Trump won by appealing to white supremacists: Analyst
US President Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election by making use of the white supremacist tendencies built up under Barack Obama, the country’s first African American president, says an American analyst.
Abayomi Azikiwe, an editor at the Pan-African News Wire, made the remarks in reaction to reports that the number of attacks carried out by white supremacists and right-wing extremists in the United States has grown significantly over the past decade.
The report, published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington-based think tank, also found that these attacks doubled in the US from 2016 to 2017.
From 2007 to 2011, right-wing extremists committed five or fewer attacks per year. In 2012, that number rose to 14 and continued at a similar level through 2016. But the number jumped to 31 in 2017, the CSIS report said.
Azikiwe said while the issue has a long history, it received a boost during Obama’s terms in the White House and then grew out of control following Trump’s racist presidential campaign.
“Part of it has to do with the growing numbers of people of color inside the United States and it also has a lot to do with the fact that many black people feel marginalized by the new economy,” Azikiwe said.
The analyst pointed to an upsurge in white supremacist tendencies under Obama, which was then exploited by Trump to win more support in the 2016 presidential elections.
“His whole campaign was to stoke fear against Mexicans, against all migrants and refugees… all people of color and he has done that to build a political base,” he said.
Azikiwe said hate crimes against minorities were on the rise because of the Trump administration’s racist policies, an issue that he said needed immediate response from the new Congress, when it reconvenes in January.
There were 65 terror attacks in 2017 in the US and right-leaning extremists carried out 37 of those, according to the Global Terrorism Database at the University of Maryland.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released statistics last week showing a dramatic rise in hate crimes for the third consecutive year in 2017.
The FBI’s annual report revealed that there were a total of 7,175 cases of hate crimes last year, up from 6,121 in 2016, with more incidents motivated by racial, ethnic and religious bias than in previous years.
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