The Resistance

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Political Influence ◽  
Social Protest ◽  
Diverse Group ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Protest Movements ◽  
Broad Variety ◽  
Resistance Movement ◽  
Over Time

Even before the 2016 presidential election took place, groups and individuals angry at Donald Trump, and frightened about what a Trump presidency could mean, were taking to the streets. After the election, and particularly after the Inaugural, the protests continued. Over time, the Resistance was joined by a broad variety of groups and embraced an increasing diversity of tactics. The Resistance details the emergence of a volatile and diverse movement directed against the Trump presidency. Bringing together a diverse group of scholars of social movements and American politics, the collection examines the origins and concerns of different factions of this movement and evaluates their prospects for surviving and exercising political influence. The authors also reflect on how existing scholarship on social protest movements helps us understand the Resistance movement, and what the movement tells us about social movements more generally.

scholarly journals Witchcraft as Political Resistance

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 43-68
Author(s):  
Sabina Magliocco
Keyword(s):  
Presidential Election ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Resistance ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Political Response ◽  
2016 Election ◽  
Resistance Movement ◽  
Cultural Features ◽  
Trump Administration

The use of political magic is one of the remarkable and unexpected cultural features to emerge from the 2016 presidential election in the United States. Using a combination of digital and face-to-face ethnography, this article explores the emergence of a movement dedicated to resisting the Donald Trump administration through witchcraft and magic. Applying the lens of Italian ethnologist Ernesto de Martino, it argues that the 2016 election created a “crisis of presence” for many left-leaning Americans who experienced it as a failure of agency. Their turn to magic was in response to feelings of anxiety and helplessness. Drawing from the approach of anthropologist James C. Scott, it analyzes magic as an art of resistance, an aesthetic, performative, as well as political response. Finally, it examines the fissures within the magical resistance as clashes in ethics, aesthetics, and beliefs associated with magic came to the fore, effectively splintering the magic resistance movement and rendering it less effective.

MOVEMENT ANALYSIS ON THE FLY: THE LIMITS AND PROMISE OF SOCIAL SCIENCE

2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-156
Author(s):  
David S. Meyer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Movement Analysis ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Protest ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Dependent Variables ◽  
The Ideal ◽  
Academic Study

Disciplined academic study of social movements should help us make sense of the movements and politics of our time, but social science often leads us astray. Particularly, the ideal of limiting the frame of analysis in terms of independent and dependent variables and in terms of time routinely neglects the disparate causes and effects of social protest. These challenges are particularly acute when considering contemporaneous campaigns, that is, analysis on the fly. Using the case of the first Women’s March, staged the day after Donald Trump became president of the United States, I elaborate the false steps that social science analysis encourages by identifying patterned errors of exclusion: applying misplaced models; producing unduly narrow fields of action; the difficulty of evaluating practical possibilities; the challenge of assessing institutionalization; and the necessity of truncating time. I conclude with suggestions for continuing to engage in analysis of contemporary movements and ways to avoid egregious errors while doing so.

scholarly journals Moral Language Use by U.S. Political Elites

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sze Yuh Nina Wang ◽  
Yoel Inbar
Keyword(s):  
Presidential Election ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Language Model ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Moral Language ◽  
Democrats And Republicans ◽  
Distributed Language ◽  
Over Time

We use a distributed language model to examine the moral language used by U.S. political elites. In Study 1, we analyze 687,360 Twitter messages (“tweets”) posted by accounts belonging to Democratic and Republican members of Congress from 2016-2018. In Study 2, we analyze 2,630,688 speeches given on the floor of the House and Senate from 1981-2017. We find that partisan differences in moral language use shift over time as the parties gain or lose political power. Overall, lower political power was associated with greater use of moral language for both Democrats and Republicans. On Twitter, Democrats used more moral language in the period after Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election. In Congressional transcripts, both Democrats and Republicans used more of most kinds of moral language when they were in the minority.

scholarly journals Moral-Language Use by U.S. Political Elites

2020 ◽  
pp. 095679762096039
Author(s):  
Sze-Yuh Nina Wang ◽  
Yoel Inbar
Keyword(s):  
Presidential Election ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Language Model ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Moral Language ◽  
Democrats And Republicans ◽  
Distributed Language ◽  
Over Time

We used a distributed-language model to examine the moral language employed by U.S. political elites. In Study 1, we analyzed 687,360 Twitter messages (tweets) posted by accounts belonging to Democratic and Republican members of Congress from 2016 to 2018. In Study 2, we analyzed 2,630,688 speeches given on the floor of the House and Senate from 1981 to 2017. We found that partisan differences in moral-language use shifted over time as the parties gained or lost political power. Overall, lower political power was associated with greater use of moral language for both Democrats and Republicans. On Twitter, Democrats used more moral language in the period after Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election. In Congressional transcripts, both Democrats and Republicans used more of most kinds of moral language when they were in the minority.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David S. Meyer ◽  
Sidney Tarrow
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Presidential Campaign ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Black Lives Matter ◽  
The Stability ◽  
Strong Emergence ◽  
Resistance Movement ◽  
Stability And Resilience ◽  
American Left

Beginning with a review of the first Women’s March, this Introduction details the sudden and strong emergence of a movement in resistance to the presidency of Donald Trump (the Resistance movement). It identifies the new movement as posing three distinct challenges: to scholars of social movements; to the American Left; and to the stability and resilience of American institutions. This Introduction identifies antecedents and foundations of the Trump Resistance, including the presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, and immigrants’ rights movements. It situates the Resistance in a historical context. It also places the Resistance in a broader context of protest politics in America.

