Trumpism

Trumpism is a term for the political ideologies, social emotions, style of governance, political movement, and set of mechanisms for acquiring and keeping control of power associated with Donald Trump and his political base. '' Trumpists'' and ''Trumpian'' are terms used to refer to those exhibiting characteristics of Trumpism, whereas political supporters of Trump are known as '' Trumpers''.

The precise composition of Trumpism is contentious and is sufficiently complex to overwhelm any single framework of analysis; it has been called an American political variant of the far-right, and the national-populist and neo-nationalist sentiment seen in multiple nations worldwide from the late 2010s to the early 2020s. Though not strictly limited to any one party, Trump supporters became a significant faction of the Republican Party in the United States, with the remainder often characterized as "establishment" in contrast. Some Republicans became members of the Never Trump movement, with several leaving the party in protest of Trump's ascendancy.

Some commentators have rejected the populist designation for Trumpism and view it instead as part of a trend towards a new form of fascism or neo-fascism, with some referring to it as explicitly fascist and others as authoritarian and illiberal. Others have more mildly identified it as a specific lite version of fascism in the United States. Some historians, including many of those using a ''new fascism'' classification, write of the hazards of direct comparisons with European fascist regimes of the 1930s, stating that while there are parallels, there are also important dissimilarities.

The label ''Trumpism'' has been applied to national-conservative and national-populist movements in other Western democracies, and many politicians outside of the United States have been labeled as staunch allies of Trump or Trumpism, or even as their country's equivalent to Trump, by various news agencies; among them are Silvio Berlusconi, Jair Bolsonaro, Horacio Cartes, Rodrigo Duterte, Pauline Hanson, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Nigel Farage, Hong Joon-Pyo, Boris Johnson, Jarosław Kaczyński, Bidzina Ivanishvili, Marine Le Pen, Narendra Modi, Benjamin Netanyahu, Viktor Orbán, Najib Razak, Matteo Salvini, and Geert Wilders.

Populist themes, sentiments, and methods

Trumpism started its development predominantly during Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. For many scholars, it denotes a populist political method that suggests nationalistic answers to political, economic, and social problems. These inclinations are refracted into such policy preferences as immigration restrictionism, trade protectionism, isolationism, and opposition to entitlement reform. As a political method, populism is not driven by any particular ideology. Former National Security Advisor and close Trump advisor John Bolton states this is true of Trump, disputing that ''Trumpism'' even exists in any meaningful philosophical sense, adding that " e man does not have a philosophy. And people can try and draw lines between the dots of his decisions. They will fail."

Writing for the ''Routledge Handbook of Global Populism'' (2019), Olivier Jutel claims, "What Donald Trump reveals is that the various iterations of right-wing American populism have less to do with a programmatic social conservatism or libertarian economics than with enjoyment." Referring to the populism of Trump, sociologist Michael Kimmel states that it "is not a theory ran ideology, it's an emotion. And the emotion is righteous indignation that the government is screwing 'us'". Kimmel notes that "Trump is an interesting character because he channels all that sense of what I called 'aggrieved entitlement,'" a term Kimmel defines as "that sense that those benefits to which you believed yourself entitled have been snatched away from you by unseen forces larger and more powerful. You feel yourself to be the heir to a great promise, the American Dream, which has turned into an impossible fantasy for the very people who were supposed to inherit it."

Communications scholar Zizi Papacharissi explains the utility of being ideologically vague, and using terms and slogans that can mean anything the supporter wants them to mean. "When these publics thrive in affective engagement it's because they've found an affective hook that's built around an open signifier that they get to use and reuse and re-employ. So yes, of course you know, President Trump has used MAGA; that's an open signifier that pulls in all of these people, and is open because it allows them all to assign different meanings to it. So MAGA works for connecting publics that are different, because it is open enough to permit people to ascribe their own meaning to it."

