No, Pro-Trumpers Who Admire Putin and Dislike Biden Are Not Therefore Beyond-the-Pale Bad People

The demonization of pro-Trump Americans is part of the ruling class divide-and-rule strategy; don't fall for it

The ruling American billionaire plutocracy wants half of Americans to view the other half as beyond-the-pale bad people. This is how our rulers intend to keep the have-nots divided and hence powerless. Here is an example of how our rulers try to make it appear to the liberal half of the have-nots that Trump’s have-not supporters are beyond-the-pale racists:

What  Trump said of the Charlottesville Neo-Nazi rally:

"There were very fine people on both sides, & I'm not talking about the Neo-nazis and white supremacists because they should be condemned totally."​

What NPR and the liberal media told their audience that Trump said:

"There were very fine people on both sides."

Today I want to address another one of the many ways that our rulers are trying to make the NPR-listening have-nots view pro-Trumpers as deranged at best and possibly outright evil (I will discuss the racism question at the end). I am referring here to the oft-made accusation that pro-Trumpers admire Putin while disliking Biden, even though Putin is (supposedly) an outright dictator who kills his adversaries. This accusation goes on to say that pro-Trumpers want to see Trump become a dictator for life and end democracy in the United States.

This accusation against pro-Trumpers is unfounded propaganda. Here’s why it is far from evil and far from “beyond-the-pale” bad for somebody to admire Putin and dislike Biden.

1. The United States and Russia are BOTH dictatorships of the rich, equally so, but

   Putin is no more a dictator than Biden; in fact Putin has received a FAR greater percentage of the popular vote in Russia for the presidency than Biden did in the United States.¹ The war that Putin is waging is a just war against Nazis in Ukraine, while the war that Biden is (indirectly) waging in Ukraine is an unjust war in support of Nazis in Ukraine, as I discuss in detail here.

2. Putin’s powers as president are no greater than Biden’s powers as president; both operate within a constitution with an elected legislature.

3. Whatever may be the truth about Putin killing his adversaries (and it’s largely propaganda without persuasive supporting evidence), the American ruling class is WELL KNOWN to have murdered its adversaries, including a) the Black Panthers (also see here), b) Martin Luther King, Jr., c) Malcolm X, d) JFK (see also here), and e) Gary Webb. And of course there is Julian Assange who, though still technically alive, is being tortured by the U.S./U.K. rulers for the “crime” of telling the truth about the truly criminal deeds of the rulers. Eisenhower, using the CIA, had Patrice Lumumba assassinated. The CIA helped orchestrate the killing of Allende in Chile. The CIA removed Iran's democratically elected liberal prime minister Mossedegh. The CIA removed Guatemala's liberal reformer and democratically elected* president, Arbenz. Not just individual murders but the murder of half a million children carried out by Bill Clinton and famously approved by his Secretary of State Madeleine Albright deserve mention also.

4. Biden also uses police state methods of repression, as this example just last week illustrates: denying his critic, Scott Ritter, freedom of speech and travel totally unconstitutionally. Back in 2011 U.S. rulers (especially the biggest banks) orchestrated the police crackdown on the Occupy Wall Street encampments in an act of overt corporate-state political repression; read about this here.

5. White both Russia and the United States are ruled by Big Money plutocracies that use the trappings of democracy to implement a dictatorship of the rich over the have-nots, there is this difference: Russia’s rulers find it in their interest to honor international law and demand that other nations also do so, whereas the United States’s rulers find it in their interests to flout international law. Thus while Biden claims the United States defends the “rules based order,” Putin very persuasively responds that these so-called “rules” are not written down anywhere (in contrast to International Law) and are only whatever the United States finds it convenient to say they are at any given time. Thus when the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued a warrant for the arrest of Putin, the United States praised the ICC but when that same court’s prosecutor called for a warrant for the arrest of Israel’s prime minister Netanyahu, the United States declared that the ICC was not legitimate and members of Congress even threatened to impose sanctions on the ICC if it did actually issue a warrant for the arrest of Netanyahu. On the world scene, Putin thus comes off sounding like a principled statesman, while Biden comes off sounding like a thug.

