FEAR & LOATHING in OHIO
Donald Trump’s Fascist Bacchanal
True-believers: Death to Hillary Clinton
HEIL TRUMP! Old-time Dixie bigots and American neo-nazis salute their hero in the lead-up to a Cleveland jamboree of xenophobia, white racism, and hush-hush porn. Polite media called the Republican Party gathering a convention. Others called it a Klanvention.
by Thomas Adcock
Copyright © 2016 – Thomas Adcock
NEW YORK CITY, near America
Like flies buzzing over hot dung, admirers of the execrable Donald J. Trump flocked to mid-July’s Republican Party convention in Cleveland—as both duly-elected delegates and a sidewalk rabble of heavily-armed nazis, white nationalists waving Confederate flags and semiautomatic assault rifles, spittle-spewing Jesus jumpers howling about abortion and black helicopters coming to get them, and pistol-packing motorcycle louts with muscled arms inked in swastikas. Consistent with Ohio state law, the rabble goose-stepped outside the Quicken Loans Arena with loaded weaponry on full display.
Inside, the scene was no less exotic. Credentialed delegates—some two thousand of America’s suburban and small-town bourgeoisie, many with concealed revolvers—broke into frequent chants of “USA!…USA!…USA!” Alternate bellowing referenced Republican nominee Donald J. Trump (“SAY HIS NAME!”…”BUILD THAT WALL!”) and his Democratic Party opponent, Hillary Clinton (“LOCK HER UP!“). They wore funny hats and an array of lapel pins indicating their witty distaste for Mrs. Clinton, the most ubiquitous of which read “LIFE’S A BITCH, DON’T ELECT ONE.”
Enjoying himself in the élite seats as Mr. Trump mounted the convention podium in a Las Vegas-style cloud of theatrical fog—was Geert Wilders of the Netherlands, a bright star in the galaxy of European proto-fascism. As parliamentary leader of the far-right Dutch Party for Freedom, Mr. Wilders’ Islamophobic and anti-immigrant bona fides are as impressive as those of his American idol, who pledges to deport some eleven million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. for generations, and ban Muslims from entering the country until “we find out what the hell’s going on.”
Enjoying himself as he watched the televised proceedings at his home near New Orleans was David Duke, America’s best-known racist, anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist, and Holocaust denier. A former member of the Louisiana state legislature and one-time grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, Mr. Duke now seeks election to the U.S. Senate as a Republican. He said of Mr. Trump’s bizarre speech upon accepting the party’s presidential nomination, “I couldn’t have said it better myself.”
In that dark and dystopian acceptance address, Mr. Trump vowed, “I alone” will solve the nation’s problems and needs. Among the needs, as he reckons them, Mr. Trump again pledged to build a continent-wide wall along the southern border to prevent the entry of “murderers” and “rapists,” as he calls dirt poor Mexicans desperate to improve their lives in El Norte. The speech scared the bejeezus out of those who hold faith in an America of democracy and mercy. With reference to ultra-right programming at Fox Television network, David Remnick of The New Yorker magazine wrote that the entire Republican convention was “like a four-day-long Fox-fest, full of fear-mongering, demagoguery, xenophobia, third-rate show biz, pandering, and raw anger.”
Surprisingly, no one was killed inside or outside the convention arena, though not for a lack of promoting death and bloodshed.
THOMAS ADCOCK 