The US presidential campaign was the umpteenth representation of a divided society and politics that has never been sopolarised. Donald Trump’s third candidacy and the tones he used in the last weeks before the vote are a sign of a situationthat is unlikely to return to calm with the vote.
The Trump phenomenon does not come out of nowhere but is the product of a history of divisions that began in the civilrights era and was fuelled by the Republican Party’s choice to use them to build its own consensus base. DouglasMcAdam, professor of sociology at Stanford University, is convinced that Trumpism comes from a long history. The scholarof social and political movements was a guest of the Ciampi Institute. We asked him to reconstruct this link between thefigure of the candidate and former president and the racial fractures that still run through US society.
Read the article on “Il Corriere della Sera” (in italian)
Racial geography of american politics changes in the 60s and continues in different ways (some southern states have changed demographically) until today. When you put Trump in historic context you start from there… can you explain why?
From the American Civil War until Reconstruction, let’s day 1880 you have a real effort to change the conomic, social and political structure of the South, make it a more egalitarian region of the United States, that comes to an end in 1880. The issue of civil rights is returned essentially to the states, the Federal Government gets out of the business of legislating about race relations. The South emerges during this period as one party autocracy, Republicans are banished and from then until 1960 (with a pause with the Roosevelt presidency) that regional racial structure of American politics holds. Then you have the civil rights movement which dramatically changes race relations in the United States, major legislation victories, the Federal governments get back into the issue. We celebrate those victories but those come at a great cost to the Democrats who had held power for essentially 35 years. The white South is angered by president Johnson and they do the unthinkable in 1964 and vote against him holding their nose and choose to vote for what in their idea was still the party of Lincoln, which they hated.
The Democrats under pressure from the civil rights movement and the Cold War, move sharply to the left on domestic issues. Meanwhile, Republicans, sensing an opportunity, not just in the South but in the whole country, move the party sharply to the right and it has been headed that way ever since. So, Trump did not start this process, he is not the cause of the divisions, the polarization ot the country, he is in my view the most extreme expression and product of those divisions, but we have to locate in a broader historical context, because otherwise we might think that if he loses the elections the divisions and the crisis of American democracy will be over. That is not the case.
How to explain the persistence of widespread political racism in the South (and more generally in the US)? Is it just heritage?
It is not a very satisfying answer, but culture is sticky. Race is so central to the DNA of the US, because of the slave trade, because of the significance of it in creating it’s political and economic structure and it has being reinforced by all sorts of cultural tropes and myths. It feels like antisemitism in other parts of the world, it keeps bubbling up. You can’t be an American without being deeply affected by racial history and all the explanations and rationalizations for that history. Then you have also politicians, prior to the 60s in the Democratic party, who so advantage in pushing racial nationalism. The Republicans are in that position now, they are appealing to racial prejudices as a way of holding power.
Even as I say that Trump fits in that long line of racially inflected republican politics started in the mid 60s, the accelerant is remarkable, so he is dramatically exacerbating the divisions. None of the prior presidential candidates who all invoked the same images where ever a serious threat to democratic institutions, while Trump is qualitatively different in that regard. So, while I stress the continuity, yes, Trump also represents a discontinuity.
The picturing of welfare policies as something that benefits minorities are both a racialized strategy and a way to degrade public welfare programs. Is its success also due to a cultural issue? The white working class and lower middle class hides its poverty, does not recognize it as such?
“A MIDDLE CLASS THAT HAS PAST THROUGH A STORM”.
It seems incomprehensible that economic self-interest wouldn’t at some point create alliances between the white and the black poor. But it hasn’t, and that is the power of race in the US context. In the 1880-90’s there was a populist movement in rural areas and we did see the beginning of alliances between black and white farm workers. The effect of those groups coming together would have changed the political face of the South. There were very blatant appeals to racism and white superiority: “Why would you ally yourself with them? You are so superior racially. Somehow that have served the function and I think that is still in place: “I might be poor, but I am not that”.
Nixon was the first to invoke this image of two Americas, the hard working, tax paying mostly white deserving America and then we have another America who does not work hard, is dependent on government and expects handouts and this is made mostly of minorities. When you have politicians saying over and over that in many different ways, and you are aligned with the party that tells you this, you begin to buy that. “I am one of those hard-working guys, they are the one who want to drain our taxes. And is where the anti-tax comes from, “why should I be paying taxes for those folks, those others”.
This path of the GOP brings also with it an erosion of democratic values and growth of anti-democratic feeling. Is this also an old story or is it something more close to our days? (I’m thinking of suppression of vote, non-confirmation of Garland, etc.)
How to explain the persistence of widespread political racism in the South (and more generally in the US)? Is it just heritage?
In your opinion, radicalization a strategy of the Gop head or a push by the more conservative organized movements? I mean: even with this shift you describe after the civil rights, even with Reagan, we did not come to this. We are now in a phase in which the leaders of the party I 2010 look like moderates. (Boehner, Ryan) AND, after all, in 2008 and 2012 the establishment managed to carry the primaries.
