Trump's First 100 Days

[Dill]

(02-20-2017, 03:59 PM)hollodero Wrote: Well of course he did it for political reasons to some degree. That fact alone, per se, doesn't make it any less racist. Or, if it was more about the name as you imply, it doesn't make it any less islamophobic.
When a demagogue uses the racial or religious bias of a fan base to rally them up, that is racist/islamophobic behaviour, hence said demagogue is racist/islamophobic. Said demagogue can not excuse himself by saying "I'm not actually a racist, I just used the existing racial (or islamophobic) bias of my supporters to gain political profit. They are the racists, I just benefitted from that, hence my shirt is clean." That is not a reasonable point to make.

Yet, that is exactly what Bfine is arguing. He really seems to the think race charge is way off if a politician is just "using" racism.

Imagine if we found Hitler's lost diaries and discovered that he really thought Jews were ok, and felt kind of bad for killing millions but it was just such an effective way of gaining power, that's all. Would have been happy to kill Czechs if that worked. By Bfine's standards, he would no longer be racist--despite the libtard's eagerness to label him so.

The point missed is that there is already a selective, race-based empathy at work when one represents racism as merely opportunism. A candidate who is ok with ginning up racism to win is making an ethical choice about races and racism.

Can anyone imagine the flip version of this--a racist who would not use racism for gain? What principle would prevent that? Certainly not equality for all under the law.