The Ghosts of American Racism: How Trump’s Presidency Rekindled Division and Authoritarianism
Charlottesville wasn’t just a violent outburst—it was a harbinger. The flames of 2017 lit up more than just torches; they illuminated a chilling resurgence of white supremacy, casting long shadows over the very foundation of American democracy.
The embers of America’s racist past never died. They smoldered beneath the surface for generations, unseen but always present, waiting for a gust of wind or a deliberate hand to fan them into flame. Charlottesville marked one such moment. As white nationalists marched with torches held high, chanting “blood and soil,” the ghosts of America’s racist past rose again, drawn to the silence of the nation’s highest office. From that silence, the old fire reignited, and the embers that had long smoldered beneath the surface burst into open flames.
Trump’s refusal to condemn these marchers was not an isolated moral failure—it was a strategic decision, the latest in a long line of political calculations designed to tap into America’s buried racial grievances. In an era where America prided itself on the progress of civil rights, Trump represented a shocking regression. He didn’t merely allow the fire to spread—he stoked it, feeding off the flames of division and resentment that had been smoldering since the nation’s founding. Trump became not just a racist president but the most racially divisive leader relative to his time in American history, actively working to raise the dead of America’s darkest chapters.
Raising Ghosts: Nixon’s Strategy and Trump’s Resurrection of Racial Division
The fire Trump reignited wasn’t new—it was the same fire that Nixon had tended with his Southern Strategy. In the aftermath of the civil rights movement, Nixon saw an opportunity to capitalize on the fears and frustrations of white Southern voters who felt alienated by the Democratic Party’s embrace of racial equality. But Nixon’s strategy, guided by advisers like Lee Atwater, relied on coded language—what Atwater himself described as “abstract” racism in a 1981 interview with Harper’s Magazine. Terms like “states’ rights” and “limited government” replaced the explicit racial slurs of earlier decades, giving white resentment a veneer of respectability.
As Atwater famously explained in that Harper’s article, the key was to be subtle: “You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘n*****, n*****, n*****.’ By 1968, you can’t say ‘n*****’—that hurts you. So you say stuff like ‘forced busing,’ ‘states’ rights,’ and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things, and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.” Nixon’s War on Drugs, ostensibly framed as a crackdown on crime, was, in reality, a calculated political effort to target and destabilize Black communities and anti-war activists. This strategy was candidly revealed by Nixon’s domestic policy chief, John Ehrlichman, in an interview from the early 1990s. Ehrlichman admitted that by associating drugs with these groups, the administration could vilify them publicly and justify their mass arrests, effectively disrupting their political power. This admission was later published in Harper’s Magazine in 2016, shedding light on the ulterior motives behind the War on Drugs.
Reagan picked up where Nixon left off, feeding the same embers of racial division under the guise of law and order. Each administration added fuel to the flames, carefully maintaining a fire that never truly died, though hidden beneath coded language and political abstraction. Then came Trump, who discarded the subtlety of his predecessors and openly fanned the flames that they had kept smoldering.
Trump’s approach, however, was different. He didn’t bother with Atwater’s abstractions. Where past Republican leaders had used dog whistles, Trump grabbed a megaphone. His birther conspiracy—the baseless, racist claim that President Obama wasn’t born in the United States—was one of the most blatant attempts to stoke the embers of racial animus in modern political history. And it worked. The birther movement morphed into the Tea Party, which cloaked its racial anxieties in the language of “limited government” and “personal liberty,” but these terms, as Atwater admitted, were thinly veiled code for the same fears that Nixon and Reagan had exploited.
The Tea Party pretended to be about limited government, but its true fuel was racial resentment. Ironically, many of its members would later depend on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) for healthcare—a system they had once fiercely opposed. The ACA provided significant benefits to many lower-income and middle-class Americans, overlapping with the demographic that had supported the Tea Party, as discussed in Politico in 2017. Even as they protested against “government takeover,” many would come to rely on Medicaid expansion or marketplace subsidies to access affordable healthcare.
The flames grew higher as the Tea Party railed against the ACA, branding it as a government takeover that would lead to “death panels.” These claims had nothing to do with small government—they were demagoguery, designed to stoke the embers of fear and mistrust. Many of the very people protesting the ACA would later rely on it for health care, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was keeping the fire alive, maintaining the resentment that had been smoldering for decades.
