Racism is woven into American democracy

 

American politics: Racism is woven into American democracy 

 

Martin Gelin's "The White Storm" depicts a nation threatened from above 

 

Published: Today 05.00 

 

Martin Gelin has worked as a journalist in the USA since 2001. He has written several reportage books and was nominated for the August Prize for both "The American Right" (2012) and "The Internet is broken - Silicon Valley and the crisis of democracy" (2018), which was written together with Karin Pettersson . Now he is current with "The White Storm: The History of Racism and the Fall of the United States". Photo: Private 

 

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No, the mob that stormed Congress in Washington in January 2021 did not consist of the people Hillary Clinton called "deplorables" - the deplorables. The fighters at the Capitol were not low-educated unemployed from the rust belt. The vast majority were villa owners with top jobs – doctors, architects, engineers. Many were self-employed who could give themselves time off from work. A group of real estate agents from Dallas flew to Washington in a chartered private plane. Less than fifteen percent of the occupiers were organized right-wing extremists 

 

This according to DN's US reporter Martin Gelin. In his new book The White Storm - The History of Racism and the Fall of America, he examines what four hundred years of slavery and plunder have done to America. It is well-founded, often painful reading. 

 

Gelin believes that European – and also American – journalists present a false image of the American working class. It's not made up of broad-shouldered opioid-abusing miners who vote for Trump. Those who struggle for low wages are mostly black shop assistants and Hispanic cleaners who don't vote at all. 

 

The stormtroopers from the Capitol and Martin Gelin agree on one thing: Democracy in the United States is urgently threatened. But Gelin sees the threat - the "white storm" in the book's title - coming from above. The seizure of power will not take place through civil war in the streets but through decisions in the courts and the parliamentary assemblies. The dismantling of democracy is already underway in Republican states where the boundaries between constituencies are being redrawn to make it harder to vote. Apolitical bureaucrats are replaced with loyal party members. 

According to Gelin, racism is as fundamental a part of the history of the American nation as the Pilgrim Fathers and the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson, who formulated the famous statement that all men are created equal, was at the same time a slave owner himself, as was George Washington. Gel goes through the protracted genocide of the indigenous people, the slavery, the oppression of the Chinese, the deportation of the Japanese, the privatized prison system, the falsification of history that hides centuries of pogroms and murders. It's knowledgeable, it's important, it's shattering reading – even if Gelin's need to highlight her rightful anger at the state of affairs on every page of the book weighs down the presentation a bit. 

 

Racial thinking and racism thus pervade the entire American society, as well as, naturally enough, the resistance to racism. It is not a straightforward story – the clash between black and white music in the US, for example, has made the whole world a better place to live. The one-sided and open oppression has another side: hatred and fear are mixed with curiosity and attraction. When Thomas Jefferson wasn't busy flogging slaves and formulating revolutionary truths, he fathered at least five children with slave girl Sally Hemings (he freed the children on his deathbed, but not their mother). 

 

The focus on racism sometimes makes the book a bit monotonous: Isn't there more to say about H L Mencken than that he was anti-Semitic? Was it the breakthrough of the gangs that led to the most dramatic reduction in crime in US history? Was the monotonous Krikelin world in the residential suburbs really planned exclusively so that the white population would not have new black neighbors? 

 

Interwoven with racism in the United States lives the deep, originally religiously motivated belief that the Creator rewards the rich for being morally superior while the poor are poor because they are stupid and lazy. 

 

I am reminded of a column I read years ago in the Miami Herald. Like the occupiers in Washington, the author—certainly a Republican—was convinced that a civil war in the United States was inevitable. However, there was nothing to worry about. His side would win, as long as the Americans who believed they could become rich outnumbered those who realized they would remain poor.