The killing of two young Jews, one American, the other Israeli, barely into the springtime of their lives, should be loudly condemned. As we learned from Martin Luther King, the stealing away of innocent lives, young or old, no matter what the circumstances, has no justification.

It isn’t a coincidence that this fatal attack takes place at a fraught moment in which anti-semitic attacks are rising worldwide. These attacks are, in part, but only in part, the result of the punishing genocidal war, waged by the Israeli miitary and Netenyahu government against the people of Gaza.

In any event, such deadly actions should be repudiated and the killer should be brought to justice. That Trump and the MAGA movement are demogogically and unashamedly portraying themselves as opponents of anti semitism shouldn’t take away from the reality of its growth at this moment and the imperative to challenge it wherever it arises.

In his White House meeting today with South African president Cyril Ramaphosa, Trump once again deployed white racist grievance to falsely accuse the South African government of sanctioning genocide against white South African landowners.

This isn’t the first time, and it won’t be the last time that Trump appeals to his MAGA supporters along racist lines. It is, after all, a staple and organizing core of his (and MAGA’s) politics. Which is all the more reason that this racist spectacle and national embarrasment should be widely and unequivocally condemned.

The main fault line in politics today is between the Trump regime and a far flung multi class, peoples coalition challenging that regime. This is the strategic matrix from which everything else — allies and alliances, forms and issues of struggle, demands, etc — flows.

Such a strategy abhors political posturing and narrowly constructed politics, while insisting on sustained initiative, breadth of approach, and tactical flexibility. It is always helpful to remind ourselves that the coalition reststing Trump and the MAGA movement stretches from Angela Davis to Liz Cheney.

From the sustained assault on DEI to the recent welcoming of white South African “refugees,” we see evidence everyday of the white nationalist posture of the Trump administration. Trump and his team make little effort to disguise the dangerous and deadly racist animus that permeates every aspect of their political outlook and practice.

To find a historical antecedent one has to go back to the Southern racists who forcefully overthrew the Reconstruction governments in the aftermath of the Civil War and violently installed the draconian system of Jim Crow — separate and unequal — in the Southern states.

That system of governance and every day practice, resting on terror, remained in place until the rise of the modern Civil Rights movement eight decades later. A similar movement — but broader, deeper, and more powerful — is on today’s agenda if we hope to defeat the latest iteration of white nationalism — Trump and Trumpism — and finally establish an egalitarian and multi-racial society.