Failure Leads Protest Movements to Support More Radical Tactics

2021 ◽  
pp. 194855062110372
Author(s):  
Winnifred R. Louis ◽  
Morgana Lizzio-Wilson ◽  
Mikaela Cibich ◽  
Craig McGarty ◽  
Emma F. Thomas ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Stochastic Simulations ◽  
Tipping Points ◽  
Sociopolitical Change ◽  
Protest Movements ◽  
Initial Failure ◽  
Support For Democracy ◽  
Over Time

Most social movements will encounter setbacks in their pursuit of sociopolitical change. However, little is known about how movements are affected after protestors fail to achieve their aims. What are the effects of failure on subsequent engagement in various conventional and radical actions? Does failure promote divergent reactions among protestors and/or dissatisfaction with democracy? A meta-analysis of nine experiments ( N = 1,663) assessed the effects of one-off failure on protestors’ reactions, subsequent tactical choices, and support for democracy; and iterative stochastic simulations modeled the effects of failure over multiple protests over time. Results indicated that initial failure gives rise to divergent, somewhat contradictory responses among protestors and that these responses are further influenced by the repeated failure (vs. success) over time. Further, the simulations identified “tipping points” in these responses that promote radicalization and undermine support for democracy.

scholarly journals Partisan differences in physical distancing are linked to health outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anton Gollwitzer ◽  
Cameron Martel ◽  
William J. Brady ◽  
Philip Pärnamets ◽  
Isaac Freedman ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Population Density ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Median Income ◽  
County Level ◽  
Hillary Clinton ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Fox News ◽  
Conservative Media ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Over Time

Numerous polls suggest that COVID-19 is a profoundly partisan issue in the U.S. Using the geotracking data of 15 million smartphones per day, we found that U.S. counties that voted for Donald Trump (Republican) over Hillary Clinton (Democrat) in the 2016 presidential election exhibited 14% less physical distancing between March and May 2020. Partisanship was more strongly associated with physical distancing than numerous factors, including counties’ median income, COVID-19 cases, population density, and racial and age demographics. Contrary to our predictions, the observed partisan gap strengthened over time and remained when stay-at-home orders were active. Additionally, county-level consumption of conservative media (Fox News) related to reduced physical distancing. Finally, the observed partisan differences in distancing were associated with subsequently higher COVID-19 infection and fatality growth rates in pro-Trump counties. Taken together, these data suggest that U.S. citizens’ responses to COVID-19 are subject to a deep—and consequential—partisan divide.

Examining false beliefs about voter fraud in the wake of the 2020 Presidential Election

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gordon Pennycook ◽  
David Gertler Rand
Keyword(s):  
Presidential Election ◽  
False Beliefs ◽  
Wide Spread ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Legal Challenges ◽  
Election Fraud ◽  
Voter Fraud ◽  
Election News

The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election saw an unprecedented number of false claims alleging election fraud and arguing that Donald Trump was the actual winner of the election. Here we report a survey exploring belief in these false claims that was conducted three days after Biden was declared the winner. We find that a majority of Trump voters in our sample – particularly those who were more politically knowl-edgeable and more closely following election news – falsely believed that election fraud was wide-spread and that Trump won the election. Thus, false beliefs about the election are not merely a fringe phenomenon. We also find that Trump conceding or losing his legal challenges would likely lead a ma-jority of Trump voters to accept Biden’s victory as legitimate, although 40% said they would continue to view Biden as illegitimate regardless. Finally, we found that levels of partisan spite and endorsement of violence were equivalent between Trump and Biden voters.

How Collective-Action Failure Shapes Group Heterogeneity and Engagement in Conventional and Radical Action Over Time

2021 ◽  
pp. 095679762097056
Author(s):  
Morgana Lizzio-Wilson ◽  
Emma F. Thomas ◽  
Winnifred R. Louis ◽  
Brittany Wilcockson ◽  
Catherine E. Amiot ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Latent Profile Analysis ◽  
Profile Analysis ◽  
Social Identification ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Group Efficacy ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Over Time

Extensive research has identified factors influencing collective-action participation. However, less is known about how collective-action outcomes (i.e., success and failure) shape engagement in social movements over time. Using data collected before and after the 2017 marriage-equality debate in Australia, we conducted a latent profile analysis that indicated that success unified supporters of change ( n = 420), whereas failure created subgroups among opponents ( n = 419), reflecting four divergent responses: disengagement (resigned acceptors), moderate disengagement and continued investment (moderates), and renewed commitment to the cause using similar strategies (stay-the-course opponents) or new strategies (innovators). Resigned acceptors were least inclined to act following failure, whereas innovators were generally more likely to engage in conventional action and justify using radical action relative to the other profiles. These divergent reactions were predicted by differing baseline levels of social identification, group efficacy, and anger. Collective-action outcomes dynamically shape participation in social movements; this is an important direction for future research.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document