In an interview with Atlantic writer Elaine Godfrey, Harvard-based political scientist and sociologist Theda Skocpol weighed in on the meaning of Trump, Trumpism and the “Stop the Steal” movement.
Having interviewed and corresponded with Skocpol in the past, I have long admired her insights, and she wowed me again in this transcribed interview describing what “Stop the Steal” really means to those who embrace that slogan to express their outrage over Joe Biden’s victory. And, she believes, it isn’t that Biden and the Democrats actually stole the election.
Try this Skocpolian explanation for the slogan’s real meaning for her piece, headlined: “‘Stop the Steal’ is a metaphor.”
Skocpol said its a metaphor “for the country being taken away from the people who think they should rightfully be setting the tone.”
“I don’t think ‘Stop the Steal’ is about ballots at all,” she opined. “I don’t believe a lot of people really think that the votes weren’t counted correctly in 2020. They believe that urban people, metropolitan people — disproportionately young and minorities, to be sure, but also frankly liberal whites — are an illegitimate brew that’s changing America in unrecognizable ways and taking it away from them.”
That last sentence represents her key insight into the grip that Trumpism has on its believers.
Perhaps, like me, you have a hunch she’s onto something that explains a fair bit about what we’ve just been through, and about how it is perceived by those whose grievances were preyed upon by Donald Trump. Perhaps “the steal” refers not to a stolen election, but to a stolen country, a society stolen from people who feel deeply that they and people like them are supposed to be the ones setting the tone and running what one might call “the USA Show.”
That group fears demographic changes and growing numbers of people who share, as Skocpol put it, “liberal values and priorities different from what this group thinks are basic America-defining values.”
The election deniers, Skocpol wrote, may traffic in strange tales of ballot-handling improprieties like “late-night ballot dumps or dead people voting.” But take all that with a big grain of salt, she advised. The deniers are worried that honest elections will enable people unlike them to take over and bring a new definition to their America.
She relied for clarification on a statement from Doug Mastriano, a prominent Christian fundamentalist and Trump ally who marched in the “Stop the Steal” rally to the Capitol but has not been charged with any crimes for his actions that day. As Skocpol put it in her Atlantic interview:
“Mastriano said it in so many words: ‘It’s a Christian country. That doesn’t mean we’ll throw out everybody else, but they’ve got to accept that we’re the ones setting the tone.’”
“Trump gave voice to that. He’s a perfect resonant instrument for that — because he’s a bundle of narcissistic resentments. But he’s no longer necessary … for an authoritarian movement to use the GOP to lock in minority rule. The movement to manipulate election access and [ballot]-counting is so far along. I think it’s too late, and we’re vulnerable to it because of how we administer local elections,” Skocpol told Godfrey.
The future, Skocpol suggests, does not depend primarily on whether Trump can come back and win next time, but…
“…on state legislatures, which have been captured, and the Supreme Court. The Court is a keystone in all of this because it’s going to validate perfectly legal manipulations that really are about locking in minority rule. In that sense, the turning point in American history may have happened in November 2016.”
The turning point toward what?
“Toward a locking-in of minority rule along ethno-nationalist lines. The objective is to disenfranchise metro people, period. I see a real chance of a long-term federal takeover by forces that are determined to maintain a fiction of a white, Christian, Trumpist version of America,” Skocpol told Godfrey.
She doesn’t think it can work over the long run, because the group she referred to as “metro people” is growing and will continue to grow faster than the white working class. But she believes that, in the near and medium term, the tale will be told in “about five pivotal states where election deniers — the culmination of the Tea Party-Trumpist strand of the GOP — are close to gaining control of the levers of voting access and counting the results. If that happens, in even two of those places, it could well be enough. The way courts are operating now, they will not place limits on much of anything that happens in the states,” she fears.
So, Godfrey asked Skocpol: “What would you say is on the ballot in 2022?” She replied:
“The locking-in of minority authoritarian rule. … People talk about it in racial terms, and of course the racial side is very powerful. We had racial change from the 1960s on, and conservative people are angry about Black political power.
“But I wouldn’t underestimate the gender anger that’s channeled here: Relations between men and women have changed in ways that are very unsettling to them. And conservatives are angry about family change.
“This is directed at liberal whites, too. Tea Partiers talked about white people in college towns who voted Democratic the way the rulers of Iran would speak of Muslims that are liberal — as the near-devil.”
I don’t dare borrow any more of the Atlantic piece than I already have. I hope you get how smart Skocpol is and what frightens her about the next election cycle or two or three.
And I hope you read the full, very smart piece, but I don’t know whether you can access it without an Atlantic subscription.
Well, duh? Was how much the conservatives despise us, those we care about, the issues that concern us, and the way we live our lives ever in question for liberals? If it was, what rock have those folks been under? They aren’t like us, and we not like them, they might as well be a different species at this point.
