IT'S WORLD-HISTORICAL FASCISM, BUT IT'S ALSO ORDINARY WHITE-GUY BIGOTRY

I could compare what happened yesterday in Madison Square Garden to a Nazi rally, and while that would be highly appropriate, what I saw reminded me of police message board transcripts gone public. Here's what speakers said yesterday at that Donald Trump rally:

A comic kicked off the rally by dismissing Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage,” then mocked Hispanics as failing to use birth control, Jews as cheap and Palestinians as rock-throwers, and called out a Black man in the audience with a reference to watermelon.

Another speaker likened Vice President Kamala Harris to a prostitute with “pimp handlers.” A third called her “the Antichrist.” And the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson mocked Ms. Harris — the daughter of an Indian mother and a Jamaican father — with a made-up ethnicity, saying she was vying to become “the first Samoan-Malaysian, low IQ former California prosecutor ever to be elected president.”

Did yesterday's rally seem like the work of an organized, dangerous fascist party? Yes -- but the rally's rhetoric also seemed like ordinary casual conversation among bigoted white men when they think no one can hear them. Remember the cops who beat Rodney King in 1991 and sent messages to one another describing Black citizens involved in a domestic dispute as being “right out of ‘Gorillas in the Mist’”? Remember the police offcial responsible for investigating workplace harassment in New York City being fired in 2021 after it was revealed that he'd written racist posts in a police discussion group called the Rant?

One referred to former President Barack Obama as a “Muslim savage.” Another labeled Dante de Blasio, the Black son of Mayor Bill de Blasio, as “brillohead.”

This is how bigoted men talk. Among cops, it reinforces a sense of grievance that often leads to brutality. It'll do the same thing among Trumpers if they win -- and, to a lesser extent, if they lose. This is a rising fascist movement, but it's built on ordinary hatreds that aren't new and that predate Trump's political career.

The speaker who drew the most attention was a comic named Tony Hinchcliffe.

“These Latinos, they love making babies, too. Just know that they do,” Hinchcliffe said, setting up his joke: “There’s no pulling out. They don’t do that. They come inside, just like they did to our country.”

A few moments later, the comedian took a second swing at a key voting bloc within the community: Puerto Ricans.

“There’s a lot going on. I don’t know if you guys know this, but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico,” he said to a scattering of claps and jeers.

Wow, nobody could have foreseen that this guy would say anything offensive:

As he finished his set at a Big Laugh Comedy show in Austin [in May 2021], Dallas stand-up Peng Dang did a series of jokes related to #StopAsianHate." Then he graciously introduced the next comic, Tony Hinchcliffe, who asked the crowd to keep it going for “the filthy little fucking ch**k who was just up here.” No lie – Hinchcliffe’s actual words....

He goes far beyond the initial hit on Dang ... haranguing against Asians and Asian Americans, including mocking Dang’s set with references to it that Hinchcliffe delivers in a caricaturish Asian accent. He even berates white members of the audience, branding them “race traitors” for laughing at Dang’s jokes and saying their “hooping and hollering” had him “puking in a fucking bucket,” and he does it all without ever showing any sign of irony or humor.

Last week in Austin, I got to bring up Tony Hinchcliffe. This is what he said. Happy Asian (AAPI) Heritage Month! pic.twitter.com/9XG6upit2a

— Peng Dang (@pengdangcomedy) May 11, 2021

Pete Buttigieg thinks we shouldn't respond to this. Mark Harris disagrees:

No, with all due respect, Donald Trump just presided over a racist, nativist, fascist rally in the heart of New York City nine days before the election, and we should very much be talking about it and take what was said there dead seriously.

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— Mark Harris (@markharris.bsky.social) October 27, 2024 at 10:03 PM

I suspect that normie Americans tune out the big insults based on ideology -- "communist," "fascist," "Marxist," "Nazi" -- but they might be shocked by the ordinary bigotry of Tony Hinchcliffe in particular, calling other ordinary people "garbage" while standing before a lectern with Trump's name in big letters. Hating people -- being given permission to hate people -- is what Trumpism is all about, and is what being a Fox viewer has been all about for a quarter of a century, but most normies still don't understand that. Maybe now they will.

I know what Buttigieg is worried about. Ads like this didn't work for Hillary Clinton in 2016:



But maybe this time will be different. Trump can say his racist attacks on foreigners are a response to immigration policies that many Americans agree are flawed. He can shrug off his offensive remarks about women as just a fuckboy's locker room talk. But what's Tony Hinchcliffe's grievance? He just seems to hate Puerto Ricans for the sake of hating them. Maybe that will wake a few voters up to the nature of this movement.