Racism. Christian extremism. Both not exclusive to themselves. Both have felt ignored and feed on the the thoughts of being victims due to their “unpopular” beliefs. There is much more to this subject but this is the best I can simplify it.
Gamergate essentially created and unified the modern alt-right as we see it today, it should absolutely be in consideration towards modern political discourse.
It’s essentially these two things. And it’s easy to see from any political map that these divides line up really well along rural vs urban areas. People who live in cities have learned how to live together and tolerate each other (even if they don’t necessarily like each other). People in rural areas think of themselves as the ‘backbone’ of the country because or our early agrarian and later industrial development as a country. And in many ways, they really were. Farmers, miners, factory workers, etc.
But time has left them behind with factory farms, overseas production, robot factories, renewable energy, etc. They blame “the other” for their problems. The “other” or “the enemy” in their minds is often “big city” people with darker skin, or “academic pinheads” or “government bureaucrats” or basically anyone but themselves. To them, hearing news about something like climate change or same sex marriage is an “attack on their way of life and traditional values”. They haven’t learned how to adapt or take proper stock of their situation. They only know how to lash out at “the other”.
If rural people would calm the fuck down and gain some perspective, they could see that they have a lot in common with working people in urban areas. For example, we’re all being fucked over by greedy corporations and a tiny number of people with way too much money and power. But those same powerful elites do a masterful job of pitting all of us working class slobs against each other. This both amuses them and keeps us divided so we don’t build the guillotines. The country being ever on the brink of civil war is very much intentional.
And of course there are guys like Steve Bannon, who is like a comic book villain. Guys like that really do want to see it all burn to the ground so it can be rebooted in some fantasy world where “bitter old white males like me rule again”.
I’m interested to see if this rural/urban divide is going to shift in the future. With the ballooning cost of real estate and the rise of remote work, a lot of urban liberals are moving to more rural areas.
There’s certainly a group of people that enjoy city life, but a lot of people (myself included) just want some peace and quiet and only lived in or near cities to be close to work.
The far right have been stoking hate and resentment for decades. But before Trump they always tried to maintain an air of respectability as well as plausible deniability. Then came Trump and threw all that out of the window. Also he has a talent to spout any nonsense with utter conviction. That is perceived as authenticity by the people who feel left out by the political process and that are simply too dumb to understand any nuanced discussion.
I and hate to admit it have read it all. And I never thought I would say it but one book made me feel unclean, dirty, and really question America so much I may find work elsewhere.
A large amount of angry, angry disillusioned people. I’m culturally close enough to understand a bit, if not 100% of it. There’s been a lot of cultural change really fast in the West, and increasingly bad economic conditions for the poor, rural and/or uneducated at the same time. As a result, a bubble of people who are completely reactionary and want to tear down the establishment has formed. Trump just managed to mobilize them.
The part I don’t really get is the appeal of the guy himself. It’s like they want to inflict him on the people they’re angry at, as if he’s a weapon and not a leader who will be in charge of them.
Yeah, lot of bitterness from perceived left wing elitism that they feel derided them and marginalized them, Trump is not a political platform, it’s just resentment.
Trump represents modern conservatism, but he himself? I’m not sure he actually stands for a whole lot beyond his own orange bubble.
He’s mostly a blank slate (philosophically and intellectually) that the people around him can use to get their agendas enacted. He surrounds himself with sycophants and bootlickers, so as long as they promise him wealth and power, he is content to parrot the talking points he’s given.
Steven Miller, Steve Bannon, Alex Jones, and all the others…those are the real evil motherfuckers. When Trump is out of the picture, they’ll find some other half-wit to puppet. The fight won’t end when one figurehead fades in to history.
idk, just one dude’s thoughts.
(Just to be clear, none of that absolves him of the real damage he’s done. Malicious indifference is still malicious.)
I suspect one of them would directly take his place, actually. Trump is kind of an anomaly in not having redeeming qualities himself, if you look around the world and through history.
