Editorial: Heil Trump!: A Bad Omen

The image of people shouting ‘Heil Trump!’ while doing the Nazi salute at a public meeting a few blocks from the White House is not a nightmare from which you can wake up, or a political aberration.

It is the present of our country. It is the logical outcome of Donald Trump’s victory based on resentments towards minorities and foreigners. It is a bad omen for the times to come with the next government.

The president elect’s words yesterday stating that the neo-Nazis who met there are “not a group I want to energize,” and that if he did so “I want to look into it and find out why,” are not sincere. His electoral strategy was based on exploiting feelings that gave him the support of neo-Nazi groups, the Ku Klux Klan and all kinds of racists.

Saying, as Trump did yesterday at a meeting with The New York Times, that if his political adviser Steve Bannon was “a racist or alt-right… I wouldn’t even think about hiring him” is a gigantic lie.

Bannon, as chairman of the news website Breitbart, is a leader of the so-called alternative right (Alt-right), a name that seeks to make neo-Nazi and similar groups more respectable.

The best manifestation of Trump’s thinking is through his actions.

When he was upset with the cast of the theater play “Hamilton,” he used his twitter account to demand an apology to vice president Mike Pence. He had the same swift and direct reaction towards the comedians of the TV show “Saturday Night Live.”

When it is the neo-Nazis who rally in his favor with their white supremacist agenda, the response comes from an obscure transition team employee, who vaguely reminds that “Trump has continued to denounce racism of any kind.” In that situation, the president elect shows no similar enthusiasm or interest in being clear.

The Republican politicians’ complicity is outrageous. We are talking about those who accept that the same racists who used to dress like soldiers in the Idaho woods are today in Washington wearing suits and ties, and celebrating having reached the White House.

This is a pact with the devil of Congress. Legislators such as Speaker of the House Paul Ryan are accepting even the most repulsive things as long as they can take advantage of the situation to pass laws that would have never been approved in a different political climate.

The rise of neo-Nazis and racists in the Republican Party was already horrendous. The fact that they are now a step away from the government is an unspeakable tragedy in our country’s history that has yet to begin.