President Donald Trump's actions over his first three weeks in office seem to be increasing the risks of violence and inflaming racial tensions.
It began almost immediately, as Trump granted clemency to nearly 1,600 people who had been convicted of criminal activity related to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Experts warned that would lead to an increased risk of political violence.
His other actions also risk turbocharging racism in local communities and helping mobilize violent white supremacists nationwide.
Trump and his staffers are undermining the social norms against racism.
Trump and his staffers are undermining the social norms against racism. Darren Beattie, who was appointed as acting under secretary for public diplomacy and public affairs in the State Department, tweeted last year that “competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work” and that Black lawmakers and policymakers need to “learn” their place. After a Department of Government Efficiency staffer resigned when he was linked to racist social media posts, including one that said “I was racist before it was cool” and another that said “Normalize Indian hate,” Vice President JD Vance defended the staffer and said he should be rehired.
They are backing these words up with deeds. The administration has set daily quotas for Trump's mass deportations, increasing the risks that Immigration and Customs Enforcement will become more sloppy as they try to make their numbers for the day. It is removing all diversity-related content from federal websites and even public displays in offices. The Department of Justice has also signaled its intent to investigate private companies’ DEI practices as discriminatory criminally.
This combination of discriminatory rhetoric and policies coming from the top of the federal government is normalizing hatred and harassment. A right-wing group has now published a DEI watch list website targeting federal workers — including names, titles and photos — whose jobs or social media posts relate to racism or the promotion of diversity, equity and inclusion.
And on the heels of already-spiking hate crimes at the local level across the country, we are now seeing new mobilization of old-school racist organizations, including the Ku Klux Klan and the neo-Nazi Goyim Defense League.
In Tennessee, a man was indicted on Jan. 23 after dressing up like an Orthodox Jewish rabbi and harassing individuals in a Jewish community center and at the Nashville Holocaust Memorial. Across Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky, a faction of the KKK has been distributing flyers threatening immigrants with deportation. On the flyers, a cartoon "Uncle Sam" figure is depicted kicking an immigrant family carrying sacks of belongings, along with the words “Avoid Deportation” and “Leave Now.”
Meanwhile, Trump’s inauguration was met with global praise from far-right leaders, including the leader of the U.K.'s neo-Nazi Patriotic Alternative, who cheered Trump’s banning of birthright citizenship and praised the “cleaning out” of “pro-migration judges.” An Australian neo-Nazi posted a photo making an apparent Roman salute (which was a salute made by Nazis and supporters during World War II) with the phrase “Donald Trump White Power, Patriots are in control.”
We’ve seen this story play out before in American history.
We’ve seen this story play out before in American history. President Woodrow Wilson — whose name has been removed from university buildings and public schools over the past few years in belated recognition of his rampant racism — explicitly tried to erase gains that Black Americans had made following Reconstruction. After his 1912 election, Wilson promoted the Ku Klux Klan, segregated the federal workforce and reserved better-paying supervisory jobs for white people. Racist violence surged, including in urban riots in 1919 that have been partially blamed on Wilson’s policies.
The past three weeks have mustered slow resistance nationally, although there are local communities that are pushing back on white supremacist mobilization. When demonstrators waved Nazi flags on a Cincinnati overpass last week, residents confronted them, and the group quickly left. The Cincinnati mayor posted on X that “messages of hate like this have no place in our region.”
But as private companies abandon diversity goals and federal employees get harassed for doing the jobs they were hired to do, it is clear that, in just a few weeks, it has become more acceptable for people to be openly racist at a level we have not seen in decades. If history is any guide, hateful violence won’t be far behind.
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