Atrios has nominated Jonathan Chait as one of America’s worst humans for suggesting that we lefties should not be applying the term “white supremacist” to Trump or his followers unless they themselves confess to being so. He links to this Chait takedown, to which the reader is referred.
I find myself in agreement with Chait, though I’m guessing he’d rather not align with me. I find the term “white supremacist” somewhat akin to the term “ethnic cleansing”, a term I have heard coming from the mouths of people who really should know better. That term was invented, or at least popularized, by the perpetrators during the genocidal wars in the former Yugoslavia. It was a way of making genocide sound somewhat more palatable, and still is. For myself, I think we should stick with “genocide”.
Calling someone a “white supremacist” somewhat avoids the issue of what he or she is in reality. The word is “racist”, a word that, at least to all right thinking individuals, connotes unmitigated loathsomeness. Let’s stick with “racist”. It gets the message across so well. And, just to be clear, I do believe that Donald Trump, Jeff Sessions and a host of other Trump hangers on are racists, pure and simple.
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