In the late hours of February 5, Donald Trump reshared a video on Truth Social that depicts Barack and Michelle Obama as monkeys. The AI generated video made all sorts of unsubstantiated claims about the 2020 election being stolen, using the theme of Lion King to portray Donald Trump as king of the jungle and a range Democratic political figures as various animals.
The likening of Black people to monkeys is racist trope that goes back centuries and has been used to dehumanize Black people to justify colonialism, slavery and segregation.
Many public figures rightly criticized the post and called it out for its deeply offensive message.
But when White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was questioned about the video the following day, she dismissed the outrage. She responded to questioning about the video by saying, “please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.”
But hours later, the video was taken off the Truth Social account with the White House came out with a statement saying that it was posted by an unnamed staffer rather than Donald Trump himself. Donald Trump now claims that he only watched the beginning of the video which focused on voter fraud and passed it off to a staffer to post for him, implying that if there was an oversight, it wasn’t his fault.
Does anyone really believe this?
This is the same Donald Trump that was sued in the 1970s for refusing to rent out his real estate properties to Black people.
This is the same Donald Trump who pulled out full page advertisements in The New York Times, The Daily News, The New York Post and New York Newsday demanding the execution of 5 Black and Latino teenagers who were wrongfully convicted of raping a white woman in the infamous “Central Park 5” scandal.
This is the same Donald Trump who referred to Haiti and nations in Africa as “shithole countries.”
This is the same Donald Trump who insanely accused Haitian immigrants in Ohio of “eating the dogs…they are eating the cats.”
This is the same Donald Trump who has recently describe Minnesota’s Somali community as “garbage” and that the only thing that Somalis are good for is, “…going after ships.”
This is the same White House that regularly posts all sorts of white supremacist dog-whistles on their social media accounts.
And it’s the same Republican Party that has said and done many of these same things for decades.
Posting the racist video is certainly not out of character for Donald Trump and neither is it out of character for Republican Party members and those in the conservative movement more generally.
At the core, many on the right simply do not see anything wrong with racist ideas and activities, and many are in fact open racists. They have used this racism throughout the years to justify policies that serve the interests of economic elites over working people by convincing a section of working-class whites to channel their anger towards endless scapegoats such as Blacks or Hispanics. This in turn diverts their attention from the capitalist class which is really responsible for the situation that we are all in.
While we shouldn’t be surprised about the racism coming from people like Donald Trump and the right wing, we definitely shouldn’t adapt to it or normalize it.
We must stand against racism and the society that gives rise to it!