Other contributors to the ''Routledge Handbook of Populism'' note that populist leaders rather than being ideology driven are instead pragmatic and opportunistic regarding themes, ideas and beliefs that strongly resonate with their followers. Exit polling data suggests the campaign was successful at mobilizing the " white disenfranchised", the lower- to working-class European-Americans who are experiencing growing social inequality and who often have stated opposition to the American political establishment. Ideologically, Trumpism has a right-wing populist accent.

Focus on sentiments

Historian Peter E. Gordon raises the possibility that "Trump, far from being a violation of the norm, actually signifies an emergent norm of the social order" where the categories of the psychological and political have dissolved. In accounting for Trump's election and ability to sustain stable high approval ratings among a significant segment of voters, Erika Tucker argues in the book ''Trump and Political Philosophy'' that though all presidential campaigns have strong emotions associated with them, Trump was able to recognize, and then to gain the trust and loyalty of those who, like him felt a particular set of strong emotions about perceived changes in the United States. She notes, "Political psychologist Drew Westen has argued that Democrats are less successful at gauging and responding to affective politics—issues that arouse strong emotional states in citizens."

Like many academics examining the populist appeal of Trump's messaging, Hidalgo-Tenorio and Benítez-Castro draw on the theories of Ernesto Laclau writing, "The emotional appeal of populist discourse is key to its polarising effects, this being so much so that populism 'would be unintelligible without the affective component.' (Laclau 2005, 11)" Scholars from a wide number of fields have argued that particular affective themes and the dynamics of their impact on social media-connected followers characterize Trump and his supporters.

Pleasure from sympathetic company

Communications scholar Michael Carpini states that "Trumpism is a culmination of trends that have been occurring for several decades. What we are witnessing is nothing short of a fundamental shift in the relationships between journalism, politics, and democracy." Among the shifts, Carpini identifies "the collapsing of the prior ediaregime's presumed and enforced distinctions between news and entertainment." Examining Trump's use of media for the book ''Language in the Trump Era'', communications professor Marco Jacquemet writes that "It's an approach that, like much of the rest of Trump's ideology and policy agenda, assumes (correctly, it appears) that his audiences care more about shock and entertainment value in their media consumption than almost anything else."

The perspective is shared among other communication academics, with Plasser & Ulram (2003) describing a media logic which emphasizes "personalization ... a political star system ... ndsports based dramatization." Olivier Jutel notes that "Donald Trump's celebrity status and reality-TV rhetoric of 'winning' and 'losing' corresponds perfectly to these values", asserting that "Fox News and conservative personalities from Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Alex Jones do not simply represent a new political and media voice but embody the convergence of politics and media in which affect and enjoyment are the central values of media production."

Studying Trump's use of social media, anthropologist Jessica Johnson finds that social emotional pleasure plays a central role writing, "Rather than finding accurate news meaningful, Facebook users find the affective pleasure of connectivity addictive, whether or not the information they share is factual, and that is how communicative capitalism captivates subjects as it holds them captive." Looking back at the world prior to social media, communications researcher Brian L. Ott writes: "I'm nostalgic for the world of television that Neil Postman (1985) argued, produced the 'least well-informed people in the Western world' by packaging news as entertainment. (pp. 106–107) Twitter is producing the most self-involved people in history by treating everything one does or thinks as newsworthy. Television may have assaulted journalism, but Twitter killed it." Commenting on Trump's support among Fox News viewers, Hofstra communications college dean Mark Lukasiewicz has a similar perspective writing, "Tristan Harris famously said that social networks are about ' affirmation, not information'—and the same can be said about cable news, especially in prime time."

Arlie Russell Hochschild's perspective on the relationship between Trump supporters and their preferred sources of information- whether social media friends or news and commentary stars, is that they are trusted due to the affective bond they have with them. As media scholar Daniel Kreiss summarizes Hochschild, "Trump, along with Fox News, gave these strangers in their own land the hope that they would be restored to their rightful place at the center of the nation, and provided a very real emotional release from the fetters of political correctness that dictated they respect people of color, lesbians and gays, and those of other faiths ... that the network's personalities share the same 'deep story' of political and social life, and therefore they learn from them 'what to feel afraid, angry, and anxious about.'"

