Donald Trump's claim that he didn't know who the white nationalist Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes was when he sat down to dinner with him at Mar-a-Lago just before Thanksgiving is not particularly credible, according to The Washington Post's Greg Sargent, who goes on to say that even if it's true that Trump didn't know who Fuentes was, he "handed white supremacists and white-power activists a major propaganda coup."
Speaking to Sargent, Kathleen Belew, who tracks white supremacist factions, said that these movements are best described as "white power" rather than "white supremacist."
"White power is a concentrated but very violent subset within the broader web of white supremacy," Belew said. "White power is better thought about as a connected movement of groups and activists who are overtly racist and interested in using violence to create an all-white ethnostate, society, or even nation. Sometimes they think about an all-white planet."
Belew went on to say that Fuentes' dinner with Trump was a huge propaganda victory for white power groups because it shows that the political mainstream can be radicalized. "It’s meant to show that the government is not all powerful, and that there are enough like-minded people to rise against it."
She added that white power groups saw the Jan. 6 Capitol riot as a "stunning act of propaganda."
"We saw upticks in recruitment drives. And the lack of condemnation of those events by the mainstream Republican Party really showed these activists that there is plenty more space for them in our political process."
Read the full interview over at The Washington Post.
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