Concerned About 'Identity Extremists?' There's One in the White House

By Steven W. Thrasher, Guardian UK

23 October 17

The FBI claims to be worried about ‘premeditated, retaliatory lethal violence’ from protest groups. What about the danger posed by the president?

ight now in the United States, there is the threat (and actuality) of racial identity extremism leading to extreme violence. But it is not coming from the so-called “black identity extremists”, an absurd made-up term Trump’s FBI has created to whip up hysteria about black people.

The FBI claims to be worried that “Black Identity Extremist (BIE) perceptions of police brutality against African Americans spurred an increase in premeditated, retaliatory lethal violence against law enforcement and will very likely serve as justification for such violence.” This is just hyperbolic speculation from the US government meant to undermine the movement – just as the FBI tried to undermine Martin Luther King and the Black Panthers decades ago.

The real threat of racial extremism is coming from the White Identity Extremist-in-Chief in the White House – and his name is Donald Trump.

The so-called “black identity extremists” are no threat to democracy. Like the Panthers, MLK, Malcolm X, Fannie Lou Hamer, and so many other black people in the mid-20th century, the brave Black Lives Matter organizers and street protesters in St Louis, Baltimore and elsewhere being called “black identity extremists” are being unfairly maligned.

Instead of a danger to society, these groups are standing up to increasing economic racial violence, the routine killing of black people by police, and gross miscarriages of justice – such as when white supremacists in Charlottesville who beat up black people were allowed to go free while two black men trying to defend their very lives were arrested.

If you want to see seething racial animus that is causing actual racial violence and terrorism in the world, look no further than the White Identity Extremist-in-Chief. who routinely uses his bully pulpit to bully people of color while defending white nationalism.

The White Identity Extremist-in-Chief cut funds for fighting rightwing white nationalist groups, just weeks before white supremacists gathered to riot in Charlottesville, leading to the killing of one woman and the death of two police officers on duty. He further gave these white nationalists succor by saying there were “some very fine people” among them.

As she tried to keep her city from sliding into starvation, the White Identity Extremist-in-Chief beat up the mayor of San Juan on Twitter. And, after pledging to help Texas and Florida for the long haul in their hurricane recovery efforts, Trump tweeted that he won’t help Puerto “forever”. When so much of the island is still without power and water, this puts countless lives at risk.

The White Identity Extremist-in-Chief is beating up on the free speech rights of black men in the NFL like Colin Kaepernick – who have valiantly taken a knee to protest police killings – and on black women like Jemele Hill, who has been suspended from her job as a sports anchor. The White Identity Extremist-in-Chief’s message is clear to black Americans: use your first amendment right to speak out against injustice and you will be destroyed.

The White Identity Extremist-in-Chief told police officers that, when they are arresting suspects who have been legally convicted of nothing, “When you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddywagon, you just see them thrown in, rough, I said, ‘Please don’t be too nice.’”

He routinely threatens to “totally destroy” all North Koreans. And he’s now using hundreds of thousands of young “Dreamers” as a bargaining chip to try to get his racist, unnecessary and divisive border wall built.

But like many manifestations of white supremacy, the White Identity Extremist-in-Chief is stoking white resentment with actions that will actually harm poor white people while consolidating money and power for rich white people.

His desperate plot to destroy Obamacare by any means necessary – just so he can dismantle the legacy of the black president he believed was Kenyan – will harm the white people in the states that voted for Trump.

His denial of freedom of expression to Jemele Hill will harm white journalists, too. White people need to drink the water and breathe the air that his administration is polluting. He will say and do nothing about a white man trying to bomb an airport. And the poll taxes and felony disenfranchisement policies his party promotes, aimed at limiting black electoral power, affect white people from Wisconsin to Alabama.

So whenever you hear about the so-called “black identity extremists”, remember they are the ones trying to save the world from the megalomaniac White Identity Extremist-in-Chief. who is hellbent on turning the US and the world into an authoritarian, unlivable, nuclear wasteland.