Except they’ve been plotting carefully for over 40 yrs and have finally reached the pt where they have gained sufficient control now to hang on to it for at least a generation. They haven’t done it honestly or fairly by any stretch of the imagination, nor will they. This is their cause celebre. A reminder (which too many have ignored or dismissed): per 50 yrs of census data in about 10 yrs middle-aged white males will become the NEW MINORITY and blacks & browns will become the NEW MAJORITY. This has put these so called Christians/REPs into an absolute PANIC!!!! Because they firmly believe they alone are the chosen ones. The superior race. So no, they won’t even consider sharing the power…let alone anything else. They are rigid. Dug in. And determined to retain white supremacy at all costs. That’s why they’re in such a foaming lather now. Time is running out for them. If they don’t succeed in their goal now, they will lose it for good. And the way things stand today they stand a decent chance, with all their game rigging and election interference and their carefully chosen Supreme Court packing choices, etc. None of this was done in secret either; all any of us had to do was be awake & aware & take notice. But folks get so locked into their habits, beliefs, ways of doing things…a train could blow thru the room and most wouldn’t notice. Plus our ‘media’ now is owned by half a dozen wealthy folks w their own agendas. Plus psychopath Trump w his incessant lies & bs and need to control the masses has been a huge distraction …. There are many, many reasons why the country finds itself at this critical juncture. I pray enough folks are finally waking up and seeing the reality and realizing the severity, the gravity of the situation facing us all now. It truly does boil down to white nationalism/fascism pushed by the R…or the continuation of democracy. The choice can still lie w the voters this Nov IF SUFFICIENT NUMBERS VOTE and FIGHT BACK AGAINST THE FRAUDSTERS. But if that doesn’t happen it will become a much harder & longer fought battle and our children and grandchildren will pay a very steep price. Things we’ve all taken for granted won’t be avail to them. The American Dream & a great many rights will not be available to them. The country will undergo a great regression back to some of the worst situations this country faced already. The undoing of Roe v Wade is just their opening salvo. If you believe in our Constitution…in equal rights & protections for ALL…then you MUST fight this fight now. They leave us no other choice.
Yeah? And? This isn’t new information, and some of us have been calling out the fascism for a very long time. There’s a phrase I won’t use to describe what happens when something long suggested, yet dismissed as hyperbole until it happens, comes to pass after all.
Well, thanks for doing your part to highlight this prophetic article. Of course this is the correct analysis of what is currently going on in the good ‘ol US of A, as a dozen of us nobody liberals have been writing here at EB Ink for years now. It’s great that mainstream periodicals are starting to really explain the crisis.
Trump himself is such a manifest personal failure and defective individual that one has to look for other reasons why anyone could think him qualified for high office. And the answer is that he has (incredibly) come to be seen and accepted as the candidate of white Christian nationalism. And that movement opposes giving political power to the various demographics that make up the Dem party.
I note that Skocpol thinks it is likely too late to right the democratic majoritarian ship, and that the processes for ensuring Repub minority rule are very far advanced now. This is principally because the Supreme Court has been illegitimately packed with conservative activists masquerading as “justices”. These worthies will permit whatever election manipulation schemes the Repubs pull in the “swing” states they currently control, thus allowing a dismal succession of popular vote-losing “presidents” and gerrymandered Repub legislatures (both state and federal) to proceed indefinitely.
The next step, as Skocpol observes, is for a takeover of the House by the anti-democratic Repub party. That majority itself (should it come pass) will be the product of severely gerrymandered Red States like TX, FL and OH (to name just a few). That means that this Repub “majority” will be democratically illegitimate.
The archaic Constitution permits this sort of anti-democratic manipulation by a minority political faction. That doesn’t mean that a political party should undertake such a strategy of control. But if they do, then the majority is compelled to point out that the results are illegitimate.
Skocpol is ringing the alarm bells way ahead of the masses and the pundits. The question is whether any elected Dems (and proclaimed independent voters) are listening…
We are, by no means, the only “nobody liberals” that have been deciphering what was really going on for YEARS. Not just here, but in comment boards everywhere. We had already figured out that not only was “economic anxiety” code for “angry that POC are getting ahead (and white men actually have to work to get ahead),” but that this isn’t a new phenomenon. We already knew that this was more than 40 years in the making. 2016 wasn’t the cause of all this. It was, at best, a symptom, but at worst, a culmination. We already knew that. But what Skocpol did here was to tell us it was the latter. I think we also were aware, but perhaps we still wanted hope.
There is an interesting post today at the Lawyers, Guns & Money blog about political charisma, as being distinct from personal charisma. Personal charisma comes from the actions and attitude of the person. They come across as concerned about the other person. Political charisma is something given by the audience, and shows itself in the devotion of the crowd. It stems from the political figure’s willingness/ability to say what the audience wants to hear.
No one thinks Donald Trump has personal charisma. He is vain and narcissistic, caring little about any of the individuals with whom he interacts. Nonetheless, he says what his followers want to hear (How many Trump supporters have explained their support with “He says what I’m thinking”?). His followers want to hear that they are the “real” Americans, and that “their” country is being stolen from them in some undefined way. There are some nameless elites (the “woke crowd”) doing the stealing and this stealing is telling the followers that they aren’t necessarily the ones in charge anymore. It doesn’t matter what it is. It could be the idea that we haven’t reached the goal of wiping out the racism they have (perhaps reluctantly) come to oppose, or it could be some ridiculous trivia like Cracker Barrel offering vegan sausage. It’s not the same, and it’s not what they were used to. Change is seen as a threat, and Trump is there to tell them that this change is somehow criminal.
Pretty much spot-on once again, RB. Change is hard to deal with in almost any case, but especially difficult for those who benefit from what is, and (sometimes justifiably) fear what is coming to replace it. And replace it it will – the old saw about the inevitability of change didn’t become an old saw by accident. My own experience with Trump supporters has included not only the “He speaks for me” business, thus revealing the anger and bigotry that characterizes so many of them, but I’ve also heard “I like his policies” as a justification for that support. It’s often been said by people who can’t name a specific policy, or even a general one.
Scary times we are living in today. Scary.
Conservative white Christian men believe that their male God put them in charge due to their natural superiority. Let them explain their version of Christianity and their basis for claiming superiority.
Trump and his white male followers are unrepentant sinners and act nothing like Jesus. They take pleasure in protecting each other and harming others to gain and retain wealth and power.
My favorite example is a small but telling one. That Trump says he is unwilling to change diapers. While his wife was home doing so, he was off having sex with a Playboy centerfold and a porn star on one weekend. Not exactly doing good works. Self proclaimed Christians voted for that kind of poor role model?
A metaphor? Obviously stopping the steal can’t actually be about stopping a steal, because that didn’t happen. Since there was no steal this is obviously about something else… that’s a mundane observation pretending to be clever insight.
