President Donald Trump’s most ardent supporters are motivated by their prejudices, not economic concerns, social scientists contend. Will Democrats stop trying to win their votes?
In January, Smith and his University of Kansas colleague, associate sociology professor Eric A. Hanley, published a 47-page paper deconstructing the Republican president’s appeal. Building on decades of scholarship about the lure of authoritarianism and their own analysis of American voting psychology in 2012 and 2016, the social scientists make an argument that some may find offensive and others unsurprising.
It goes something like this: Trump’s biggest supporters are motivated by bigotry and want him to hurt the people they dislike.
Note: There’s a lot to unpack in this article, and this just seems to be the hook.
Honestly, my experience is entirely anecdotal, and I completely admit that. I have not read this article yet, so I don’t even know what the conclusion is (but I can make an assumption).
Disclaimer being what it is, literally all of the full-on racist people I know or have known are also MAGA conservatives. And conversely, all the MAGA people I know or have known are way more racist than average. I say that from the perspective that, at least in the USA, most people have racial biases to a certain extent.
I’ve been told things like “You don’t have the right skin color to take the bus into the city”, meaning because I’m Caucasian with “white” skin, I would somehow be an outlier among the rest of the folks taking the bus. Many, many times I’ve heard statements like “we can’t even say [the N-word] anymore even though that’s what they call themselves all the time” and let me tell you the people saying that don’t say “N-word” they say the real deal that rhymes with chigger. They’ll claim illegal “Mexicans” took their jobs, without a moment’s thought about who hired those “Mexicans” or what nationality those “Mexicans” are. There’s really no skin color other than white-white that doesn’t receive some hate.
Anyway, this is just old man ranting at this point, and it may even be too long to be readable, so let me summarize it with FUCK RACISTS & FUCK MAGA.
The average immigrant from Guatemala has had about 2-4 years of school in their entire life. They don’t speak English and will never be fluent. There a decent chance they’re not even literate in Spanish.
Now imagine who you have to be for that person to be a threat to your job.
I am the son of MAGA parents. They were never overtly racist. They were always kind to my non-white friends and their non-white neighbors, always thinking that they were “one of the good ones”. But since Trump has validated their latent racism, it has become more ugly. I think that’s more insidious and dangerous than empowering the lunatic fringe, honestly.
Trump made a lot of people who thought it was a societal norm to be kind and hide their biases feel like it was okay, and that felt freeing to them. It’s also why many of them bray about freedom
When these types talk about “freedom” or “liberty”, they usually mean the Southern definition.
“Things have gotten so bad over the last 4 years” is just a dog whistle for “theres too many brown people on my tv and no one says f*** are weird anymore”
So at least theyre still somewhat restrained
Sigh I’ve heard my parents and their neighbors complain about “all the Jews” buying houses to rent to “all the Mexicans” who now live in their neighborhood. (Hint: there is no way that 100% of the “Mexicans” they refer to are actually Mexican. But being so nuanced isn’t a skill racists tend to have.)
I hate houses being bought up by big landlords, too, and I know that being constantly bugged by realtors (who just want to turn around and rent those houses out anyway) is something that bothers those particular home owners. I would be great if we could talk about those problems for what they are, without bringing in people’s religion, culture, or national origin. The only war is a class war, and although even these people agree that a class war of some type exists, it seems that some people love to hate so much that it just gets added to a pile of things to hate.
It’s almost like they’re the opposite of polyamorous, some kind of poly-misery, where they can’t hate just one group. Ugh.