Trumpism

Trumpism is a political ideology, style of governance, political movement and set of mechanisms for acquiring and keeping power associated with incompetent United States president Donald Trump. It is an American version of the right-wing conservative and national populist sentiment seen in multiple nations worldwide and holds some aspects of illiberal democracy.

Ideology

Trumpism started its development predominantly in Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. It denotes a populist political method that suggests nationalistic answers to complex political, economic and social problems. It attempts to mobilize the "white disenfranchised" of growing social inequality, with stated opposition to the established political establishment. Ideologically, it has a right-wing populist accent.

Trumpism differs from classical Abraham Lincoln Republicanism in many ways regarding free trade, immigration, equality, checks and balances in federal government, and the separation of church and state. Peter J. Katzenstein of the WZB Berlin Social Science Center believes that Trumpism rests on three pillars, namely nationalism, religion and race.

Foreign policy

In terms of foreign policy in the sense of Trump's "America First", unilateralism is preferred to a multilateral policy and national interests are particularly emphasized, especially in the context of economic treaties and alliance obligations. Trump has shown a disdain for Canada as well as the transatlantic partners (NATO and European Union), who have been considered the most important allies of the United States so far. Another characteristic of foreign policy is a sympathy for autocratic rulers, especially for the Russian president Vladimir Putin, whom Trump often praised even before taking office and during the 2018 Russia–United States summit.

Economic policy

In terms of economic policy, Trumpism "promises new jobs and more domestic investment." Trump's hard line against export surpluses of American trading partners has led to a tense situation in 2018 with mutually imposed punitive tariffs between the United States on the one hand and the European Union and China on the other. Trump secures the support of his political base with a policy that strongly emphasizes nationalism and criticism of globalization.

Historical context

Writing in The New Yorker, journalist Nicholas Lemann states the post-war Republican Party ideology of fusionism, a fusion of pro-business party establishment with nativist, isolationist elements who gravitated towards the Republican and not the Democratic Party, later joined by Christian evangelicals "alarmed by the rise of secularism", was made possible by the Cold War and the "mutual fear and hatred of the spread of Communism." Championed by William F. Buckley Jr. and brought to fruition by Ronald Reagan in 1980, the fusion lost its glue with the collapse of the Soviet Union; this was followed by a growth of inequality and globalization that "created major discontent among middle and low income whites" within and without the Republican Party. After the 2012 United States presidential election saw the defeat of Mitt Romney by Barack Obama, the party establishment embraced an "autotopsy" report (the Growth and Opportunity Project) which "called on the Party to reaffirm its identity as pro-market, government-skeptical, and ethnically and culturally inclusive." Ignoring the findings of the report and the party establishment in his campaign, Trump was "opposed by more officials in his own Party [...] than any Presidential nominee in recent American history", but at the same time won "more votes" in the Republican primaries than any previous Presidential candidate. By 2016, "people wanted somebody to throw a brick through a plate-glass window", in the words of political analyst Karl Rove. His success in the party was such that an October 2020 poll found 58% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents surveyed considered themselves a supporters of Donald Trump rather than the Republican Party.

Non-ideological aspects

Journalist Elaina Plott suggests ideology is not as important as other characteristics of Trumpism. She cites one political analysist (Jeff Roe) noting Trump "understood" and acted on the trend among Republican voters to be "less ideological" but "more polarized". Republicans are now more willing to accept policies like government mandated health care coverage for pre-existing conditions or trade tariffs, formerly considered burdensome government regulations by conservatives. At the same time strong avowals of support for Trump and aggressive partisanship have become part of Republican election campaigning in at least some parts of America, reaching down even to formerly collegial, issue-driven, non-partisan campaigns for local government. Research by political scientist Marc Hetherington and others has found Trump supporters tend to share a "worldview" transcending political ideology, agreeing with statements like "the best strategy is to play hardball, even if it means being unfair". In contrast, those who agree with statements like "cooperation is the key to success" tend to prefer (Trump adversary) Mitt Romney.

