Francois Ntone

Hate Groups – KKK Cross Burning, by John Bazemore / AP

Apparent Affinity Between Trump and Groups Promoting Hate and Extremism

Southern Poverty Law Center has been tracking hate and extremism in America for a long time.  In the 2017 Spring Issue of SPLC’s Intelligence Report, Mark Potok provides an enlightening report on recent advances made by the radical right in recent history.  He states the following:

“After half a century of being increasingly relegated to the margins of society, the radical right entered the political mainstream last year in a way that had seemed virtually unimaginable since George Wallace ran for president in 1968.”

Potok then links this rise in the radical right to Trump’s successful campaign for the presidency of the United States:

“A surge in right-wing populism, stemming from the long-unfolding effects of globalization and the movements of capital and labor that it spawned, brought a man many considered to be a racist, misogynist and xenophobe into the most powerful political office in the world. Donald Trump’s election as president mirrored similar currents in Europe, where globalization energized an array of extreme-right political movements and the United Kingdom’s decision to quit the European Union.”

The link between Trump and the radical right is established because of his actions, the warm support expressed by hate groups for his campaign, and the choices he made in setting up his administration after his victory.

Anybody who followed the presidential campaign knows that Trump made derogatory comments towards Mexican immigrants, calling them rapists and drug dealers.  Here is a sample of his comments:

“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

Trump retweeted fake statistics from a racist tweeter account implying that blacks committed 81% of all murders of whites in 2015.  He encouraged violence against black demonstrators at his rallies, promising to pay legal fees incurred by perpetrators of such violence.  And of course, he announced that he would ban Muslims from entering the country.

It is well known that Ku Klux Klan leaders such as David Duke expressed their support for Trump during the presidential campaign.  According to Potok, following Trump’s victory, Andrew Anglin, a man who runs a neo-Nazi website called Daily Stormer, wrote: “Our Glorious Leader has ascended to God Emperor”.  Richard Spencer, leader of the racist National Policy Institute, wrote: “Trump’s victory was, at its root, a victory of identity politics”.

The radical right was quite pleased with some of Trumps’ appointments after his victory.  When he made Stephen Bannon chief strategist and senior counselor, Andrew Anglin declared: “Bannon is our man in the White House.”  Prior to his role in the Trump campaign, Bannon had been leading Breitbart News, a far-right media outlet promoting the Alternative Right movement.  Trump also showed his anti-Muslim and anti-LGBT positions by selecting as head of his domestic transition team Kenneth Blackwell from Family Research Council.  Retired General Mike Flynn, Trump’s national security advisor who was later fired because of his questionable ties to Russia and Turkey, is known for his characterization of Islam as a “malignant cancer.”

Rise in Hate Groups in the Trump Era

Potok cites statistics gathered by SPLC, which show that there were 1094 bias incidents in the 34 days after Election Day.  More than a third of the incidents referenced Trump, his “make America great again” slogan, or his “infamous remarks about grabbing women by the genitals.”

The number of hate groups in the USA rose from 892 in 2015 to 917 in 2016.  The number of anti-Muslim hate groups increased from 34 in 2015 to 101 in 2016.  Potok explains this rise as follows:

“Anti-Muslim hate has been expanding rapidly for more than two years now, driven by radical Islamist attacks including the June mass murder of 49 people at an Orlando, Fla., gay nightclub, the unrelenting propaganda of a growing circle of well-paid ideologues, and the incendiary rhetoric of Trump — his threats to ban Muslim immigration, mandate a registry of Muslims in America, and more.“

He also reports that 3 members of a hate group called the Crusaders were arrested last October: they had planned to blow up, the day after Election Day, an apartment complex in Kansas where 120 Somali Muslims lived.

On the other hand, as reported by Potok, the Patriot groups, which oppose the federal government, accusing it of plotting to take away liberties from the people, have a somewhat different story.  They tend to rise under Democratic administrations, and had seen a decrease under Republican president George W Bush.  In the Obama years, the number of such groups surged from 149 in 2008 to 1360 in 2012 while the nation was led by a black man they suspected of being a “foreign-born Muslim”.  Patriot groups have seen Trump as a leader who supports some of their important issues such as opposition to gun controls and a desire to transfer federal lands to states.  This confidence in Trump has actually led to a decrease in their numbers, as they saw less need for direct activism under his leadership.  From 2015 to 2016, their numbers dropped from 998 to 623, even though they remained quite active on the internet.

