International Trumpism
by digby
This analysis of the Trump phenomenon by Thomas Edsall in the NY Times very deftly synthesizes all the polling and other studies that explain just what in the hell is going on with this. Basically a bunch of white people are getting very nervous now that their majority and the privileges that come with it is slipping away. They believe that everything’s going to hell in a handbasket (although that’s not really true) and it’s all because of the “others” who are taking over.
Edsall’s piece thoroughly and accurately surveys these attitudes and the hay the Republican Party has been making of them for the past 50 years but doesn’t really delve into whether or not it’s actually true that these people are losing something they had to immigrants and other people of color or whether it’s just a perception. And he also doesn’t ponder whether some of these people might be afraid that this imminent change in our racial and cultural make-up might result in a little “pay-back” for centuries of white mistreatment of people of color, which I doubt it at the forefront of these people’s minds but is undoubtedly in the sub-conscious of many of them.
But what he does say in his dry, analytical way is chilling:
The current prominence of an anti-immigrant wing of the Republican Party is part of an international phenomenon. The Trump campaign represents the American iteration of hostility to third world immigration now visible across Europe, where overwhelmingly white right-wing parties are flourishing from Greece to Britain. European opposition to immigration, and the strength of this opposition on the political right, was demonstrated in a Pew Research Center study of voters in seven countries — Italy, France, Britain, Spain, Poland, Greece and Germany – that showed that voters on the right were 18 points more likely than voters on the left to agree that “immigrants are a burden because they take jobs and social benefits.”
Donald Trump, in other words, is part of a movement gaining momentum among whites across the Northern Hemisphere. The Trump campaign will serve as a measure of the strength of this movement in the United States.
Trump’s vitriol expresses the degree to which the American debate over immigration has grown ugly, even hideous. At the same time, Trump’s followers are motivated, and enraged, by what they see as a breakdown of law and order and the erosion of norms and standards they believe should be upheld. They are frustrated by the poor performance of the public schools their children attend, by cities and suburbs they believe to be under siege, by a criminal justice system they perceive as dysfunctional, and by a government they view as incompetent.
Earlier this week Trump added a new campaign commercial. It begins: “JEB BUSH’S THOUGHTS ON ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS” and displays a film clip of Bush saying “Yes, they broke the law, but it’s not a felony. It’s an act of love.” Interspersed are three mug shots: “Francisco Sanchez: Charged with Murder,” “Santana Gaona: Convicted of Murder,” and “Brian Omar Hyde: Charged with Murdering Three People.”
“LOVE?” the next screen reads. “Forget Love. It’s Time to Get Tough!”
To voters who see the world this way, Trump offers the promise that he can restore a vanished America, that he can “make America great again,” as his campaign puts it. Trump clearly finds this endeavor personally gratifying, even as his odds of winning the nomination remain slim. To his followers, the letdown of defeat could be brutal, leaving them stranded, without a candidate who can successfully capture the intensity of their beliefs.
Good lord.
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