Source: Sean Rayford / Getty
The recent marginal increase in Black Trump support has been disappointing, to say the least, and baffling considering Donald Trump has shown nothing but contempt for our leaders, our civil rights movements, our non-whitewashed history, our voting districts (Trump’s “stop the steal” nonsense would have largely affected predominately Black and Latino voting precincts), diversity in the workforce and “wokeness.” It’s almost painful to watch so many Black people—as relatively minimal as their numbers may be—gush over the ex-president who was sued by the Department of Justice over anti-Black housing discrimination in the ’70s and declared in the ’90s that “laziness is a trait in Blacks.”
But out of all these sunken souls who are pretending to be smart by embracing the cult king of anti-intellectualism, none of them are likely to leave Black folks scratching their heads like the Black Trump supporter who is also the leader of a Black Lives Matter chapter.
Meet Mark Fisher.
Fisher is the co-founder and former senior director of a Black Lives Matter chapter in Rhode Island, which is notably only 9% Black and 82% white. Earlier this month, he said he’ll be voting for Trump in 2024 due to the “racist” policies employed by the Democratic Party.
From KOMO News:
“Everybody else sucks,” Fisher said of Trump’s competitors. “I like Trump personally. I think right now who we have sitting in the Oval Office is a deep disappointment. I deeply have disdain for him and I really dislike the vice president [Kamala Harris] as well.”
When asked if he felt “alone” in his support for Trump, Fisher said his view is growing in popularity among Black Americans.
“I feel like a lot of Black people are starting to pivot off that Democratic plantation. For so long, we’ve been slaves to that party,” Fisher said. “Actually, we’ve been mental slaves afraid to get off of that plantation because we’ve been used and abused for so long by that party.”
First of all, it can’t be emphasized enough that the “Democratic plantation” narrative is condescending nonsense largely espoused by people who don’t appear to have a very high opinion of Black people in the first place, indicated by the implication that we’re too dumb and gullible to think for ourselves. But the truth is America has a two-party system. It would be nice if there were more political party options that are viable, but there aren’t. So, we vote for the party that isn’t fighting police reform at every turn while ignoring or downplaying police violence against Black people. We vote for the party that isn’t redistricting their congressional maps to dilute Black voting power. We vote for the party that isn’t seeking to further whitewash Black history through an anti-critical race theory propaganda campaign (for which Trump led the charge). We vote for the party that isn’t currently celebrating the Confederacy and falling all over itself to protect its monuments and flags. We vote for the party that didn’t effectively end affirmative action to appease petty white grievances.
It might be cliché to say that we vote for the lesser of two evils, but it’s a reality that many of us view the Democratic party that way. If Black people were truly on a “Democratic plantation,” we would show up to every single election in droves to support and vote for our blue massas. Instead, when many of us are feeling disillusioned by the party, we don’t show up at all.
Anyway, Mark Fisher went on to claim that the Democratic party is a “racist party that strikes at the heart of the Black family and the nuclear family in general,” and that “Donald Trump is the opposite” without citing any Democratic policy or Trump policy in particular to back those claims. And here he is on Fox News saying that Black people, the same ones still stuck on a “plantation,” are “not stupid” and that we “understand when someone’s for us and when someone is not and it’s obvious that the Democratic party is not for us.”
He also said, “A lot of people are misinformed. They don’t really understand because they don’t educate themselves on Donald Trump as a person and his history.”
Again, Trump’s “history” includes a racist housing discrimination lawsuit and his declaration that Black people are inherently lazy.
But Fisher maintains that the Democratic party is bad for Black people, which, oddly enough, is the exact same thing Trump said about—*checks notes*—Black Lives Matter.
In fact, Trump spent much of 2020 attacking the BLM movement. He called BLM protesters “terrorists,” “anarchists” and “thugs.” He called the BLM movement “toxic propaganda.” He called the very concept of BLM a “symbol of hate.” He even falsely blamed BLM protests for a rise in COVID-19 cases a few months before researchers found that Trump rallies led to more than 30,000 COVID-19 cases and more than 700 COVID-19 deaths.
The worst part is that Republicans and right-wing media outlets, which are desperate to show that Trump and the GOP have “Black friends,” will undoubtedly embrace a story about a Black BLM leader embracing Trump despite the fact that those same politicians and media outlets have done nothing but condemn the BLM movement up until now. The movement is literally built on the idea of systemic racism, which Trump and the rest of his ilk vehemently deny the existence of.
So, yeah—so much for Fisher knowing “when someone’s for us and when someone is not.” Unfortunately, some of us really are, to say the very least, “stupid.”
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