The mythology that the force compelling Americans to support Donald Trump was his economic anxiety – a fragile myth that has been repeatedly questioned for the past four years – was irrevocably destroyed by last week’s attack on Capitol Hill when Trump waved his followers away.
The protesters shouted: “Hang Mike Pence”. They built ties. They spelled “Murder the media”. They repeatedly called the Black officers n-word. One had the Confederate flag as its standard. A man would have threatened to kill Nancy Pelosi. The less radical said they were there as patriots who “bleed red, white and blue”, struggling to recover what was stolen from them.
These are not the screams of people hungry for economic opportunities. They are angry screams of revenge against phantom enemies imagined by the president.
If the last four years had already weakened the idea that financial difficulties had driven voters to Trump, the January 6 events totally discredited her. “When people attack the Capitol by waving Confederate flags, they are not expressing economic anxiety. They are expressing a desire to dominate, ”said Sarah Crozier, a spokeswoman for the Main Street Alliance, an organization representing small businesses, a segment that has been financially devastated by the pandemic. The group described last week’s events as “a riot by an angry mob of armed white guards.”
Undoubtedly, financial insecurity and inequality define much of American life – I wrote about it some time ago – but attributing the insurrection to the devastating impact of financial difficulties ignores the role that racism played. Economic insecurity and racism have gone hand in hand and fed on each other throughout American history, and it is essential not to confuse this “revolution” with Trump for anything else. “[T]The human stain in America is racism, and it’s something we haven’t looked at and allowed to rot, ”said Mit Joyner, president of the National Association of Social Workers.
Trump sold himself very effectively as an economic populist, boasting for years of the strength of the United States economy under his leadership. But his tax review cut taxes for the wealthy and corporations; inequality reached new highs as billionaires’ wealth skyrocketed and investors made gains from the stock market, while poorer families were unlikely to see improvements. Despite endorsing stimulus checks during the pandemic (checks with his name, in an election year), Trump has largely abandoned economic populism – and yet his base follows him. It is worth examining why.
“White supremacy is central to this,” said Manju Kulkarni, executive director of the Asia Pacific Policy and Planning Council, which works with low-income people, immigrants and refugees. “When you look at all the people who were there last Wednesday, it is difficult to find economic anxiety.”
Certainly, there were many people at the rally and riot who were left behind by an insensitive economy and the uneven economic recovery of the past decade. Several participants turned to GoFundMe to raise money to travel to DC, for example. But the people most likely to live in poverty in America – blacks and Indians – did not show up in crowds looting the Capitol, or gathering at Elipse. There were, however, many high-level elites.
Consider some of the people who met for Trump in DC that day: Derrick Evans, a newly elected officer from West Virginia (who has since resigned); Rick Saccone, a former Pennsylvania lawmaker who also taught international relations and global terrorism at Saint Vincent College (he resigned); John Eastman, a professor at Chapman University who wrote an opinion article at Newsweek arguing that Kamala Harris could be ineligible to be vice president because her parents were not US citizens when she was born (he retired from his position at Chapman on Wednesday and they say it was joining Trump’s impeachment defense); The CEO a Chicago-based marketing company (he was fired from his position); a retired Air Force officer “who lives in an affluent suburb of Dallas,” according to the New Yorker; a realtor who arrived in a private jet; the son of a judge. These people are just a few among the thousands who attended Trump’s rally, but they do not stand out as members of the country’s disadvantaged classes.
Nor are his allies in this so-called class war – including some of the wealthiest members of Congress and those who graduated from the country’s elite schools – who spread Trump’s baseless lies about electoral fraud. In the end, 147 of them actually voted to overturn the election results (Kelly Loeffler backed down after the violence); some are still fighting for it. Trumpism is not about economic anxiety.
In a January 6 riot newsletter, Kulkarni wrote: “These individuals came from all over the country, from the legal, business and technological community; many were former members of the armed forces or police, rich, poor and middle class. What they had in common was a shared belief in the lies told not only by the Trump administration, but by many members of the Republican Party and the moral and financial support of countless conservative organizations, as well as conventional companies. And they defend whiteness and white Americans over all others, marking the rest of us with subordinate status and conditional citizenship, which can be revoked at any time. ”
“If we don’t put out the fire, it will just continue to burn. And we will not have a democracy.”
Within the crowd, many said they fumblingly fought to “save America”, to protect their constitutional freedoms and the sanctity of the electoral process, to eliminate the rot that infects the government and the country in general, to get the United States from back on an upward path. They are, they feel, the victims of a flawed system and demand justice. They want to be seen and heard. In fact, many of that mob’s feelings are based on their lived reality. But Trump’s lies sparked an already burning sensation of political victim and fear, and today they represent something completely different.
None of these things detract from the fact that millions of Trump fans face serious financial difficulties, especially due to a pandemic that has worsened under his leadership. But that alone did not lead 74 million people to vote for him in November (11 million more votes than in 2016) or led them to a demonstration to keep him in office. “There is real economic pain here, we saw, but it is not the essence of what happened last week – especially for those who have had the time and resources to board a plane to DC,” said Crozier. “Insinuating the opposite loses the real challenges that we must all face together.”
What happened on January 6, and what is being planned in future uprisings, is not about fighting for economic justice. “They were asking for injustice. They would overthrow our government, our democracy, everything we work with, ”said Joyner. “People invaded our Capitol without masks, taking pictures and selfies. What does that tell you? It shows that these people think they have the power of our government behind them. ”And there is no quick way to deal with the consequences. “You have to put out the fire first and then replant the trees,” she said. “It will take another generation to get the forest again, but if we don’t put out the fire, it will continue to burn. And we will not have democracy ”.
A mild description of what happened is that many of Trump’s followers, including those with power, are trying to go back in time to an America that didn’t work better for everyone, but probably worked better for people like them. As Tucker Carlson of Fox News said, a vote for Trump is a vote against the ruling class, which has forgotten these people, except as a target for mockery. Trump gave them affirmation. They longed for recognition as much as Trump himself. And so they define themselves in opposition to the “leftists”, those who despise them, the Democratic Party’s agenda and the media. These views alone are not racist, they argue. As one person told Pew researchers: “I am not a racist. I am not a neo-Nazi. I am not a fanatic. I am not a misogynist. I am not deplorable. I don’t hate immigrants, I just want them to enter the United States legally. I’m not a white supremist [sic]. “Another said:” We are neighbors, friends and sometimes relatives “.
Without context, these positions may be harmless, but the actions they inspire are anything but. And, as Kulkarni said, “Just because someone really believes in something, it doesn’t allow them to avoid the consequences and the responsibility.”