Trump argued yesterday that the radical right, unlike the left, is not a problem because it only wants to prevent crime. Is that true?
Absolutely not. The radical right’s actual position is that white Christian men are entitled to a monopoly of political, economic, and social power in America and are justified in using violence to preserve it when other means fail; since this pursuit of power is supposedly legitimate, anyone who opposes it is a “criminal.” Trump’s statement should be viewed as a syllogism: cities are full of black people who don’t support me and hate real America; cities are also overridden with crime; cities are consequently a danger to me and real America; therefore, they must be brought to heel in the name of fighting “crime.”
It is worth noting that the division of America into pure white Anglo-Saxon rural havens and crime-ridden cities full of those other people is an enduring theme of our history. You find it in the Alien and Sedition Acts, in the Know-Nothing movement, and in the KKK, as well. Trump is just carrying on a tradition.