In the meantime why is it so hard to admit that this isn’t about winning or losing elections, it’s a Fascist attempt to overthrow our democracy. And yeah… Fascist think they’ve “lost” their country… regaining lost glory and restoring traditional power and influence is a typical Fascist narrative. This narrative has been documented for decades, remember the “Moral Majority”? And this has been the white supremacists narrative since the Civil War… it’s literally the founding myth of the KKK. This isn’t an academic puzzle, this is an existential threat… let’s recognize that fact.
I think there are a large number of otherwise intelligent people who actually believe the election was stolen. It’s not that you have to be stupid, it’s that you have to let your bias overcome your judgement. The MAGA crowd sees people with reasonable (or better) accomplishments – like Guilianni and others – saying the election was stolen and say “if they think so, there must be something there”. The ones who say otherwise are lying or can’t be trusted. 60 some court cases lost – those are all liberal judges (even though they weren’t).
I was once in a small shop where the owner was telling someone not to believe the weather forecast because you can’t trust the government. The national weather service can’t be trusted to tell you the truth as they believe it to be!
What we have here is the craven (who insist the election was stolen not because they believe it, but because it’s useful) leading the gullible. What the craven are doing – destroying democracy to achieve their political ends – is no better than destroying democracy with guns in the street.
As the saying goes, “There are none so blind as those who will not see.”
Not telling many of us anything new, but it’s an excellent summation of what is going on. The “They’ve got to accept that we’re the ones setting the tone,” quote is it in a nutshell. The scary thing is that it’s not only the tone they’re setting, but it’s also the demonizing of the opposition and the corruption of the voting process. Yes, the Democrats make feeble attempts, but they still fundamentally believe in government trying to benefit all people. That’s a big handicap in this battle.
“I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty.” – Bill Buckley
I thoroughly enjoy coming here everyday to read the white liberals’ amusing take on Trump and his supporters. The Bill Buckley quote above was the first thing I thought of when I started to read Theda Skocpol’s opinion. Things haven’t changed.
Just to point out a few common misunderstandings that I read here:
Trump received 75 million votes. That’s 9 million more than he received the first time. So he actually *gained* followers during his term in office, including increases in black and brown voters.
It’s not about Trump the personality. It’s about Trump’s anti-establishment agenda. People are fed up with a congress that thinks it’s more important to hire 85,000 IRS agents than it is to hire 85,000 border patrol agents. People are fed up with a uniparty that spends more defending the border of Ukraine than it does defending our own Southern border against the Mexican cartels and their drug smuggling. Over 100,000 people died of Fentanyl poisoning last year alone. Attacks on Trump’s personality or personal shortcomings have zero effect on his supporters because it isn’t about him. Ron DeSantis (ex-Navy SEAL) would carry the torch just as well, in our view. There’s loyalty to Trump for being the founding father of the movement, but rest assured it doesn’t end with him.
There is no “authoritarian movement” in the GOP. Quite the opposite. An authoritarian Trump would have shut down the economy by federal mandate and forced everyone to abide by the CDC rules if they wanted to work or go to school. Trump immediately announced that state governors would be making those calls, not the feds. A good authoritarian wouldn’t have done that. And sure enough, it was the republican governors who refused to mandate shots and masks … it was left to the liberals in charge of the blue states, cities and school districts to make that call for their constituents and they all chose lockdowns and mandated masks and shots. The republican governors made those rules optional. Good authoritarians wouldn’t have done that.
But here’s the bottom line: When 35-40% of the electorate believe that the 2020 election was fraudulent, you have a problem. Returning the voting rules and procedures to what they were prior to the cheating allegations will help restore that confidence. Refusing to roll back the pandemic-related voting methods that make it easy to cheat, doesn’t change any opinions, and in fact reinforces peoples’ views that the democrats cheat.
When the elections are seen as fraudulent, you don’t have a democracy.
That Bill Buckley, nothing but a pointy headed Ivy League elitist.
He’d never make it in today’s conservative movement.
Or is it only the liberal Ivy Leaguers we say aren’t in touch with the working class?
It’s not the job of the 85% to validate the insanity of the 15%. It’s the job of the 15% to abandon their madness and move back toward sanity. I don’t care what someone “thinks” about the validity or lack thereof of any election. Come with evidence, or sit down, shut up, and remain so until you do. The conservative conundrum is that no such evidence exists, and won’t so it is necessary to drive ever further into madness to keep up the charade. This will never allow for conversion of anyone not similarly insane, and as the numbers of those persisting in the madness dwindle, the strategy ONLY works when actually holding fraudulent elections becomes the strategy. I honestly don’t know what you expect to gain from your endless repetition of talking points only meaningful to the already converted. None of what concerns you has any meaningful impact to anyone outside the conservative silo you inhabit, we don’t care about your COVID grievances (in fact, unlike those who claim we needed to “move on” all along, we actually HAVE), we don’t care about your voting concerns (we want to make voting literally as easy as humanly possible, because turnout means WE win, because unlike conservative theology, OUR ideas are actually popular), we understand there’s not a “war at the border” and can see the help wanted signs everywhere that demand immigrants to fill, because despite your lamentations to the contrary, unemployment is as low as it’s been in our lifetimes. In short, we KNOW you’re lying, and nothing you ever say, beyond, “sorry, I guess I’ve been completely wrong, all along” will ever convince us otherwise.
Thanks for your Trump defense, however based on distortions and inaccuracies it may be. I’d be curious to learn if Trump himself has ever used the phrase “anti-establishment agenda” to describe his “movement”, or if this is a phrase you have glommed onto to make Trumpism more intellectually respectable to you? I’ve surely not heard the phrase ascribed to him.
You talk much about “people” being “fed up with” one (actually popular) policy or another. I think you mean Trumpites being fed up with something they believe is occurring, usually without evidence. And you’re only spotting Fentanyl in the past 2 years?