They were absolute geniuses compared to Trump, and put on a far more convincing show of honesty - particularly Hitler, with his faux-compassionate warmups and vegetarianism. Mussolini had an actual career as an intellectual before he was famous. Hitler sounds kind of intellectually average.
He made an actual living as a newspaper editor, and got some good reviews according to Wikipedia, so apparently he convinced other people too. At the very least, he could pass.
I don’t think fascism is capable of producing competent longterm leadership. Like the ideology preselects for loyalty above all, it’s rabidly anti-intellectual and scorns anyone perceived as being an intellectual elitist. It’s purely emotion driven and requires ever escalating emotional rhetoric to keep the based angry at external all-powerfully weak enemies (lazy mexicans stealing your jobs, sneaky jewish bankers crashed the entire economy, thuggish high school dropout gangbangers in the inner city are criminal masterminds responsible for all the drugs flowing through rural communities who would overrun everything if they were smart enough to unify, take your pick of contradictory scapegoat.)
That’s not to say incompetence means harmlessness, there’s a lot of blood that has been spilled throughout history due to incompetence.
Well, they certainly got straight to the point this time. The last time it took a world war before they really started to shit the bed. I’m grateful, if confused.
Well… were not on the other side of this yet. Were still in the sort of early 1930s Germany era where the real problems people face haven’t gotten all that much better, and the fascists have made many decently successful smaller attempts at power but haven’t quite succeeded in that big push for power. like the stuff that is planned in project 2025.
It’s like they want to inflict him on the people they’re angry at, as if he’s a weapon
This completely nails it. Trump’s lack of a filter and eagerness to pick fights makes him look like a fearless champion for his followers. He isn’t going to pull punches or compromise with anyone.
A very conservative relative of mine likened supporting Trump to hiring a sleazy but effective lawyer: his personality and methods are irrelevant; you hired him to achieve specific results and the only thing that matters is his ability to achieve those results. If it makes the opposition scream then that’s just added entertainment.
What I don’t get is he had four years already to achieve results and all he did was make the country worse off, but somehow everyone seems to have forgotten that 😭
Anti-federalism – Deep rooted distrust of the Federal Government has been around since the dawn of the USA, though its often been part of the minority.
Know Nothing / Native American Party – 1850s era movement. Protectionist, isolationist, nativist. Originally they popped up as anti-Irish and anti-Catholic, but overall the concept is that immigrants suck. The modern concept is: “I know nothing”, about the movement. The overall idea is that even in the 1800s, it was bad to look like a racist bigot, so you’d keep your support for these causes secret. Everyone in the party knows that “the Know Nothings are larger than everyone expects”, but no one really knows how big the movement is. And that’s the point.
America First – 1930s saw the rise of Fascism vs Communism in Europe with the dawn of the Spanish civil war. The “America First” movement focused on isolationism and even pro-German / Nazi slant mixed with religious fervor. This was pushed by tech-gurus of the time: Charles Lindberg (airplane entrepreneur, first Trans-atlantic flight, etc. etc.), and the Christian Front. (en.wikipedia.org/…/1939_Nazi_rally_at_Madison_Squ…).
NAFTA – 1990s free-trade by Bill Clinton opened up Mexico and Canada as incredible trading partners. However, local industry / local steel lost out as companies started to shop in Mexico for material. As Bill Clinton was a huge pusher of NAFTA, the anti-NAFTA political group consolidated under Republicans. This is likely where the bulk of blue-collar workers is coming from, especially because Trump started adding Tariffs / anti-globalism concepts back to the forefront of American Politics.
Some more recent context:
Trump has been building his brand for decades as a very rich, very macho straight-talker. Even in the 80s and earlier, there’s a large number of Hotels, Casinos, Resorts, Golf Courses (etc. etc.) that have relatively high reputation among Americans in general with Trump’s name.
