You might find them abhorrent. You might think them stupid for having fallen for such a charlatan. You might be right on those counts. But you can’t pretend that Donald Trump voters are all vicious fascists, because they aren’t. Indeed, the most shocking aspect of the Trump fans I’ve met is their decency.
For all the doom peddling by people in my profession this week, there was no violence to speak of at the Cleveland Republican Convention this week — from either pro or anti Trump gangs.
Thousands of journalists roamed the city, desperate for trouble to report. Protestors burned an American flag, and people shouted at each other. But nothing bad happened. That I am sure was down to the huge 5,500 police presence in central Cleveland all week. But it was also because almost nobody wanted aggro.
Even the real nasties on the fringes, the white nationalists and black panthers, behaved themselves. In fact, the most nasty looking elements of the so-called ‘alt-right’ seem to be feeling fairly sanguine; Trump’s success has made them feel enfranchised, and so they are not feeling the need to agitate against democracy.
The national socialist Traditionalist Worker’s Party, for instance, is here, a bunch of white supremacist boys in black T-shirts, trying to establish links with Donald Trump’s Republican delegates. Matthew
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