Why we won’t defang right-wing extremism

Ronald Brownstein relies on surveys,^[1] whose methodology should be at this point be considered entirely discredited,^[2] but his conclusion that the Republican Party has been captured by Trumpsters’ verbal and physical bullying and their white nationalism,^[3] is in line with what I see around southwestern Pennsylvania.

Brownstein quotes Elizabeth Neumann saying that “if nobody steps up and tries to tell the truth and tries to lead people out of this echo chamber of stolen elections and [the belief that] violence is justified, that is catastrophic for the country. We will not survive as a democracy.”^[4] Setting aside that this is not, and never has been a democracy,^[5] Neumann does not offer a prescription for “tell[ing] the truth and tr[ying] to lead people out of this echo chamber”^[6] when the people in question are in fact desperately and fervently attempting to persuade themselves of the very claims that Neumann would refute.^[7]

In essence, what needs to happen is that another belief system, one more attractive than bullying, one more attractive than white supremacy, would need to be offered, to substitute for the lure of personal power over others, a power that Trumpsters keenly feel they are losing.^[8]

This isn’t just about ego. It’s in part, only in part, about a pervasive economic decline for a majority—not just whites—of people^[9] that has been exacerbated in the pandemic.^[10] It is about an economic despair over lost prosperity, a prosperity I think many people of color never took for granted, at least not to the degree that whites did,^[11] that means parents cannot expect their children to do better, that leads many white men especially to feel they have no place^[12] in a demographically changing society^[13] and that many whites are blaming on people of color, especially migrants.^[14]

Which is to say that the rich would need to share their prosperity, that there would need to be economic redistribution, indeed that there would need to be “socialism,” the very thing that with a bipartisan embrace of neoconservatism,^[15] with its embrace of neoliberalism as a moral imperative,^[16] elites have spent decades indoctrinating the Amerikkkan people against, with a message that seems especially to have taken hold among Trumpsters.

When one considers that corporate leaders were even willing to instigate a coup against the New Deal,^[17] and have sustained a political barrage to roll it back since,^[18] we need to understand that this is like asking the rich to cut off their own arms with a rusty hacksaw.

And no, of course, this would not eliminate all racism, all bigotry, all bullying, all extremism, or even much of the desire to dominate others. It would at least alleviate some of the threat that many whites face, defanging the authoritarian populist, paleoconservative, and social conservative hold on the Republican Party.

But instead, we’ll use the excuse that racism exists even without classism to refuse any effort to address class and thus to defang some racism. Why? Because even as the rich built their fortunes largely on racism^[19] and slavery,^[20] they now deploy racism as a foil to avoid dealing with class.

Which is why the Democrats cannot truly oppose the Republicans, or especially their right-wing extremists.^[21]

