The Republican Party is running in two directions at the same time.
Electorally speaking, the modern GOP has never been so diverse. Each of the past two elections, and the most available 2024 polling, reveals the GOP is making real inroads with black and (especially) Latino voters. These gains shouldn’t be overstated — Democrats still dominate among non-whites overall — but they are real.
But at the elite level, conservative intellectuals and operatives are developing a new doctrine of white identity politics. And it’s already shaping the Trump administration’s plans for a second term.
“Anti-White Racism” is a new book – Vulnerable classJeremy Karl, a colleague at the Claremont Institute—illustrates this trend.
Its April release was unknown outside conservative circles, but it received appreciative attention among them. Tucker Carlson praised it as “outstanding”; Top activist Chris Ruffo described it as a “must read”. Nate Hochman, a former speechwriter for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, calls it “The most important thing you read this year“Carl got a friendly interview Donald Trump Jr.’s web show And then Fox News during primetime.
Carl’s book centers on the claim that “anti-white racism is the most prominent and politically powerful form of racism in America today.” What mainstream scholars of race call “white privilege” is, in his view, a series of “informal alienating cultural legacies.” In contrast, anti-white discrimination was “increasingly legal and formal.”
This inequality, for Karl, is primarily the product of a pernicious ideology popular among elites (white and white alike). “Anti-white racism is the all-but-official ideology of our ruling regime,” he wrote — and they have served to ensure that whites increasingly move to the bottom of America’s social hierarchy.
Karl’s arguments for this view resemble a funhouse mirror version of American racial history: almost the same series of events, but the roles of victim and perpetrator are reversed.
Everyone agrees, for example, that the integration of American cities drove white people to the suburbs and other remote areas. Traditionally, Historian And Social scientists Look at this as a manifestation of white racism: either white urbanites worry about the effect of integration on property values or they dislike living near black people. The flight of white wealth then deprives black people and neighborhoods of high-quality public services, recreating segregation on a de facto basis.
But Karl argues that white flight can more accurately be described as a response to anti-white racism. He claims that integration brings crime, often involving minority criminals targeting longtime white residents (source information on “transnational murder” on Carl’s anonymous Twitter account @fantasy). The situation was so dangerous for whites, Karl argued, that it was akin to state-sanctioned mob attacks on Jews in Czarist Russia.
“Anti-white crime works in the 21st century actually Harassment, the expulsion of whites from areas where they have lived for decades,” he wrote.
Carl’s version of white identity politics is hardly alien to the intellectual right. He cites two other prominent books, by New York Times Contributor Christopher Caldwell And Think Tanker Richard Hanania, to argue that the legal roots of anti-white racism were created by the legal victories of the civil rights movement. Their accounts align with the idea that basic frameworks of anti-discrimination protections—including the Civil Rights Act of 1965—need to be overhauled or repealed entirely.
Of course, conservatives have complained about “reverse racism” for decades. What’s new is not the aggressiveness of the demands of Carl and others like them, but their direct connection to radical policy proposals — and the people in positions of power seem to be listening.
in April, Axios’ Alex Thompson reports That “close allies of Trump” are planning a second term overhaul of anti-discrimination laws, which would “dramatically change the government’s interpretation of civil rights-era laws to focus on ‘anti-white racism’ rather than discrimination against people of color.”
Much of that work, according to Thompson, is coming out of America First Legal — the law practice of notorious Trump associate Stephen Miller. Since leaving the government, Miller has filed several lawsuits alleging anti-white discrimination. Examples included The lawsuit against the NFL’s “Rooney Rule“That would require teams to interview minority candidates for some high-level coaching positions, as well as a successful bid to block pandemic aid. For women- and minority-owned restaurants.
Miller is poised to play a key role in the second Trump administration. Trump’s former attorney Ty Cobb said guardian “Trump is looking to Miller” in choosing White House lawyers and Justice Department officials. With such power, Miller’s attempt to write white identity politics into law could succeed next year.
