Racism has seeped back into mainstream politics

“What’s your ethnicity?” Kellyanne Conway barked at a reporter on the lawn of the White House this week. President Donald Trump’s counselor, a pugnacious battleaxe who is no stranger to controversy in Washington, shocked onlookers as she attempted to ask Andrew Feinberg about his origins in an effort to gauge his politics.

There is no doubt that political parties and institutions have long ignored vast sections of the electorate, and that these forgotten masses have been adopted by the forces of nationalism. The issue, however, is that the increasingly nationalist rhetoric is taking on an overwhelmingly divisive — and at times racist — tone.

Recent events in Washington displayed a barely veiled racism that cannot be allowed to occupy the political mainstream.

Trump’s racist jab at four Democratic congresswomen, when he suggested they “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places that they came from,” was a surprise, and not a pleasant one. The president — already mired in controversy over his treatment of women, allegations of discrepancies in his campaign, and his infamous business dealings — has opened up a new front, creating more consternation among Democrats bent on his impeachment.

There is no doubt that even in a White House where fact-checking is merely a formality and the truth is a fanciful enterprise that only other elected officials are expected to respect, the president’s remarks concerning those four women of color can only be viewed as one thing: Racist.

Rep. Ilhan Omar has been the center of Trump’s vitriol. The Somali-born Democratic representative is everything the president and his ilk have come to criticize. It was hard for many observers not to feel chills when they watched footage of a Trump rally in North Carolina during which the chant “Send her back! Send her back!” was directed at Omar. The president of the United States looked on, doing nothing to calm the crowd.

This moment, as thousands of people at a presidential rally chanted for a naturalized US citizen and member of Congress to be “sent back” to her native Somalia, chillingly illustrated the particular fusion of racism and authoritarianism that defines Trumpism as a political movement of our times.

The careful blend of bigotry, the anger of an overlooked section of society, and Trump’s increasingly clear authoritarian impulse has encouraged an administration that has lurched from crisis to excess over and over. The Muslim ban, the separation of infants from their families, and a disrespect for US institutions and the rule of law have come to characterize this administration.

In the words of Conway’s target, after decades as a reporter in Washington Feinberg “thought he’d seen it all” — only for the president’s own counselor essentially to question how “American” he really is.

It is important to note that such behavior has been enabled and permitted by the Republican Party, the members of which have, from the outset, shown a willingness to tolerate Trump’s authoritarian white revanchism in exchange for tax cuts — or, worse, actively agree with it.

A troubling xenophobic thread has been present in the Trump administration’s policies, and in the president himself, numerous Republicans and Fox News hosts, who have made it an explicit feature of their rhetoric. The likes of Conway have come to characterize the administration; no stranger to controversy, at as early a stage as the president’s inauguration ball, she punched a fellow guest.

The decorum and quality of the professionals occupying the White House have been in question throughout Trump’s term. That the administration has had a handful of press secretaries and communications directors come and go in three years is a reflection of the media scandals they have repeatedly, and unsuccessfully, had to deal with.

When Trump convened his Cabinet in the White House after his comments about the four congresswomen, the first to speak after him was Ben Carson, the secretary of housing and urban development. The only African American member of a Cabinet in which gushing praise of the president has become the norm, Carson outdid his colleagues. The once-celebrated brain surgeon lauded Trump, assuring him he was carrying out God’s work, no less, and thanking him for his “incredible courage...stamina and resilience from unwithering criticism, unfair criticism, all the time.”

The episode stunned the media and illustrated how this president is completely above scrutiny.

As such scandals continue to draw the attention of the public, more importantly they illustrate the increasing disregard for any need to adhere to the liberal theory of law or, indeed, the principle of the office of the president itself as a neutral protector of freedoms. Replaced with the “send her back” theory of law, it becomes increasingly clear that the real purpose of holding legal power is now to defeat your enemies.

This anti-democratic theory has been encouraged at Trump rallies for years. A man who openly mused about prosecuting Clinton during his 2016 election campaign, encouraging chants of “lock her up,” he has projected his views onto an entire apparatus of leading elected officials, allies in the conservative media and public servants too timid to oppose him.

It remains to be seen what further actions Trump will take along these lines during the run-up to the 2020 presidential election. However, these scandals and his flagrant disregard for basic values of respect and common decency threaten to have long-term consequences for democracy.

The “send her home” litany has captured people’s attention — it must now mobilize efforts to keep such vitriol out of the political mainstream.

• Zaid M. Belbagi is a political commentator, and an adviser to private clients between London and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Twitter: @Moulay_Zaid