Payton Gendron is a child of Trumpism, and Trumpism is fascism with an American face

White supremacist mass shooter, Payton Gendron, is a child of Trumpism. He is the product of the renaissance enjoyed by white supremacy as a result of Donald Trump’s rise to prominence within the Republican Party. The result has been the mainstreaming of white supremacist conspiracy theories such as White Replacement Theory and QAnon, which along with crazed Second Amendment vigilantist tropes, has unleashed, per the attack on the Capitol Building in January 2021, a second US civil war in all but name.

Where it began?

On 20 January 2017, at the close of his inauguration speech in front of the US Capitol Building in Washington DC, the newly sworn-in 45th President of the United States raised his right fist in the air in triumph. Standing there, he appeared more like a newly anointed emperor of the late Roman Empire, come to take what was rightfully his, than he did an elected president. ‘America First’ had been the mantra and message of Trump’s election campaign, which he proclaimed repeatedly during one of the most remarkable inauguration speeches ever delivered by an incoming president:

For too long, a small group in our nation’s Capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished — but the people…