In Which Charles Murray Defends Trump's Racism with Class Warfare

It has not gone without widespread notice that Donald Trump explicitly (and implicitly) appeals to bigotry and xenophobia, yet this criticism has not appeared to slow down Trump’s support among the GOP primary process.

Support for Trump’s campaign from the think tanks of Republicanism has been limited, perhaps because the Republican elite are still enchanted by Marco Rubio, and a good share of the overtly Christian fundamentalists are drawn to Ted Cruz.

However, in Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal, noted racist and American Enterprise Institute scholar Charles Murray defends Trump’s racist-politik:

Trump’s America

There’s nothing irrational about Donald Trump’s appeal to the white working class, writes Charles Murray: they have every reason to be angry

Murray tries something quite slick here:

[...]

White working-class males were the archetypal “Reagan Democrats” in the early 1980s and are often described as the core of support for Mr. Trump. But the grievances of this group are often misunderstood. It is a mistake to suggest that they are lashing out irrationally against people who don’t look like themselves. There are certainly elements of racism and xenophobia in Trumpism, as I myself have discovered on Twitter and Facebook after writing critically about Mr. Trump.

But the central truth of Trumpism as a phenomenon is that the entire American working class has legitimate reasons to be angry at the ruling class. During the past half-century of economic growth, virtually none of the rewards have gone to the working class. The economists can supply caveats and refinements to that statement, but the bottom line is stark: The real family income of people in the bottom half of the income distribution hasn’t increased since the late 1960s.

[...]

First, Murray is asserting that it’s the Trump supporters who are the racists, in opposition to himself (Murray).

Murray is doing a kind of triangulating in this article, putting himself at a midway point between those racist Trump supporters on twitter, and the “elite” in our society.

But then in the second paragraph I quoted above Murray basically mimics Bernie Sanders. Murray’s assertions there are no different than Sanders’ often heard campaign arguments, regarding the inequality of economics in contemporary America.

In this article, Murray uses “class” (or a derivative) over 30 times. Noticeable, and repetitive, is the language.

Please understand what those of the ilk of Murray are trying to do: they are wrapping the bitter taste of racism with a thin, sweet coating of borrowed-from-socialism concern for the lower classes.

Despite Murray’s attempt at moving the tar-baby of racism onto Trump’s online supporters, Murray seems quite concerned about “white” males, and about some mythical (as far as I am concerned) traditional American “creed” that harkens back to the 18th century (when only white males could vote.)

Murray is not a big Trump supporter, which I gather comes mostly from a personality clash. Murray doesn’t disagree with the bigoted goals Trump has championed in his campaigning (which in Trump’s case is more noticeably against Mexicans than African Americans), clearly, but instead Murray tries to justify the essentialism of Trump by constant appeals to alleged grievances of “white” males.

This idea that one can cover up racist-essentialism with a large enough lexicon is what separates Murray from Trump supporters, many of whom probably do not know what a “lexicon” is in the first place.

It’s all very deceptive. Clearly this article is just another dog whistle.

And the target readers of the WSJ heard that whistle. Here’s an early comment to Murray’s article:

JIM SHULER 2 minutes ago
For many this country has to be changed. For blacks like Obama he is resentful that some smart white men were able to form and build this wonderful nation.

For liberal women, the fact that a bunch of smart white men designed and founded this country.

That are the reasons liberals hate this country. It is because they are selfish petty people that can’t stand to give the white men the credit they deserve.

As Trump scores more success in the primaries, I suspect there will be more writers rationalizing the ominous clouds of the bigotry Trump is cheerleading.

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