6. Biden is an over-the-top supporter of extreme ‘woke” practices, such as requiring that health professionals always agree with a youth who says they are a boy born in a girl’s body or vice versa and who wants life-altering and dangerous medical and surgical (such as dangerous “puberty blockers” and double mastectomies for a thirteen year old girl!) interventions to change their body to make it look like the opposite sex. And Biden defends the absurd practice of men having a right to enter female-only places and to compete in female-only sports competitions merely by asserting that they are female. (Read about this woke stuff here and here.) Putin, in sharp contrast, denounces these absurd and dangerous ‘woke’ practices.

7. While it is undoubtedly true that Donald Trump is a vile misogynist con-man jerk, this doesn’t mean that people who support him are vile misogynist con-men jerks. Many pro-Trumpers will tell you, “Yes, he’s an ass hole, but he’s OUR ass hole.” They support him because they think things would be better if he rather than Biden were president; that is all. This is, after all, the same kind of thinking that U.S. foreign policy has been based on, supporting horrible dictators on the grounds that “They’re OUR SOB”²

I have written earlier about the positive values of pro-Trumpers, in my article titled, “Pro-Trumpers and Egalitarianism.” Here is an excerpt from that article, dealing with the accusation that pro-Trumpers (forget about Donald Trump, himself, because he is not the issue here; his supporters are the issue) are beyond-the-pale racists:

WHAT ABOUT RACISM?​

First of all, many people who voted for Trump had earlier voted for Obama.​

Secondly, Trump's appeal to white working class people was that he did NOT accuse them of being guilty for (and benefiting from) systemic racial discrimination against non-whites. In contrast, liberals such as Hillary Clinton (noticeably more than Obama did when he ran for president) told--and tell--white working class people that they are indeed guilty because they benefit from systemic racial discrimination against non-whites--that they enjoy "white privilege" (and the word "privilege" as everybody knows means a benefit.)​

Well, the fact is that on this question, Trump's appeal was based on the truth and Hillary Clinton (and the liberal establishment) were--and are--telling a lie. ​

If you don't understand this, I suggest you read Martin Luther King, Jr.'s explanation in a speech he gave (read and listen to his speech here and also read the articles linked to near the top) about how Jim Crow laws harmed, not benefited, the poor whites. MLK, Jr. explains what many people today don't grasp--because the ruling class works hard to prevent them from doing so--, that among ordinary people AN INJURY TO ONE IS AN INJURY TO ALL. Also read "Is It a "Privilege" Not To Be Discriminated Against?"

Of note, the article linked to above (and again here) about how lots of white voters switched from voting for Obama in 2012 to voting for Trump in 2016, argues that these white voters switched because of racism. But the article seems to very wrongly equate racism with a) not agreeing with the liberal mantra about ordinary white people benefiting from the racial discrimination against blacks that people like Hillary Clinton called "white privilege" while accusing ordinary whites of wrongly enjoying it; and b) not agreeing with liberal wish to let lots of illegal immigrants into the country (read about this issue below.)

The ruling class has worked very hard to persuade white working class people that anti-racism is code for anti-white. This is precisely what Affirmative Action was designed to do, as I explain here. The liberal wing of the ruling class has been using its false framework on race (i.e., the lie that racial discrimination benefits working class whites) to deliberately drive whites into the waiting arms of racist white nationalist leaders whose pitch is that they are merely defending whites against unfair attacks on them carried out in the name of anti-racism. I discuss this in some detail here.

So yes, it is true that many pro-Trumpers are very confused about race, and unfortunately do believe that anti-racism is code for anti-white, and do not know the truth about the fact of systemic racial discrimination against non-whites (read here how the War on Drugs is designed to make them think that blacks and Hispanics are "criminal races") and do not know that such racial discrimination harms ordinary whites as well as the obvious non-white victims. Many pro-Trumpers therefore, unfortunately, do not understand how poisonously divisive of the have-nots is the veiled racism³ of Donald Trump and also the failure of his followers to condemn that racism. An egalitarian revolutionary movement would make the truth about these things widely known. So yes, we have work to do. But the notion that most pro-Trumpers don't want to know the truth and would be hostile to it is flat out false.​

Most pro-Trumpers want the egalitarian goal that requires removing the rich from power. When they learn that racial discrimination against non-whites is used by the rich to foment fear and resentment and mistrust between ordinary whites and non-whites in order to destroy their solidarity and prevent them from being able thereby to remove the rich from power, then guess what? These pro-Trumpers will be ANGRY at the fact of racial discrimination, and will view the perpetrators of it as their enemy.

