{"id":19610,"date":"2018-10-24T01:23:56","date_gmt":"2018-10-24T01:23:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=19610"},"modified":"2018-10-24T01:23:56","modified_gmt":"2018-10-24T01:23:56","slug":"in-texas-trump-speech-takes-far-right-turn-im-a-nationalist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=19610","title":{"rendered":"In Texas, Trump speech takes far-right turn: ‘I’m a nationalist.’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Washington, DC –\u00a0<\/strong>From the outset of Monday’s campaign rally<\/a> for US Senator Ted Cruz, US President Donald Trump received a warm welcome from thousands of mostly red-clad Republicans gathered in Houston’s Toyota Center.<\/p>\n

The audience had applauded throughout the speech delivered by Cruz, who is facing off against Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke in a closely-watched race<\/a> in the November 6 midterm elections.<\/p>\n

But when Trump took the podium and his speech took an even sharper rightward turn, the crowd erupted in boisterous applause and chants of “USA!”<\/p>\n

On Monday, after addressing unemployment and taxes, among other topics, Trump declared himself “nationalist” who is fending off “corrupt, power-hungry globalists”.<\/p>\n

“We’re putting America first… it hasn’t happened in a lot of decades,” he declared, adding: “We’re taking care of ourselves for a change, folks.”<\/p>\n

He continued by accusing Democrats of being “globalists” who want “the globe to do well [by] frankly not caring about our country so much”.<\/p>\n

“You know, they have a word. It sort of became old-fashioned. It’s called a nationalist,” he continued. “And I say really, we’re not supposed to use that word. You know what I am? I am a nationalist. Use that word.”<\/p>\n

Trump used the term, nationalist, again on Tuesday, defending the recently agreed-upon trade deal with Mexico and Canada.\u00a0<\/p>\n

With\u00a0midterm elections<\/a>\u00a0less than two weeks away, Monday’s rally was the latest in a pattern of Trump and Republican candidates nationwide employing increasingly aggressive campaign rhetoric.<\/p>\n

In races from California to New Jersey, Republican candidates, campaign ads and mailers have accused Democratic opponents of advocating\u00a0“open borders”\u00a0and\u00a0supporting\u00a0“terrorism”<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Conspiracy theory<\/h2>\n

In North America and Europe, far-right and ultra-nationalist groups have routinely disparaged their political opponents as “globalists”, a term that researchers and experts describe as a dog-whistle with thinly-veiled anti-Semitic undertones.<\/p>\n

While some right-wing politicians and commentators use globalism interchangeably with globalisation, the term now refers more commonly to a far-right conspiracy theory that alleges that the world is controlled by a shadowy group of economic elites.<\/p>\n

Monday was not the first time Trump employed the phrase. In March, the president prompted a tide of criticism when he referred to his outgoing top economic adviser, Gary Cohn, as a “globalist”.<\/p>\n

“He may be a globalist, but I still like him,” Trump said at Cohn’s final cabinet meeting, continuing, “He’s seriously a globalist. There’s no question.”<\/p>\n

“Never underestimate the power of anti-Semitism in this,” Shane Burley, author of Fascism Today, told Al Jazeera. “I don’t think Trump is making an open reference to Jews, but the logic of anti-Semitism is informing rhetoric.”<\/p>\n

The alt-right<\/a>, a loosely knit coalition of neo-Nazis and white nationalists, surged during Trump’s presidential campaign and following his victory in November 2016.<\/p>\n

But alt-right groups<\/a> found themselves marginalised<\/a> after differing with many of the president’s policies and facing public backlash after the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville in August 2017.<\/p>\n

Burley said the movement’s lasting influence can be seen in the Republican Party’s open embrace of far-right talking points, including globalism and conspiracy theories blaming Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros<\/a> for everything from migration to anti-Trump protests.<\/p>\n

“If we think about parts of the Trump base, that rhetoric works very well with them,” Burley said.<\/p>\n

Escalation<\/h2>\n

In recent weeks, Trump has intensified accusations that Democrats are “radical” leftists who incite “mobs”, claimed protesters are “paid” and repeatedly attacked a US-bound caravan of migrants.<\/p>\n

Some Republican incumbents and hopefuls across the country have followed suit, and right-wing Super PACS have aired a slew of televised campaign ads attempting to link their Democratic opponents to “terrorism”.<\/p>\n

Others have ostensibly targeted non-white candidates for their heritage, such as Republican congressman Duncan Hunter’s attack ad claiming that his Palestinian-Mexican-American opponent, Ammar Campa-Najjar, is a “national security threat”.<\/p>\n

Although the 29-year-old Campa-Najjar is a Christian, Hunter’s ad alleged that the progressive House hopeful was trying to “infiltrate” Congress and is supported by the Muslim Brotherhood<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And in New York, another attack ad targeted African American Democratic House candidate Antonio Delgado for his former career as a rapper. Paid for by the Congressional Leadership Fund, the ad accused Delgado of “lacing his raps with extremist attacks on American values”.<\/p>\n

On Monday, the civil rights group Muslim Advocates published a pre-election report<\/a> documenting a sharp uptick in anti-Muslim sentiment among political candidates in 2017 and 2018.<\/p>\n

Heidi Beirich, the head of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, explained that Trump has been “escalating pretty egregiously” the tenor of midterm election rhetoric.<\/p>\n

“You’d have to be a fool not to know that Trump is trying to use race as a way to gin up his supporters,” she told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

“There are large sections of this election marked by racism, anti-Semitism, anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant efforts. In some ways, Trump’s win in 2016 unleashed this kind of extremism into our system.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Washington, DC –\u00a0From the outset of Monday’s campaign rally for US Senator Ted Cruz, US President Donald Trump received a warm welcome from thousands of mostly red-clad Republicans gathered in Houston’s Toyota Center. The audience had applauded throughout the speech delivered by Cruz, who is facing off against Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke in a closely-watched…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":19611,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19610\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}