NYT Op Ed: The Real Problem With Trump's Rallies

[iluvtennis]

The Real Problem With Trump’s Rallies
There are a lot of similarities between the president and George Wallace of Alabama. But there’s also one big difference.

By Kevin M. Kruse
Mr. Kruse is a professor of history at Princeton.
July 28, 2019

President Trump’s political rallies are certainly a spectacle, but a spectacle we’ve seen before. In both style and substance, the president’s campaign appearances bear strong resemblances to the rallies held a half-century ago by Gov. George C. Wallace of Alabama.

There are a number of similarities between the two politicians’ rallies. But there is one significant difference — and it shows how Mr. Trump remains a greater danger and poses a graver threat to peaceful political discourse, especially as we enter a presidential election campaign.

Like Mr. Trump, Mr. Wallace presented himself as the political champion of aggrieved working-class and middle-class whites. As governor, he embodied the cause of segregationist resistance, literally standing in the schoolhouse door to block the first black students at the University of Alabama and figuratively standing against what he called the “civil wrongs bill.”

Yet in his repeated campaigns for the presidency between 1968 and 1976, despite today’s consensus to the contrary, Mr. Wallace didn’t make open appeals to racism. Instead, he couched opposition to the civil rights movement — both his own opposition and that of whites in the North and South alike — in new terms.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/28/opinion/trump-george-wallace-rallies-the-squad.html

[UniteFightBack]

1. He also didn't specifically attack people putting their lives in danger. nt