Paper short abstract:

Drawing on It Can Happen Here: White Power and the Rising Threat of Genocide in the US (NYU, 2021), this paper argues that, rather than being exceptional, the Trump presidency was symptomatic of the US's long history of racism and systemic white supremacy, genocide, and atrocity crimes.

Paper long abstract:

If many people were shocked by Trump’s 2016 election, many more were stunned when, months later, white power extremists took to the streets of Charlottesville chanting “Blood and Soil” and “Jews will not replace us!” Like Trump, the Charlottesville marchers were dismissed as aberrations --the momentary appearance of “racists” and “haters” who did not represent the real United States. Rather than being exceptional, these events are symptoms of the country’s long history of racism and systemic white supremacy, genocide, and atrocity crimes. And there is a high likelihood that such violence will occur here again. This reality, the author argues in a just published book, It Can Happen Here: White Power and the Rising Threat of Genocide in the US (NYU, 2021), is a key lesson we learned from the Trump presidency. It is also a lesson that is connected to the white power frame of white genocide, or the feared extinction of the white race that legitimates race war and even the genocide of non-whites in response. This paper discusses the origins of this idea and its connection to the pre– and post–civil rights history of white power extremism—ranging from the systemic white supremacy that informed settler colonial genocide and slavery to the ideology of contemporary groups like the alt-right. The paper concludes by noting how the idea of white genocide was directly mobilized not just by groups like the alt-right, but mainstream media and the Trump administration.