Few law professors have earned as much distinction as experts on the relationship between law, society and human rights as Bernard E. Harcourt, professor of law and political science at Columbia University and directeur d'etudes at the Ecole des hautes etudes en sciences sociales in Paris.

Professor Harcourt has also served on human rights missions in South Africa and Guatemala, and has acted as editor for collections of writings in French and English by the world-renowned philosopher of social science, Michel Foucault,

Professor Harcaurt has also represented US prison inmates pro bono. He is exceptionally well qualified to give an opinion about the larger implications and dangers of Donald Trump's anti-immigrant rhetoric

In a November 29, 2018 article in the New York Review of Books, Harcourt warns that Trump's attacks on non-white immigrants are not just examples of the familiar anti-immigrant racism which America has been used to for most of its history, Instead, he shows that Trump's language id carefully and deliberately calculated to promote the far right, neo-fascist "New Right" movement aimed at overthrowing democracy and setting up white supremacist authoritarian states in Europe and America. See:

How Trump Fuels the Fascist Right

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/1...-fascist-right

Harcourt writes:

President Trump makes constant use of the language and logic of the 'new right' , a toxic blend of ante-bellum white supremacy, twentieth-century fascism, European far right movements of the 1970's and today's self-identified 'alt-right.' And his words and deeds have enabled an upsurge of white nationalist and extremist organizations...

Everything about Trump's discourse - the words he uses, the things he is willing to say, when he says them, how, how many times - is deliberate and intended for consumption by the new right."

Harcourt continues:

Trump is methodically engaging in verbal assaults that throw fuel on his political program of closed borders, nativism, social exclusion and punitive excess."

And:

"President Trump is no mere entertainer or buffoon, as many want to believe. Instead, he is carefully, skillfully and consistently speaking directly to his hardline nationalist supporters...

Trump knows exactly what he is doing, as he does when he...uses demeaning and dehumanizing expressions such a 'infest', 'animals,' 'rapists,' and 'shithole' countries to describe immigrants and African countries. These are deliberate fodder for his white nationalist base."

Who are the white nationalist base the Harcourt is talking about. He is not referring to ordinary white working class Americans who voted in large numbers to elect Trump out of "anxiety" or "resentment" over gains in equal rights and racial equality made by immigrants and other minorities as a result of the civil rights movement over the last half century

To the contrary, the "New Right" movement which Harcourt identifies Trump as openly supporting through his anti-immigrant rhetoric is a well organized, highly ideological movement based on the concept of white racial superiority to be imposed through violence and other anti-democratic means. Harcourt writes:

"Building on the ugly history of white supremacy in this country, and on European far right movements of the late 1960's and 1970's, a new right has emerged in America. The central tenets of the new right are that Christian heterosexual whites are endangered...that "Western Civilization" is in decline, and that whites need to reassert themselves."

Harcourt quotes one of the leaders of the New Right movement, editor George Shaw, as writing that the main goal of that movement is to discuss:

"the one topic that white conservatives are not allowed to discuss...'race'."

Shaw also rails against:

"a transfer of power from white males to one or another nonwhite and/or non/male fringe group...White genocide is under way."

Harcourt also quotes Shaw as saying that diversity and multiculturalism (associated, of course, with non-white legal as well as "irregular" immigration):

"rather tend to make white societies poorer, more dangerous and finally unlivable for whites."

Another New Right spokesman, Richard Spencer, according to Harcourt:

"describes the superiority of certain athletes who are 'white, and not just white, but Anglo and Germanic.'"

Harcourtalso quoted Daniel Friberg, a Swedish New Right leader as railing against "mass immigration", along with Jews, Muslims and other minorities as being indifferent to the interests of "Europe's native populations" and traditional European values."

Harcourt writes:"

"When, on a visit to Europe this summer, Trump spoke of Europe 'losing its identity', he was speaking directly to the new political constituency built on the concept of white genocide."

Harcourt summarizes Trump's appeal to the neo-fascist New Right as follows:

"We are watching, in real time, a new right discourse come to define the American presidency. The term 'alt-right' is too innocuous when the new political formation that we face is, in truth, neo-fascist, white supremacist, ultranationalist, and counterrevolutionary. Too few Americans appear to recognize how extreme President Trump has become...but we must - and we must call Trump out for deploying [far right arguments] to gain power."

Harcourt concludes:

"Speaking openly to the new right, Trump is rallying and emboldening a counterrevolutionary [anti-democratic] politics. If we do not act soon, we risk being caught in a downward authoritarian spiral or violent civil strife."

And the above was written before Trump shut down the US government and overrode the will of America's elected representatives in Congress by declaring a "national emergency" to fund his totalitarian Wall against non-white immigrants.

Roger Algase
Attorney at Law