But the main problem with your defense of the Trumpite masses and their supposed “stolen election” concern is that you ignore one of the main points of the professor’s argument: that Trumpism (either with “the founder” Trump or the heroic seal DeSantis) is ultimately an anti-democratic “locking-in of minority rule along ethno-nationist lines”. That Trumpism, for all its talk of “the people” and “stolen elections” and “75 million votes”, is a movement that will (necessarily) have to rely upon minority rule procedures and mechanisms if is is to “rule” at all. That is why it is so essential for Repubs to ensure that turnout be reduced, most especially urban turnout.
Since you can’t even mention one of Skocpol’s main arguments indicting Trumpism, I have to say I think she has your number, whatever the blue-blooded bigot Buckley might have said about his alma mater…
Buckley went to Yale. He was also a Green Beret. Funny how military service turns people into conservatives.
Good heavens – a Yale man!
Buckley was not a Green Beret. He served two years in the Army during in WWII (having spent the first two years of the war attending college in Mexico) before the Special Forces were established, but he never saw combat.
Thank goodness I got that crucial fact wrong or what would you have to say in response? And if you imagine Bach-loving Green Beret Bill Buckley would have supported the nauseating conman and mentally-unbalanced imbecile Trump (as opposed to, say, Liz Cheney), you really don’t know your conservative forebears…a Never-Trumper if ever there was one!
Thanks for giving an example of why the democrat party has lost the vote of working people. But no worries. They’ll always have the vote of the Tina Smiths of this world. And people named “Ian.”
Oh look, even our names are anathema to “real Americans” like Dennis. (You do know what that means, right?)
Since the majority of voters vote for Democrats, you’re saying that the majority of Americans don’t work?
“It’s not about Trump the personality. It’s about Trump’s anti-establishment agenda.”
I wonder when his supporters will realize that Trump is part of the establishment. The ‘anti-establishment schtik is a ruse. Trump cares about one thing: Trump. He’s made a ton of money off the people that believe his lies. His first reaction to the FBI search was a plea for more donations. And a bunch of suckers sent him more money.
Well, of course what’s funny is the fact that traditionally, conservatism is about preserving establishments… this is why Trump and his follower aren’t actually conservatives… they’re extremists trying to capture power.
Right.
The term for people who want to return to some mythical golden age is ‘reactionaries’.
Nothing really new here.
The Founders (going back to the 16th century, not just the 18th) were rich white male Christians (read your Jill Lepore).
No one surrenders power voluntarily; if these people go it will be kicking and screaming.
The demographics are against them — they will chose power over democracy.
The Founders? Christians? Ah, no, they were not warming church pews on Sunday morning.
Swing and a miss.
I said ‘Christians’, not church-goers.
Washington was famous for not wanting to set foot in a church.
Even Tom Jeff, the least theologically conventional of the bunch, was a proto-unitarian.
I believe that they all regarded themselves as Christians in the sense of accepting the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.
Well . . . more or less. The Founders were not a monolithic crowd, and while Jefferson, Washington, Franklin etc. largely gave organized religion a miss, most of the others were those who would, as we used to say on Sunday, “profess and call themselves Christians.”
Most of the original 13 states had some kind of religious test or qualification for state officeholders in their constitutions. Whether they actually believed in Christianity (as so many of today’s so-called “Christians” do not) is another matter.
The term ‘Deists’ is often used to generically describe the Founders’ religious attitudes.
Few of them were outright atheists.
Read it again.
Why do you think that Jefferson wrote his own abridgement of the New Testament?
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwiVhfyuwt35AhUUlIkEHUUbAxUQFnoECBYQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FJefferson_Bible&usg=AOvVaw3iBa8BEp79fvDXQRcwltLU
Liberal values? Like unscientific ideas about gender, race, climate, renewables and Covid, that are held up as so scientific they can’t be questioned and if you do question them in any way you are a right wing fascist antivaxxer conspiracy freak racist bigot misogynist?
Not if you bring facts and data to the discussion. Real facts, not “alternative facts”.
Specifics?
I tried. But seriously questioning any of these issues here apparently is hate speech.
“Only I know the truth! If you criticize me, it’s censorship!”
Oh joy, you’re back. Oh right, it’s election season…
Like a good cat I happened to stroll by the fishbowl…
Hand me the rolled up newspaper.
You missed me!
But in case you were being facetious, that’s ok. I am going back to chat with people on Substack where all the cool kids are and free speech is still a thing.
I’m not sure it’s ok to joke about it. I can’t put my finger on why, but…
Conservatives are historically far more intolerant. Liberals invented the 1st Amendment. Simply being a citizen among other citizens, or having to listen to other peoples speech, doesn’t make you a victim of persecution William. And of course these complaints about name-calling from people who turned the guy who coined the phrase: “Feminazis” into a national hero are simply amusing.
Oil. I think it comes down to oil.
And here is why I think it is about oil. I will quote German social scientist Stefan Aykut. “The social unrest that is current could be tamped down if politicians could ensure some measure of justice. If we don’t this throws us back years in terms of climate policy. It is unacceptable that some who are better off earn money from energy transition and others always the same finance it through higher energy prices”. What were the Clintons most known for? Globalization.
.1% of the monies for climate change have been spent on the societal side of climate change. 99.9 has been spent on the technical side. But people are the motor and could be the brake. So we just don’t know.
We agree, those folks are about telling others how to live their lives, even though they don’t live their lives that way. They do not believe in the America dream, they were/are happy as long as they rule. As a Florida Judge mentioned in an order against DeSantis, they are in support of the “upside down”. Its their vote for reality vs non-reality autocratic rule. And there is nothing else to say on the matter. You can whack these folks in the skull with a 4×4 and their corrupt thinking won’t move. You don’t think like them you are the enemy, where as for typical lefties, you don’t think like me, perhaps you are in need of some enlightenment, we aren’t here because some autocrat told us to be, we are here because this seems like a reasonable and logical path forward for all of us!
