The Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s campaign platform is based on religious bigotry, hatred of women, racism and the resuscitation of New World Order conspiracy theories that remain in circulation among the clusters of paranoid spectators all over the world.
Just this week a domestic terrorism plot against a Kansas area mosque, by a militia group calling themselves the Crusaders, was thwarted by law enforcement. This latest attempt at murdering Muslims served as a reminder that the greatest threat facing America today is not whether Trump will win the majority but whether he intends to wield the power of this militant minority to advance his power lusts.
Whether the men arrested were self-radicalized or just your average Trump zealots, remains to be seen. But all indicators suggest that they were inspired by supremacist mythologies not unlike the ones that have been motivating radical right wing gangs all over the world.
Leaders like Trump resort to spreading conspiracy theories as a political tactic because it’s the only strategy that appeals to minds that are incapable or unwilling to navigate the complicated shores of a world that demands more from the average citizen than paranoid speculation. He is trying to appeal to minds too paralyzed by insecurity and fear to think for themselves. Minds that crave the rhetoric of a crude dictator to restore their sense of balance; Minds terrified of their own existence.
Ironically for his supporters, the rise of Trumpism and hate crime in the US is precisely what terrorism was designed to encourage. It has always been the intellectual strategy of groups like ISIS to reinforce their malevolent view of humanity by proving that people, when properly threatened, will rush towards the safety of totalitarianism through ideological abdication. Terrorists understand that the only way to destroy a nation that is militarily more powerful then you, is to get it to commit suicide. And that is exactly what the Republican establishment has done in appointing a man like Trump to act as an opinion leader.
Fascist movements and all their milder variations are not trying to enforce conformity but to establish uniformity. And Uniformity as a political aspiration inevitability leads to genocides of one kind or another. ISIS understands this, which is why they don’t shy away from their genocidal agenda. But Americans are still basking in the theoretical. Unable to grasp the extent of the danger they are in, they see a personality like Trump as a man to be defeated rather than a phenomenon to be opposed at every level. Even long after Hillary Clinton moves into the white House, Trumpism must be opposed, not just politically but intellectually , philosophically, morally, and in Trump’s case, sexually as well.
The freedoms that Trump supporters wish to secure, with their obsession with gun rights, is a freedom to protect themselves from the encroachment of “others.” When Trump says he wants to make America great again, he means to do this by destroying everything that America stands for. This is a fact that is not lost on many of his supporters. They understood exactly what Trump was implicitly suggesting when he tweeted the following words after the republican establishment began to distance themselves from him.
“It is so nice that the shackles have been taken off me and I can now fight for America the way I want to.”
This was not a veiled threat, but a very clear message to this particular anti government constituency who interprets all of Trump’s pronouncements as private confessions that he is merely playing the system until he gains the power necessary to overthrow it.
This election is critical not only to this country but to the entire world. Its the election that will set the trajectory for how free societies will deal with the upheaval that results when a record number of states fail, creating the highest rate of refugees in the history of man. The dilemma before us today is simple; will we preserve our ideological principles by allowing for the demographics to shift in favor of greater diversity and pluralism? Or will we gravitate towards being a closed society, which is nothing more than a euphemism for dictatorship.
Read more on US 2016 elections:
Your Vote Matters: US Muslims Told
US Muslim Women Unite Against Trump
US Muslims Weigh Options: Hillary, Trump, or None
Republican Muslims Endorse Trump for Change