There are no American nationalists. They don’t exist. There are people like Laura Ingraham, who present themselves as American nationalists. But they are not at all convincing. On the other hand, there are lots of American white nationalists, including our current president. So how can we tell the difference? First let’s look at how Laura Ingraham perceives “the problem”:
Ingraham said on Wednesday that “in major parts of the country, it does seem that the America we know and love doesn’t exist anymore. Massive demographic changes have been foisted on the American people and they’re changes that none of us ever voted for and most of us don’t like.”
. . .
Ingraham said toward the end of Wednesday’s commentary that she was not talking about race and ethnicity, and complained a night later that the disclaimer was being missed.
On Thursday, she said she had “a message to those who are distorting my views, including all white nationalists and especially one racist freak whose name I won’t even mention, you don’t represent my views and you are antithetical to the beliefs I hold dear.”
Instead of race, she said she was talking about “a shared sense of keeping American safe and her citizens safe and prosperous.
We roll our eyes at her attempt to dig her way out of trouble. Does anyone seriously think that Ingraham is horrified by blond immigrants from Norway (or Slovenia)? Her concern about immigration is clearly linked to race, at some level. But it’s also true that she fears crime, and that she associates crime with immigration. The problem here is that the violent crime rate in many of the “American” parts of big cities like New York is dramatically higher than in the immigrant areas.
So let’s think about what it would take to avoid “massive demographic change”. In America, blacks made up 14% of the population in 1860, and 12.6% today. That ratio is now pretty stable, because the black birth rate is about equal to the overall birth rate, and the rate of black immigration as a share of the total is similar to the share of blacks in the US population. You can think of recent immigration from Haiti and Nigeria as a way of keeping the black share of the population stable, i.e. a way of preserving traditional America. Is that how Ingraham thinks about Haitian immigration?
In this vision of “American” nationalism, Detroit is a red, white and blue, all-American city, while Orange County is a disturbing foreign place, where whites are only 41% of the population and blacks are almost non-existent. It’s mostly Hispanic and Asian, many from first or second generation immigrant families. Is that how Ingraham feels about these two places? I think we all know the answer, one doesn’t have to be a dog to hear the hidden messages in the white nationalist rhetoric.
I claim there are no “American nationalists”, only “Murican nationalists”. They believe in Murica, a mythical white country cleansed of the blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans who have lived here for centuries. Ingraham may see herself as an American nationalist, but I don’t believe it for a moment.
Those who believe in Murica blame inner city blacks for their plight (bad culture), while romanticizing the plight of opioid-addicted whites in Appalachia. It’s all the fault of the Chinese, who stole their jobs.
When Trump asked why we should accept immigrants from “shithole” countries, many people focused on the insult to low-income countries. That comment was certainly impolite, and not something an American president should be saying about countries we need to deal with; but the real problem was the implication that immigrants from shithole countries are not the sort of people that we want here. Some whites have trouble seeing the implication of Trump’s comments, but African-Americans (and Central Americans) whose ancestors came from those exact countries certainly know what Trump was implying. Trump was implicitly saying (to them) “we don’t like the fact that you are here”. Interestingly, many of our most successful immigrants come from dysfunctional poor countries like India, and even immigrants from Nigeria do about average in terms of income.
Lots of Trump voters don’t care what Trump says about minorities. But there are still a substantial number of people who vote GOP for tax cuts and Supreme Court nominees, but who would be very uncomfortable if Trump made explicitly racist statements. Enough to swing a very close election. These people would rather pretend that Trump’s not a racist, just being a bit politically incorrect on occasion. So Trump continues to send out dog whistles to his white nationalist supporters, while the moderate, upper middle class Republican voters of Orange County can continue to look the other way.
There was recent speculation that Trump might have used the N-word in private conversation. (Admittedly not from a very credible source.) Speaking for myself, the truth or falsity of this claim would in no way affect my view of Trump. I already know how he thinks about lower income minorities. They are people that Trump doesn’t want in “Murica”. I wish he’d just admit it.
PS. I moved to Orange County a year ago. Compared to Boston, it’s culture reminds me much more of the traditional (white) America I grew up in during the 1960s in Wisconsin. Back then, if one saw an East Asian on the street (then called “Orientals”) the person seemed very foreign looking. Now they no longer look foreign. Here’s a video from an Orange County 4th of July Parade last month, full of marching Chinese ladies. Even Laura Ingraham might shed a tear.
PPS. Play the video until it reaches a pop song, which starts out with rap, transitions to Christina Aguilera (I think), and then samples a Norwegian pop song from the 1980s. Seeing the middle-aged Chinese ladies dancing to all of that is more than a bit surreal.