Blog 147: Trump Rejects Neoracism but Promotes Hyperpatriotism

Posted on 2025-03-02 by

David Rand

Publication Date: 2025-03-02

Immediately after taking power on January 20^th 2025, USA President Donald Trump issued numerous Executive Orders (EO) and declarations, several of which deal with the issues of racism and antiracism.

EXECUTIVE ORDER: Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing, White House, USA, 2025-01-20.
Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity, White House, USA, 2025-01-21.
FACT SHEET: President Donald J. Trump Protects Civil Rights and Merit-Based Opportunity by Ending Illegal DEI, White House, USA, 2025-01-22.
EXECUTIVE ORDER: Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling, White House, USA, 2025-01-29.

DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) sessions are a neoracist program for allegedly working against racism. Neoracism is a collection of ideologies (such as Critical Race Theory and intersectionality) which combine postmodernist philosophy with American antiracist activism. But despite its antiracist pretentions, neoracism is itself racist. It is most notorious for promoting prejudice against those from a European (i.e. “white”) or Asian background, but that is only the tip of the iceberg. The underlying problem with neoracism is that it is anti-universalist and prioritizes racial identity as the most important attribute of the individual, similarly to what classical racism does, putting us all into 19^th century racial categories based on skin colour. Furthermore, neoracism essentializes racism itself by claiming that “white” people are essentially and inevitably racist by nature.

Neoracists simply assume, without proof, that any inequity between racial groups must be caused by injustice; no other possible cause may be envisaged. They also assume, again without proof, that universalist antiracist strategies, which emphasize colour-blindness and oppose discrimination, are ineffectual and must be replaced by their colour-obsessed positive-discrimination strategy. Moreover, neoracists accuse anyone who favours such universalist methods of being himself or herself racist, thus demonizing anyone who dissents from their dogma and stifling healthy debate.

In short, neoracism is dogmatic nonsense, and DEI programs poison work environments by inflaming racial animus while pretending to fight racism. For an example of just how toxic DEI can be, just read about the experience of Richard Bilkszto.

In the EO issued on January 29^th (fourth declaration above), what we call “neoracism” is referred to as “Discriminatory equity ideology.” The same EO also lists eight aspects of this ideology, all of which are valid observations. The final point is particularly revealing, stating that this ideology makes the generalization that:

(viii) the United States is fundamentally racist, sexist, or otherwise discriminatory.

Neoracists do indeed condemn anyone of European descent, including “whites” in the USA, as fundamentally racist. But the solution proposed by this Trump executive order would simply flip this upside down, replacing neoracism with sanitized and sugar-coated “patriotic education” consisting of “a clear examination of how the United States has admirably grown closer to its noble principles throughout its history.”

Slavery and the slave trade constitute a disgraceful central chapter in the history of the USA, both before and after independence. Perhaps the most shameful aspects of this history are that the Revolution failed to end slavery, and that even after slavery was abolished in 1863, it took another century before that country began to implement serious measures to deal with the extreme anti-Black racism that remained. However, neoracists go even further, claiming that slavery was in fact a foundational principle of the US republic and that the Revolutionary War was fought to preserve slavery. This indeed is the approach adopted by the New York Times’ 1619 Project.

In response, the EO proposes to resurrect the President’s Advisory 1776 Commission, first ordered by Trump in November 2020 and terminated by Biden in January 2021, whose purpose is to promote “patriotic education” and to help prepare for the 250^th anniversary celebration of American Independence on July 4^th, 2026. The 2020 EO establishing the 1776 Commission also opposes the idea of a core curriculum set by the federal government and asserts that the US founding “envisioned a political order in harmony with the design of ‘the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God’.”

Thus, Trump would replace an exaggeratedly negative misinterpretation of US history with an exaggeratedly positive misinterpretation (with a dash of divinity), both lacking in nuance. The reality, of course, is that the history of the USA involves both atrocities (e.g. slavery, the massacre of native peoples and the theft of their lands) and noble achievements (e.g. the liberation of Western Europe from the Nazis in 1944-1945) and a whole range of aspects between those two extremes.

Both neoracism and gender ideology are regressive, harmful ideologies. They must be opposed, and also excluded from the State. It is to the shame of Trump’s opponents that most of them not only failed to do so, but in fact actively promoted such nonsense, even demonizing anyone who dared to question their dogma. If they had done the right thing before the November 2024 US election, if they had distanced themselves from neoracism and gender ideology, the Trump victory might very well have been averted. Will they learn from their mistakes, or will they continue to support irrational, fashionable ideologies which make Trump look sane in comparison?