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TO UNDERSTAND THE rise of Donald Trump, you don’t need to go to a diner in the Midwest or read “Hillbilly Elegy,” J.D. Vance’s memoir.
You just need to know these basic facts:
In 1980, white people accounted for about 80 percent of the U.S. population.
In 2024, white people account for about 58 percent of the U.S. population.
Trump appeals to white people gripped by demographic hysteria. Especially older white people who grew up when white people represented a much larger share of the population. They fear becoming a minority.
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That true, actually where I grew up there were few orange people, but lately I noticed some people elected one !
Btw I am an antiracist so I will not descriminate but please dear U.S.A. citizens do not vote for this orange guy.
we got ourselves a sherlock over here
This is definitely true. It’s something I’ve heard Trump supporters argue about firsthand. But it’s not just only racism or the threat of being a minority, but the fear of losing freedom to do what they want according to their own skewed morals. So while a decent chunk of why they think the way they do is sheer racism and fear around that (especially since the start of the BLM movement), it’s not the core of the problem.
I believe that this started as the resurgence of toxic masculinity in that Trump showing people it was okay to be misogynistic, racist, and homophobic in opposition to race, gender, and identity politics rising in the 2010s. Women’s rights and LGBT people are in their sights as well and, despite their narrative fitting well with fundamentalist religious morals, this seems more like resentment that those movements didn’t address their needs or issues. COVID restrictions that they disagreed with fanned the growing fire into the fulblown fascist conservative movement we see today.
So I don’t think it’s the fact that cis het white people are in lower relative numbers but it’s the event of rising social progressivism and more rights for minorities and women that spurred the antagonism of them.
Tldr: Bigots are upset that they didn’t get anything out of women’s, LGBT, and minorities rights.
I’ll agree with you except for the timeline. It started after 9/11, bigotry was far less openly acceptable during the 90s. It just blew up after Obama was elected and social media took off. People were all exposed to the same type of media at the time, and big media companies weren’t spreading extremely racist content, other than a few fringe things like Rush Limbaugh. Fox news really took off after 9/11 too.
I think after 9/11 they were still the same old tactic they used in and after the cold war; security theater and fear mongering. But you’re right, news and political representatives definitely weren’t the completely open bigots that they are today though and I think you might be right about that time period being the start of today’s Fox news.
Social media definitely had a profound impact on politics, people’s rights, and open bigotry. This definitely gave them the means to have more of a voice with younger demographics but I’ll still argue that it wasn’t until Trump entered the picture that they were able to really push their narrative and decouple “truth” from official news sources in the minds of many. I don’t think I’ve seen so many people just repeat distorted views of reality at once until then.
I’ll agree with you except for the timeline. It started after 9/11, bigotry was far less openly acceptable during the 90s.
I want to disagree with this because bigotry was huge in the 90’s, but so was attacking it. Our cartoon’s were chock-full of anti-bigotry messaging, but then movies would be the opposite.
I think I, personally, would typify the 90’s with saying that one out-group is ok, but only if we all make fun of another one or you’re the butt of jokes. IE. You can have Will and Grace, but we’re using ‘gay’ as a word to literally just mean ‘bad.’
Trump showing people it was okay to be misogynistic, racist, and homophobic
Yup. It’s far more that racism alone.
It’s all sorts of bigotry that Trump has essentially given them permission to stop hiding.
Not just racism. His platform was racism AND a magical wall that pays for itself.
WHAT? Not Trump! /s
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Why? Are minorities treated badly or something?
Dey turk mah jerb
DEY TUK IS JERB!!!
Why are they worried about white pepper becoming the minority? I mean, do we treat minorities badly around here or something?
I don’t think racism itself is enough for Trump and far-right to succeed, which is precisely why they’ve combined it with populism and working class rhetoric. Of course, there’s still racism like how muslims are being portrayed as violent beasts as opposed to culture white christians, but a lot of it is also things like “immigrants are taking away money from welfare thats why you live bad” or “immigrants are taking our jobs” or “jews control everything and steal from workers” and so on, you know what they say.
Like any good right-wing propaganda, there is a grain of truth in those statements, and it’s that economic reality of working class is shit - wages are stagnant, exploitation is rampant and just pure stress when it comes to finances. I do believe that if people’s needs are met then the racist rhetoric would lose a lot of its power and people will just stop caring as much as they do right now, but that’s very unlikely without any radical action.
His supporters certainly don’t mind an awful lot of racism though.
They fear becoming a minority.
They operate under the false beliefs that they already are and that “the libs” bring in foreigners to tilt the vote (which is litteraly not possible) and then “those people get free everything” to feed further into racism. The imaginary bussed in people can’t vote or get benefits but thier social circle says so and thats all they need to believe and repeat it.
