It can be unfair, bordering on dangerous, to attribute political motivations to racism without clear evidence. (Of course, sometimes, the evidence is quite clear.)
But it would also be willful self-imposed blindness to ignore the various indications that the fierce devotion of Trumpists, or many Trumpists, to Donald Trump and Trumpism has something to do with racism, or race anxiety among whites who see rising numbers of non-whites in the U.S. population as we approach the point where the non-Hispanic white portion of the U.S. population will fall below 50 percent. (Depending on various factors, it’s currently around 60 percent.)
Paul Waldman’s column in Tuesday’s Washington Post was rooted in one compelling statistic, borrowed from research done by University of Chicago political scientist Robert Pape, who analyzed the identities of the 377 people who were arrested in the violent, lethal, Trump-incited Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol Building.
The 377 people did not come from pro-Trump counties. In fact, the majority of them came from “blue counties that [Joe] Biden won comfortably,” Pape found. But he also analyzed recent demographic changes in the home counties of the protesters, leading him to this finding:
“By far the most interesting characteristic common to the insurrectionists’ backgrounds has to do with changes in their local demographics: Counties with the most significant declines in the non-Hispanic White population are the most likely to produce insurrectionists who now face charges.”
To restate that for emphasis or clarity: Those protesters who did enough to get arrested and charged with crimes came from counties that both were carried by Biden, and, while still majority white, have recently experienced a significant increase in non-whites in their populations.
Of course, since they all were BLM and/or ANTIFA members it only makes sense that they came from those demographic areas.
To GOP leaders, leadership means simply caving to the will of the crowd. They are the flesh and blood equivalent to social media platforms that carefully analyze what you want to hear and then spew it back to you, spreading lies and nonsense, but at least keeping the ax and pitchfork crowd smiling and nodding. Those leaders know this is the road to disaster for their party and the country, but hey, they really like the DC lifestyle and who wants to go back to Hicksville and sell insurance?
Unpossible! I thought Trump voters were motivated by economic anxiety! And the ones who stormed the Capitol were concerned about the integrity of the system, and just wanted their voices heard!
The great failing of the mainstream media during the Trump years will be the relentless support they gave to the fiction that race was not a major factor behind Trump’s rise. It became a cliché: a reporter would descend on a diner in some blue collar community, usually in the Rust Belt, talk to a few denizens, and accept at face value their protestations that they weren’t racist (why, many of them said they had black friends!). All of this would be dutifully reported with a few words musing about the Democrats not connecting with working class voters (the American working class, it seems, being made up of non-college educated white males).
This morning, I read a brief yet apropos excerpt from Isabel Wilkerson’s book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents: “What does racist mean in an era when even extremists won’t admit to it? What is the litmus test for racism? Who is racist in a society where someone can refuse to rent to people of color, arrest brown immigrants en masse, or display a Confederate flag, but not be ‘certified’ as a racist unless he or she confesses to it or is caught using derogatory signage or slurs? . . . [T]he instinctive desire to reject the very idea of current discrimination on the basis of a chemical compound in the skin is an unconscious admission of the absurdity of race as a concept.”
Correlation may not be causation, but it sure can be interesting.
When two variables are but there is no evidence of causation, it’s time to look for a third variable that determines both of the first two.
An exercise left to the readers.
“Counties with the most significant declines in the non-Hispanic White population…” Aren’t most places declining? Except SW Minneapolis? : ) I’m here all week, folks.
For the leader of the faux “insurrection,” there’s this: “A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. For the traitor appears not a traitor — He speaks in the accents familiar to his victims, and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation — he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city — he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared.”
— Cicero, 42 B.C.
And for those 377 “insurrectionists,” there’s this: “When you are used to privilege, equality feels like oppression.” — Jenny Yang, tweet on May 9, 2018.
This all strikes me as a rather long winded exercise in saying “racists are gonna racist”, which really, should be self evident to anyone possessing a pulse, and a modicum of cultural awareness.
“By far the most interesting characteristic common to the insurrectionists’ backgrounds has to do with changes in their local demographics: Counties with the most significant declines in the non-Hispanic White population are the most likely to produce insurrectionists who now face charges.”
Oh really? That’s what you get for relying on the Washington Post. Because if you look at Pape’s actual research on the demographics of those arrested as printed in that right-wing rag The Atlantic, you may be surprised to learn that “They work as CEOs, shop owners, doctors, lawyers, IT specialists, and accountants. Strikingly, court documents indicate that only 9 percent are unemployed.” Indeed the Trump supporter who was shot and killed by a DC cop was a military veteran, business owner, and oh yes, a woman.
This finding is much more interesting and instructive than which counties they happen to come from, because indeed, Pape “found that 39 percent of suspected insurrectionists came from battleground counties, where Trump received 40 to 60 percent of the vote; 12 percent came from counties where less than 60 percent of the population is white. In these and many other ways, the mix of counties from which the arrestees hailed was typical of all American counties.”