Yes, there are KKK-type racists (such as David Duke, and others) who view pro-Trumpers as potential recruits to the white nationalist organizations they control; this is why they support Trump. These racist leaders recruit by denying they are racist and insisting that their organizations are simply for defending white people against unjust discrimination against them that is done today in the name of "anti-racism." Read about how these racist leaders operate in "What do 'white supremacists' believe?" and read how liberal establishment leaders help them to recruit good and decent white working class people in "America's Liberal Establishment Has Done the Heavy Lifting to Recruit Working Class Whites Into White Supremacist Organizations."​

Pro-Trump people are opposed to illegal immigration. Does that make them racists? 

Here's something to consider regarding this question.

Cesar Chavez was born in Yuma, Arizona, to a Mexican-American family and began his working life as a manual laborer before spending two years in the U.S. Navy.  Chavez was thus a Latino, and Hispanic.

Cesar Chavez--is famous as the organizer of a farm workers union whose members were mainly Hispanic. And Chavez opposed illegal immigration! Read about this in an ABC NEWS article  that reports:

For a significant period of his storied career as a labor organizer, Cesar Chavez opposed illegal immigration.

He encouraged union members to join "wet lines" along the Arizona-Mexico border to prevent undocumented immigrants from crossing into the U.S. He accused immigration agents at the border of letting in undocumented immigrants to undermine the labor efforts of Latino farmworkers.

If anybody was NOT bigoted or racist against illegal immigrants from Mexico, it was Cesar Chavez! Chavez's opposition to this illegal immigration had absolutely nothing to do with bigotry or racism; it was opposition to the employers bringing in strike-breakers.

The fact is that there are about 1.1 million illegal immigrants working in construction jobs in the U.S. Read this article about how the residential construction industry in Massachusetts, for example, is based on illegal immigrants--paying them much less than would be paid to American citizen construction workers and forcing the citizen workers to compete for jobs against the lower paid illegal immigrant workers. Citizen construction workers have every right to be angry at this attack on their livelihood.

The point is that the ruling class does in fact use illegal immigrant workers to lower the wages of citizen workers, and not just agricultural workers, and it is not bigotry or racism for citizen workers to express anger at having their wages lowered this way.

The other point on this topic is that the sensible response of citizen workers to illegal immigration is to join with illegal workers in fighting against the ruling class's practice (both political parties, for many decades) of doing things in Latin and Central America to FORCE people there to have to illegally immigrate to the United States just to survive. Thus  Cesar Chavez responded to the problem wrongly. He should have required the illegal immigrants to join the farmworkers union, and only opposed their entry into the United States if they refused to join it.

But wrong though he was, Cesar Chavez did not oppose illegal immigration for racist reasons. Likewise, just because pro-Trumpers oppose illegal immigration, that does not mean they are necessarily racists, even though the liberal media would say they are racist for this reason alone.

1. One might object that Putin used his “dictatorial” power to get such a large vote. But consider this (extracted from my book pg. 18-19):

Within two months of being appointed Chancellor, Hitler arrested four thousand leaders of the Communist Party along with others in the Social Democratic and liberal parties, including members of the Reichstag, and carted them off to be tortured and beaten. Hitler got away with this because of a suspiciously convenient fire that burned down the Reichstag building February 27, 1933. (Although the trial of the suspected arsonist came too late to affect events, historian William Shirer writes that “the trial, despite the subserviency of the court to the Nazi authorities, cast a great deal of suspicion on Goering and the Nazis.”)

Hitler used the fire as an excuse to gag and arrest his opponents. The Nazis accused a communist of starting the fire, and did everything they could to create panic and fear ofCommunists. The day after the fire Hitler got President Hindenburg to sign a decree “For the Protection ofthe People and the State.” Shirer notes the act was described as a “defensive measure against Communist acts of violence endangering the state.” It imposed restrictions on personal liberty, free expression of opinion including freedom of the press, rights of assembly and association; and violations on the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communication. Also it declared that warrants for house searchers, orders for confiscations and restrictions on property were permissible beyond the pre-existing legal limits. And it imposed the death sentence for new categories of crime including “serious disturbances of the peace" by armed persons.

