The roots of Trumpism

2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 100-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Post
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Tea Party ◽  
Social Origins ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social

This essay examines the social origins of the election of Donald Trump in November 2016, and assess the possible direction of his presidency. Riding the wave of middle class radicalism that began with the Tea Party insurgency, Trump’s nomination temporarily disrupted the dominance of capitalists over the Republican Party. Despite his economic nationalist rhetoric, Trump will be unable to break in practice with the neo-liberal consensus of the past forty years.

The Social Origins of Liberal Democracy: The Swedish Case

1974 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 561-571 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy A. Tilton
Keyword(s):  
Open Market ◽  
Social Origins ◽  
Welfare Programs ◽  
Commercial Agriculture ◽  
Market Society ◽  
Democratic Development ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Radical Model ◽  
Means Of Production

Implicit in Dahrendorf's Society and Democracy in Germany and explicit in Moore's Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy are respectively a liberal and a radical model of democratic development. Neither of these models adequately accounts for the experience of Sweden, a remarkably successful “late developer.” Although Swedish industrialization proceeded with little public ownership of the means of production, with limited welfare programs until the 1930s, and above all with restricted military expenditure—all factors Dahrendorf implies are crucial for democratic development—it did not produce the traditional liberal infrastructure of bourgeois entrepreneurs nor a vigorous open market society. Similarly only three of Moore's five preconditions for democracy obtained in Sweden: a balance between monarchy and aristocracy, the weakening of the landed aristocracy, and the prevention of an aristocratic-bourgeois coalition against the workers and peasants. There was no thorough shift toward commercial agriculture and, most important, there was no revolutionary break with the past. Consequently, one has to evolve a radical liberal model of development which states the conditions for the emergence of democracy in Sweden without revolution. This model contains implications for the further modernization of American politics.

scholarly journals Advertising Homeownership through Cultural Capitalism: Neoliberal Making of New Shanghai Middle-Class Dream

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Lei Ping
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Interior Design ◽  
Global Capitalism ◽  
Chinese Society ◽  
Urban Citizenship ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Cosmopolitan Citizenship ◽  
Market Promotion ◽  
Class Distinction

Private homeownership has increasingly become a kind of new obsession and a symbol of upward mobility among the emerging middle class in post-Mao Chinese society. This essay studies the neoliberal making of the new Shanghai middle-class dream by exploring how this dream is invented and imagined through the pursuit of cosmopolitan citizenship, socio-spatial class distinction, and tiered lifestyles. It analyzes and problematizes the enduring charm of Shanghai as a global “city of magic” continues to attract those who aspire to eventually own a piece of property and display cultural capital of this highly unaffordable neoliberal city. Through a series of distinct case studies of recent real estate advertisement, interior design philosophy, and signature furniture stores and architecture magazines whose storytelling aesthetics are middle-class-inspired and focused, the essay critiques the way in which private homeownership is engineered, advertised, and made as one of the key prerequisites for the new Shanghainese (xin Shanghairen) to become middle class in the past two decades. It argues that the making of the new Shanghai middle-class dream is problematically preconditioned by a type of state-market promotion and advertisement of private homeownership and urban citizenship that ultimately synchronizes with the state-capitalist, neoliberal making of a moderately prosperous (xiaokang) society where class distinctions have revived to dominate the social, cultural, and economic discourses of a bourgeois Shanghai in the age of global capitalism.

scholarly journals A white men’s agony: the rise and fall of the Reagan coalition through the perspective of american scholars (1940-2016) * A agonia do homem branco: a ascensão e queda da coalizão Reagan através da perspectiva dos intelectuais norte-americanos (1940-2016)

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 287
Author(s):  
Bruno Henz Biaseto
Keyword(s):  
New Deal ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Tea Party ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Conservative Movement ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
The New Deal

The American Conservative movement saw a huge rise following Reagan’s ascent to the residency. The Reagan Coalition managed to make the Republican Party the dominating force for almost thirty years, empowering certain social groups that supported its rise since its beginning, during the New Deal era. Following deep economic and social changes seen in the early 21st century, Barack Obama managed to craft a new political coalition, one that managed to end the Republican dominance. As the Democrats were able to craft a new coalition, the answer came in the rise of an authoritarian/populist right embodied by Donald Trump and the Tea Party. The goal of this essay is to understand this political process through the lens of American scholars, focusing on their analysis of how the rise and fall of the Reagan Revolution shaped the troubled political scenario seen in America today.

