Why Americans Are Worried About Trump: The Mask Is Off Their Underlying Bigotry

Donald Trump’s call this week for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” has rightly drawn angry responses from all quarters, including the Republican party.

However, an NBC News-Wall Street Journalpoll shows that 42 percent of Republican voters agreed with him, and only 36 percent did not. Among Americans as a whole, 57 percent disagreed with Trump, and only 25 percent backed his idea.

This may be reassuring, but it would be too much of a leap of faith to presume that Americans, by and large, are less bigoted than what the support for Trump within the Republican party suggests.

Contrast the 25 percent support for Trump with support for the murderous Islamic State (IS) among Muslims the world over. A Pew Research report on attitudes to IS in 11 countries showed that favourable views on Islamic State were mostly in single digits, and over 60 percent had an unfavourable view of it. Pakistan was, of course, an outlier, with only 28 percent disapproving of IS, and 62 percent choosing not to even have a view on it. That itself is telling.

The numbers to contrast are the 57 percent of Americans who disagree with Trump, and the 60 percent plus Muslims who disagree with IS.

Another point one needs to juxtapose is this: 25 percent of Americans support Trump’s anti-Islam extreme views, as against the 0-14 percent range of support for Islamic State among Muslims in 11 countries.

What this shows is that Americans are substantially bigoted, and possibly even more so than some Islamic countries. And the reason why Americans are unhappy with Trump may not be that he is bigoted, but that his bigotry is now showing up the underlying bigotry of many Americans that they were earlier able to conceal under layers of sophisticated language and political correctness. If the world’s most powerful country has 25 percent holding illiberal views that border on bigotry, we know that prejudice and racism are alive and kicking in the US of A.

But the US may not be an exception. In Europe, where many countries in Eastern Europe, and especially Hungary, openly opposed the entry of Muslim refugees into the European Union, only Germany managed to stem this underlying illiberalism, thanks to the German constitution which forces the country to provide asylum. But Chancellor Angela Merkel is losing popularity fast due to her open-door policy to refugees, and has been tightening norms in response to this criticism.

As for France, which has been the target of at least two major terror strikes recently – the assassination of Charlie Hebdo journalists, and the more recent attack in Paris – anti-Islam feelings have helped Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Front make big gains in recent regional election. It has now effectively become France’s third force. It may hold the balance of power in the next French parliament if it continues to make gains.

We need to thank Trump for two simple reasons: one, for being politically incorrect in stating his prejudices; and, two, for the poll which showed that a majority of Republicans and a quarter of Americans agree with him.

The mask is now off America’s best-kept secret: under the skin, it is as racist and bigoted as Islamists or others elsewhere.

Note: An earlier version of this piece incorrectly stated that 28 per cent Pakistanis support IS. That has now been corrected. The error is regretted.