Potok also mentions some demographic trends resulting from globalization and leading to long term immigration trends both in Europe and in the US.  As a result, in the US, the proportion of foreign-born residents increased from 4.7% in 1970 to 13.7% in 2015.  This, of course, corresponds to a steady drop in the proportion of non-Hispanic whites:

“While America was about 90% white from the colonial era right up through the early 1960s, it was 62% white by 2015 and predicted by the Census Bureau to fall to under 50% by 2043.“

But the impact of the global economy has also been seen in the transfer overseas of certain economic sectors such as the steel industry and automobile production.  As explained by Potok,

“This has disproportionately affected working- and middle-class whites in the Rust Belt and similar areas, with white suicides and drug overdose deaths hitting new highs. As manufacturing wages have fallen and higher education has become essential to make a living wage, income inequality has risen dramatically since the 1970s.”

These developments had an impact on support received by Trump during the election, as many white voters saw him as their hope for a reversal of the above trends. Many of these voters did not belong to hate groups, and some might even have chosen a Democratic candidate under different circumstances.  Quoting from an analysis published by the New York Times, Potok states that the coalition that carried Trump to the White House included not only conservative Republicans of the South and the West, but also “millions of voters in the onetime heartlands of 20th-century liberal populism — the Upper and Lower Midwest — where white Americans without a college degree voted decisively to reject the more diverse, educated and cosmopolitan Democratic Party of the 21st century.”

Using the Bible to Justify Hate

There has been, and there are still today attempts made by white supremacists and white nationalists to justify hate through pseudo-science.  A recent article by Nicole Hemmer, a Vox columnist, denounces the rise of “scientific racism” on the right, while recognizing that it is nothing new in America.  Hemmer states that the roots of scientific racism go back to “the 19th century, when scientist Samuel George Morton produced works like Crania Americana and Crania Aegyptiaca, in which he assiduously measured skull sizes of members of different races, then correlated those measurements with alleged intelligence.”  In the early 20^th century, the science of eugenics, which focuses on “good genes”, gave the states the rationale they needed to establish “programs of voluntary and involuntary sterilization in order to keep people with low IQs or criminal records from having children.”  Immigration policies were also shaped to restrict immigration to white populations.

In 1994, Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein wrote The Bell Curve, a book that argued that IQ is can be inherited, that low IQ and bad behaviors correlated with race, and that such “facts” needed to be accounted for in policy decisions.  According to this book, poor people were poor as a result of their low intelligence, and low IQ people needed to be discouraged from immigrating and having children.

In 1995, Dinesh D’Souza wrote The End of Racism, which provided additional ammunition to conservative politicians.  According to Hemmer, D’Souza argued in his book “for the supremacy of Western (white) culture, maintaining that problems of high incarceration rates and poverty were caused not by racist institutions but by a corruption at the heart of black society, which he described as ‘self-defeating’ and ‘irresponsible.’”

Needless to say, the ideas expressed in both of the above books are repudiated by most scientists and do not deserve further discussion here.  Instead, I would like to focus on justifications of hate and extremism that rely on the Bible.  Indeed, hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan do not fail to present themselves as Christian groups.  Simply dismissing them as pretenders is not sufficient, as they rely for their claims on interpretations of the Bible that date back to slavery days.  Some of that thinking is still promoted today by the so-called Christian Right, and needs to be vigorously denounced.

A paper written by Larry R. Morrison, The Religious Defense of American Slavery Before 1830, does an excellent job of explaining the arguments made by slave owners to counter accusations made by abolitionists against them.  The pro-slavery arguments are summarized below.

Noah’s Curse

The standard explanation used to justify slavery is Genesis 9:20-27, where Noah, after the flood, pronounces a curse against Canaan:

“Cursed be Canaan!   The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers.  He also said, ‘Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem.  May Canaan be the slave of Shem.  May God extend the territory of Japheth; may Japheth live in the tents of Shem, and may Canaan be his slave.’”

In the story Noah, a farmer, drank some wine from his vineyard, became drunk and lay uncovered in his tent.  One of his sons, Ham, saw his nakedness and told his brothers about it.  His brothers, Shem and Japheth, on the other hand, walked in backward and covered their father’s nakedness without seeing it.  This incident leads to Noah’s curse which, surprisingly, is pronounced against Ham’s son Canaan instead of Ham himself.

One might argue that the curse provided a justification for later occupation of Canaan by Israel, since Genesis 15:16 suggests that the Canaanites’ sin is to reach its full measure by the time the Israelites return to the Promised Land.  In other words, the Canaanites were so wicked they did not deserve the Land promised by God to the Israelites.  However, the pro-slavery side went out of its way to promote the idea that Canaan was the ancestor of black people who therefore were under Noah’s curse.  They also argued that Noah’s curse had to be a divine curse since Noah would have had no way of knowing, on his own, the future of his wicked Canaanite descendants.