Charlottesville: The Flames Burst into Open Fire
Charlottesville wasn’t merely a flare-up of racial animus—it was the moment when America saw the fire for what it was. The torches held aloft by white nationalists weren’t just symbols of hate; they were emblems of a larger political strategy, one that had been carefully cultivated over decades. Trump’s infamous remark that there were “very fine people on both sides” wasn’t just an act of equivocation—it was a signal to his supporters that the ghosts of America’s racist past were welcome in his America.
Trump’s presidency fanned those flames at a time when they should have been dying out. His decision to breathe new life into racial animus sets him apart from figures like Andrew Jackson, whose racism, however reprehensible, reflected the brutal norms of his time. Trump’s presidency, however, comes at a moment when American institutions—media, education, and even the judiciary—have been complicit in creating the illusion of post-racial progress. Yet, the very structure of these institutions, with deep roots in white supremacy, allowed Trump’s brand of racial division to flourish under the guise of free speech and political correctness gone too far. The fire, it seems, had never truly been extinguished—only hidden beneath layers of cultural myth-making.
The Authoritarian Flame
Authoritarianism, like racism, has always burned beneath the surface of American history, its flames fed by the lives of the vulnerable and the marginalized. From the forced labor of enslaved people to the mass incarceration of Black men in the 21st century, this fire has consumed lives while enriching those in power. Under Trump, this authoritarian flame has found new fuel—fueled by xenophobia, fear of immigrants, and a growing disdain for dissent. And it is the same communities, already scarred by history, who now find themselves in the line of fire once again.
His administration’s aggressive immigration policies, which included family separations and mass deportations, were designed not only to punish but to divide. Trump, in his admiration for authoritarian leaders like Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, made no secret of his desire for similar power—the power to silence dissent, to crush opposition, to fan the flames of fear. Trump expressed envy for these leaders’ ability to keep their nations under control, and in his own presidency, he sought to bring that authoritarian fire to American soil.
When Trump’s lawyers were questioned in court about whether he had considered using SEAL Team 6 to eliminate political opponents, the hypothetical, though unproven, aligned with Trump’s clear admiration for violent repression. His willingness to see violence as a solution became unmistakable during the 2020 protests, when he reportedly asked if the military could shoot protesters. In these moments, the authoritarian flame blazed bright, revealing the extent of Trump’s willingness to burn down democratic norms to maintain control.
Trump’s Big Lies: The Flames of Misinformation
Trump’s presidency will be remembered for three “big lies,” each of which acted like accelerants, spreading the fire of division across the nation. The first lie, the birther conspiracy, was a racist theory that claimed President Obama wasn’t born in the United States and was therefore illegitimate. This conspiracy was the first major spark that Trump fanned into flame, stoking racial animus and undermining trust in the presidency itself.
The second big lie was Trump’s handling of COVID-19, where he downplayed the virus, spread misinformation, and rejected scientific guidance. This led to widespread confusion, deepened partisan divides, and contributed to unnecessary deaths as the pandemic spread across the country. The fires of distrust and denial were fanned by a president willing to ignore the truth for political gain.
The third, and perhaps most consequential lie, was Trump’s refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election. This “Big Lie” culminated in the January 6 insurrection, where the flames of disinformation and grievance fueled a violent attack on the Capitol. Trump’s repeated false claims of election fraud set the nation ablaze with distrust in its own democratic processes, a fire that still smolders in the minds of many of his supporters.
Conclusion: Confronting the Flames
The ghosts of American racism and authoritarianism are not confined to history books—they have been summoned by a leader who knows how to fan the flames of fear. Trump’s presidency represents not just a regression but a deliberate effort to turn back the clock on civil rights and democracy. The flames of 2017 were more than just torches—they were the rekindling of a long-smoldering fire, one that now threatens to consume the very foundations of American democracy.
The question isn’t whether these ghosts will rise again—they already have. What remains uncertain is whether America has the resolve to confront them head-on, extinguish the flames of division, and ensure that the embers of racism and authoritarianism are finally, once and for all, laid to rest.
Works Cited
Allen, J. (2017). The tortured saga of America’s least-loved policy idea. Politico.
Atwater, L. (1981). Interview on coded racial language in politics. Harper’s Magazine.
Baum, D. (2016). Legalize it all: How to win the war on drugs. Harper’s Magazine.
Edsall, T. (2004). How the Willie Horton ad played on white Americans’ fears. The New York Times.
Serwer, A. (2019). When Reagan said ‘monkey.’ The Atlantic.
Taylor, A. (2018). Trump’s praise of authoritarian leaders. The Washington Post.