Many of my relatives, lifelong mainstream republicans, hold their noses and vote for Trump. “I don’t like the man, but I like his policies”. Tax cuts uber alles. Beyond that there are no policies that I have noticed that give aid and comfort to America.
I agree to some extent with Professors Godfrey’s and Skocpol’s interpretation of the “Stop the Steal” movement. But at another level, I wonder if in claiming to read the minds of Trump fanatics they are not drifting a bit out of their lands of expertise in political science and sociology and into a separate area of expertise in social psychology. Are they endorsing the idea that voters can be manipulated by psychological profiling and targeting for “fake news” that tips “persuadable voters” to vote for tyrants? Or vulnerable voters” to stay home? Recently, I’ve been reading some books about Cambridge Analytica, the firm Tr**p factotum Steve Bannon helped create with billionaire Robert Mercer and which some, like ex CA-employee Chris Wylie, influenced the 2016 election by psychologically manipulating voters. Wylie asserts persuasively in his 2019 book that voter manipulation by that firm at granular precinct levels did in fact work to great effect in the swing states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania to bring Trump the Electoral College win. He also claims persuasively it worked to persuade voters in the UK to approve Brexit.
Those claims, I have read, have been contested, by political scientists and sociologists like Godfrey and Skocpol and also others who claim that Cambridge Analytica’s claims are overstated and reflect mere marketing ploys. They argue that nothing has disproved studies from the 1940’s to the 1960’s that people’s voting patterns and especially their attitudes on culture and morality are largely predictable and beyond manipulation.
I’m not so sure about this. The Article reviewed by Eric suggests to me that perhaps some of these political scientists and sociologists are changing their views without saying so. It’s perhaps kinder to assume manipulable voters are rational actors and have simply adopted a “myth” that drive their actions. On the other hand, it’s not inconsistent with the view that people really are subject to manipulation and deception, that it’s really not so hard to do so and that the evidence shows how easily manipulated and deceived people are. I’d say the fact Ron Johnson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Paul Goshard and Louis Gohmert are in Congress is evidence enough to prove this. But it’s also evident from the actual known facts about Wisconsin, where vague claims of election fraud, which of course were totally without evidence, were advanced in the Wisconsin courts and were actually accepted by 3 of the 7 members of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. There has since been a laughable but not really very funny farce by the Wisconsin Assembly Leader Robin Vos and his stooge, former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, investigating the “fraud” which is finally coming to its farcical conclusion. Other Republicans have been trying to divert public attention from the farce by side law suits which imply that the issue was not really about “fraud” but essentially that the law did not expressly allow drop boxes for absentee votes as allowed by the Wisconsin Election Commission. One of the True Tr**p Believers did bring a lawsuit well after the 2020 election to get a court ruling that the Wisconsin Election Commission was acting “illegally” in allowing drop boxes for absentee votes outside of limited City offices. “Illegal” sounds enough like “fraud” to the True Tr**p Believer so the “logic” or “reasoning” ( if the complete failure of thought, typical of Tr**p followers can ever rise to that level) went that the Democrats must therefore have “harvested” tens of thousands of votes by exploiting this supposed “illegality” . Presto: “illegal”=”fraud” so the True Tr**p Believer has his/her “evidence”. Not enough for a court of law because it ignores the additional requirement of proving actual “fraud” that the”harvesting” of ballots would have also required the evidence of forgery of tens of thousands of ballots by persons unknown. But enough for the non-thinking Tr**p True Believer who would never consider the conclusive refutation that the imaginary and fictitious forgers also forged ballots that elected a Republican majority in the Wisconsin legislature and take other offices.
I think voter manipulation is real and it’s enough to create a Big Lie. Cambridge Analytica’s Steve Bannon predicted (boasted?) months before the 2020 election that Trump would claim the election was stolen even if the results showed he lost. The Big Lie is enough to create policy of voter suppression in Wisconsin that makes voting harder even for people disabled in nursing homes to vote. Fake news targeted to the poorly informed can be demoralizing and enough to make even motivated voters stay home on Election Day. It’s enough to foster and create a myth that voting for a Big Lie con artist and criminal like Tr**p will preserve your Freedom and your way of life even if people like me tell you it will destroy it and our Democracy.
I’d say the creation in the 90s of the digital world, with a nationwide Rightwing Noise Machine dedicated to spreading lies and disinformation to anyone who wishes to tune in (and permitting one the ability to exclude traditional media, which follow rules of evidence and reason), as well as the creation of social media in the next decade or so, has destroyed any reliance one could place upon voter “manipulation” studies from 50 years ago and longer. The society of the 21st Century is simply too different.
There’s no way to prove what many or most Trumpites “really” believe about the 2020 election, or the effect the Noise Machine (broadly defined) has had on their beliefs. There are two propositions being offered here for rightists: 1. that the election was “stolen” by Dems, and 2. that “their” country is being stolen by metropolitan citizens whose opinions Trumpites think should not take precedence over theirs. Some Trumpites feel comfortable publicly expressing the latter message of Herr Trump; but most likely don’t, even if they privately subscribe to it. Trumpites overwhelmingly feel comfortable expressing the first opinion, and they likely even believe it to some degree. It obviously operates as an “acceptable” moral cover for the stronger, more anti-democratic proposition.
Umberto Eco, I think, said that in a fascist society the citizens (the Volk) believe everything the government says, and nothing it says. The important thing is they believe that everything is being said for the glorious advancement of the Fatherland and Volk, whatever its “truth”. This is likely the way to understand what Trumpites “believe” about Trump’s “Stolen Election” lies, and may be the manner in which Skocpol thinks Trumpites “don’t believe” the nonsense about ballots.