From Kreiss's 2018 account of conservative personalities and media, information became less important than providing a sense of familial bonding, where "family provides a sense of identity, place, and belonging; emotional, social, and cultural support and security; and gives rise to political and social affiliations and beliefs." Hochschild gives the example of one woman who explains the familial bond of trust with the star personalities. " Bill O'Reilly is like a steady, reliable dad. Sean Hannity is like a difficult uncle who rises to anger too quickly. Megyn Kelly is like a smart sister. Then there's Greta Van Susteren. And Juan Williams, who came over from NPR, which was too left for him, the adoptee. They're all different, just like in a family."

Media scholar Olivier Jutel focuses on the neoliberal privatization and market segmentation of the public square, noting that, " Affect is central to the brand strategy of Fox which imagined its journalism not in terms of servicing the rational citizen in the public sphere but in 'craft ngintensive relationships with their viewers' (Jones, 2012: 180) in order to sustain audience share across platforms." In this segmented market, Trump "offers himself as an ego-ideal to an individuated public of enjoyment that coalesce around his media brand as part of their own performance of identity." Jutel cautions that it is not just conservative media companies that benefit from the transformation of news media to conform to values of spectacle and reality-TV drama. "Trump is a definitive product of mediatized politics providing the spectacle that drives ratings and affective media consumption, either as part of his populist movement or as the liberal resistance."

Researchers give differing emphasis to which emotions are important to followers. Michael Richardson argues in the ''Journal of Media and Cultural Studies'' that "affirmation, amplification and circulation of disgust is one of the primary affective drivers of Trump's political success." Richardson agrees with Ott about the "entanglement of Trumpian affect and social media crowds" who seek "affective affirmation, confirmation and amplification. Social media postings of crowd experiences accumulate as 'archives of feelings' that are both dynamic in nature and affirmative of social values (Pybus 2015, 239)."

Using Trump as an example, social trust expert Karen Jones follows philosopher Annette Baier in claiming that the masters of the art of creating trust and distrust are populist politicians and criminals. On this view, it is not moral philosophers who are the experts at discerning different forms of trust, but members of this class of practitioners who "show a masterful appreciation of the ways in which certain emotional states drive out trust and replace it with distrust." Jones sees Trump as an exemplar of this class who recognize that fear and contempt are powerful tools that can reorient networks of trust and distrust in social networks in order to alter how a potential supporter "interprets the words, deeds, and motives of the other." She points out that the tactic is used globally writing, "A core strategy of Donald Trump, both as candidate and president, has been to manufacture fear and contempt towards some undocumented migrants (among other groups). This strategy of manipulating fear and contempt has gone global, being replicated with minor local adjustment in Australia, Austria, Hungary, Poland, Italy and the United Kingdom."

Right-wing authoritarian populism

Other academics have made politically urgent warnings about Trumpian authoritarianism, such as Yale sociologist Philip S. Gorski who writes,

Some academics regard such authoritarian backlash as a feature of liberal democracies. Some have even argued that Trump is a totalitarian capitalist exploiting the "fascist impulses of his ''ordinary'' supporters that hide in plain sight." Michelle Goldberg, an opinion columnist for ''The New York Times'', compares "the spirit of Trumpism" to classical fascist themes. The "mobilizing vision" of fascism is of "the national community rising phoenix-like after a period of encroaching decadence which all but destroyed it", which "sounds a lot like MAGA" (Make America Great Again) according to Goldberg. Similarly, like the Trump movement, fascism sees a "need for authority by natural chiefs (always male), culminating in a national chieftain who alone is capable of incarnating the group's historical destiny." They believe in "the superiority of the leader's instincts over abstract and universal reason".

