American Nazi Party chairman Rocky Suhayda declared on his radio show that a Trump presidency would be a huge win and a “real opportunity” for white nationalists to come out from the cesspool of a US history that has left such radical hate groups behind.
"I believe that Trump is going to win the election this November, for various reasons which I don’t want to go into again," Suhayda said in July. "I think it’s gonna surprise the enemy, because I think that they feel that the white working class – especially the male portion of the working class – and with him his female counterparts have basically thrown in the towel. Given up hope of any politician again standing up for their interests."
The problem with Suhayda’s endorsement, which carries the baggage of the negative appeal of a radical hate group that has historically called for any number of crimes against humanity including beating and lynching minorities and establishing a system of political and economic oppression that for too long left people of color out of the national debate, is that it sounds like an accurate statement about Donald Trump and it is.
Donald Trump’s target audience does appear to be the Rust Belt and Appalachia voters left behind in America’s old industrial core who suffer rates of poverty statistically worse than minority communities although Caucasians as a larger cohort do experience higher earnings. This cohort of individuals has largely been left behind by American politicians, on both the right and the left, who have favored international trade deals such as NAFTA, CAFTA, and the TPP that carved out the industrial base.
The fact that Donald Trump’s most likely electorate, based on these economic imperatives, happen to be primarily impoverished male white voters does not mean that the candidate is espousing or deserves to be connected to the praise of white supremacists. That said, as a candidate, Trump has done a tremendous amount to ingratiate himself with this most disconcerting sub-sect of poor white voters calling for a “total and complete ban on all Muslims entering the country” and making adverse statements about Latinos.
Whether or not Donald Trump’s positions are white supremacist perspectives, as former KKK leader David Duke and now American Nazi Party Leader Rocky Suhayda seem to believe, the support by these groups does present another very important problem – even if Trump does not push forward white supremacist policies, his very existence as a candidate seems to embolden these groups.
"We have a wonderful OPPORTUNITY here folks, that may never come again, at the RIGHT time," says Rocky Suhyada on his website. "Donald Trump’s campaign statements, if nothing else, have SHOWN that 'our views' are NOT so 'unpopular' as the Political Correctness crowd have told everyone they are!"
He went on, "But, and here’s the kicker – so WHAT do we DO – sit back and heartily congratulate ourselves that our viewpoints are NOT the pariahs that we have been told that they are, and get all warm and fuzzy feeling OR, do we FINALLY get SERIOUS about what we are supposed to be engaged in?"
Is Donald Trump’s candidacy being sabotaged by radical hate groups who are grafting their despicable messages of hate to his anti-trade and loosely, perhaps unfortunately, worded tirades to advance ideas that he himself would find repugnant? That’s possible. Even so, it does not lessen the horror of growing ranks of emboldened racist hate groups that are inspired, even if wrongly, by Trump’s candidacy.