Hitler had scheduled elections to the Reichstag for the following week, March 5, and tried to use the fire to frighten Germans into believing that they had to vote for Nazis to prevent the Communists from taking over and completely destroying the nation. “Truckloads of storm troopers roared through the streets all over Germany, breaking into homes, rounding up victims and carting them off to S.A. barracks, where they were tortured and beaten. The Communist press and political meetings were suppressed; the Social Democrat newspapers and many liberal journals were suspended and the meetings ofthe democratic parties either banned or broken up. Only the Nazis and their Nationalist allies were permitted to campaign unmolested.”

Hitler naturally expected the Nazis to win handily. But in a show of resistance to the Nazis that is almost always overlooked by standard 21st century accounts, Germans under these extraordinary circumstances gave the Nazi Party only 44% of the total vote.21 The Nazis could not obtain a majority even with Hitler installed as Chancellor and their opponents in prison!

So, do you really think that Putin’s high vote was just due to dictatorial repression?

They're 'our' SOBs

2. From the National Post:
No one knows for sure if President Franklin D. Roosevelt really said, of the U.S.'s support for the corrupt Nicaraguan dictator, Anastasio Somoza Garcia, "He may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch." Most likely he didn't. It hardly matters. The fact the quote has, for 72 years, taken on a life of its own -- it has been held up as the defining, cold-hearted mentality behind U.S. foreign policy--does…. But the U.S. has also got better at hedging its bets: With this dictator's days certainly numbered, Washington prays that whoever replaces him isn't too resentful of its pro-Mubarak record -- another SOB it can even live with. What it can't tolerate is someone hostile to U.S. interests. "The United States is used to juggling that [inconsistency] when dealing with people who are authoritarian and distasteful but are also stable, and you have problems where they can be helpful," says Patrick Morgan, chairman of peace and conflict studies at the University of California, Irvine. "So you hold your nose and you work with them, and that includes doing things that compromise your principles. On the other hand, you take opportunities to say, 'You know we'd like it if you cleaned up your act.'"

3. One type of Trump's veiled racism takes the form of denying that blacks and Jews and Muslims are individuals; he often refers to them rather as an undifferentiated homogenous group--an 'other' to be viewed as different from 'us white people.' Thus, as illustrated in this Politico article, Trump refers to black people not as "some blacks" or "most blacks" but as "the blacks." He refers to Jews by telling a Jewish audience that he is a "negotiator like you folks" (a racist stereotype of Jews.) Trump referred to Japanese people as "the Japs." Politico also reports,

"With the country rattled by the San Bernardino shooting in which a Muslim husband and wife massacred 14 and wounded 21 others, Trump’s came out on Monday with a doozy of a statement, calling for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”​

Most famously, at the start of Trump's presidential campaign he attacked Mexico saying, “They are not our friend, believe me,” before disparaging Mexican immigrants: “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” The racism is the characterization of Mexicans as rapists, followed typically with the veil: "some are good people."​

Here is another example of Trump's veiled racism. White supremacist Neo Nazis held a torch-lit rally in Charlottesville,VA in 2017, chanting Nazi slogans including “Sieg heil” and “blood and soil” and giving the Nazi salute, and protesting the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Trump declared that their demand to keep the statue of General Lee was a good demand because "Whether you like it or not, he was one of the great generals." In this way Trump reinforced the pro-slavery narrative (known as 'The Lost Cause') that says (falsely, as I show here) that during the Civil War the pro-slavery Confederacy government was the beloved representative of all the Southern whites whether they owned slaves or not. This false narrative--which is veiled racism because it glorifies the slave-owners and their Confederacy--is dividing us along race lines today, as indicated by the large number of Confederate Flags that are flown by numerous and typically poor white people.​

The veil is an integral part of Trump's racism. Another example of this is what  Trump said of the Charlottesville Neo-Nazi rally:

"There were very fine people on both sides, & I'm not talking about the Neo-nazis and white supremacists because they should be condemned totally."​

The liberal press published only the first part of this statement, "There were very fine people on both sides," without Trump's explicit condemnation of the Neo-Nazis and white supremacists.

This is what's going on. The liberal media says Trump is an un-veiled explicit racist. Trump tells his followers the liberal media is lying about him and that he is not a racist at all. The result is that people who read the liberal press think Trump is an un-veiled racist and people who listen to Trump think he's not a racist: in other words the result--intended by the ruling class--is great hostility between each half of the have-nots against the other.

​