In other words, social media hives and the hermetically-sealed Noise Machine allow Trumpolini’s white nationalist movement the ability to operate very much as Eco describes a fascist society.
You’re right. Thanks for the comment and many others. I take some comfort from the saying ” victory has many fathers but defeat is always an orphan.” And I remain hopeful and optimistic whatever the outcome.
This is very insightful. Thank you for sharing this.
Oddly, because it puts this national bellyache called trumpism in a sort of historical context, I take heart in the fact that this whole nightmare might not be the end of democracy (try as they might) but might be instead one of those deep shudders that recalibrate our American experiment. The pro-white, anti-law, baldly nationalistic, anti-intellectual, anti-immigrant convulsion will have to run its course as we watch their numbers eventually dwindle. But it will be very, very messy in the meantime.
“I take heart in the fact that this whole nightmare might not be the end of democracy (try as they might) but might be instead one of those deep shudders that recalibrate our American experiment.”
Perhaps. As someone who expected the Bush-Cheney fiasco to be the nadir of Republicanism, the ensuing descent to nihilism has been hard to watch.
On the plus side, there are signs that the Dems are making progress in Senate races. Maybe we’ll get throigh this yet.
Yeah, that’s just another permutation of “American exceptionalism”. There is absolutely no reason our nation, like literally every other in the history of the world WON’T fall to totalitarian rule. It’s the baseline of history, from the feudalism of the Dark Ages, to the fascists and faux “communists” of the 20th century and beyond. As long as a significant enough portion of a population can be convinced that they aren’t capable, or desirous of charting their own destinies, strongmen, and the societies they exploit, will exist.
Matt, I don’t think we can assume a US descent into Fascism is inevitable. I’m not promoting complacency but the idea that such a collapse is inevitable is actually a Christian Conservative narrative (i.e. comparisons to the fall of Rome going back to the 1950’s).
In fact if you look around the world, and even the US you’ll see that liberalism is actually extremely prevalent and popular. For the first time in history we actually have three “Leftist” governments in Latin America and Fascism is faltering in Europe as well. Here in the US, although you wouldn’t know it by looking at Democrats we have large table-top of popular liberal agenda items ranging from living wages to MFA and abortion rights.
Beyond all that, it’s absolutely critical to remember that the world today, the US, and even Europe, are very very very different than they were the last time Fascist rose to power. Our populations are far far far more divers, educated, and accustomed to the entitlements and privileges of liberal democracy. White Supremacy is difficult to promote at this point even in the deep south, although racism is still an endemic and powerful feature of or culture.
I don’t see Fascism rising to power, but I don’t want to fight these guys in the streets to keep THAT from happening. What remains to been seen is whether or not civil war of some kind is inevitable, not if Fascism is inevitable. Democracy will prevail, the question is whether or not we’ll have to fight a civil war to keep it intact… fighting Fascists in the streets is NOT on my bucket list of things to do before I die.
I think putzing around previous comfort levels and academic discussions that want to treat this as some kind of “metaphor” rather than an assault on democratic institutions, pushes us closer to civil war. The more these “moderates” try to pretend this is just a form of normal politics that can be voted away the more we flirt with disaster and invite violence. This isn’t a metaphor, it’s an age old Fascist narrative that justifies violent overthrow, why are we pretending we haven’t seen this before?
I’d note that I didn’t claim we’d fall to Fascism, specifically, just totalitarianism. I’d argue that isn’t pessimism, or an artifact of “original sin”, but rather an observation of the actual history of the world. Democracy, small d or large, is a minor blip in the overall course of human civilization, rising briefly during periods of overwhelming oppression, only to recede once comfort and complacency sets in. Conservatism, and the authoritarian impulses it inspires requires stability like oxygen, no one is conservative when they are struggling to survive, it’s only when they have time to contemplate their status, and their selfish desires that it sets in. As to whether we’re “different” now, I take a longer view than most I suppose, in my eye we’re still overly clever apes fumbling about with increasingly complex tools. Tools that while we may figure out how to use, cannot very well understand how to use wisely. We still squabble over resources and territory in ways the average chimp would comprehend. I think it will take a few million more years for us to evolve to a state that might actually meet our high opinion of ourselves.
Good points in the pessimism/optimism discussion here. Democracy requires adequate universal education to survive in the long run. That didn’t used to happen, maybe that’s why it failed. As Paul noted, many examples of representative democracy flourish around the globe. Generations have gotten used to the advantages of maintaining their “consent of the governed.” On the other hand, the luddite in me bemoans “clever apes fumbling about with increasingly complex tools. “
Matt, you’re view of human nature is certainly grounded in conservative tradition, it does in fact flow out of the Christian “Original Sin” mythology. That’s OK, you do you, but let’s not confuse perspective with fact.
It’s not about pessimism or optimism, it’s just different historical and empirical observations. Where you see never ending recidivism towards totalitarianism (I won’t quibble over the difference between Totalitarianism and Fascism) other’s see a long but continuous arc of justice. We note that the Inquisitions ended hundreds of years, as did the world wide slave trade. We note the 1000 year Reich lasted 12 years and ended in utter and complete ruin. We can also note that right now, there are actually fewer totalitarian regimes in existence than ever before. The Monarchies of Europe and elsewhere, Colonial giants, and Soviet style regimes have all collapsed and been replaced with far less oppressive regimes. From East Timor to Siberia and from South Africa to Chile dictatorships and racial superiority are in retreat. Even in the US, while a bunch nimrods may have taken a run at the Capital, the last few decades have been decades of expanded rights and equity.
None of this means everything is coming up roses, and the long arc of justice isn’t necessarily inevitable, but none of this could happen if human nature was actually as evil as conservatism presumes. Sinners in the eyes of an angry God simply wouldn’t have risen up against oppression, injustice, and inequity as we’ve seen.
