On Thursday, Anat Shenker-Osorio recommended branding the Trump cult a faction as James Madison defined it in Federalist 10: “united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.”
Lilliana Mason of the University of Maryland* (“Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity“) tweeted on Friday that she wanted to elaborate on implications from her June 30 study. She and colleagues examined “the extent to which citizens’ animus toward (Democratically aligned) minority groups — African Americans, Hispanics, Muslims, and Gays and Lesbians — drove political support for Donald Trump.” Support among his faction, they found, is substantially, perhaps uniquely, rooted in animosity towards these groups, and that animosity transcends traditional party identification.
This animus does not predict future support for other Republican or Democratic politicians or either party. Nor do we find that animus toward Republican groups predicts support for Democratic elites. Trump’s support is thus uniquely tied to animus toward minority groups.
Animosity towards Democratic-linked groups measured in 2011 was predictive of later support for Trump in 2017 and 2018. They found also that “preexisting animus toward Democratic-linked groups does not correspond to support for the Republican Party or its more established leaders.” Moreover, “the effect of animosity toward Democratic-linked groups is substantively identical for both Democrats and Republicans.” But less prevalent among Democrats, as Mason later explains.
The researchers summarize their findings with this warning:
Finally, this research reveals a wellspring of animus against marginalized groups in the United States that can be harnessed and activated for political gain. Trump’s unique ability to do so is not the only cause for normative concern. Instead, we should take note that these attitudes exist across both parties and among nonpartisans. Though they may remain relatively latent when leaders and parties draw attention elsewhere, the right leader can activate these attitudes and fold them into voters’ political judgments. Should America wish to become a fully multiracial democracy, it will need to reconcile with these hostile attitudes themselves.
This faction, while it may have overtaken the Republican Party for now, is not wedded to it nor, where it exists among Democrats, to them either.
Mason spells it out more bluntly in her tweet thread:
The new MAGA/anti-MAGA conflict is not an entirely partisan one. It’s about white Christian supremacy versus a fully multi-racial democracy. The Trump effect occurs most powerfully at the most hateful end of the spectrum (above 0.5 on the animus scale).
And it’s not happening for anyone on the Democratic side. Hating Christians and White people doesn’t predict favorability toward any Democratic figures or the Democratic Party. So it isn’t “anti-White racism” (whatever that means) motivating the left. It’s not “both sides.”
This means that there is a faction in American politics that has moved from party to party, can be recruited from either party, and responds especially well to hatred of marginalized groups. They’re not just Republicans or Democrats, they’re a third faction that targets parties.
THIS is the faction we, as Americans, should be worried about. “Bipartisanship” is not the answer to the problem. We need to confront this particular faction of Americans who have been uniquely visible and anti-democratic since before the Civil War (when they were Democrats).
We haven’t really talked about them – except in extreme and isolated ways like talking about the KKK. But Trump served as a lightning rod for lots of regular people who hold white Christian supremacist beliefs. We neglect to name and identify them at the peril of democracy.
Because, Mason adds, “they are not loyal to a party – they are loyal to white Christian domination.”
I still recall the “Baptist church on every downtown street corner” days in the South when conservatives kept Blue Laws in place. There were Confederate monuments in the center of nearly every Southern town, Friday night football games began with prayers to Jesus, and the pep bands played “Dixie.” And you knew who you were then | girls were girls and men were men. And everyone else knew just who was in charge. Those days are all but gone and those once secure in the knowledge that they and theirs were exclusively in charge really don’t like where things are headed.
Once Democrats, then Republicans, Mason identifies them as their own faction.
Polls are all over. Republican registration is down since January 6th and Democratic identification is up. What I wonder is how much does this Trump faction account for the decline of party registration and growth of independents away from either major party?
*Update: Mason recently moved on to Johns Hopkins University.