QUIET?:

With the midterms just weeks away, MAGA Republicans have been busy playing up racial stereotypes and hurling invective. During a Trump rally in Nevada on Oct. 8, Senator Tommy Tuberville declared in a frenetic ramble that Democrats are "pro-crime" and that black Americans are "the people that do crime." Not to be eclipsed, the next day Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene told a crowd in Arizona that "Joe Biden's 5 million illegal aliens are on the verge of replacing you . . . replacing your culture"--echoing the central premise of the conspiratorial "Great Replacement" theory.

The crudeness of MAGA race rhetoric starts at the top: Donald Trump leapt into politics by becoming the chief proselytizer of birtherism, falsely asserting that Barack Obama is not an American citizen. He began his campaign in 2015 by saying Mexican immigrants to the United States are mostly drug dealers and rapists. He continued as president to make racist remarks, including notorious comments about "shithole countries" sending immigrants to America and about how the black and brown congresswomen of "The Squad" should "go back" to the countries they came from (even though all but one were born in the United States). Trump's references to COVID-19 as the "kung flu" and the "Chinese virus" were no fluke, either; he described Elaine Chao--who served as his transportation secretary and is married to Mitch McConnell--as the senator's "China loving wife, Coco Chow!"

The dwindling days of dog whistle politics are upon us. Instead of using veiled racial messages to evoke resentment toward specific groups, Republican politicians seem increasingly willing to "say the quiet part out loud."

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