White with Fear

In his compelling documentary White with Fear, Andrew Goldberg draws a direct line between Richard Nixon’s racist campaign rhetoric of 1968 and the current MAGA playbook of strategic racism. Over decades, as the GOP’s dominance slipped away, they became frantic about finding a way back in. Attention spans grew shorter, and their voters were less educated, such that wonky policy discussions of economics and reasoned discourse were boring and ineffective. Sound bites needed to be short, sharp, and incendiary. White frailty, it turns out, was a substance that, once ignited, would burn white hot. 

Nixon’s anti-Black “Law and Order” angle was refined into political uranium for nuclear weapons demonizing Libs, Muslims, LGBTQ people, Women, anyone non-white, and immigrants. Whites are told that immigrants are taking their jobs and ruining the culture. Critical Race Theory and Replacement Theory supposedly hold that White people are at fault and need to be removed from the levers of power and that reparations are owed to current and future generations. During Barack Obama’s presidency, the racial uprising took the form of the Tea Party as a grievance against the first Black president.

“…White frailty was a substance that once ignited, would burn white hot…”

The film shows how White fear has been used to create a political-industrial complex, ginning up racism to achieve political power. The GOP has become a party driven by racially motivated grievances. Politicians deploy hate with impunity using provably inaccurate statements. Mouthpieces like Marjorie Taylor Greene are willing to say anything to gain power, regardless of accuracy or consequences. 

Interestingly, those marketing the MAGA agenda are not invested in any of the issues they are dropping on America, like ICBMs of hatred. These are just the cynical, masterfully engineered sticks with which to poke the sore spots of terrified White Americans who feel they are on the verge of becoming marginalized. 

It’s clear from these clips that there’s no moral compass in the MAGA movement. The goal, as per usual, is power. In the U.S., power means financial leverage as the end game. Late-stage capitalism is striving toward its absurd logical conclusion:  a small group of extremely wealthy men in power consolidating wealth and creating a society composed of a small upper and middle-class layer with a huge population of poor. It will be those same lower-class people who will be kept foaming at the mouth in hatred toward other poor people who are different from them by the Oligarchs living in their gated bubble worlds, far away from the unwashed masses. This has been a time-tested formula around the world, and tools like social media are enabling a world-class implementation of purified hate covering the country like a thick fog.