Ironically, of the four sons of Ham listed in Genesis 10:6, Cush, Mizraim and Put are the ones identified with northern Africa,  while Canaan is obviously seen as the ancestor of the Canaanites who were Caucasian.  This is clearly seen in the map below, taken from the NIV Study Bible.  In other words, this unassailable proof that slavery was ordained by God is based on either a mistake by ignorant interpreters of the Bible or a lie promoted by evil people in pursuit of their economic interests at the expense of an entire race.  I am reminded that Jesus said it is extremely difficult for rich people (i.e. those whose focus in life is the pursuit of material wealth) to enter the kingdom of God.

Table of Nations in Noah’s Day

Divine Sanction in Mosaic Law

According to Morrison, a biblical passage quoted even more than Noah’s curse of Canaan was Leviticus 25:44-46 which is reproduced here:

“Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves.  You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property.  You can will them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly.”

To slave owners, this passage was obviously the ultimate justification of slavery.  God himself had allowed the Israelites to buy slaves, treat them as property and pass them on as inheritance forever.  To some, in fact, any suggestion that slavery was evil clearly stood in opposition to God’s will.  Their argument carried even more weight when they reinforced it with Genesis 17:12-13, which says

“For the generations to come every male among you who is eight years old must be circumcised, including those born in your household or bought with money from a foreigner – those who are not your offspring.  Whether born in your household or bought with your money, they must be circumcised.  My covenant in your flesh is to be an everlasting covenant.”

This passage is part of the Abrahamic covenant of circumcision.  The fact that it made provisions for people “bought with money” was music to the ears of slave owners.  Furthermore Abraham, the man of faith, was presented as the ultimate example of a slave owner:

“And every male in Abraham’s household, including those born in his household or bought from a foreigner, was circumcised with him.” (Genesis 17:27)

However, the appeal to the Law of Moses to defend slavery fails to recognize some fundamental facts.  Moses intended Israel to be a kingdom of priests of Yahweh (Exodus 19:5).  Given that the Israelites had been slaves in Egypt, Moses intended to prevent slavery from taking hold in God’s kingdom of priests.  Here are a few passages from Leviticus making this point:

“If a man is caught kidnapping one of his brother Israelites and treats him as a slave or sells him, the kidnapper must die. You must purge the evil from among you” (Deuteronomy 24:7, see also Exodus 21:16).

“If one of your countrymen becomes poor among you and sells himself to you, do not make him work as a slave. He is to be treated as a hired worker or a temporary resident among you; he is to work for you until the Year of Jubilee. Then he and his children are to be released, and he will go back to his own clan and to the property of his forefathers. Because the Israelites are my servants, whom I brought out of Egypt, they must not be sold as slaves. Do not rule over them ruthlessly, but fear your God.” (Leviticus 25:39-43)

In other words, the idea that one of God’s people would become a slave was not tolerated by God.  Foreigners could be slaves because their wickedness was taken for granted.  Of course, if one assumes that the rules in ancient Israel are permanent divine mandates that are still applicable today, and if one accepts the (erroneous) assumption that black people are cursed by God, then it makes perfect sense to combine those two ideas and say that slavery should not be questioned by Christians.  I will return later to the assumption that the Old Testament provides permanent divine mandates.

The Pauline Mandate

Surprisingly, southerners also used Paul’s Epistle to Philemon as proof that slavery was biblically justified.  In this epistle, Onesimus is a slave owned by Philemon who is a Christian.  Onesimus runs away and is converted to Christianity by Paul in Rome.  Slave owners in America argued that his conversion meant nothing since he was returned by Paul to his master.  The use of this story to defend slavery is surprising because the epistle is actually a clear statement of Paul’s anti-slavery position. Paul wants Philemon to do the right thing on his own, as one who understands what it means to follow Christ:

“Therefore, although in Christ I could be bold and order you to do what you ought to, yet I appeal to you on the basis of love.” (Philemon 1:6)

Paul, who is in prison at the time he writes, then states what he considers as the correct expectation for a Christian, something that he assumes Philemon already knows:

“I am sending him – who is my very heart – back to you.  I would have liked to keep him with me so that he could take your place in helping me while I am in chains for the gospel.  But I did not want to do anything without your consent, so that any favor you do will be spontaneous and not forced.  Perhaps the reason he was separated from you for a little while was that you might have him back for good – no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother.  He is very dear to me but even dearer to you, both as a man and as a brother in the Lord.”

Paul is obviously saying that slavery cannot be consistent with Christian brotherhood, and he is encouraging Philemon to act like a true Christian would.  How can anybody use this material to defend slavery?  But slave owners did just that.  Should I repeat Jesus’ statement about the rich here?

