Freedom over Fear: Fundamentalist Populism and the Challenge of COVID-19

Although public responses to national and international crises are never without contestations and conflicting truth claims, the COVID-19 pandemic draws attention to the stark political and cultural divisions presented by conservative populism in the age of the Tea Party Movement and Donald Trump. Beginning with research among Tea Party activists in 2010 and continuing through the Trump Administration and “reopen” protests, I have documented a shifting cultural world of right-wing populism. The vivid and symbolically elaborate performance of patriotism and indignation by the Tea Party Movement declined in 2012, being replaced by a more belligerent and less colorful form of populism with Donald Trump. As Trump-inspired protests opposing COVID-19 mitigation policies emerged in 2020, however, Tea Party themes and symbols reemerged as frames for resistance to government restrictions. Yet, despite the shifting styles, there was a constant theme of what I term “fundamentalist populism.” This style illustrates political identities characterized by vilification of opponents, distrust of existing political and social institutions, ideological rigidity, and a rededication to individualism and personal freedom. Ethnographic and documentary research shows how these themes animate a small yet vocal resistance to the science-based and cooperative guidelines prescribed by public health experts

Glenn Beck’s Common Sense

The Patriot Rebellion during the Obama administration demonstrated just how well conservative western frustrations with federal land management were woven into a national conservative challenge to federal authority, and it illustrated how well-integrated the militias were in conservative politics. Indeed, the line between mainstream and extreme political protest were blurred considerably compared to the Sagebrush Rebellion. The Patriot Rebellion was led by the largely Christian Tea Party movement, which used the language and symbols of the American Revolution to condemn the Obama administration and the federal government generally as unconstitutional tyrants. And it was carried further by the armed Patriot Movement, in which people claimed they were prepared to kill for the Constitution.

Dynamics of respect: Evidence from two different national and political contexts

In (post-)modern, plural societies, consisting of numerous subgroups, mutual respect between groups plays a central role for a constructive social and political life. In this article, we examine whether group members’ perception of being respected by outgroups fosters respect for these outgroups. In Study 1, we employed a panel sample of supporters of the Tea Party movement in the United States (N = 422). In Study 2, we employed a panel sample of members of the LGBTI community in Germany (N = 262). As disapproved target outgroups, we chose in Study 1 homosexuals in the United States, while in Study 2, we chose supporters of the German populist, right-wing political party „Alternative für Deutschland“. Our studies thus constituted a complementary, nearly symmetrical constellation of a liberal group and a conservative political group each. Among Tea Party movement supporters, respect from a disapproved outgroup consistently predicted respect for that outgroup. Among German LGBTI community members, this effect of respect from a disapproved outgroup was found in some of our analyses. For this latter sample, there was furthermore a tendency of societal respect to predict respect for a disapproved outgroup longitudinally. Additionally, we observed for both of our samples that respect from other ingroup members decreased respect for a disapproved outgroup. The dynamics of mutual respect in these two complementary intergroup contexts are discussed as well as the importance of direct intergroup reciprocity and superordinate group membership as routes to mutual respect.

The Mainstreaming of Racism in American Politics

This chapter frames the book’s analysis and provides an overview of the subsequent chapters. It explains how racism today is manifested most significantly in white “outgroup hostility” toward Latinos and Muslims as well as African Americans. It highlights the importance of race-baiting elites in exploiting a transformed media landscape to stoke white outgroup hostility and thereby mainstream racism in American politics today. The chapter introduces and defines a number of key terms, including “racialized political narratives” that operate to racialize selected groups of people to be constructed as threatening “outgroups” in opposition to whites as the “ingroup.” It emphasizes that the “political opportunity structure” for white racial extremists became more open, especially with the rise of the Tea Party movement, leading to their increased participation in conventional politics. The chapter argues that these factors had already converged prior to 2016 for Donald Trump to exploit in winning the presidency, thereby accelerating the mainstreaming of racism in American politics by putting it at the center of public policymaking in the White House.

The Mainstreaming of the White Nationalist Movement

Chapter 4 documents the rise of the Tea Party movement (TPM) and how it evolved into an attractive vehicle for the expression of outgroup hostility and the pursuit of racist policy priorities. We show that the TPM not only mobilized a significant number of previously inactive white racial conservatives but also co-opted a significant portion of the white nationalist movement, especially the traditional white supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. In many ways the TPM set the stage for Trump by bringing more white racists and racial conservatives into electoral politics. Yet this newly energized constituency lacked a national leader. Trump’s emergence as a presidential candidate thus represents the second critical change in the political opportunity structure. With Trump, white racial extremists and racial conservatives now had a national leader who spoke directly to their outgroup hostility and their anger.

Hard White

This book analyzes data from a variety of sources to understand the mainstreaming of racism today, putting this research in a historical context. With issues of globalization, immigration, and demographic diversification achieving greater public salience, racism is now more likely to manifest itself in the form of a generalized ethnocentrism that expresses “outgroup hostility” toward a diverse set of groups, including Latinos and Muslims as well as African Americans. Changes in both structure and agency have facilitated the mainstreaming of racism today. Changes in the “political opportunity structure,” as witnessed by the rise of the Tea Party Movement, enabled the mainstreaming of white extremists into the Republican Party and established the basis for an electoral politics focused on giving voice to white people more generally acting on their outgroup hostility. Changes in the political opportunity structure were matched by the appearance of a charismatic leader in the person of Donald Trump, who made great use of a transformed media landscape to stoke white people’s outgroup hostility. Trump won the presidency by strategically deploying his demagoguery to mobilize white nonvoters in swing states, with the end result greatly accelerating the mainstreaming of racism and placing it at the center of policymaking in the White House. Providing extensive empirical evidence, this book documents how the mainstreaming of racism today began before Trump started to run for the presidency but then increased under his leadership and that it is likely to be a troubling presence in U.S. politics for some time to come. The findings provided create the basis for suggestions on how to push racism back to the margins of American politics.

An Ominous Mismatch

Congress created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, sparking a bitter partisan battle. The bureau’s mission—to help individual consumers cope with their financial problems and to ward off future crises like the 2008 financial collapse—posed a direct challenge to the financial industry. As the industry has grown, it has also greatly expanded its power in Washington through extensive political contributions and lobbying efforts. Its support for the Tea Party movement shifted the political balance in the 2010 elections. Using its political might, the industry opposed the bureau and then sought to block confirmation of anyone as its director, hoping to hobble efforts to operationalize it. On Elizabeth Warren’s recommendation, President Obama nominated Richard Cordray to be the first director, starting a fight over his confirmation that would last two years.