Meet the shock troops of Trump’s America https://t.co/haH18LN9xO pic.twitter.com/5YESy0Pz8J
— Raw Story (@RawStory) June 18, 2016
The Portland State University Students for Trump gathered on a Friday afternoon in June on the downtown campus to build a replica of “the great wall of Trump.” The wall was four pieces of plywood painted to look like red bricks, and plastered with a black “T” and photocopies of Trump’s head. The Facebook post for the event announced, “Mexico and Black Lives Matter are going to need help paying for the wall so we’ll be holding a collection.”…. The wall was propped against a concrete ledge in a grassy mall that cuts through the campus. The dozen or so participants were all white, all male but one, and from the late teens to early 30s. They spent hours milling about, taking selfies, confronting lone protesters and angry passersby, all under the watch of campus police and left-wing activists videoing them. Sam Hyde, 20, a computer science major at PSU said, “The wall fell apart, it’s wobbly. If Donald Trump hires us to build the wall, it’s a lost cause.”
Portland has a well-deserved and not altogether inaccurate reputation as a place friendly to Progressive values. That’s not to say that Conservative viewpoints across the spectrum can’t be found here. Recent history has bestowed upon Puddletown some folks with some truly hateful, loathsome values. The fine, upstanding intellectual and moral stalwarts at PSU who support Donald Trump are merely the latest iteration of a strain of crazy, intellectually and morally challenged souls unafraid to reveal themselves as haters and bigots.
Most college campuses tend to be friendlier to more left-leaning causes and ideologies. Free speech rights being what they are, there are the occasional College Republican sorts who decide that the way to draw attention to their cause is to be outrageous, offensive, and/or just plain stupid. Portland State University Students for Trump have managed to hit the trifecta of ill-considered disdain for those unfortunate enough not to be born White, Conservative, and Christian.
What’s frightening is that as a society we like to think of college students being the best and brightest, the people who will lead America into the future. In the case of Portland State University Students for Trump, what we have is good reason to be scared sh-tless for that future. No, they’re not wearing brown shirts or spray-painting “JUDEN RAUS!!!” on Jewish-owned businesses, but it doesn’t take much imagination to envision engaging in the modern-day equivalent. They believe America ipso facto belong to Conservative White Christian males like themselves, and they don’t much care whose rights they trample to get what they believe to be their due. Anyone familiar with fascist Italy or Nazi Germany will no doubt recognize, and be greatly disturbed by- the similarities.
Others also talked of political power in sexual terms. Timmy Matlock, 24, a high-school dropout who claims to work in security in Europe and Asia, said “I don’t give a f*ck about the wall” but supported the movement behind Trump. “It’s ending 30 years of cuckoldry the country has been subjected to, with the United States capitulating to the Saudis, Europe, and NAFTA. Our move away from American nationalism is going to cripple us economically and socially in the end.” A reporter present labeled them “angry nerds” and added that Matlock was around the Bundy militia occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Eastern Oregon in January.
Mama must be SO proud, eh?
Matlock’s t-shirt is indicative of the general disdain for democracy and fair play prevailing amongst members of Portland State University Students for Trump. I worked and lived in Kosovo during the conflict there, so I think I can speak to this atrocity with some authority. The idea that “Kosovo is Serbia” is a thoroughly offensive nod to the murderous regime of Slobodan Milosevic, which, despite Kosovo’s 80% Albanian majority, forcefully kept the province under its thumb.
It’s not much of a stretch to believe that anyone who looks favorably upon Milosevic and/or Vladimir Putin is not someone with a predilection for advancing American-style democracy. It’s more than likely they’d be perfectly willing to destroy anyone who stands in the way of keeping America in the hands of its “rightful” owners.
Lest you begin to think that Portland State University Students for Trump are deeply and incontrovertibly committed to democracy, freedom, and liberty, rest assured their commitment extends only as far as their own self-interest. They’re almost uniformly racist, sexist, misogynistic, and intolerant of anyone whose outlook doesn’t dovetail with their worldview.
After the first meeting of the Students for Trump was confronted by nearly a hundred protesters, including Black Lives Matter, in April, Duffy appeared on Infowars, where the conversation focused on how the left is oppressing whites and the right with “cultural Marxism” and “neo-segregation.” Duffy said many on the right are “afraid of being called a racist.” But with Trump supporters “that doesn’t affect us. It bounces right off of us. … We don’t apologize for being white. We don’t apologize for being a man.”
Not only are they not afraid to own up to those things, they wear those epithets a badge of pride. They celebrate their willingness to elevate themselves and their own interests over those of people and groups they disdain as “less than.” They invite your disdain, and indeed even revel in it…perhaps because in their minds being despised is preferable to being ignored.
The Students for Trump members are children of the Internet and molded by raw ideology. They find each other online, have a megaphone in Infowars and Breitbart.com, are versed in alt-right memes, and some cruise dark digital recesses like subreddits that are “a worse black hole of violent racism than Stormfront,” and 4chan, notorious as an incubator of violent misogyny. Some in Students for Trump delight in spreading the 14/88 meme, too. The former refers to the 14-word-long white supremacist slogan, “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children,” the latter is code for “Heil Hitler” as H is the eighth letter of the alphabet.
If Donald Trump becomes President, these are going to be the people who believe the world is theirs and that anyone unwilling to fall into line should be treated harshly and with dispatch. Though they will prattle on at come considerable length about democracy, freedom, and liberty, the truth is their style is more Mussolini than Jefferson.
This sort of ideological underground isn’t particularly new; fascists and other assorted advocates for intolerance and hatred have been part of the American electorate since Day One. Donald Trump has simply allowed them to feel legitimate, as if they and only they represent a New World Order. The 1st Amendment, which allows trolls the same right to express themselves as anyone else. Freedom of speech can be, and very often is, offensive, objectionable, and anti-democratic speech.
That doesn’t students at PSU have to stand by idly as Portland State University Students for Trump spreads their ugliness, but neither do they have a right to shut them down. No matter how arrogant, cocksure, and thoroughly objectionable the Portland State University Students for Trump trolls may be, they have the same right to express themselves as the more tolerant and reasonable majority.
Yes, democracy can be and often is messy, ugly, and distasteful, but as Churchill once said, it’s the worst system of government except for every other one out there.
