THEY HATE (SOME) WHITE PEOPLE, TOO

Over the years, I've been skeptical of the idea that Donald Trump and other right-wing extremists rose to power simply because America is racist. I agree that racism is a major reason for the ascendancy of the GOP since the 1960s, but I've never been fully on board with the idea that Donald Trump came to power exclusively because, as many people put it, we elected a Black president and white America went crazy. I think there's a high level of racism in the Republican base, but Republicans have been taught to hate many other people as well. Among them: gay and trans people, feminist women, and plain old white liberals and lefties.

It's that last category of hatred that the most racist man in America, Stephen Miller, is cynically tapping into here:

Stephen Miller: "All these demonstrators that you've seen out here in recent days, all these elderly white hippies, they're not part of the city and never have been ... we're gonna ignore these stupid white hippies that all need to go home and take a nap because they're all over 90 years old."

[image or embed]

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) August 20, 2025 at 12:57 PM

Echoing Miller's denunciation of "stupid white hippies" was the equally cynical J.D. Vance:

Vance chimed in to say that it was “kind of bizarre that we have a bunch of old, primarily white people who are out there protesting the policies that keep people safe when they’ve never felt danger in their entire lives.”

Republicans can play the demonization game a hundred different ways. They can tap into anti-Black racism, then turn on a dime and pretend to be Black people's best friends, arguing (as they have for years) that the troubles Black people suffer all stem from the fact that most of them are stuck on the "Democrat plantation." But despite the phony show of sympathy here, Republicans' favorite stereotypes portray all people of color as violent and/or parasitical.

Yet Republicans also despise white people who, in their view, betray their whiteness by holding left-of-center views and voting for liberal or left-wing candidates. White people on the left are regarded as unnatural freaks -- in the George W. Bush years, they were seen as people exposing their necks so swarthy Islamists could cut their heads off. Here they're depicted as enablers of criminals. White liberals and leftists are always depicted as enthusiasts of crime, violence, and cultural decay.

The right has hated left-leaning whites for decades. Remember how Ronald Reagan described hippies in the 1960s: "For those of you who don't know what a hippie is, he's a fellow who dresses like Tarzan, has hair like Jane, and smells like Cheetah." Right-wingers today see leftists as overweight, ugly grotesques. Here are just a few examples:

The right's cartoonists are probably hard at work on "hippie granny" grotesques right now.

To Republicans, left-leaning whites are "the enemy within" -- people who could be your neighbors, white man! Racism allowed the GOP to dominate American politics over the past half-century or so, but Republicans have a lot more hate to go around.