I would only quibble in that while you (and the conservatives) bemoan “evil”, I don’t in any way think our position is determined by good, evil, or any other supernatural construct. We are what we are by the force of the evolution that’s shaped us, or not. Where I think we diverge is in what seems to be your belief in the higher status of human beings, somehow able to transcend our biological nature, where as I don’t see evidence that such an epiphany has yet occurred. It doesn’t require a “devil” or a god to revert to behavior that’s hard wired into our DNA, it simply requires giving into those impulses vs understanding WHY that is a bad idea and attempting to act otherwise. For all the progress you cite, I would argue that a not insignificant portion of that progress has come due to fear of consequence, not as some enlightenment of human awareness. Given the opportunity, free from the threat of retribution, legal or otherwise, we’d be at each other’s throats in the streets, not because we are inherently evil, but because we are territorial, omnivorous, rigidly hierarchical primates, and the thin veneer of civilization we’ve constructed is no substitute for millions of years of evolutionary time.
Matt, you’re claims of a scientific basis for an inherently evil human nature are simply a secular version of original sin. In fact science has long since established that human’s are among some of the most social (not anti-social) animals on the planet. Compassion, cooperation, empathy, and a variety of other factors that facilitated our survival as a species are baked into our DNA… if we killed each other off whenever times got tough none of us would be here. Historically you see that when people face catastrophe’s they organize collective responses, they don’t kill each other off. Your dark view of human nature isn’t based on science or DNA, it’s just a dark view of human nature. To be sure, people can be incredibly bad and do incredibly bad things, but we are an inherently collective species that has always thrived and survived in groups large and small. There ARE sociopaths among us, but we are not a sociopathic species.
I’m an Atheist by the way, so when I refer to “evil” I’m never using a supernatural or religious sense of the word, obviously evil exists regardless of supernatural inspiration. But we’re way off the trail here.
As am I. I would say your view of our species is somewhat rose tinted, however. Does cooperation exist? Sure. Is it the norm, I’d argue no. And its hard to argue about the unrecorded epochs of our history prior to the advent of written language. In any event, we are a bit in the weeds, so I’ll leave it at that.
Matt, you (and everyone else here) should read: “The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity” by Graeber and Wengrow. And thank you for blowing a hole in John Grey’s claim that Atheists have adopted a religion of “progress”.
Like many other readers here, this article is nothing new to me either. The last time I was surprised by a right-wing president whom I naively expected to fail, was in my late-20s, during the early Reagan years. As a newly minted academic librarian at the time, I soon started poring over the microfiche collections of the General Social Survey and other troves of longitudinal survey data to which I had access, and started noticing a pretty consistent baseline on all sorts of social and political questions—it appeared to me that about a quarter to a third of the American population would be perfectly happy with an authoritarian white nationalist government, and another ten to twenty percent was persuadable given the right combination of circumstances and political charisma. I’ve been confirming that observation for nearly forty years and telling anybody who will listen (and yeah, they’re all tired of me).
But I also have a much more existential understanding of this troublesome culture. Put bluntly, I was raised a Hoosier hillbilly fundamentalist, my grandpas were coal miners with eighth grade educations. I literally played on the abandoned gob piles and collected bait minnows out of the orange cricks running through my grandmas’ woods, I stoked barely warm coal furnaces on winter mornings, pumped water for baths out of the backyard well (always uphill from the outhouse!), and drove to a little country church on Sunday mornings over a covered bridge built by my great-great grandpa. And like so many of my fellow “liberals” and “leftists,” who grew up in the same kinds of places, I survived the relentless adolescent bullying and constant denigration of learning and creativity, and eventually managed to grow up to be a rational and functional adult, who incidentally, now refuses to grovel before the perpetual right-wing b__s__ that still accuses us of “effeteness,” and “superiority,” especially when it comes from some tiresome parrot who wouldn’t have stomach to pluck a chicken or pick all the fat ticks out of a dog’s ears.
And for those of you who aren’t convinced that Trumpistas really believe in stuff like stolen elections, let me just clue you in about fundamentalism, which is not a doctrine, but a way of thinking which permeates American culture, even among those who’ve never actually darkened the door of a church. It’s not about what you think of as rational belief. The most dysfunctional aspect of fundamentalism is the habit of sentimentality. Sentimentality is a feeling about a place, a story, a myth, an identity, a “faith.” It’s a feeling that you’re conditioned from childhood not to analyze or investigate very closely, because somewhere inside, something inside of you knows it’s not really true, but like Coyote running off the edge of the cliff, it’s too dangerous to stop running and look down. So, you just keep running for all you’re worth, and try to keep that good feeling going. The flip side of sentimentality is, naturally, resentment. And that’s what drives Trumpworld. Trump didn’t invent “alternative facts,” he just picked it up from the insidious fundamentalism that runs through our culture. In Trump’s America, “facts” have nothing to do with truth or reality, they’re just weapons to defend your sentimental myths against the adversaries you resent. Listen to one of the formative texts of fundamentalism: “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” You grow up thinking of this sort of stuff through a sort of fond mental haze as an inspiring and comforting bit of religious wisdom, and that’s exactly what makes it so dangerous. But look at what it literally says. The roots of QAnon, of stolen election conspiracies, Covid denial, global climate change denial, and all the creationist pamphlets, with their specious lists of “answers,” in the back of the church I grew up in, they all have their roots in this kind of sentimental nonsense. Believe me, you’ve got to take a scalpel to your very sinews over a lifetime to get free of these unconscious habits of thinking, and who wants to slice out their sinews?
What a wonderful synthesis and revelatory explanation of the phenomenon. Great writing, too.
Many thanks.
You have hit the nail right on the head, especially with your last paragraph. Protestations from the MAGA crowd notwithstanding, Trump’s appeal has never been about his ideas (insofar as he has ideas and not reactions). It’s about his attitude, and his willingness to say what the mob wants to hear. Trump did nothing in his days as President that any bog-standard Republican would have done, except that he did them in the most offensive, obnoxious way possible – red meat for those whose interest in politics doesn’t extend any further than owning the libs.