Conservative columnist George Will considers Trumpism similar to fascism, stating that Trumpism is "a mood masquerading as a doctrine". National unity is based "on shared domestic dreads"—for fascists the "Jews", for Trump the media ("enemies of the people"), "elites" and " globalists". Solutions come not from tedious "incrementalism and conciliation", but from the leader (who claims "only I can fix it") unfettered by procedure. The political base is kept entertained with mass rallies, but inevitably the strongman develops a contempt for those he leads. Both are based on machismo, and in the case of Trumpism, "appeals to those in thrall to country-music manliness: 'We're truck-driving, beer-drinking, big-chested Americans too freedom-loving to let any itsy-bitsy virus make us wear masks.'"

Disputing the view that the surge of support for Trumpism and Brexit represents a new phenomenon, political scientist Karen Stenner and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt present the argument that Discussing the statistical basis for their conclusions regarding the triggering of such waves, Stenner and Haidt present the view that "authoritarians, by their very nature, want to believe in authorities and institutions; they want to feel they are part of a cohesive community. Accordingly, they seem (if anything) to be modestly inclined toward giving authorities and institutions the benefit of the doubt, and lending them their support until the moment these seem incapable of maintaining 'normative order'"; the authors write that this normative order is regularly threatened by liberal democracy itself because it tolerates a lack of consensus in group values and beliefs, tolerates disrespect of group authorities, nonconformity to group norms, or norms proving questionable, and in general promotes diversity and freedom from domination by authorities. Stenner and Haidt regard such authoritarian waves as a feature of liberal democracies noting that the findings of their 2016 study of Trump and Brexit supporters was not unexpected, as they wrote:

Author and authoritarianism critic Masha Gessen contrasted the "democratic" strategy of the Republican establishment making policy arguments appealing to the public, with the "autocratic" strategy of appealing to an "audience of one" in Donald Trump. Gessen noted the fear of Republicans that Trump would endorse a primary election opponent or otherwise use his political power to undermine any fellow party members that he felt had betrayed him.

The 2020 Republican Party platform simply endorsed "the President's America-first agenda", prompting comparisons to contemporary leader-focused party platforms in Russia and China.

Nostalgia and male bravado

Nostalgia is a staple of American politics but according to Philip Gorski, Trumpian nostalgia is novel because among other things "it severs the traditional connection between greatness and virtue." In the traditional "Puritan narrative, moral decline precedes material and political decline, and a return to the law must precede any return to greatness. ... Not so in Trump's version of nostalgia. In this narrative, decline is brought about by docility and femininity and the return to greatness requires little more than a reassertion of dominance and masculinity. In this way, 'virtue' is reduced to its root etymology of manly bravado." In studies of the men who would become Trump supporters Michael Kimmel describes the nostalgia of male entitlement felt by men who despaired "over whether or not anything could enable them to find a place with some dignity in this new, multicultural, and more egalitarian world. ... These men were angry, but they all looked back nostalgically to a time when their sense of masculine entitlement went unchallenged. They wanted to reclaim their country, restore their rightful place in it, and retrieve their manhood in the process."

The term that describes the behavior of Kimmel's angry white males is toxic masculinity and according to William Liu, editor of the journal ''Psychology of Men and Masculinity'', it applies especially to Trump. Kimmel was surprised at the sexual turn the 2016 election took and thinks that Trump is for many men a fantasy figure, an uber-male completely free to indulge every desire. "Many of these guys feel that the current order of things has emasculated them, by which I mean it has taken away their ability to support a family and have great life. Here's a guy who says: 'I can build anything I want. I can do anything I want. I can have the women I want.' They're going, 'This guy is awesome!'"

