The party’s three leading candidates are speaking about history and race in polarizing and provocative ways that sometimes diverge from or distort the facts, some political strategists, experts and civil rights leaders said

Former president Donald Trump uses dehumanizing rhetoric to describe undocumented immigrants before largely White audiences. The runaway GOP polling leader says they are “poisoning the blood of our country” — comments some experts have compared to Adolf Hitler’s writings on blood purity.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis defended part of his state’s African American history curriculum standards that claimed some enslaved people developed skills that “could be applied for their personal benefit.” And Nikki Haley omitted any mention of slavery when she was asked to explain the cause of the Civil War at a town hall event this past week. It wasn’t until the next day that Haley acknowledged the war was “about slavery.”

But their rhetoric is also appealing to many Americans who lean conservative, interviews with voters in Iowa and New Hampshire show, including some who reject the accusations that the statements are racially insensitive or worse. Many in the GOP are resentful of liberal leaders who they see as constantly pointing out or forcing the country to apologize for past atrocities, and some are angry about demographic and cultural shifts in America driven in part by immigration.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Many in the GOP are resentful of liberal leaders who they see as constantly pointing out or forcing the country to apologize for past atrocities

    I FUCKING HATE our modern society where somehow apologizing for things is viewed as wrong in and of itself. Apologizing is the way to start righting a wrong.

    I mean yeah, it starts at the top with Trump refusing to ever apologize for anything, but this is a pervasive idea across American culture. I don’t know when it started, I didn’t notice it starting, but it sure is here now and it’s so bad that we can’t even teach proper history anymore because someone might feel the need to say, “I’m sorry we did that to your people.”

    • DrDeadCrash@programming.dev
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      11 months ago

      It’s the conservatives that feel that way. They can’t ever admit to being wrong, or admit that the US has done wrong.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        I wish it were just conservatives, but I have encountered multiple people on the left who have this same issue. It is so bothersome to me because, if anything, I apologize too much. It costs nothing to apologize and it might just end some bad feelings.