David Plunkert’s “Red Meat”

On Tuesday night, in the first Presidential debate, Donald Trump was asked to denounce white supremacists—and, specifically, the Proud Boys, a far-right group associated with political violence. “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by,” Trump said. The next day, the Proud Boys’ chairman, Enrique Tarrio, wrote online, “Standing by sir.” In the cover for the October 12, 2020, issue, David Plunkert speaks to the ways in which Trump’s appeal to extremists has moved beyond a mere dog whistle. (“I feel like the hungry attack dog makes an appropriate symbol for the forces that seem ready to march,” Plunkert told us.) It’s a familiar theme for Plunkert, whose first cover for the magazine, in 2017, came after a white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville led to the killing of a protester. Trump later said there were “very fine people” on both sides of the event. For more coverage, read:

John Cassidy on the alt-right’s response to the debate:

Even as some Republican senators professed not to know what Trump was really doing at the debate, members of the Proud Boys and other alt-right groups were in no doubt. “Starting Tuesday night and continuing Wednesday, Trump’s comments were enshrined in memes, including one depicting Trump in one of the Proud Boys’ signature polo shirts,” the Washington Post reported. “Another meme showed Trump’s quote alongside an image of bearded men carrying American flags and appearing to prepare for a fight. A third incorporated ‘STAND BACK AND STAND BY’ into the group’s logo.”

Charles Bethea’s conversation with a white supremacist after Trump’s election:

He added, “I think we now have a President with some of the same ideals.” He insisted that the Loyal White Knights had been growing since Trump’s victory. When I asked him for specifics, he replied, “I can’t give out exact numbers—that’s why we’re called ‘the invisible empire.’ But I can tell you this: since Trump has been elected, people have been calling us left and right wanting to join, from all walks of life.” The claim was difficult to fact-check. In February, the S.P.L.C. published a report asserting that the number of operating U.S. hate groups rose from eight hundred and ninety-two, in 2015, to nine hundred and seventeen, in 2016. “The radical right was energized by the candidacy of Donald Trump,” the report read.

And Jelani Cobb, from 2017, on Charlottesville and the toll of white terrorism:

There have been at least thirty attacks carried out by white terrorists since 9/11; the victims of those attacks constitute the majority of people killed on American soil in acts of terrorism. Two years ago, when Dylann Roof murdered nine people, in the sanctuary of Emanuel A.M.E. Church, in Charleston, he described himself as a kind of rageful prophet, one whose actions would awaken white people to the perils they faced from people of color in the United States. Those forces took Trump as a like-minded figure, and saw in his reluctance to denounce David Duke during the campaign, and his willingness to retweet white-supremacist accounts and parrot their mythical statistics about black crime, a sign that their moment had arrived.

And for more political covers, see below:

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