Thanks Gregg, these folks are 100% into whatever you want to call it, nonsense, or whatever, and there are not enough 4×4 whacks across the head that is going to change anything. There are no rational discussions to be had with irrational people, as you noted they just can’t go there. I think MinnPost is a perfect example, been years going back and forth with some of these folks to make sense, nope, it isn’t about what’s right its about piling on enough BS to at least be perceived as something that could look right.
This is very insightful. Thank you.
Well, obviously people believe in their beliefs, so yeah… many Trumpists believe in the steal. But this analysis doesn’t claim that these beliefs are not genuine, it simply observes that these beliefs have a purpose.
A bunch of people believing in something doesn’t manifest a movement, or win elections. For THAT to happen you need leadership willing to exploit beliefs and/believers. Foundational myths need to be cultivated in order to produce organized movement. So the question isn’t simply whether or not believers believe, but rather who’s exploiting/manufacturing/cultivating those beliefs? And we can note that historically movements based on lies this are riddled with dishonesty and sociopathic/damaged people who may or may not believe their own myths. Believers believe, but their leaders don’t necessarily believe.
For instance, I have no special access to Giuliani’s mind, but we can’t assume that he believes the lies he’s been promoting, even if followers believe them. If I had to guess, I would say that at best Giuliani doesn’t care, he just promoting useful mythology. I suspect that when we find out what his testimony under oath is, he’ll say he knew he was promoting lies, but there’s nothing illegal or “wrong” with lying, it’s just politics.
It’s wishful thinking to believe all those Trumpists don’t really believe in a stolen election. They have been told this big lie over and over again by politicians they trust, by conservative pundits they trust, by amoral RW media whores who offer very little to counter their Orwellian world view.
There is some resemblance here to the War in Iraq led by Bush-Cheney 20 years ago. Despite the flawed reasoning for engagement Republicans supported Bush 43’s war overwhelmingly. Evidence for the war’s justification was refuted, and support slowly disappeared, but Republicans never had an internal, public debate (unlike the Democrats over the Vietnam War). Never. They just let Bush and Cheney slither away into retirement never to reappear at GOP conventions. Years later , the evidence having sunk in, the party became anti-Iraq war without taking any responsibility for having been to blame!
Today we have the spectacle of a party which wants to either keep Trump or replace him with a clone from Florida despite growing evidence Trump is a crook and chronic liar, at best. Like with Iraq, party supporters believe in nonsense and do no self-reflection. Time will pass and eventually most of them will know the truth, but their moral responsibility to the country will have been long relegated to the same amnesia that allowed them to put the sin of Iraq behind them.
“Biden and others are pushing their own “Big Lie” that state election laws are now being changed to steal the 2022 and 2024 elections. What is most striking is how these claims are detached from the actual laws themselves — the power of this claim being based entirely upon its repetition rather than its foundation.”
Johnathan Turley
Not unlike the story that the 2020 election was stolen, I suppose, except the Democrats’ “story” has not resulted in any violence.
I don’t suppose Professor Turley let you know anything about those laws. He just told you what to think, and let it go at that.
I just can’t take anyone seriously that could argue for Clinton’s impeachment and against TFG’s. And even if I could, I’d need more than a statement. I’d need proof. Because I’ve seen MORE than enough evidence to show that he’s completely talking out of his bottom half.
…and as usual, there are assertions presented here as facts, without even a shred of evidence to support them. Just for fun, rattle off a couple of new voting laws from Florida or Texas and explain to us ignoramuses how those laws are NOT what Dems are saying they are…
Or GA or AZ or OH for that matter. And of course the reality is that Biden is not actually saying the next election will be “stolen”, while that IS Trumpolini’s actual rhetoric.
The reality is that Repubs in most states they control passed new election laws in 2021 aimed at suppressing urban turnout, especially Black and Latino turnout. Just as Skocpol says. And no one can deny that these Repubs have radically gerrymandered the Red states to maintain their control, no matter what a majority of the state’s voters might want. And no one can deny that Repubs do not even maintain a pretense that their next nominee can win the popular vote for president.
By becoming a willing stooge for Trump and his desire for cashola from Fox “news” , this Turley guy has lost all credibility as a law professor. I guess the bills have got to be paid and he is willing to say what the deluded Foxists want to hear.
But to be a willing part of such a lying propaganda machine is intellectually disgraceful. And that is what he will now be remembered for, not because he was (ever) an objective legal commentator. He is now a propagandist, plain and simple.
And let’s not forget that in Trump Impeachment 1, Trump’s only witness was Jonathan Turley who agreed that if in the course of the proceedings Trump could be shown to have made a “Quid Pro Quo” It would be cause to remove the President.
WHOOPS!
Not to worry, flip flopping Senate cowards like Lamar Alexander still looked to other way:
“What he’s saying: Alexander said he believes Trump should not have withheld military assistance from Ukraine or asked Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky to announce an investigation into Joe and Hunter Biden.
“I think he shouldn’t have done it. I think it was wrong. Inappropriate was the way I’d say — improper, crossing the line,” he said. “I think what he did is a long way from treason, bribery, high crimes and misdemeanors.”
Alexander said Trump should have taken his concerns about corruption in Ukraine to the Department of Justice rather than asking the country directly. When asked why he did not go to DOJ, Alexander said, “Maybe he didn’t know to do it.”
Pressed on whether an acquittal would embolden Trump to continue to solicit foreign election interference, Alexander responded: “I hope not.”
“I mean, enduring an impeachment is something that nobody should like,” Alexander said. “Even the president said he didn’t want that on his resume. I don’t blame him. So if a call like that gets you an impeachment, I would think he would think twice before he did it again.”