According to Morrison, the above three biblical passages provided the foundation for the defense of slavery.  Many additional passages were often quoted to provide further support.  The thought that Abraham was a slave owner was one of the favorite reminders that God, who called himself the God of Abraham, sanctioned slavery, and that opposing it amounted to opposing God.

Slavery advocates referred to Exodus 21:20-21 which states that a slave is a man’s property, and implies that killing a slave is not a capital offense. They also claimed that while the Old Testament has statements that support slavery, it has no statements against slavery.  This argument was also extended to the New Testament.  For example, they quoted Matthew 5:17, which states that Jesus did not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it, as proof that Jesus silently endorsed slavery.  Note that I have, in a previous article, shown that the assumption that Jesus fully endorsed the Law of Moses is faulty and misrepresents Matthew’s gospel.  But slave owners promoted the strange idea that even the golden rule could not be used against slavery: to them, it only meant that a slave owner should treat a slave as he would want to be treated if he were a slave.  In other words, slavery had been explicitly sanctioned by words found in the Bible and, therefore, fell outside of ethical considerations covered by the golden rule.

Slavery defenders argued that Jesus knew about slavery under the Roman Empire, but said nothing to repudiate it.  Instead, he said “render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s”.  This of course disregards the fact that Jesus was specifically talking about paying taxes to the Romans, not slavery.  But they also argued that the New Testament, as seen in the teaching of both Paul and Peter, generally did not condemn slavery, but instead, urged slaves to obey both good and bad masters.  Passages that urged submission to masters were particularly dear to slave owners who used them constantly to discourage slaves from running away.

Why Slavery Is Unacceptable in the Kingdom of God

In the debate opposing abolitionists to slavery defenders, abolitionists appealed to the spirit of Christianity, while the other side referred to specific laws and statements from the Old Testament and from the Bible in general.  Slavery advocates therefore claimed they had the upper hand because they were quoting scriptural passages that specifically referred to slavery, white abolitionists were making more general statements that could not be supported by direct scriptural references.  This approach relies, to a great extent, on certain assumptions that are made about Bible interpretation.  Morrison lists five propositions put forth by slavery defenders about how to read the Bible:

“That the volume of sacred writings commonly called the bible, comprehending the old and new Testaments, contains the unerring decisions of the word of God”

“That these decisions are of equal authority in both testaments, and that this authority is the essential veracity of God, who is truth itself.”

“That since there can be no prescription against the authority of God, what ever is declared in any part of the holy bible to be lawful or illicit, must be essentially so in its own nature, however repugnant such declaration may be to the current opinions of men during any period of time.”

“That as the supreme lawgiver and judge of man, God is infinitely just and wise in all decisions, and is essentially irresponsible for the reasons of his conduct in the moral government of the world—so it is culpably audacious in us to question the rectitude of any of those decisions—merely because we do not apprehend the inscrutable principles of such wisdom and justice.”

“That if one, or more decisions of the written word of God, sanction the rectitude of any human acquisitions, for instance, the acquisition of a servant by inheritance or purchase, whoever believes that the written word of God is verity itself, must consequently believe in the absolute rectitude of slave-holding.”

These propositions are based on a very literal interpretation of the Bible and on the assumption of Bible inerrancy, ideas that were central tenets of fundamentalism at its beginning. They are meant to intimidate dissenters by suggesting that such dissenters are questioning words that came out of God’s own mouth.  I discussed these ideas in a previous post.  In particular, I explained why I reject as false teaching the assumption that all parts of the Bible are equally relevant.  No true Christian can claim that Moses’ teaching is equal to Jesus’ teaching.  Unfortunately, these assumptions are still used today to mislead people and promote bigotry.  They must be unequivocally denounced.

In my review of the conclusions from SPLC earlier in this post, I mentioned the Family Research Council as a group that has promoted anti-Muslim and anti-LGBT positions.  Such groups promote a view of the Bible that agrees quite well with the propositions listed above.  To illustrate this fact, I quote from an article by Rob Schwarzwalder that can be found in the FRC website:

“Self-described “Red Letter” Christians tend to give the words of Jesus greater weight than those of Moses or Paul.”

I suppose by “Red Letter” Schwarzwalder is referring to the fact that Bible translations often highlight Jesus’ words in red to make them stand out.  In his article, Schwarzwalder was writing to warn against “low views” of the Bible that are theologically inadequate and lead to harmful public policy.  The article is anti-LGBT and strongly criticizes former president Obama for promoting views of the Bible that place some parts of Scripture above others.  Schwarzwalder then proceeds to give what he sees as the proper grounding for biblical interpretation, relying on theological jargon that may seem intimidating to his audience.

