hasn’t anyone called for the removal of that? Because that was a part of the compromise. So that doesn’t seem fair, does it?” A monument to the Confederacy still stands in the statehouse grounds. There has been no suggestion that monument will be removed, but Few said the removal of similar structures elsewhere put it under threat. She said if it were to be removed then the African American memorial should also be ditched.

Like Stewart, Few conflates the victims of oppression and violence with those who perpetrated those acts. She believes the people who rose up against the nation to preserve slavery are just as deserving of memorials as the people they enslaved.

The primary slogan for Few’s campaign (unsurprisingly) is to ‘Make America Great Again.’

Stewart, Few, and the conservatives like them who now embrace the mantle of hate speech as normal threaten to make the Republican Party the new KKK. And they’re not afraid to admit they have no intention of making government work for all people.

“These leftist radicals know they’re not going to elect a Democrat in a seat that Donald Trump won by nearly twenty points,” Few said in an email to press. “[S]o they’re hoping the Republican who wins the primary is someone they can ‘work with.’”

The Future of the GOP

As many who read us regularly know, one of our contributors is a former Republican who left the party when it veered to the far right. As the GOP now ventures past the point of no return and gleefully campaigns on the concepts of anti-democratic obstructionism, white supremacy and a love for the Confederacy, the question of the party’s future becomes more pertinent.

The ongoing stability and functionality of government depends not only on the existence of (at least) two political parties, but the honest participation of those parties in furthering good policy.

Having a policy to literally work against your ideological opposition no matter what they propose (something that should be called ‘McConnell-ism’) doesn’t meet that criteria. Campaigning on the disenfranchisement of people based on the color of their skin doesn’t meet that criteria. Hate in general doesn’t make America great (and doesn’t meet that criteria).

While it may be popular among racist, aggrieved white people still angry an African-American occupied the White House for eight years, white nationalism and Trump-style antics will only carry the GOP so far before the country pulls back the curtain to reveal the white-robed wizard.

The nation needs substantive policy discussion. More importantly, the GOP needs to return to its sensible roots and begin bringing ideas to the table again rather than fear, hatred of ‘otherness’ and contrarianism.

Peacock Panache readers:

Tim Peacock is the Managing Editor and founder of Peacock Panache and has worked as a civil rights advocate for over twenty years. During that time he’s worn several hats including leading on campus LGBTQ advocacy in the University of Missouri campus system, interning with the Colorado Civil Rights Division, and volunteering at advocacy organizations. You can learn more about him at his personal website.

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