Trump reads from the teleprompter in “another voice”, openly showing his disdain for public speaking and the political system. Anyone who has lost faith in the political system loves this. Trump pretends that the teleprompter is forcing him to talk and its all just a “through the motions” thing. Then Trump obviously goes off teleprompter and talks about different concepts, the “real stuff”. (Or so goes his branding). This simple trick is enough to get the gist to his followers: don’t listen to what I say (because I’m being forced to say this politically correct crap). This means that Trump’s true actions are only limited to the imagination of the listener.
Trump is playing and leaning into the borne again Christian role. From a religious perspective, the “former enemy / former outsider” coming into religion is a common story and religious love it. Trump was openly a Democrat in the 90s / 00s before switching into Republicanism.
The “bulk” of Trump’s political style is Know Nothing + Macho + anti-political correctness.
I would add the admittance of China to the WTO as another proximate cause. And one which probably had more of a material effect than NAFTA; but, NAFTA had already become a GOP talking point and it just stuck. China’s entry to the WTO was also moved over the finish line by Bush II, though most of the ground work was laid by Clinton. So, it wouldn’t have had the same clean narrative as NAFTA. US Employment in manufacturing went into freefall in late 2000 and early 2001. This was also during a recession, so that is intermixed with the effects of those changes in international trade. But, even as the recession receded and the US entered an economic boom, leading up to the 2008 crash, manufacturing employment in the US either held steady or decreased slightly. It’s unsurprising that the same period saw a lot of offshoring of manufacturing to China. And this was also the period of Neoliberal economists pushing “comparative advantage” and how the US losing all those manufacturing jobs was a good thing.
So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
– Barack Obama, 2008
I think the current economic and political system is failing a vast majority of Americans and like other authoritarian demagogues in the past, Trump misattributes that problem in ways that resonate with the bigotry and racism that exists in American culture.
America has had a long history of nationalism and exploitation that leaves it ripe for cherishing those values and minimizing critical thinking about current structures and questioning how those really only benefit the rich and powerful.
I think the current economic and political system is failing a vast majority of Americans and like other authoritarian demagogues in the past, Trump misattributes that problem in ways that resonate with the bigotry and racism that exists in American culture.
You just explained in one sentence what I bumbled my way through in four paragraphs. Well written, my friend.
A lot of old-fashioned “good old homegrown” folks who feel that the world is changing and the economy is leaving them behind. Think of coal towns, mid-west mining towns, etc…
Insert a republican who tells them enough times that it’s not the fault of big business screwing literally everyone over, it’s actually the fault of the immigrants/LGBTQ+/Mulsims/Blacks (insert marginalised group of choice here) coming and taking what should rightfully go to Good Honest Working Folk/Christian Evangelicals (Insert the group you’re trying to court here) and then promise to change that.
The low-key greatest quote came from LBJ in an off-hand remark to an aide. Not even from a speech.
“If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
True then. True now. And true internationally. There is no country where the Conservative Right Wing doesn’t play by that exact rulebook.
American politics has been described as a two party system, but it is really a one and a half party system. One party creates a winning political coalition while the minority party has to deal with the remains. Sometimes the minority party wins major elections, but it is generally rare.
There are two ways the parties shift or reorganize.
The first is when one party collapses. Most recent examples were Republicans in 1932 and Democrats in 1968. The majority party messes up so much that it is blatantly apparent that they aren’t going to win elections any more and the transfer of power is rather peaceful.
The second is due to mainly demographic change as the majoriry party becomes the minority party. This is generally more risky for democracies as the shift is gradual and there isn’t a firm reason parties to switch. There is also more electoral chaos as votes are a lot closer.
One example was the Election of 1800, where Southern and Westward expansion in the country had led Jefferson and Burr to beat Adams, but then there was a stalemate on who would be picked. While a political solution was found in the end, militias were being drawn up and there was a growing threat of civil war.
The second example was the Civil War. While Lincoln won a minority of votes, it was apparent that future elections would likely be won by the party of thr North due to increasing immigration.
It seems like Trump is tapping into this demographic fear. More educated voters vote Democratic and the populace is becoming more educated. Outside of Florida, it appears that voters are choosing to move to Republican Sun belt states and voting Democrat. What was thought of as a party collapse in 2008 is turning out to be a demographic shift instead. So, the former dominant party is fighting back to delay or prevent the shift.
