Thomas Klingenstein argues that President Trump is the leader of an American politics of citizenship against its multicultural antagonists. Trump put the “P” in Politics with his verbal vindication of America, which Klingenstein thinks was a crucial aspect of his 2016 campaign.
Klingenstein defines multiculturalism as a view that “conceives of society as a collection of cultural identity groups, each with its own worldview, all oppressed by white males, collectively existing within permeable national boundaries…. It carves ‘tribes' out of a society whose most extraordinary success has been their assimilation into one people.” Trump, Klingenstein further contends, “showed us that multiculturalism, like slavery in the 1850's, is an existential threat;” conservatives must make the defeat of multiculturalism the non-negotiable focus of their politics.
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