White supremacists are the greatest domestic threat we face as a nation. So said Attorney General Merrick Garland and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas who testified before the Senate last May.
According to them, “Those who advocate for the superiority of the white race” are the single greatest domestic threat facing the United States.
What’s interesting about this for me is not that white supremacists are a major threat – old news – but the positioning of “the Establishment” against it. You can hardly get more Establishment than the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security and there they were calling out the bigots among us. This is a welcome change for people of my generation who grew up viewing “the Establishment” with hostility and contempt.
And the Establishment did deserve contempt in the 1960s and beyond. At that time we had a viciously racist president in Richard Nixon. We also had a notorious bigot running the FBI, namely, J. Edgar Hoover. Beyond this, systemic racism was entrenched and seemingly immovable in every nook and cranny of that era’s institutions.
Of course, we can’t say that today everything has changed completely for the better. But we can say that almost everything has changed at least a bit in the right direction. How great is it that our vice president and Secretary of Defense are African-Americans, and that the leaders at Justice and Homeland Security are striving to remind us all about just how nasty and dangerous America’s bigoted weirdos have become? As a child of the Sixties, I say, all this is pretty great.
But how did those creepy characters – Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, QAnon wackos, and the rest – get to be so dangerous? I say it’s the Republicans’ fault. Starting with Nixon’s Southern Strategy, continuing with Ronald Reagan’s bigoted “welfare queen” fantasies, and George H. W. Bush’s Willie Horton ads, the GOP has been cultivating racial hatred as a key part of its electoral strategy for decades. The culminations of this unethical racial pandering are the presidency of Donald Trump and the violent assault on the Capitol last January 6.
So now the battle lines are almost the opposite of what they were in the 1960s. Inside the White House and Congress we have men and women who are trying to counter the effects of our deep, enduring traditions of injustice. Outside in the streets are throngs, mainly white male throngs, trying with all their might to stop justice and the rule of law from prevailing. Injustice and lawlessness are their bread and butter and thereby lies our danger.
Our best long-term hope, I believe, lies in the success of the Biden presidency. That’s why I am hoping that this week’s legislative agenda gets through more or less intact. If Biden, Pelosi, and Schumer can make the economy more efficient and more responsive to the needs of middle class and working-class people, the pull of racial bigotry will begin to lose its appeal. Not for everyone, but for enough people that we will be able to move forward as a united society toward more justice and fair play for everyone. If and when that does happen, I will happily send a congratulatory bouquet and a deeply sincere peace offering to my old enemy, the Establishment.
