Month: July 2021

NYTimes: Trump’s Cult of Animosity Shows No Sign of Letting Up

Trump’s Cult of Animosity Shows No Sign of Letting Up nyti.ms/3ypBnBo

In the case of Trump and other anti-democratic leaders around the world, Uscinski and Enders contend that

anti-establishment sentiments are an important ingredient of support for populist leaders, conspiratorial beliefs, and political violence. And, while we contend that this dimension is orthogonal to the left-right dimension of opinion along which partisan and ideological concerns are oriented, we also theorize that it can be activated by strategic partisan politicians. As such, phenomena which are oftentimes interpreted as expressions of “far-right” or “far-left” orientations may not be borne of left-right views at all, but rather of the assimilation of anti-establishment sentiments into mainstream politics by elites.

Anti-establishment voters, Uscinski and Enders write, “are more likely to believe that the ‘one percent’ controls the economy for their own good, believe that a ‘deep state’ is embedded within the government and believe that the mainstream media is ‘deliberately’ misleading us.” Such voters “are more prevalent among younger people, those with lower incomes, those with less formal education, and among racial and ethnic minority groups. In other words, it is groups who have historically occupied a tenuous position in the American socio-economic structure.”

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