I would say there is three accelerants. Trump is one, Newt Gingrich is another. There were always divisions in Congress, but the message the new Speaker brought after the Republican large midterm win in 1994 was “this is war against the Democrats and the Clinton administration, we’ll refuse to pass any law brought to the House”. From Gingrich forward Congress has been a ineffective institution. With the Obama election we have the Tea Party movement which also was upsurge in racism directed not only to the first black president but in general. As I stressed, there is continuity, but there are also moments in which Republicans double down on this strategy of racial exclusion. The Gingrich leadership, the Tea Party and now Trump represent a dramatic acceleration or exacerbation of these divisions.
Do you see this as a national strategy from the bottom up or was it also a push from movements in society?
Both. The importance of a series of right-wing movements from the bottom cannot be underestimated, from the tax revolt that sweeps the country in the late 70s on. Then the evangelicals, who until Jimmy Carter held politics as something dirty, “we are about salvation, not politics”. But Carter was one of their own and they did mobilize to recoil with horror at his policies. But that was the moment in which they realize their political force and they attach themselves to Reagan. Then the pro-life movement and after that the Tea Party. All the movements keep pushing the party to the right. The reaction from the top was should we try to be more inclusive or should we double down? The choice was to double down. Trump triples down.
One more thing I think is very important is related to the way we nominate candidates. Everything changed in 1968, Trump would never have been candidate if the rules left the nomination process in the hand of the party. The Republican party did not want Trump, but the base did. Before 1972 there less primaries and they were not binding. What happened was the struggle inside the Democratic convention of 1968, during which the anti-war left managed to change the rules for nominating in order to democratize the process (every State would have an electoral moment and results would be binding). This is the perfect way to strengthen the role of movements: in low turnout election and more in caucuses an organized minority can win. After Congress decided not to disqualify Trump after January 6 because the idea was that he was so disqualified that he had no political future, I knew he was going to be the nominee in 2024.
What are the reasons for the success of this push towards radicalization?
Would you describe the conservative national right movement as homogeneous? What are its main “branches”?
How much the right-wing movement is a movement, how much is grassroots and how much is bottom up? What actors played a role in building it?
I would say that beginning in the late 70s there were discreet movements, that had leader at the grassroots level, the pro-life had a life of its own, the tax revolt was a real thing, Tea Party etc. They were broadly in sympathy with one another and would vote mainly Republican, but that did not make it a unified movement. Trump has forged all of those strengths of right-wing activism into a movement. I think it has not much of grassroots, it is Trump orchestrating it, so it feels quite different from what was before, which as I said, pushed the party to the right, but was not a nationally integrated movement.
What role did right wing media play in building a movement, in creating a parallel reality? I am thinking about talk radio first, then Fox, then social media….
The change in the media environment has been huge. It has impacted also left wing politics. The vast majority of Americans got their information through three mainstream television stations and the major daily newspapers etc. Today the echo chamber effect is there and it is real. Take the Trump-Harris debate as an example: a lot of people watched it, Harris clearly won, it did not change much. Trump supporters are not bothered by his performance at all. If Trump loses these divisions will stay the same, the media environment too. Lots of people who have invested in those divisions will keep promoting them on various platforms.
Movements: first BLM, then Palestine, reproductive rights… before and during the Biden administration we have seen powerful and diverse movements rising and being able to put some issues at center stage. The Biden admin also worked (some time winning sometime losing) on some huge socio economic issues (infrastructure, Trade unions, etc.) which were part of the demands of the left. Sanders and AOC have been supporters and allies of this administration too.
The students’ movement on Palestine though was ignored or repressed locally while foreign policy was more than the opposite of what the movement asked. On the other hand, abortion has given way to a mass mobilization which we can also describe as more mainstream (cfr 2022 midterm).
How do you think the frustration on Palestine among the young electors and the mobilization for reproductive rights will play in the elections?
OR, PUT IN ANOTHER WAY: How fragile is the broad tent identity coalition if compared to the smaller but united conservative right wing coalition?
Beginning in the 60s there was much more conflict and divisions inside the Democratic party than in the Republican party. Progressives were deeply suspicious of the establishment about Vietnam. It was very hard to keep the left of the party loyal. I would say that this was still true in 2016 during the Clinton-Sanders primary contest. But there was not yet the Trump threat to democratic institutions. Through history we have seen these broad coalitional movements that are kept together by the threat of some kind of authoritarian movements. Remove the threat and divisions will return. If Trump lost and the whole MAGA movement collapsed, it would be much more difficult to keep the Democrats unified. The demographic diversity within the party is huge if compared to the overwhelming white republican voter’s base. So I give some credit to Biden whose legislative agenda was not the one the senator Biden would have pushed, and to the whole party who saw the threat and therefore got immediately behind him (same happened with Harris).