American Cultural Purity

 

The last pretense of Trump’s self-proclaimed racial neutrality vaporized when he addressed a virtually all-white rally in Minnesota on September 19^th and told the cheering crowd: “You have good genes, you know that, right?” The insistent denial – despite oceans of statistical evidence to the contrary – of discriminatory standards of social, business, economic and criminal justice applied to people of color or those of religious/ethnic diversity by the President and his Attorney General William Barr remains blatant and unrepentant. Aside from Trump’s affinity for those of Jewish faith – based on family ties and evangelical commitments to Armageddon – it is really about a white protestant ethos with a minor carve out for white, non-Hispanic Catholics. Trump draws huge waves of support from admitted white supremacists and associated fringe conspiracy groups. Non-whites are a threat, sinister “minorities” to be marginalized.

Though the Census has always measured “people” as its metric for allocation of federal resources and voting districts, the Trump administration has attempted to add “citizenship” – rejected at the federal trial and circuit court of appeals levels as an unlawful attempt to intimidate – a factor that has never been on any census since it began in 1790. From the march of torch-carrying white nationalists at the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia on August 11, 2017 – “[Y]ou also had people that were very fine people, on both sides” according to the President – to the Minnesota Trump rally noted above, white evangelical values (those that do not interfere with big business profits) have become Trump’s values, mandated to “Make American Great Again.” The unambiguous cry from the 1920s – an “America First” racist slogan embraced by the Ku Klux Klan and others of that racial persuasion – became an anchor phrase in Trump’s policy-making, a factor that did not go unnoticed by Western “allies.”

In an ideal Trump world, Muslim Americans would go back to their countries of origin (ignoring that many are from families that have been citizens for generations), black Americans would simply accept that there is no racial injustice to be corrected but would preferably be kept as far from voting as possible, and anyone supportive of any Democratic candidate would be labeled as a radical and tracked by the FBI. Listen to the words of rally supporters. Listen to Trump’s praise of self-admitted racial bigots. Hear his dismissal of any notion of injustice against any minority. Watch him embrace those with extremist conspiracy beliefs.

So, what would it be like to live in an authoritarian country where anything but the government-sanctioned cultural mainstream becomes legally marginalized if not completely suppressed? Like China, where Muslim Uighurs, who have lived in western China (today, the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, which is anything but autonomous) for centuries with their own language, dress and culture, are being forcibly removed from their homes, a million or more, and relocated to barbed wire “reeducation camps” (read: “concentration” camps), where their language and culture are banished and where they are allowed to return after having been cleansed of their ethnicity. Mandarin. Mainstream Chinese culture and dress.

Tibet is old news now. “The region maintained its autonomy until 1951 when, following the Battle of Chamdo, Tibet was occupied and incorporated into the People's Republic of China, and the previous Tibetan government was abolished in 1959 after a failed uprising.” Wikipedia. Its culture was then decimated when China took over and invited traditional Han Chinese to come and settle to dilute the local culture. What’s left of Tibetan traditionalism is little more than a tourist attraction today.

The pattern repeats itself. China could not accept their treaty obligations to maintain British laws and freedom in Hong Kong until at least 2047. Instead, they recently shoved a new repressive legal code down HK’s throat, arrested its activists and protestors, sentencing many to well over a decade for expressing their opposing political views. It’s happening all over China, including in what had been a politically loyal region, Inner Mongolia (formally, the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region), which despite its different style of dress and language, never mounted any serious challenge to Beijing’s rule. They were so compliant that they were often referred to by Chinese government authorities as a “model minority.”

Not good enough under the iron fist of Xi Jinping. Preserving the regional mother tongue as part of the regions ethnic heritage was no longer valued. Quite the opposite, as Beijing began phasing out bilingual instruction, insisting on “Chinese only” classes. There is just one acceptable Chinese culture now. Mongols were shocked and immediately protested. Alice Su, writing for the September 24^th Los Angeles Times, describes this standard Chinese program of cultural repression: “‘We have no way out. There’s nothing we can do,’ said Gangbater, a herder in Xilingol League, a central part of China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, where mass protests broke out three weeks ago when the government implemented a new ‘bilingual education’ program to replace the Mongolian language with Chinese in half of Mongolian school classes.

“Demonstrations against the program appear to have been largely suppressed. More than 90% of children who had boycotted school in Xilingol were back in class — including his own, said Gangbater, who asked that his full name not be used for fear of retribution from authorities… ‘If you don’t send the kids [to school], they take away your jobs,’ said Gangbater. ‘You can’t get subsidies or loans from the banks. They put you on a blacklist. They are arresting the people who signed petitions. They have all kinds of methods.’

“The Chinese government’s crackdown on Inner Mongolia has been swift and unsurprising, using a familiar arsenal of tactics — surveillance, financial and occupational threats, detention, social credit blacklisting and media control — often deployed against ethnic minorities and others deemed a threat to ‘social stability.’…

“The protests, however, have not deterred the government’s resolve to erode minority cultural identity. Last week, local authorities in the city of Xilinhot, the seat of government in Xilingol, announced via WeChat that parents who did not send their children to school by Sept. 17 would lose access to government subsidies. High schoolers who did not attend classes would be expelled and blocked from taking the college entrance exam. Banks would stop loans for the next five years to any parents who did not comply.

“A separate government notice stated that parents who did not abide would be placed on an ‘untrustworthy persons list,’ and face restrictions on jobs, special market transactions, cross-border travels, home reconstruction and other actions requiring good social credit standing.

“Xilinhot authorities announced last week that they had successfully brought all 3,469 students in the area’s Mongolian-language schools back to class. ‘Chinese ethnicities as one close family, building the China dream with one heart,’ declared bright white Chinese and Mongolian letters against a red background on top of the announcement.” Think that forced cultural exclusion cannot happen here in the United States, known as the lettuce bowl (“melting pot”) of cultural diversity? Think again.

Start with a President, quite willing to defy the Constitution, federal statutes, to use federal forces against peaceful protestors, labels cities as “anarchist” and lawless as he incites protestors to violence, applies vitriolic descriptions to anyone who opposes anything he wants to have happen (“radical Democrats,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Crooked Hillary,” etc.), calls the free press the “enemy” of the people, is threatening to overrule the FDA if it will not declare a vaccine safe within Trump’s time requirements, has the worst track record on telling the American people the truth on major issues of any American president in history, has nothing but disdain for immigrants of color or non-white-traditional cultures (remember his take on so many Mexican immigrants: “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”) and who is even suggesting that he might not leave office even if the election results favor his opponent. Do you really think that if he believed he could impose his will, Trump would not reshape political, economic and cultural power to favor white traditionalists… to the exclusion of everyone else?

              I’m Peter Dekom, and for most of the 20^th and earliest 21^st centuries, we have been concerned with foreign powers destroying us or taking over our nation; today, that same horror is back, but this time the biggest existential threats to American freedom come from within.