RWarehall: I see you as an extremist who sees anyone who votes for Trump or dared consider voting for Trump as completely racist and xenophobic. I get it. It's remeniscent of a bygone era. Frustrated people banded together and cast blame on other races and religions and started a world war. But why are you blaming every Trump supporter? They didn't start World War II.
First of all, you have no idea who started ww2. And it is an extremely interesting question. You should plunge a bit into history, and, more specifically, into the discourses of the extreme-right nationalists
before ww2, before the word "nazi" became this consensual comic book notion of the extreme baddie everyone agrees against. When "nazism" was a cool trendy thing throughout europe, with its so respectable admirers everywhere ("oh come on, it's not like they will invade other countries, oh come on, it's not like they will kill the jews dead"). It was a collective trend (not "nazism" as we know it in retrospect, but its nationalist ethnicist components with its brand of "conservative revolution") that was driving Franco, Metaxas, Hitler, Mussolini and others as the "common sense" of that time, in front of horrified progressives witnessing its evolution. It was not about "killing everybody" (actually, much later, as genocides were ongoing, nazi supporters at various degrees were still in denial of what was going on, a very common process that -by he way- you can also witness nowadays about refugee camps conditions, which we also try to not know about). The point is that, if you checked the ordinary discourses and debates of that era, you'd realise how close they are to the ordinary values (and relative diversity) of today's radical right and worldwide nationalisms. One difference between us is that when you hear "nazi", you see some cyber-hitler at the end of a FPS. When I hear "nazi", I see the ordinary moron who, in the 30s, considered that this Hitler guy was not all that bad, and he was funnily exaggerating at times but deep down was making some good points so why not. And this eternal moron has a very, very familiar voice. He's what national populists keep tapping on, forever, through the ages, with the scale of consequences that an era permits. In other words, the alt right would be electing Hitler without any hesitation. It only seems absurd to you because of this retrospective look you have on this character and ww2 history, which makes him so remote and alien. Study the actual popular discourses in the medias of that time, and this remoteness will vanish. We may not have a Hitler. We will always have the kind of ordinary people who brought him to power, and will always go for the next best thing. And they will always sound less bloodthirsty than Hitler, because they already were. They are still as nauseating as they were, though, because the unchanging value of their discourses always was.
And these are things that educated people tend to be horrified by. When these thrills get recognisable, these same old populisms, these same old anti-intellectualisms, these same old ethnicisms, same old racisms, same old nationalisms, same dismissal of human rights, same golden age fantasies, a whole array of alarm bells ring for decent people. The politicians who ride on such feelings, and encourage these worldviews, are outside the range of acceptable politicians (the range of acceptable politicians that we would ote for or against). And the voters who manage to support them despite of it (or, quite often, because of it) are simply creeps. There are disqualifying evils, in political visions. Racist platforms are an exemple. Those who have no issue with racism deserve contempt. Those who have issues with racism would be incapable of supporting a Trump. In our 21st century, there is no excuse anymore.
Because one other thing that you fail to notice, is that a Trump isn't a moderate (even though a Cruz might manage to be worse). It is not a matter of disagreeing with conservative candidates. The point is, moderate standards have been left behind : we are living times where racism and xenophobia have been so much banalized again that extreme-right platforms (such as Le Pen in France) are reaching "normality". They have hardly changed, beyond the surface, from the discourses that were keeping them at the margins a few decades ago, when the nationalist collapses of the 20th century were still vivid. A contextual change (the rise of expansionist islamist dictatorships, the social failures of neoliberalism, the explosion of autonomous media bubbles that start reiterating -as "rebels"- the discourses of 1930s states in opposition to today's democraties) explains this shift, but it should not fool you into accepting these discourses as "moderates", like a boiling frog would still consider its water lukewarm. Those who are anchored in the long history of political ideas, those who still remember the insensitive nationalist discourses (so close to "normality") of the 30s beyond the "foaming nazi" cliché (so conveniently far from everyone), have a sense of where a middle ground would be located, around which legitimate disagreements would take place. Those without this awareness will always shift their idea of "center" along the current trends. Which is the only way to not measure which extremes have been reached with the election -and the support- of a Trump.
What I am saying is that the trend may continue ad infinitam. Each new crazed extreme-right bigot elected (as a formal representant to the "conservative" identity) will be, by defintion, "not that bad after all" and "not as extreme as the opponents say". Each new pierced floor after floor will become a new standard : the Bush jr. era seemed an unthinkable aberration of stupidity, whose faults the world is still paying in blood, and now Bush jr. will be remembered as an enlightened scholar in comparison with Trump. And when conservatives will elect a cucumber -imagination fails me for anything more caricatural than Trump-, the same discourses will justify it ("hey it's not as extreme as you say"). Discourses that are absurd to those with more stable and honest standards.
So no, your whole "come on, stop considering Trump and his supporters as extremists" would only work if we were not talking about a Trump-like candidate. You would be right if people were reacting like that to, say, a mere Kasich. But we are not here. What functionned, what won an election, are Trump levels of discourses and manipulation. And it is very justified to be objectively appalled by what it says about society, and about the permanence of human pettiness and stupidity throughout the centuries.
One Trump (who, thankfully, doesn't seem to be on the expansionist branch of ultraconservatism) would not be sufficient for a world war. But Trumps and Putins and Erdogans and al-Assads are popping up everywhere, like the Francos and Mussolinis of the 20th century. And that is a trend to be really, really worried about.