Social psychologists Theresa Vescio and Nathaniel Schermerhorn note that "In his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump embodied HM /nowiki>hegemonic_masculinity.html" ;"title="hegemonic_masculinity.html" ;"title="/nowiki>hegemonic masculinity">/nowiki>hegemonic masculinity">hegemonic_masculinity.html" ;"title="/nowiki>hegemonic masculinity">/nowiki>hegemonic masculinity/nowiki> while waxing nostalgic for a racially homogenous past that maintained an unequal gender order. Trump performed HM by repeatedly referencing his status as a successful businessman ("blue-collar businessman") and alluding to how tough he would be as president. Further contributing to his enactment of HM, Trump was openly hostile toward gender-atypical women, sexualized gender typical women, and attacked the masculinity of male peers and opponents." In their studies involving 2007 people, they found that endorsement of hegemonic masculinity better predicted support for Trump than other factors, such as support for antiestablishment, antielitist, nativist, racist, sexist, homophobic or xenophobic perspectives.

Neville Hoad, an expert on gender issues in South Africa, sees this as a common theme with another strongman leader, Jacob Zuma, comparing his " Zulu Big Man version of toxic masculinity versus a dog whistle white supremacist version; the putative real estate billionaire turned reality television star". Both authoritarian leaders are figureheads living the "masculinist fantasy of freedom" supporters dream of, a dream bound to national mythologies of the good life. According to Hoad, one description of this symbolism comes from Jacques Lacan who describes the supremely masculine mythic leader of the primal horde whose power to satisfy every pleasure or whim has not been castrated. By activating such fantasies, toxic masculine behaviors from opulent displays of greed (the dream palaces of Mar-a-Lago and Nkandla), violent rhetoric, "grab them by the pussy" "locker room" "jokes" to misogynist insults, philandering, and even sexual predatory behavior including allegations of groping and raping become political assets not liabilities.

Gender role scholar Colleen Clemens describes this toxic masculinity as "a narrow and repressive description of manhood, designating manhood as defined by violence, sex, status and aggression. It's the cultural ideal of manliness, where strength is everything while emotions are a weakness; where sex and brutality are yardsticks by which men are measured, while supposedly 'feminine' traits—which can range from emotional vulnerability to simply not being hypersexual—are the means by which your status as "man" can be taken away." Writing in the ''Journal of Human Rights'', Kimberly Theidon notes the COVID-19 pandemic's irony of Trumpian toxic masculinity: "Being a tough guy means wearing the mask of masculinity: Being a tough guy means refusing to don a mask that might preserve one's life and the lives of others."

Tough guy bravado appeared on the internet prior to attack on Congress on January 6, 2021, with one poster writing, "Be ready to fight. Congress needs to hear glass breaking, doors being kicked in ... . Get violent. Stop calling this a march, or rally, or a protest. Go there ready for war. We get our President or we die." Of the rioters arrested for the attack on the U.S. Capitol, 88% were men, and 67% were 35 years or older.

Christian Trumpism

According to 2016 election exit polls, 26% of voters self identified as white evangelical Christians, of whom more than three-fourths in 2017 approved of Trump's performance, most of them approving "very strongly" as reported by a Pew Research Center study. In contrast, approximately two-thirds of non-white evangelicals supported Hillary Clinton in 2016, with 90% of black Protestants also voting for her even though their theological views are similar to evangelicals. According to Yale researcher Philip Gorski, "the question is not so much why evangelicals voted for Trump then—many did not—but why so many white evangelicals did." Gorski's answer to why Trump, and not an orthodox evangelical was the first choice among white evangelicals was simply "because they are also white Christian nationalists and Trumpism is inter alia a reactionary version of white Christian nationalism."

Israeli philosopher Adi Ophir sees the politics of purity in the white Christian nationalist rhetoric of evangelical supporters, such as the comparison of Nehemiah's wall around Jerusalem to Trump's wall keeping out the enemy, writing, "the notion of the enemy includes 'Mexican migrants', 'filthy' gays, and even Catholics 'led astray by Satan', and the real danger these enemies pose is degradation to a 'blessed—great— ... nation' whose God is the Lord."

Theologian Michael Horton believes Christian Trumpism represents the confluence of three trends that have come together, namely Christian American exceptionalism

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