Status Anxiety Is Drives the Right Wing

One of the myths of the 2016 presidential election that the mainstream media still has not ceased promoting is that working class whites voted for Donald Trump due to economic anxiety.  Subsequence studies have debunked that story line and confirmed that racism and fears of the loss of white privilege were the real motivating forces for Trump voters. A new study of 377 of the January 6, 2021, insurrectionists who stormed the U.S. Capitol arrested and charged to date further confirms this reality.  Of this group, 95% were white and 85% were male and there was heavy representation of right wing "Christians."  Their grievance is there perceived loss of control of the country as it has become more racially diverse and the ability of evangelicals and Christofascists to impose their antiquated and fairy tale based beliefs on others has decreased dramatically and church affiliation has plummeted. A column in the Washington Post looks at the study findings and the reality that little will end the smoldering hatred that motivates this far right.  Here are column highlights:

The Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 had a number of things (mostly) in common, including their race, their gender and their belief that when an election doesn’t turn out the way you want, the appropriate response is violence.

But political scientist Robert A. Pape found something interesting when he looked at where the 377 people who have been arrested or charged in connection with the riot hailed from:

Nor were these insurrectionists typically from deep-red counties. Some 52 percent are from blue counties that Biden comfortably won. But by far the most interesting characteristic common to the insurrectionists’ backgrounds has to do with changes in their local demographics: Counties with the most significant declines in the non-Hispanic White population are the most likely to produce insurrectionists who now face charges.

There has already been a good deal of social media response to Pape’s study of the, “Duh, it’s racism, not economic anxiety” variety. But while this result may not be surprising, it is a vivid illustration of the forces that helped propel Donald Trump to the presidency and still hold the Republican Party in their grip.

It’s also a reminder to Democrats of what they can and can’t accomplish with subtle alterations to their messaging.

Many at the Capitol seem to have experienced the kind of cultural change that the entire conservative world — including both ambitious politicians and an entrenched right-wing media — is intent on not just drawing attention to but also focusing on as a source of resentment and fear.

Looking back, it seemed almost destined that the Trump era would culminate in a violent right-wing insurrection.

We’ve known for some time that many Trump supporters felt a deep cultural anxiety, the sense that the world is changing in ways they don’t like and can’t control, and is leaving them behind. To a great degree, they’re right: Popular culture is far more diverse now than it was 20 or 30 years ago, and in many ways it reflects liberal values. If you think it’s an abomination for people of the same gender to marry, TV is going to make you feel very uncomfortable . . . .

And if you’re a White person living in a town that is steadily becoming less White, just like the country as a whole? Many such people will welcome that diversity, but some will see it as a threat to their status.

Status is complicated. It comes not only from your income, the prestige of your occupation or the esteem of your neighbors. It can also come from the feeling that you and people like you are in charge. And sometimes you don’t even notice it until it’s threatened, which is part of how cultural hegemony operates.

Trump understood that the feeling of status threat could be turned into a powerful political weapon. For instance: The point of insisting Mexico would pay for his border wall wasn’t that we needed the money, but that we’d regain status and potency by dominating and humiliating that country. Vote for Trump and that status and potency would be restored, he suggested.

It is almost impossible to overstate the role that the conservative media plays in creating and sustaining the feeling that White people’s status is under threat — and that the appropriate response is resentment and fear. The encroachments of liberalism are a daily drumbeat on Fox News and conservative talk radio, as is the message that everything you cherish is on the verge of collapse.

After the past couple of decades, we should understand that there’s almost nothing Democrats can do to diffuse those feelings of cultural displacement. Fox is gonna Fox, and politicians like Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) are going to see culture war rabble-rousing as their key to rising within the GOP.

The degree to which Democrats “reach out” to guys in Midwestern diners or try to show them “respect” by paying homage to their cultural markers won’t make a difference. . . . . Trump didn’t show his voters respect; he could barely contain his contempt for them. He told them he’d be a vehicle for their rage. That’s what they loved.

That rage still burns, because the forces of societal change that feed it continue inexorably, and some people will always try to profit from it, politically or financially. That’s true even if conservatives find it harder to loathe President Biden than they did Obama or Hillary Clinton.

And sometimes, even if — or especially when — Democrats assemble electoral majorities, that rage is going to burst out in violence. Again.

These people are the number one threat to peace and security in America and white nationalist are the number one terrorist threat.