Leftist ‘Intellectuals:’ It’s Racist for Trump to Defend the West

Left-wing pundits reacted angrily to President Donald Trump’s speech in Warsaw, Poland, on Thursday, accusing him of racism for defending the “West.”

Peter Beinart (Credit Image: Joe Mabel / Wikimedia)

Peter Beinart, writing in The Atlantic, asserted: “The West is a racial and religious term.” He added: “To be considered Western, a country must be largely Christian (preferably Protestant or Catholic) and largely white.”

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In addition, Beinart also claimed that Trump’s statement that “The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive,” a climax of the speech, “only makes sense as a statement of racial and religious paranoia.”

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Jeet Heer, at the New Republic, called Trump’s address an “alt-right” speech in a commentary titled: “An International Brotherhood of White Grievance.” He likened Trump’s ideas to those of Pat Buchanan, adding: “Such rhetoric is meant to conjure blood-and-soil nationalism. Here, Trump is defining the West not based on ideals like democracy and liberty, but atavistic loyalties to territory and shared kinship.”

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The Washington Post‘s Eugene Robinson was somewhat more restrained, deriding Trump for portraying history “as a zero-sum clash of civilizations in which ‘the West’ can triumph by imposing its will.”

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