If by now you’re still unsure whether the White House is moving forcefully towards vicious totalitarianism then you haven’t been paying attention.
Some have gotten the message, though, and interpret it as a license to punish, dehumanize, and demoralize. This is essential for The Authoritarian Man, who finds security in obedience.
Jewish cemeteries have been vandalized. Jewish centers in Albuquerque; Baltimore; Birmingham, Ala.; Milwaukee; and Wilmington, Del., have reported repeated threats; jarring graffiti of swastikas have been reported on some college campuses as well as the New York City subway. Two Indian engineers were shot in Kansas. According to the New York Times’s John Eligon, Alan Blinder, and Nida Najar, “It raised new alarms about a climate of hostility toward foreigners in the United States, where President Trump has made clamping down on immigration a central plank of his ‘America first’ agenda.”
A feces swastika was found in a gender-neutral bathroom at the Rhode Island School of Design.
The Southern Poverty Center reports that hate groups have increased for a second year following Trump’s election. The Center also reports that, “Comparing the language of Breitbart commenters to the language of the most aggressive far-right extremists online — e.g. language used by Twitter users who advocate for violence against minorities and are openly pro-Nazi — we can see a clear trend of increasing similarity over a three-year period, the bulk of it under Bannon.”
The Uncanny 