As residents of East Palestine, Ohio struggle to pick up the pieces after a freight train carrying hazardous chemicals was derailed there nearly two weeks ago, rightwing media has seized on this moment to launch baseless conspiracies about why the government’s response has been so poor.
According to them, the Biden administration has abandoned East Palestine because the people living there are white, poor and working class.
“East Palestine is overwhelmingly white and it’s politically conservative. More than 70% of the voters in the surrounding counties supported Donald Trump in the last election. That shouldn’t be relevant but as you’re about to hear it pretty much is,” Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson said ominously on his show.
Donald Trump, being no doubt well-practised in how to capitalize on the grievances of the marginalized, took the chance to visit East Palestine on Wednesday and to commiserate with its residents about the Biden administration’s “betrayal” of them.
It’s the kind of political rabble-rousing that’s become typical in the aftermath of any American disaster. But the race and class-baiting happening here is also eerily reminiscent of the Republican party’s poor-white-victim strategy of 2016.
Back then, conservative dog-whistling about how white people in red states are pariahs in their own country who need to beef up their political muscle in order to ensure their own survival was a tactic that helped Trump win a presidential election. And I’m ruefully reminded of that period as I watch him and his supporters take advantage of East Palestine the same way.
But democrats aren’t taking this lying down. “Congressional Republicans and former Trump administration officials owe East Palestine an apology for selling them out to rail industry lobbyists when they dismantled Obama-Biden rail safety protections,” said the White House deputy press secretary, Andrew Bates, following Trump’s Wednesday visit.
And even as both administrations lob blame for what happened back and forth, it’s important to remember that the derailment is a symbol of much larger problems, ones that go far beyond the partisan quarelling we’re watching play out. As Greg Sargent notes in the Washington Post, this is really about “profit-driven rail companies underinvesting in safety [and] lobbyists weakening rail regulation”.
Look, there’s no doubt the people of East Palestine have a lot to be upset about. The government completely dropped the ball both in protecting them from an incident like this, and in responding to it after the fact.
Labour advocacy groups say this could have been prevented had it not been for weakened regulatory standards and cost-cutting measures by railroad companies (which occurred under both Democrats and Republicans) that have left staff stretched thin. The controlled burning of some chemicals following the derailment – a decision made by authorities to avoid a massive explosion – has also been a point of contention for residents, thousands of whom had to evacuate, and are still unclear about just how dangerous the fallout from this is going to be. And then to add insult to injury in their eyes, Biden has yet to come into town, but was just in Ukraine commemorating the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of the country, something the East Palestine mayor called a “slap in the face”.
Still, what’s clear is that the derailment and its repercussions have way more to do with decades of federal government disinvestment in small, poor communities like East Palestine, than anything to do with race.
And, Carlson’s suggestion on his show that places like Philadelphia and Detroit are “favored cities,” and that Black Americans are the “favored poor,” is laughable when you take even a cursory look at what’s happening in cities with a significant Black population like Flint, Atlanta and Chicago.
The people of East Palestine should be able to move on from this without being used as pawns in an endless political battle.
Tayo Bero is a Guardian US contributing writer.