scholarly journals Political Persona 2016 - an Introduction

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. David Marshall ◽  
Neil Henderson
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Human Interaction ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Political Event ◽  
Political Dimension ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Human World ◽  
The Individual

It seems politics invades everything. We can rarely think of any activity, any building, any human-to-human interaction and not see some political dimension infiltrating and shaping it. And this very interpretation, in its language of invasion and infiltration, implies that politics’ ubiquity is not necessarily a wanted accomplice in our human world. Nonetheless, its presence is expected, its strategic intentions acknowledged and negotiated.What is interesting is that persona—at least as it has been explored and defined in Persona Studies so far—always has a political dimension. It has been identified as a strategic identity, a form of negotiation of the individual in their foray into a collective world of the social (Marshall and Barbour). Persona is a fabricated reconstruction of the individual that is used to play a role that both helps the individual navigate their presence and interactions with others and helps the collective to position the role of the individual in the social. Persona is imbued with politics at its core.In this issue of Persona Studies, we explore political persona, a characterisation roiled in redundancy if our definitions above are adopted. The essays gathered in this collection debate these definitional affinities, and augment and nuance many other dimensions that help delineate what constitutes political persona. In this introductory essay, we will use the collected work on political persona that is developed in this issue to better define political persona. But before we evaluate and identify the intersections of our contributors’ work, we want to begin our exploration with what makes political persona constitutively different today than in the past. Can we identify through some of the most prominent political personas—Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and Bernie Sanders in the United States’ 2016 Presidential campaign, for example—and through a study of a major political event—Brexit in 2016 in the U.K.—whether something has shifted and changed in these cultures?

The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism

2011 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vanessa Williamson ◽  
Theda Skocpol ◽  
John Coggin
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Tea Party ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Business Elites ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
Electoral Defeat ◽  
Conservative Media

In the aftermath of a potentially demoralizing 2008 electoral defeat, when the Republican Party seemed widely discredited, the emergence of the Tea Party provided conservative activists with a new identity funded by Republican business elites and reinforced by a network of conservative media sources. Untethered from recent GOP baggage and policy specifics, the Tea Party energized disgruntled white middle-class conservatives and garnered widespread attention, despite stagnant or declining favorability ratings among the general public. As participant observation and interviews with Massachusetts activists reveal, Tea Partiers are not monolithically hostile toward government; they distinguish between programs perceived as going to hard-working contributors to US society like themselves and “handouts” perceived as going to unworthy or freeloading people. During 2010, Tea Party activism reshaped many GOP primaries and enhanced voter turnout, but achieved a mixed record in the November general election. Activism may well continue to influence dynamics in Congress and GOP presidential primaries. Even if the Tea Party eventually subsides, it has undercut Obama's presidency, revitalized conservatism, and pulled the national Republican Party toward the far right.

Mass Movements and the Petty Bourgeoisie: the Social Origins of ICU Leadership, 1924–1929

1984 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 295-310 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Bradford
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Mass Movements ◽  
Social Origins ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Lower Middle Class ◽  
Petty Bourgeoisie ◽  
The Social

Radical historians criticizing leaders of the Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union have focused on their petty bourgeois origins. This article argues that although most organizers of the later 1920s did not derive from the working class, neither were they able to base themselves securely within the petty bourgeoisie. Instead, like lower-middle-class Africans in general, they were being forced ever further from the white bourgeoisie and ever closer to the black masses. This was apparent in all spheres of life – economic, political, cultural, social and ideological – and was also increasingly evident in protest. As racially oppressed men and women subject to proletarianization and engaged in struggle, ICU leaders do not fit neatly into schemas which stress the bourgeois nature of the petty bourgeoisie.

scholarly journals How Did Donald Trump Turn the Republican Party into the People's Party?

