The racial politics of Trump's troop deployments

For conservatives, state power exists to discipline minorities

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Below is a gallery of the elected mayors (and one governor) whose jurisdictions Trump has threatened to send troops to in order to address what he says are widespread “filth” and “crime”. I’ll give you a minute to think about what they all have in common.

Left to right: Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, Maryland Governor Wes Moore, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, Baltimore Mayor Brandon M. Scott, New York Mayor Eric Adams, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. What could they have in common?

It’s unsurprising that there is a racial component to Trump’s domestic troop deployments. After all, he is a racist. It’s also a long-running GOP tactic to use racially coded phrases like “crime”, “gangs” and “filth” to invoke images of violent and uncivilized racial minorities in the face of whom white voters require a strong protector.

Urban/rural polarization has only made this tendency worse. Republican Party base voters now overwhelmingly live in rural areas or distant suburbs, while the cities lean heavily to the left. As a result, Republican Party leaders feel free to portray downtown areas as hellholes plagued by both crime and failed Democratic governance. Trump’s coalition doesn’t raise an eyebrow at him invading and occupying urban areas because to them, these are not areas full of fellow American citizens with equal rights. They are enemy territory.

There’s a long tradition in American history of nativist and racist political movements accepting the use of state power to discipline racial minorities while being aghast at the idea that the same thing might happen to themselves. In the view of racists, America has always meant freedom and liberty only for those with the right skin color - those without it are outsiders who lack rights and must be aggressively kept in line by any means necessary.

Slavery and segregation are the most obvious examples of this line of thought. But modern conservatism is hardly free from it either. The conservatives who are now cheering the flooding of soldiers and federal agents into the streets of majority-minority cities are in many cases exactly the same people who have reacted with paranoid outrage anytime the federal authorities pay the scantest attention to their own communities.

As an example, take “Operation Jade Helm 15”.

Jade Helm 15 was a military training exercise which took place in the American South and West during the Obama administration. It involved a relatively small number of troops - just over a thousand - who were practicing how to manoeuvre through populated areas. The exercise became a target of conspiracy theorists who claimed it was actually a cover for a military takeover of Texas by the Obama administration. Texas Governor Greg Abbott even sent the state’s National Guard to “keep an eye” on the military for the duration of the exercise.

(It later emerged that the online furore against Jade Helm on right wing social media had been deliberately fueled by a Russian misinformation campaign. After seeing how easy it was to whip up controversy, they doubled down on their efforts to interfere with the 2016 election).

This contrast - yes to masked federal agents without ID on the streets of DC but no to a federal military exercise in a red state - tells you everything you need to know about the racial double standard on the American right.

The fact that Trump has sent National Guard forces from deep-red states to patrol Washington, D.C. adds an extra dimension to the story. White troops from the old Confederate states are patrolling the streets of “Chocolate City”, almost as if the point is take revenge against the seat of the federal power which deconstructed both slavery and segregation.

Beyond the symbolism, I fear that this is a dry run for assembling loyal security forces in the capital in the event of major protests breaking out against the Trump regime’s authoritarian takeover. In countries with dictatorial governments, it is common to ship in guys with guns and clubs from the sticks to put down rebellion in the cosmopolitan capital. Iran’s basij militia is an example. Red state National Guardsman might leave DC soon, but they could be called back with their guns and their clubs at some point in the future.

At a minimum, the Trump White House thinks that it is good politics to make the African-American elected leaders of some of the nation’s largest cities into hate figures. It wants to show its base that it is punishing and degrading people of color and cleansing America of their influence. That tells you everything you need to know about this White House and its shameful supporters.

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