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White Nationalism<\/b>
\nAt the core of contemporary white nationalism are three closely related beliefs: (1) people\u2019s political identity is based most fundamentally on their ascribed racial identity; (2) \u201cAmerica\u201d as defined by white nationalists has been and should continue to be a nation based on white supremacy and European cultural traditions; and (3) white Americans are increasingly dispossessed of this birthright because of the political power of \u201cthe liberal establishment\u201d and their allies among traditional racial minorities, along with their ideologies of cosmopolitan openness to the world, multiculturalism, and \u201cpolitical correctness.\u201d Contemporary white nationalism depicts white Americans as both entitled to a secure position of superiority in this country, and victims of forces conspiring to deprive them of that birthright.<\/p>\n
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Author David Neiwert summarizes Trump\u2019s racialized appeal by reference to \u201cproducerism,\u201d a populist ideology that upholds \u201cordinary Americans\u201d \u2014hard-working, tax-paying, law-abiding\u2014as pillars of the republic, beleaguered by liberals and their clients among the \u201cundeserving\u201d poor: \u201cThe ideology that is identifiable through [Trump\u2019s] braggadocious and at times incoherent speaking style is the \u2018producerist\u2019 narrative, which pits ordinary white working people against both liberals\u2014who are cast as an oppressive class of elites\u2014aand the poor and immigrants, who are denigrated as parasites.\u201d This form of populist political narrative lends itself to racialized interpretations in which the unproductive poor and burdensome immigrants are presumed to be people of color, dragging down \u201creal Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n
Survey evidence indicates that persons with these kinds of beliefs were drawn to the Trump campaign from the outset. A Washington Post\u2014ABC News poll from March 2016 asked whether \u201cwhites losing out because of preferences for Blacks and Hispanics\u201d was a bigger problem in America today than \u201cBlacks and Hispanics losing out because of preferences for whites.\u201d While only a plurality of Ted Cruz supporters (37%) and Marco Rubio voters (35%) subscribed to this narrative of white dispossession, a clear majority of Trump supporters did (54%). Other researchers analyzed data from the January 2016 American National Election Survey using an index of multiple questions designed to measure indirectly whether respondents had high or low levels of racial resentment. They found that an overwhelming majority (81%) of white Trump supporters had high levels of racial resentment as measured by this index.
\nKlansmen, neo-nazis, and their fellow travelers in the Alt-Right\u2014many of whom share a fear of demographic displacement they equate with \u201cwhite genocide”\u2014rode the Trump train. Leading White Nationalist Jared Taylor endorsed Trump because \u201che is not on his knees before Mexico and Mexican immigrants. Americans, real Americans, have been dreaming of a candidate who says the obvious, that illegal immigrants from Mexico are a low-rent bunch that includes rapists and murderers.\u201d Andrew Anglin, editor of the neo-nazi Daily Stormer web site, framed Trump\u2019s victory in terms of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories which are a staple of the racist right: \u201cThis was not a presidential election. It was a referendum on the international Jewish agenda. And the biggest part of that agenda is multiculturalism.\u201d Richard Spencer, one of the leading figures of the Alt-Right, celebrated Trump\u2019s election by shouting \u201cHail Trump, Hail our People, Hail Victory\u201d while supporters in the audience threw up Nazi salutes.<\/p>\n
Processes reshaping US society<\/b>
\nTo understand the context of this white nationalist resurgence, we need to take a step back from electoral politics and look at some longer-term processes that are reshaping this country. In the decades between World War II and the 1970s, real wages (corrected for inflation, so as to reflect the actual standard of living those wages can buy) for most US workers grew steadily. During these years, an unprecedented number of (mostly, but not exclusively, white and male) workers could gain access to the \u201cAmerican Dream\u201d and the \u201cmiddle class\u201d standard of living that is associated with it. Many workers could reasonably expect their own prosperity to grow year-by-year, and for their children to enjoy even more material abundance than did their own generation.
\nIncreasing affluence in exchange for hard work might then begin to seem to like a birthright. But for a complex set of reasons that I believe had mostly to do with a shifting balance of power between capital and labor, this \u201cproductivity bargain,\u201d in which workers could expect greater output to be rewarded with greater income, came to an end. Since the 1970s, real wages have stagnated for most US workers. This, I think, lies at the root of what many Americans experience as a crisis of the American Dream, a birthright denied.<\/p>\n
In recent decades, this economic malaise has coincided with a demographic transition that can be described as the browning of the country. Due to increases in immigration (especially from Latin America and Asia) and differential birth rates among various segments of the US population, white US citizens of European heritage are going to find themselves in a minority by mid-century. The confluence of these two processes, demographic and economic, has made it possible for white nationalists to depict the two as cause and effect. \u201cOrdinary Americans\u201d (implicitly white) are being deprived of their birthright by globalization, immigration, and increasingly assertive racial minorities who will soon make America their own, transform its European culture into something unrecognizable, and marginalize white Americans in \u201ctheir own country.\u201d This, I believe, is the dark fear that has driven much, if surely not all, support for the Presidency of Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
White supremacy and racism have been part of American life since Columbus first set foot in the \u201cnew world.\u201d In more recent times, social movements and political forces have been able to push back against it, delegitimize it, and limit some of its effects. But white supremacy remains an underlying element of our society. And sometimes it steps out of the shadows, openly claims that the nation belongs to white Americans, and attacks their perceived enemies. As Ian Haney-Lopez demonstrated in his important book, Dog Whistle Politics, since at least the 1960s the GOP has deliberately played to the anxieties of white voters with messages of racial backlash. The election of America\u2019s first African-American president sharpened these fears of white racial dispossession and intensified the political backlash, paving the way for Trump\u2019s overtly white nationalist politics. So while racism is nothing new, I believe the election of Donald Trump marks the culmination of a period of increasingly militant white nationalism in US politics.<\/p>\n
Contradictions and Possibilities<\/b>
\nTrump\u2019s White House includes a number of advisers like Stephen Bannon\u2014an ethno-cultural nationalist who sees Western Christian civilization as under threat of extinction due to global demographic trends and massive influxes of non-Christians and people of color. But Trump has had to broaden his coalition to include other GOP constituencies\u2014business conservatives, traditionalists, and the religious right, each with its own priorities and demands. And Trump\u2019s family also holds considerable sway in this White House. There are real tensions among these sectors, and it is far from clear whether Trump will be able to manage these contradictions. Meanwhile a massive nationwide wave of resistance has arisen to challenge the administration\u2019s divisive politics and to articulate a more inclusive and democratic vision of what this country could be. The current situation, then, presents us with reasons for hope as well as profound concern.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Donald Trump brought his presidential campaign road show to Syracuse on April 16, 2016. I went to the OnCenter to see for myself what a Trump rally looked like. People wore T-shirts describing Hillary Clinton in misogynistic terms, exhorting Trump to \u201cBuild the Wall,\u201d and to defend the Second Amendment….<\/p>\n