White supremacy is a leftist buzzword, and ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, the Biden administration turns to white supremacy as a political wedge as an election-year distraction.
The Biden administration has consistently made white supremacy a focus of its rhetoric and government efforts in countering violent extremism, which is typically viewed as combatting radical ideologies such as radical Islam, black nationalism, and other divisive ideologies.
But President Joe Biden has been at the forefront pushing the narrative that Republicans, conservatives, or anyone who disagrees with his left-wing, progressive agenda is a white supremacist sympathizer. Railings against white supremacy has become a recent trend within the Biden administration messaging, which could show how obsessed Biden is with his own narrative.
In a recent speech, President Joe Biden declared, “White supremacists will not have the last word.” His rhetoric singled out voters who did not vote for him in 2020, meaning Trump supporters, and it meant that Biden may believe that half of the country’s voters harbor white supremacist views or are sympathetic to them.
Yet, his speech was steeped in irony because of his extensive history of racist comments, such as calling President Barack Obama a rarity as an articulate black man. In 2008, when he was running in the presidential primary against then-upstart Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, Biden observed, “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.” He also bragged that, with “civility,” he worked with segregationist Senate colleagues to pass legislation. On the 2020 presidential campaign trail, Biden said, “Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids.”
There is also his long Senate tenure, during which his role in the passage of the 1994 crime bill is a major sticking point among the black population. The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, according to critics, led the mass incarceration of black Americans over crimes such as marijuana possession and had a stringent set of federal sentencing guidelines. The same critics point to his crime bill as singlehandedly incarcerating millions of black Americans since its passage.
Biden’s messaging has not helped his poll numbers, with much of his presidency mired in high disapproval ratings.
Biden is not the only Democratic Party politician, leader, or activist who seized the narrative to promote divisive rhetoric, but he is certainly promoting it by using the president’s so-called bully pulpit.
