Even though racism has often been unmasked as motivated by economic interests rather than various claims to superiority, it has at the same time not been popularly seen as an essentially economic phenomenon. It has often been presented as based in cultural distinction, as has been the case in South Africa, or in something called "races", as has been the case in the USA. With Donald Trump, however, the mask has been taken off and racism has clearly been shown to be based in economic interest. His desire to ban Muslims from the United States, his "rapist" and "wall" remarks about Mexicans, point to the group of people he would like to exclude from the United States so that his people may be "great again". Now the KKK is pointing to Donald Trump as the one who has a similar vision as the group, a vision which, it can hardly be denied, is based in the economic stress which their constituency in the United States has been experiencing. Other presidential candidates in the United States have run on economic issues but hardly has the economic message been so openly racist. What makes Trump different is that his economic message has been clearly tied to racism. Those, like Howard Fineman of Huffington Post, who think that Trump's economic message may lead him to victory, fail to see that this economic message is laced with racism and may only lead to victory if Americans also generally buy into his racist vision. Are Americans not better than this racist vision?
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