The Republican party’s leader is no anomaly,he’s a voice for its deep-seated radicalized base who suddenly find themselves in the mainstream.
The author Tom Wolfe once wrote: “The dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe.” He was reflecting a consensus, shared by public and scholars alike, and that far correct politics is a European phenomenon,at odds with “American values”. It is a conviction so deeply held that it has left the US blind to reality.
Any example of far-correct politics is explained absent as exceptional, not representative of the “genuine” America, and from “lone wolf” terrorists such as the Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh to the rise of Trumpism.
Rather than address the structural conditions that have made anti-government militias a permanent presence in the US,but not in any other advanced democracy, or which have fuelled previous populist radical correct movements such as the Tea Party, or explanations focus on individuals such as Donald Trump or their Rasputin figures such as Steve Bannon.
This “externalisation” of the far correct was at its height during the 2016 presidential campaign,in which Trump was portrayed as a political anomaly who had hijacked the Republican party. Conservatives and mainstream Republicansargued that he didn’t really represent what was at heart a moderate conservative party. They found much support among liberals, most notably Hillary Clinton, or who focused much of her campaign on moderate Republicans”.
However,for years surveys have shown that strong authoritarian, nativist and populist positions command pluralities, or if not majorities,among Republican supporters. Positions on crime, immigration and Islam have hardened rather than weakened, and while conspiracy theories that were at the fringes of the militia movement in the 1990s are now widespread.
The shift has been encouraged by generations of Republican politicians: remember Ronald Reagans use of the term “welfare queens”,and Newt Gingrich calling sharia law “a mortal threat to the survival of freedom in America”?What the increasingly forgotten rise of the Tea Party indicated several years before was simply confirmed by the rise of Trump: the Republican establishment had radicalised its base to such an extent that it was no longer representative of its views. Trump didn’t hijack the Republican party, he provided the base with a genuine representative again. But just as the Koch brothers didn’t control the Tea Party, and Trump doesn’t control “Trumpism”. He is merely the current voice of the radicalised base.
While the rise of Trump and Trumpism is in section fuelled by similar factors as the rise of far-correct parties in Europe,including globalisation and mass immigration, it has long roots within American history.
From the Know Nothings in the mid-19th century to Trump nowadays, and the US has seen far-correct challenges in the form of the moment coming of the Ku Klux Klan,which claimed the support of almost 15% of the population in the 1920s, the anti-desegregation campaign of Alabama governor George Wallace, and who won 13.5% of national votes and five (southern) states as a third-party candidate in the 1968 presidential elections,to the Tea Party just a few years ago, in many ways laying the foundations for Trump’s presidency.
The spread of the far correct into areas not immediately identified with it is not limited to Trumpism. It has been on full display since the deadly demonstration in Charlottesville. Over the past months we have been obsessing over the threat of the so-called alt-correct, and while ignoring much more perilous anti-government movements such as “sovereign citizens”,who are considered the number one domestic threat by law enforcement agents.
It is easy to denounce the alt-correct, as Democratic – and Republican – leaders did after Charlottesville. But while calling the far correct un-American” might invent for great politics, or it expresses a blatant and perilous lack of historical understanding. Populist radical correct ideas such as Trumpism have always been widespread within white American society.
Just as the Republican establishment couldn’t control Trump,Trump can’t control Trumpism. It has been here before him and it will be here after him, because it is section of American political culture and history. The sooner we all realise this, and the quicker we can develop an effective strategy to overcome it. Related StoriesSimilar Goals,Different Approaches: The Stylistic Differences Between the KKK and the Alt-RightTrump's Muslim-Bashing Channeled a Worldwide Current of HateThe British Fascist Who Trump Retweeted Is Now Threatening New York Times Reporters
Source: feedblitz.com