The glimmer of hope in Trump’s racist social media diatribe

Donald Trump’s repeated attacks on a group of Democratic congresswomen have dominated American news this week.

It’s hard to stay positive when the leader of the free world is telling four young women of colour (three of whom were born in the US, and all of whom are citizens) to “go back where they came from”, to “their crime-infested countries”. But in the president’s days-long xenophobic tirade, there has been a glimmer of hope.

As someone who works in social media, I watch trends and movements grow online as the news unfolds. On Monday, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley – aka The Squad – held a joint press conference in response to Donald Trump’s comments.

Referring to him pointedly as “the occupant of the White House”, the congresswomen took a stand against Trump’s racism, urging the nation not to “take the bait”.

While they spoke, Donald Trump knocked out some more enraged tweets, slamming the “four ‘progressives’”, socialism and Barack Obama. Although these tweets received thousands of likes and retweets – as with anything the president posts – they weren’t the main event. Another social media trend was brewing.

After the success of the hashtag #RacistPresident, #TheSquad has been raking in the posts, likes and shares. There’s some slight confusion about who used “The Squad” as a term first, but it can be seen on AOC’s social media accounts long before Trump ever said it. Although Donald Trump has adopted the term as an insult against the freshman congress members, it probably won’t have the same effect as nicknames such as “Creepy Joe” or “Pocahontas”, which he has used for Democratic presidential hopefuls Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren respectively. There have been hundreds of thousands of posts on Instagram and Twitter with the hashtag – some critical, of course, but many defensive and many others celebratory. The hashtag drew global attention and is still being near-constantly posted about. “The Squad” nickname has solidified these women as an other to Donald Trump in the public consciousness, a tangible alternative to the politics he is offering.

Donald Trump may be good at Twitter, but so are The Squad. These young Democrats know how to use social media and they’re not afraid to pit their skills against the president. And they might just win.

Yours,

Lucy Anna Gray

Assistant audience editor (US)