He basically told all the racists, homophobes, transphobes, xenophobes, and anyone else who feels they’re entitled to more than anyone else that they were right and they don’t need to maintain any air of dignity or even basic human compassion about it anymore.
Look at that list and you’ll see it’s all people who base their whole identity around hatred of things they’re afraid of or don’t understand. That’s what he tapped into, ignorance and fear.
Among other factors, I think humans have a certain instinctive drive: when there’s a broad sense of social malaise—when lots of people feel there’s something wrong with their social institutions, but there’s no consensus on how to remedy it—they gravitate toward whatever thing the social establishment seems most afraid of, because in our deep history that’s been an effective way to break out of dangerous institutional stasis.
Depending on the social establishment at the time, that anti-establishment movement could take many forms—religious, ideological, nationalistic, etc. So I think Trumpism is an inevitable reaction to the rise of the neoliberal establishment under Clinton and the Bushes: the underlying cause of the neoliberal malaise is economic, but the most visible social anxieties are over racism, sexism, and other social factors. So that creates a feedback loop of growing fear that attracts those feeling a general sense of discontent.
Half the population is below average IQ and will listen to whoever screams the loudest. That’s a gross simplification but basically what’s going on. People with low IQ do not have logical reasoning.
Besides coming across as iamverysmart, that doesn’t match the actual demographics. Somehow, low-IQ people are all born poor, white, male and decades ago? You could make the argument for the tendency to be uneducated, but even that’s not a perfect correlation with raw intelligence.
I’m not sure what your argument is. I’m not saying all dumb people are poor. Absolutely not the case. There are plenty of absolute morons who are rich that support Trump. I literally never made any correlation claims about wealth?
Also I’m not talking about myself at all so idk why you took this as me saying i am very smart? Weird take…
Most Trump supporters are white, old, uneducated, male and/or poor. If Trump supporters are all dumb, there must be a strong correlation between these things and being dumb, statistically speaking.
In fact, Trump supporters may skew a little less intelligent, but there’s also plenty that are smart. (And I won’t even get into the validity of IQ as a valid measure of intelligence)
Tldr: The media attacked him, turned him into a symbol of unhappiness.
America isn’t doing so great. Unemployment is high, inflation is spiraling out of control, wild habitats are being bulldozed, hell it’s getting hard to put food on the table.
I think even lemmy can agree that the economy isn’t doing so well.
Back in the 80s, we had factories, with unions. NAFTA decided that America should send most of our factories to Mexico and beyond. Immigration went up, importing cheap labor, basically scabs.
The Democrats, who claimed to be for the common worker, made a farce of it, saying “they took our jobs” was racist. And you know what, those jobs weren’t stolen, there were given away.
Every year, year after year, it gets worse. Politicians on both sides are lying to our faces and won’t do jack shit to bring in tariffs or lower immigration.
Then comes Trump. He’s a fucking scumbag just like every other politician, but at least he attempts to pander to the millions affected. And then the media started attacking him.
This just made him look like someone who might actually be on our side. Sure, he might fuck over every other country, but God damn it, America comes first, not Mexico, not China, not the EU, America comes first.
people are realizing that the American dream was a lie and they don’t want to believe that the people they voted for all along are the ones who caused it
no, if you were a white middle class boomer born between 1945 & 1970ish who managed not to go to vietnam, you got to live the American dream. then we methodically voted for the people who stripped away all of the policies that made it possible
Hey, my boomer dad got to be a slave soldier AND live the dream.
Because his dad was a dentist and he could afford to pay for college after Uncle Sam, it turns out, got him shot twice, blown up once, and gave him leukemia.
But at least Vietnam doesn’t have universal healthcare.
I know, I’m referring to the fact that all that got done to him to defend a fascist state against Big Scary Communist Ho Chi Minh who actually wanted to be a US Ally against Chinese influence in Asia.
And then they didn’t even fucking win. Which was probably good, but still.