With the above statement, Schwarzwalder is promoting the idea that words attributed to Moses, Jesus and Paul are all equally authoritative.  In reality, a true Christian should consider such a suggestion as blasphemous.  To Christians, Jesus is the Son of God, and Moses and Paul are not.  Paul’s theology implies that the Jews were under the Law of Moses before Christ, but that everybody (Jews and Gentiles) is now under a new regime which he calls justification by grace through faith.  Moses was telling the Israelites that their survival was dependent on their obedience of the covenant between them and their God.  But according to Paul,

“But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known to which the Law and the Prophets testify.  This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.” (Romans 3:21-22)

To Paul, the Law (which the Jews were under) and the Prophets pointed to the righteousness brought by Christ.  Romans 4 points to the fact that Abraham was already under that regime since he lived before the Law of Moses was established, and was justified by faith, not by the works of the Law.  Furthermore, this evolution in Paul’s theology came from his recognition that the Abrahamic covenant of circumcision, previously a requirement for the people of God, could not legitimately be imposed on the Gentiles.

In Galatians 5:1, Paul says “It is for freedom that Christ has set you free.  Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.”  The slavery he is referring to is slavery to the law, a return to the circumcision requirement.

The author of the book of Hebrews states that “Jesus has been found worthy of greater honor than Moses, just as the builder of a house is worthy of greater honor than the house itself.” (Hebrews 3:3)  He then adds: “Moses was faithful as a servant in all God’s house, testifying to what would be said in the future.  But Christ is faithful as a son over God’s house.  And we are his house, if we hold on to our courage and the hope of which we boast.” (Hebrews 3:5-6)

If we are part of God’s house ruled by the Son, why would we want to turn back to the servant Moses for guidance? As for Paul, he saw himself as one sent by Christ and was highly disappointed that believers in Corinth boasted about following him or Apollos, given that only Christ mattered (1 Corinthians 1:10-17).  He was the first Christian writer to describe Jesus as God incarnate (Philippians 2:6-11) and certainly considered Jesus’ commands as more authoritative than his own, which is why he is careful to distinguish between the two in 1 Corinthians 7:10-12.

Clearly the assumption that all parts of the Bible must be given equal weight goes against the spirit of the Bible itself.  If the punishments prescribed in Leviticus 20 are permanent mandates from God, then Christians owe it to their God to put to death all who commit adultery, engage in same sex acts, in prostitution, etc.  Clearly some “Christians” actually feel that way.  But they are major contributors to the kind of thinking that leads to evil in the world.

The abolitionists had the right answer when they proclaimed that slavery violated the spirit of Christianity.  Jesus taught about the kingdom of God, a realm within which the poor and the oppressed are elevated, while the rich and powerful are brought low.  In Jesus’ kingdom, slave owners who maintained their status by oppressing the poor and the powerless simply had no place.

When Jesus says that the golden rule sums up the Law and the Prophets, he is also saying that a guiding principle must now replace the rules and regulations listed in the Law of Moses.  Along the same line, Paul says:

“The commandments, ‘Do not commit adultery,’ ‘Do not murder,’ ‘Do not steal,’ ‘Do not covet,’ and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’  Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.” (Romans 13:9-10)

I doubt very much that anybody who loves his neighbor would want to turn him into a slave.  I doubt very much that anybody who loves his neighbor would want to harm him, or burn his place of worship, or chase him out of a neighborhood.  When Jesus is asked who is one’s neighbor, he points to the Good Samaritan, a man despised by the Jewish religious establishment who ends up being the one who lives by the rules of the kingdom of God.

In closing, I will say that the debate related to Bible interpretation continues.  It is not a matter of opinion: one side is absolutely wrong.  That is actually quite obvious because one does not need a doctoral thesis to understand Jesus’ basic teaching.  The problem is that some Christians want to use Jesus as a tool for salvation while their relentless pursuit of material wealth generates inequities in the world.  They then want to rely on military power to protect their way of life.  They will therefore inevitably oppose the very principles that are the foundation of Jesus’ kingdom of God: caring for the poor, peace, love and forgiveness.  They will then construct elaborate doctrines in order to circumvent Jesus.  But the Bible always says that God’s people are recognized by the fruit they produce.  As I pointed out before, the Southern Baptists, to their credit, repented in 1995 from their support of slavery.  That in itself is proof that the propositions about Bible interpretation they had previously used to support slavery and hate were wrong.  Indeed long before the the days of slavery in America, Paul’s words, which they apparently only discovered in 1995, were already in the Bible:

“You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.  There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:26-28)