The REAL takeaway from Pape’s work should have been this:
“What’s clear is that the Capitol riot revealed a new force in American politics—not merely a mix of right-wing organizations, but a broader mass political movement that has violence at its core and draws strength even from places where Trump supporters are in the minority.”
As usual, Waldman’s observations are worthless.
Are you all disturbed by the fact of “a broader mass political movement that has violence at its core?” Or the fact that this movement is so easily provoked into violence by blatant falsehoods?
I can’t quite figure out what your point is. The piece referenced is talking about where these criminals and terrorists came from. You are talking about what these people do (and did, since many of them lost their jobs) for a living.
Is the point that doctors and CEOs support murdering cops? That these people can be un-American traitors? That they are are fundamentally dishonest to the point they actually believe Trump’s ridiculous lies about the election that Trump and his own people know are false? I don’t think that is any way inconsistent with the original point.
I think we can all agree that these people are the absolute scum of the earth, and hopefully long prison sentences await them. The point of the article is trying to figure out how these people get this way. How did they become radicalized into terrorists can cop-murderers.
A “new force in American politics”? White American racism is a very old force in American politics, one which might even say is foundational to the United States and our Constitution. White supremacy is not a new political force. It seems to have an enduring appeal and quality in the United States that periodically goes dormant but is easily aroused by demagogues. It is grounded in fear and resentment, which overwhelm education, religious conviction, upbringing, class, reason or logic.
I’m hoping Pape’s next project is a story examining how the average enthusiastic Trump supporters who were convinced that he was going to be re-elected are coping with the great leader’s loss several months after. You know, not the whackos who invaded the Capitol and tried to hunt down the vice-president, but the average right winger who gets his news from Fox. I’m curious because they seem to have been avoiding us lately.
Well, one reason for the avoidance may be that several of the conservatives who previously were engaged here absolutely, positively, predicted a resounding win for Trumpolini (even in MN!), and may be somewhat abashed by such foolishness. To them I say, don’t worry, that’s all forgotten, water under the bridge, ha-ha. Also, too, returning to the fray basically requires a “conservative” to weigh in on the accuracy of Trumpolini’s Big Lie, and one has to admit that’s a heavy burden to have to “defend”….
On the other hand, the sock puppet method is also favored, so be on the look-out…
My thought is more that the pay checks stopped. They’ll be back oh, say, end of the summer I suppose? Whenever the 2022 campaigns start heating up.
They are coping by staying secure in their delusion that The Great Helmsman really did win, and that He will come again in glory, to own the libs for once and for all.
If you look at the surveys, 65% of self-identified Republicans don’t believe that President Biden won legitimately. The “average” Republican is part of the gaggle of the gullible.
Was your point that rich white people are racists too? Umm, yeah? Was that in question?
Re the mob – See Cipollas five laws of stupid.
I guess we’d have to know what Waldman means by “most significant declines”.
Frankly, the chief attraction of Trump for his (overwhelmingly white) followers was/is his open and brazen allegiance to White Nationalism. He figured out this was a possible “business model” for a presidential campaign (which was not obvious to traditional politicians). He opened his campaign with racial animus (chiefly directed toward Latino immigrants) and, after he “won”, followed through with policies designed to harass and harm non-whites. He openly spoke of how dire the situation of the country was, that his candidacy was the “last chance” for whites, and to lose was to lose “their” country. His followers believe this, and him. The Floyd riots and demonstrations allowed him to more openly expand his theme to hostility towards blacks. And White Americans ate it up, as we saw by the large increase in votes for Trump in 2020. Naturally the Repub party has now fully thrown in its lot with this new formulation of “conservatism”. Whether White Nationalism will prevail is the new “battleground”.
So there’s no real need to try to dig into things like county demographics to solve some “puzzle” about motivation; white nationalists are everywhere white people reside. The more whites there are in a county (in absolute terms), the more white nationalists there likely will be, period. They do not like the demographic path the country is on, and are now willing to jettison democracy and endorse political violence (such as Trumpolini’s Insurrection) in order to maintain white (male) control of the country. A new leader will come into the picture for them, and they will follow him. If democracy has to be destroyed to “save” “their” country, that’s an acceptable price for them.
The nation is plainly degenerating and regressing, as more and more whites find this garbage persuasive.
Yeah, I guess that term “ignorance is bliss” resounds like a church bell in these folks, the corollaries are: facts are fiction, truth is lies, education is corruption, an open mind is a disease, division is better than collaboration, ………
Fahrenheit 451 in all its glory . . . .
One of the core foundations of Fascism has always been racism. We can easily dispense with mundane observation that racism is a core feature of Trumpism, in that regard this is an unremarkable observation… but why are we not calling these people Fascist? I think recognizing the emergence of Fascism is more critical than documenting the Fascist racism. Racists gotta be racists, but Fascist gotta take over the government and tear up democracy.
2015 me is tearing his hair out at this commentary Mr. Udstrand, but we’ll just say I’m glad you came around eventually…