The triangle of rhetoric is appeal to authority, appeal to emotion, appeal to logic. They don’t accept any of it thay didn’t come from within thier social group so there is no convinving them and that is why Tronald Dump can say he could shoot somebody on 5th avenue and have them call it fake news despite being recorded.
(Edit x 5 :Why oh why can’t spellcheck just work?)
The triangle of rhetoric is appeal to authority, appeal to emotion, appeal to logic. They don’t accept any of it thay didn’t come from within thier social group so there is no convinving them and that is why Tronald Dump can say he could shoot somebody on 5th avenue and have them call it fake news despite being recorded.
This is spot on. Delve into the inevitable “Politics and Religion” section of any old school web forum for white guy hobbies and nine times out of ten it’s going to be knee deep in a loud circle jerk consisting of these exact guys whipped into a frenzy over nothing. Look, but don’t touch, it’s like a buzz saw in there.
Aren’t they also the ones loading up all of their undesirables onto buses and shipping them off to more lefterly cities?
Yeah, coz every accusation from them is a projection if some type.
This is exactly what my neighbor stopped me to tell me recently. About bringing in immigrants to vote and what not. I tried to tell him none of that information is true and show him where and why, but it’s really hard to do without making them dig further into their position.
Anne they are now conditioned believe that any media that doesn’t align with them is fake.
Even when you do manage to get one to think and realize the truth their peer group will come down on them HARD for “falling for leftist propaganda” and they will 180 immediately.
I feel like this article gets written every 3 weeks.
While I do think racism plays a big role, articles like these that paint a large American section with broad brush like this play a dangerous game.
At this point if you’re still supporting Trump, there is little that can be done for you with regards to changing your mind and youll be hard pressed to find sympathy.
But there is something to be said about the rural / urban divide. Small town America has been left behind - both economically and culturally and somehow we have to reach them. I don’t know if it’s a failure of messaging on the Dems or what exactly. I also think it’s a much broader issue than just ‘racism’.
I actually think a core part of being republican has to do with hating someone and feeling superior to them. It can revolve around sex, education, accent, culture, religion, sexual orientation, government structure, or skin color, but they have to hate on someone. You can plot the generations of conservatives by who they (primarily) hate at any given time.
They have to wrap themselves in their hate-blanket and fantasize about how they’ll have their AR-15 locked and loaded when the baddies come around. First they need to be scared, so they make up stories and lies about how “the other” corrupted their children, stole their jobs, took the government assistance, or performed DDOS on their interview, and then talk with friends or family on how evil the other is. Then they get great pleasure in having a big hate-orgy and trying hard to “trigger a liberal” spewing their made up hysterical bullshit.
A short list who’s-who hate list for conservatives: communists, socialists, civil rights activists, labor unions, abortion rights people and doctors, environmentalists, academics, immigrants, “the gays” (all LGBTQ+ individuals), muslims, transgender people, “mainstream media”. They’ve got to hate someone.
That reminds me of the primitive human trait of tribalism.
If you have a group labeled “others”, your group will get closer. If you have no “others” to fear, you’ll find a way to invent such a group.
It’s why I don’t think humanity will ever get along unless an external, immediate threat unites us. Aliens or something.
But yeah, it feels like conservative people are just more… “Primitive” in that way. Their fear organ is just more developed.
It’s why I don’t think humanity will ever get along unless an external, immediate threat unites us. Aliens or something.
What like a foreign dictatorship meddling in your democratic process? Or maybe that’s not existential enough - what about an urgent planetary climate crisis caused by a greedy minority trying to steal or planet’s limited resources to turn into useless stock?
The tragic thing about that is that it’s kind of not concrete enough for our little brains to comprehend on an emotional level.
Or rather, it’s so large and long-term and complex that we can’t deal with it.
I honestly think you’d still have collaborators with an obviously malevolent external force. Like say portals to hell opened up
Hmm, probably, but I feel like humanity would largely come together, or split into two camps.
I would envision either “everyone against the demons”, and the few who are with them are a small, covert minority, kind of like criminals, or humanity splitting into two camps, which would still be division, but arguably less divided than how we currently are.
To this point, how could we increase the number of people who take the side of humanity?
My thinking is that reducing anomie and inequality, increasing the bonds between people, all help move that number in a positive direction, as more of us realise that we need eachother.
This is my sneaky way of saying that we could be doing this now. That sure, maybe there will always be those who are just in it for themselves or a tiny in-group, but that’s no excuse for fatalism/doomerism.
IE we don’t have to wait for baleful aliens or demons spewing forth from hellgates. If we’re not waiting for the perfect unifying scenario, we can start moving the needle in a positive direction now. :)
Oh yeah I certainly hope we can. It’s just hard when there are big systemic and evolutionary obstacles in the way.
Authoritarian Personality
Duh.
Pretty sure this applies to all right-wing politicians, especially ones of the far-right.
Yepp. Even if they don’t speak to it, they are Trojan horses.
