This is technically true, which is the best kind of true. Swap in nationalist, chauvinist. It's utterly clear what was meant by racism above, in spite of your semantics.
A perfect example is Donald Trump. Every argument about Trump became "he's a racist!!11", which caused people to ignore and focus on the wrong problems with him! There was a lot of negatives to Trump, and yet everyone just said "Racist, boom I don't need to argue any more!"
People started ignoring completely legit arguments because the racist angle was so overplayed. I'm sick of hearing racist as the end-all be-all argument. It doesn't work anymore, the card is overplayed. The only place it still works is in liberal bubbles. (Note I'm socially liberal, fiscal conservative moderate, no dog in this race)