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kobby Barda
Keyword(s):  
Republican Party ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
People's Party ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Racial Background ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Us ◽  
White Supremacists ◽  
Support Rate ◽  
The Rich

The accepted working assumption on the eve of the 2020 Presidential Election in the US was that his image, as well as the perception that he holds negative opinions regarding immigrants and immigration while supported by white supremacists, would result in voters casting their ballot based on racial or ethnic considerations to vote against him.This paper was aimed at examining that linkage, to see if it took place in reality, or rather if voting needs to be looked at as a choice made based on class and stature, not racial background. To examine the issue at hand, 2016 voting patterns were compared to 2020 exit polls based on racial background. The findings showed that support for President Trump rose across all races, sometimes more than doubling. At the same time, votes were analyzed based on a breakdown by class. For the study, three batches of districts were chosen: the poor of America, the average of America, and the rich of America. One district was chosen from each state, and a total of 147 districts from across the US were looked at. The research shows that as one climbs the social ladder, support for President Trump declines. Or, in the context of this paper: the lower one is on the social class ladder, especially among the 'forgotten' periphery, the higher the approval and support rate of President Trump is.

scholarly journals How Did Donald Trump Turn the Republican Party into the People's Party?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kobby Barda
Keyword(s):  
Republican Party ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
People's Party ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Racial Background ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Us ◽  
White Supremacists ◽  
Support Rate ◽  
The Rich

The accepted working assumption on the eve of the 2020 Presidential Election in the US was that his image, as well as the perception that he holds negative opinions regarding immigrants and immigration while supported by white supremacists, would result in voters casting their ballot based on racial or ethnic considerations to vote against him. This paper was aimed at examining that linkage, to see if it took place in reality, or rather if voting needs to be looked at as a choice made based on class and stature, not racial background. To examine the issue at hand, 2016 voting patterns were compared to 2020 exit polls based on racial background. The findings showed that support for President Trump rose across all races, sometimes more than doubling. At the same time, votes were analyzed based on a breakdown by class. For the study, three batches of districts were chosen: the poor of America, the average of America, and the rich of America. One district was chosen from each state, and a total of 147 districts from across the US were looked at. The research shows that as one climbs the social ladder, support for President Trump declines. Or, in the context of this paper: the lower one is on the social class ladder, especially among the ‘forgotten’ periphery, the higher the approval and support rate of President Trump is.

scholarly journals E pluribus unum Shrugged: Ayn Rand Against American Conservatism and Libertarianism

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dean Caivano ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Republican Party ◽  
Tea Party ◽  
Ayn Rand ◽  
American Conservatism ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Events ◽  
Midterm Elections ◽  
2016 Election ◽  
Philosophical Writings ◽  
Forceful Critique

The past decade has witnessed a renewed interest in the works of twentieth-century Objectivist philosopher Ayn Rand. Political events ranging from the rise of the Tea Party to the 2016 election of Donald J. Trump have only helped to spur this resurgence, further evident in film adaptations and reissues of her popular literary novels. Political pundits abound have, in turn, deemed the return of Ayn Rand as a victory for libertarian thought and the Republican Party, more broadly. However, in this paper I contest such a theoretical synergy and complicate the Rand/Republican Party interplay by suggesting that it rests on false grounds. Drawing from Rand’s Objectivism, I argue that modern-day Republican Party politics, specifically conservative and libertarian strains of thought, fail on epistemological grounds. The philosophical writings of the Russian-born, turned-American philosopher therefore are not only incompatible, but function as a forceful critique against the governing platform of the Republican Party in preparation for the 2022 midterm elections.

scholarly journals Cadets in portuguese military academies: a sociological portrait

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helena Carreiras ◽  
Fernando Bessa ◽  
Patrícia Ávila ◽  
Luís Malheiro
Keyword(s):  
Military Training ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Social Origins ◽  
Officer Corps ◽  
Recruitment Pattern ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Military Academies ◽  
Service Academies ◽  
Using Data

The aim of this article is to revisit the question of the social origins of the armed forces officer corps, using data drawn from a survey to all cadets following military training at the three Portuguese service academies in 2016. It puts forward the question of whether the sociological characteristics of the future military elite reveal a pattern of convergence with society or depart from it, in terms of geographical origins, gender and social origins. The article offers a sociological portrait of the cadets and compares it with previous studies, identifying trends of change and continuity. The results show that there is a diversified and convergent recruitment pattern: cadets are coming from a greater variety of regions in the country than in the past; there is a still an asymmetric but improving gender balance; self-recruitment patterns are rather stable, and there is a segmented social origin pointing to the dominance of the more qualified and affluent social classes. In the conclusion questions are raised regarding future civil-military convergence patterns as well as possible growing differences between ranks.

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