The Age of Trump empowered many "zombie ideas," both here in America and around the world. Fascism is the most dangerous of those zombie ideas. There is also the Big Lie that the 2020 Election was rigged or somehow stolen.
The claim that the rise of Trump is primarily a story of "economic anxiety" among the white working class is one of the most powerful zombie ideas in recent memory. It appears highly resistant to facts, evidence or reason. Social scientists and other researchers have clearly established that white racism in its various forms explains why white voters support Trump, the Republican Party and neo-fascism.
It is of course true that questions of class cannot be easily separated from the color line in America. And it's unquestionably true that the working and middle classes in America (white or otherwise) have suffered greatly since the 1960s from deindustrialization and gangster-capitalist attacks on upward mobility, the commons and the overall quality of life. Those shocks to the system have definitely made right-wing authoritarians, demagogues, fake populists and "friendly fascists" like Donald Trump seem more appealing to many disgruntled white voters.
But it is also true that, in practice, "economic anxiety" among white people has historically manifested itself through white racism and the politics of white supremacy. The evidence also undercuts the claim that Trumpism is primarily a function or corollary to economic suffering or "anxiety."
For example, the average 2016 Trump voter lived in a household with a median income of $72,000, slightly above the national median income at the time. . . . Last January's assault on the U.S. Capitol was a white supremacist attack against America's multiracial democracy. Yet these zombie ideas about the "white working class" still color how too many political observers understand that event.
New research sheds additional light and clarity on the role played by white identity politics in the Jan. 6 attack.
A paper by social scientists Austin Wright (the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy) and David Van Dijcke (the University of Michigan) details how participants in the Capitol assault were more likely to come from areas of the country with comparatively high levels of Trump support. In addition, Wright and Dijcke also show that the likelihood of participating in the attack on the Capitol greatly increased if the participants came from a community that Trump narrowly lost.
Trumpists who participated in the insurrection were also more likely to perceive their communities as being politically isolated, i.e., they live in an area where their neighbors or the surrounding community do not share their affinity for Trump and his movement. This perceived isolation also heightens a sense of threat and vulnerability.
Wright and Van Dijcke's paper, "Profiling Insurrection: Characterizing Collective Action Using Mobile Device Data," also finds that people who participated in the Capitol attack were more likely to come "from Trump-voting 'islands,' where residents are surrounded by neighborhoods with higher numbers of Biden supporters."
Not surprisingly, Trumpists who participated in the insurrection were also more likely to have been radicalized by right-wing social media platforms such as Parler, and to live in close geographic proximity to right-wing extremist paramilitary, terrorist or hate groups.
These new findings complement the much-discussed research by Robert Pape and his colleagues at the University of Chicago Project on Security and Threats, which shows — contrary to stereotypes about rust belt and rural America — that a large percentage of those who attacked the Capitol last January came from white suburban middle- and upper-class communities. . . . Another singular finding is that many people who participated in the insurrection came from formerly white-majority areas that have experienced rapid demographic change.
In keeping with the scholarship on fascism and other forms of radical and extremist movements, there is strong evidence that Trump supporters are driven by a search for belonging, meaning and identity. As an example of that dynamic, people — especially young men — who are attracted to extremist movements are often seeking out a type of family and community that is tied together, generally in opposition to some out-group or "enemy," by what sociologists describe as "bonding" social capital.
When it comes to zombie ideas, white supremacy and racism are among America's oldest examples. In many ways, America was actually founded on them. Donald Trump can be seen as a political necromancer who took those zombie ideas and made them powerful in ways not seen since the era of Jim Crow white supremacy, or perhaps the end of Reconstruction following the American Civil War. To this point, Joe Biden and the Democrats have shown themselves incapable of stopping or reversing these zombie ideas. America's democracy teeters on the edge of disaster as a result.
Political Social scientists Hakeem Jefferson and Victor Ray address this in a recent essay for FiveThirtyEight:
The idea that the racial reckoning of 2020 would last preyed on some of the most pervasive myths about race in America — in particular, optimism about what would come out of the protests and activism of 2020. It required that one believed, as Martin Luther King Jr. famously said, that the "arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." . . . But these moments that hint at a change in the racial hierarchy and a change in the status and social position of Black Americans are never met with uniform support from the American public.
Instead, these moments are often met with violent responses. They are also often met with new laws that attempt to weaken the political power of Black people while strengthening the political power of white people. And, yes, these moments are also often met by attempts to ensure a particular telling of American history that helps to maintain the mythology of racial progress that so many Americans find so deeply attractive.
White supremacy, racism, authoritarianism and fascism are intimately tied together. In fact, Jim and Jane Crow white supremacy was (and is) America's native form of fascism. As such, what today's Republican-fascist movement represent is not something exotic, brought from foreign shores, but something truly American.
[P]olitical scientists Jesse Rhodes, Raymond La Raja, Tatishe Nteta and Alexander Theodoridis have conducted new research showing a clear relationship between white racism and support for Trump's coup and the Capitol attack. They summarize their findings in an essay for the Washington Post:
People who deny White racial advantages and the prevalence of racial inequities also doubt the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election, express more positive attitudes toward the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and absolve former president Donald Trump of blame for the riot.
In short, Donald Trump, the Jim Crow fascist Republican Party and the larger white right made an offer to the "white working class," which a large proportion of the latter did not refuse. For many reasons, tens of millions of white Americans chose racism, racial resentment and white supremacy. By doing so, those white Americans decided to make the lives of black and brown Americans and other marginalized groups much worse with the hope that somehow it would elevate their own collective feelings of power and self-esteem.
The sooner the Democrats come to grips with that fact, and fully recognize the compelling power of zombie ideas such as racism and white supremacy, the faster they can focus their energy on mobilizing their own base and doing the hard work of preserving, defending and redeeming the country's democracy. Time is running out.
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