Nicholas Lemann notes the disconnect between some of the Trump campaign's rhetoric (anti-free-trade nationalism, defense of Social Security, attacks on big business) and campaign promises ("building that big, beautiful wall and making Mexico pay for it", repealing the Obama Affordable Care Act, a trillion dollar infrastructure-building program), and the "conventional" Republican policies and legislation enacted by the Trump administration (substantial tax cuts, rollbacks of federal regulations, and increases in military spending). Many have noted that instead of the National Republican Convention issuing the customary "platform" of policies and promises for the 2020 campaign, it offered a "one-page resolution" stating that the party was not "going to have a new platform, but instead [...] 'has and will continue to enthusiastically support the president's America-first agenda'".

Rhetoric

Rhetorically, Trumpism employs absolutist framings and threat narratives characterized by a rejection of the political establishment. The absolutist rhetoric emphasizes non-negotiable boundaries and moral outrage at their supposed violation. The rhetorical pattern within a Trump rally is common for authoritarian movements. First, elicit a sense of depression, humiliation and victimhood. Second, separate the world into two opposing groups- a relentlessly demonized set of others vs. those who have the power and will to overcome them. Vividly identify the enemy causing the current state of affairs and promote paranoid conspiracy theories to inflame emotions of fear and anger. After cycling these first two patterns through the crowd, the final message is a cathartic release of crowd pent up energy and salvation is at hand because there is a powerful leader who will deliver the nation back to its prior glory. This three part pattern was first identified in 1932 by Roger Money-Kyrle and later published in his Psychology of Propaganda.

Reporting on the crowd dynamics of Trumpist rallies has documented expressions of the pattern and associated stagecraft, with some comparing the symbiotic dynamics of crowd pleasing to that of the sports entertainment style of events which Trump was involved with since the 1980s. Some academics point out that the narrative common in the popular press describing the psychology of such crowds is a repetition of a nineteenth century theory by Gustave Le Bon when organized crowds were seen by political elites as potentially anarchic threats to the social order. Le Bon described a sort of collective contagion uniting a crowd into a near religious frenzy, reducing members to barbaric, if not subhuman levels of consciousness with mindless anarchic goals. Since such a narrative depersonalizes supporters, the criticism is that the would-be defenders of liberal democracy employing the narrative simultaneously dodge responsibility for investigating grievances while also unwittingly accepting the same us vs. them framing of illiberalism.

The absolutist rhetoric employed heavily favors crowd reaction over veracity with a large number of false or at least misleading statements which Trump presents as facts. In his speech accepting his nomination as the Republican presidential candidate on August 27, 2020, Trump claimed he passed Veterans Choice, when in fact Barack Obama signed the law in 2014, or when he claimed that Democrats wanted to open borders which has also been disputed.

Social psychology

Social psychology research into the Trump movement, such as that of Bob Altemeyer, Thomas Pettigrew and Karen Stenner view the Trump movement as primarily being driven by the psychological predispositions of its followers. Altemeyer and other researchers such as Pettigrew emphasize that no claim is made that these factors provide a complete explanation. Important political and historical factors such as those mentioned elsewhere in this article are obviously involved. In a non-academic book which he co-authored with John Dean entitled Authoritarian Nightmare: Trump and His Followers, Altemeyer describes research which demonstrates that Trump followers have a distinguishing preference for strongly hierarchical and ethnocentric social orders that favor their in-group. Despite disparate and inconsistent beliefs and ideologies, a coalition of such followers can become cohesive and broad in part because each individual "compartmentalizes" their thoughts and they are free to define their sense of the threatened tribal in-group in their own terms, whether it is predominantly related to their cultural or religious views (e.g. the mystery of evangelical support for Trump), nationalism (e.g. the Make America Great Again slogan), or their race (maintaining a white majority).

Altemeyer, Macwilliams, Feldman, Choma, Hancock, Van Assche and Pettigrew claim that instead of directly attempting to measure such ideological, racial or policy views, supporters of such movements can be reliably predicted by using two social psychology scales (singly or in combination), namely right-wing authoritarian (RWA) measures which were developed in the 1980s by Altemeyer and other authoritarian personality researchers, and the social dominance orientation (SDO) scale developed in the 1990s by social dominance theorists. In May 2019, Monmouth University Polling Institute conducted a study in collaboration with Altemeyer in order to empirically test the hypothesis using the SDO and RWA measures. The finding was that social dominance orientation and affinity for authoritarian leadership are indeed highly correlated with followers of Trumpism. Altemeyer's perspective and his use of an authoritarian scale and SDO to identify Trump followers is not uncommon. His study was a further confirmation of the earlier mentioned studies discussed in MacWilliams (2016), Feldman (2020), Choma and Hancock (2017), and Van Assche & Pettigrew (2016).

