Amid Epstein Chaos, Trump Turns to Football to Distract and Dehumanize

While Donald Trump’s disciples are increasingly formal reasons why their cult leader is certainly not a pederasty, our authoritarian president is desperately responsible for distractions of the press cycle. Now Trump goes with it: “Do not think of me sexually exploiting children with Jeffrey Epstein. Instead, remember to make racist football again.”

Trump published a particularly toxic tweet on Monday, which I will not quote in full due to its use of a racist insult. In this document, Trump called for the Washington commanding team football team to return to their previous name, The R * DSKINS, a derogatory term that indigenous Americans have spent decades trying to change. Trump threatened from preventing DC municipal council from using more than a billion dollars of local public funds to build a new stadium unless the name returns to this insult defined by the dictionary.

Trump also wrongly says that Aboriginal peoples like the racist name of the old team. In fact, the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) as well as dozens of tribal advice called to change. This is a request that dates back at least to the American Indian movement, which was launched in 1968.

Yes, Trump’s tweet is supposed to be a distraction of his alleged attraction for children. Yes, this decision adapts to contempt and racism that he has long shown towards indigenous peoples. But that’s not all. This power game strengthens Trump’s agenda to end the rule at home at DC, which he argued by fueling crime hysteria and nourishing racism.

It is also a sop for the billionaire backer Dan Snyder. The almost universally hated Snyder was forced to sell the Washington football team after the accusations that the cheerleaders had been sexually treated and to be a sweaty about the women he used. (Regarding his friendships, Trump certainly has a guy.) Even other NFL owners could not bear Snyder, perhaps because he hired private investigators to collect “dirt” in case they have tried to force him to go out. It was a bridge too far: Snyder could be a human trash, the owners’ message was, but do not hack our research stories. In a final humiliation, the racist Bellumally Snyder had to announce that the name R * dskins that he adored and defended so well. But it was not decades of indigenous activism that moved it. These are sponsors – in particular Fedex, who held the names of name on his PG county stadium – who told him in 2020 following the murder of the police of George Floyd that they no longer wanted to be in the racism sector. (If you want to know the story of how the most racist owner in the history of the NFL, George Preston Marshall, spoke of the name “R * dskins”, read here.)

But this push to change the name into an insult is not only to create a distraction. This is dehumanization. At the heart of the Trump agenda is the rehabilitation of violent white supremacy as a national principle. The only way to justify the sick, smiling and joyful torture of brown and black immigrants is to dehumanize them in the eyes of the origin. The masked gestapo and without a racial profiling mandate known as the ice has even stopped indigenous peoples in the raids “immigration”, holding them “accidentally” and “indefinitely”. Turning this racist brand image to the powerful NFL – a league whose leader without spin Roger Goodell seems physically unable to resist Trump – facilitates this program.

The name change would also help to erase the way in which the manifestations of George Floyd 2020 have pushed the power of the company to reassess their own racist practices. Trump’s disciples want to eradicate any legacy of the biggest manifestations in the history of the United States and the efforts of the movement to dismantle institutionalized racism.

In the big local symbol of this, Trump (with the voluntary participation of the mayor of Michael Bloomberg Acolyte DC Muriel Bowser) brought out of Black Lives Match Plaza out of existence. Calling for a Renaissance R * DSKINS is an obvious next step. The White House wants its base to believe that by humiliating brown immigrants, we can return to a fantasy of the 1950s. It is a fascist fan fiction.

Trump brace’s diatribe also the real debate on the stadium. The plan put forward by the mayor with the owner of the Josh Harris team, who can afford his fucking stadium, is a terrible affair for Washington, DC. All football stadiums built with public funds are scams: politicians send billions for structures that economic studies show do not provide a return on investment and hunger for social security. But even according to NFL standards, this boondoggy is horrible. As Charles Allen, a member of the DC Council, said, “in refined financial terms, at a time when the district faces a recession and tens of thousands of workers lose their jobs, this proposal asks DC residents to pay more than $ 4 million for each home game for the next 30 years, a proposal that does not even include funding for an expansion of the Metro Station.

If it is built, this stadium will accelerate the trip and gentrification, injuring residents of the neighborhood who could never afford $ 400 of tickets to go to a match. The Liberals Pro-Stadium will welcome a fight on the name of the team (a fight, I bet, they would go if the push came to push) instead of knowing if it is worth being built.

All this indicates the need for an anti -fascist left which not only resists the revanchist racism of Trump, but also favors the economic needs of workers – an anti -fascist left which will not excuse or ignore the sexual exploitation of children.