The research does not imply that the followers always behave in an authoritarian manner but that expression is contingent, which means that there is reduced influence if it is not triggered by fear and threats. The research is global and similar social psychological techniques for analyzing Trumpism have demonstrated their effectiveness at identifying adherents of similar movements in Europe, including those Belgium and France (Swyngedouw & Giles, 2007; Lubbers & Scheepers, 2002; Van Hiel, 2012; Van Hiel & Mervielde, 2002), the Netherlands (Cornelis & Van Hiel, 2014) and Italy (Leone, Desimoni & Chirumbolo, 2014). Quoting comments from participants in a series of focus groups made up of people who had voted for Democrat Obama in 2012 but flipped to Trump in 2016, pollster Diane Feldman noted the anti-government, anti-costal élite anger: "They think they're better than us, they're P.C., they're virtue-signallers.' 'He doesn't come across as one of those people who think they're better than us and are screwing us.' 'They lecture us.' 'They don't even go to church.' 'They're in charge, and they're ripping us off.'"

Reception

American historian Robert Paxton poses the question as to whether Trumpism is fascism or not. Instead, Paxton believes that it bears a greater resemblance to a plutocracy, a government which is controlled by a wealthy elite. Professor of sociology Dylan John Riley calls Trumpism "neo-Bonapartist patrimonialism". British historian Roger Griffin considers the definition of fascism unfulfilled because Trump does not question the politics of the United States and he also does not want to abolish its democratic institutions.

Argentinean historian Federico Finchelstein believes that significant intersections exist between Peronism and Trumpism because their mutual disregard for the contemporary political system (both in the area of domestic and foreign policy) is discernible. American historian Christopher Browning considers the long-term consequences of Trump's policies and the support which he receives for them from the Republican Party to be potentially dangerous for democracy. In the German-speaking debate, the term has so far only appeared sporadically, mostly in connection with the crisis of confidence in politics and the media. It then describes the strategy of mostly right-wing political actors who wish to stir up this crisis in order to profit from it. The British Collins English Dictionary named Trumpism after Brexit as one of its "Words of the Year 2016"; the term denotes both Trump's ideology and his characteristic way of speaking.

In How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship, Turkish author Ece Temelkuran describes Trumpism as echoing a number of views and tactics which were expressed and used by the Turkish politician Recep Tayyip Erdoğan during his rise to power. Some of these tactics and views are right-wing populism, demonization of the press; subversion of well-established and proven facts (both historical and scientific); dismantling judicial and political mechanisms; portraying systematic issues such as sexism or racism as isolated incidents; and crafting an "ideal" citizen.

Political science scholar Mark Blyth and his colleague Jonathan Hopkin also believe that strong similarities exist between Trumpism and similar movements towards illiberal democracies worldwide, but they do not believe that Trumpism is a movement which is merely being driven by revulsion, loss and racism. Hopkin and Blyth argue that on both the right and the left, the global economy is driving the growth of neo-nationalist coalitions which find followers who want to be free of the constraints which are being placed on them by establishment elites whose members advocate neoliberal economics and globalism. Others emphasize the lack of interest in finding real solutions to the social malaise which have been identified, and they also believe that those individuals and groups who are executing policy are actually following a pattern which has been identified by sociology researchers like Leo Löwenthal and Norbert Guterman as originating in the post-World War II work of the Frankfurt School of social theory. Based on this perspective, books such as Löwenthal and Guterman's Prophets of Deceit offer the best insights into how movements like Trumpism dupe their followers by perpetuating their misery and preparing them to move further towards an illiberal form of government.

See also

• America First policy under the presidency of Donald Trump
• American nationalism in the Donald Trump presidency
• Civil rights movement
• The Lincoln Project
• Make America Great Again
• Political positions of Donald Trump
• Presidency of Donald Trump
• Reagan Democrat
• Republican Voters Against Trump

Bibliography

Books

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• Löwenthal, Leo; Guterman, Norbert (1970) [1949]. Prophets of Deceit: A Study of the Techniques of the American Agitator (pdf). New York: Harper & Brothers. ISBN 978-0870151828. Cited page numbers correspond to the 1949 online version at ajarchives.
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