1. ^[1]Ronald Brownstein, “Is the GOP’s extremist wing now too big to fail?” CNN, February 14, 2021, https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/14/politics/republican-extremism-trump-impeachment/index.html↩
2. ^[2]Mona Chalabi, “The pollsters were wrong – again. Here’s what we know so far,” Guardian, November 4, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/commentisfree/2020/nov/04/the-pollsters-were-wrong-again-heres-what-we-know-so-far; David A. Graham, “The Polling Crisis Is a Catastrophe for American Democracy,” Atlantic, November 4, 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/polling-catastrophe/616986/; Courtney Kennedy and Hannah Hartig, “Response rates in telephone surveys have resumed their decline,” Pew Research Center, February 27, 2019, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/02/27/response-rates-in-telephone-surveys-have-resumed-their-decline/↩
3. ^[3]Ronald Brownstein, “Is the GOP’s extremist wing now too big to fail?” CNN, February 14, 2021, https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/14/politics/republican-extremism-trump-impeachment/index.html↩
4. ^[4]Elizabeth Neumann, quoted in Ronald Brownstein, “Is the GOP’s extremist wing now too big to fail?” CNN, February 14, 2021, https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/14/politics/republican-extremism-trump-impeachment/index.html↩
5. ^[5]David Benfell, “A constitutional oligarchy: Deconstructing Federalist No. 10,” Not Housebroken, December 20, 2020, https://disunitedstates.org/2020/04/22/a-constitutional-oligarchy-deconstructing-federalist-no-10/↩
6. ^[6]Elizabeth Neumann, quoted in Ronald Brownstein, “Is the GOP’s extremist wing now too big to fail?” CNN, February 14, 2021, https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/14/politics/republican-extremism-trump-impeachment/index.html↩
7. ^[7]David Benfell, “Doubting the ‘Fox News bubble,’” Not Housebroken, January 9, 2021, https://disunitedstates.org/2020/09/07/doubting-the-fox-news-bubble/↩
8. ^[8]Ezra Klein, Why We’re Polarized (New York: Avid Reader, 2020).↩
9. ^[9]Economic Policy Institute, “The Productivity–Pay Gap,” July 2019, https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/; Lawrence Mishel and Julia Wolfe, “CEO compensation has grown 940% since 1978,” Economic Policy Institute, August 14, 2019, https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-compensation-2018/↩
10. ^[10]Nick Hanauer and David M. Rolf, “The Top 1% of Americans Have Taken $50 Trillion From the Bottom 90%—And That’s Made the U.S. Less Secure,” Time, September 14, 2020, https://time.com/5888024/50-trillion-income-inequality-america/; Charles Lane, “The rich got richer during the pandemic. We need to claw back their gains,” Washington Post, January 25, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-rich-got-richer-during-the-pandemic-we-need-to-claw-back-their-gains/2021/01/25/d17c8a44-5f32-11eb-9430-e7c77b5b0297_story.html↩
11. ^[11]Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The Case for Reparations,” Atlantic, June 2014, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/↩
12. ^[12]Gina Kolata, “Death Rates Rising for Middle-Aged White Americans, Study Finds,” New York Times, November 2, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/03/health/death-rates-rising-for-middle-aged-white-americans-study-finds.html; Gina Kolata and Sarah Cohen, “Drug Overdoses Propel Rise in Mortality Rates of Young Whites,” New York Times, January 16, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/17/science/drug-overdoses-propel-rise-in-mortality-rates-of-young-whites.html; Paul Krugman, “Heartland of Darkness,” New York Times, November 4, 2015, http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/11/04/heartland-of-darkness/; Paul Krugman, “Despair, American Style,” New York Times, November 9, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/09/opinion/despair-american-style.html; Alana Semuels, “Is Economic Despair What’s Killing Middle-Aged White Americans?” CityLab, March 23, 2017, https://www.citylab.com/politics/2017/03/economic-despair-killing-middle-aged-white-americans/520554/; Josh Zumbrun, “The Economic Roots of the Climbing Death Rate for Middle-Aged Whites,” Wall Street Journal, November 3, 2015, http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2015/11/03/the-economic-roots-of-the-climbing-death-rate-for-middle-aged-whites/↩
13. ^[13]Ezra Klein, Why We’re Polarized (New York: Avid Reader, 2020).↩
14. ^[14]Laura Bliss, “The Pessimism of White, Working-Class America,” CityLab, November 17, 2015, http://www.citylab.com/politics/2015/11/the-pessimism-of-white-working-class-america/416379/↩
15. ^[15]Melvyn P. Leffler, “The Free Market Did Not Bring Down the Berlin Wall,” Foreign Policy, November 7, 2014, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/11/07/berlin_wall_fall_25_anniversary_reagan_bush_germany_merkel_cold_war_free_market_capitalism↩
16. ^[16]Gertrude Himmelfarb, “Irving Kristol’s Neoconservative Persuasion,” Commentary, February 2011, 25-29.↩
17. ^[17]George Seldes, 1000 Americans: The Real Rulers of the U.S.A. (New York: Boni and Gaer, 1948; Joshua Tree, CA: Progressive, 2009).↩
18. ^[18]Daniel Altman, Neoconomy (New York: Public Affairs, 2004); Mark Blyth, Austerity (Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University, 2010); Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson, Winner-Take-All Politics (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010); Daniel Stedman Jones, Masters of the Universe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 2012); Charles A. Reich, The Greening of America (New York: Crown, 1970).↩
19. ^[19]Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The Case for Reparations,” Atlantic, June 2014, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/↩
20. ^[20]Sven Beckert, “Slavery and Capitalism,” Chronicle of Higher Education, December 12, 2014, https://www.chronicle.com/article/SlaveryCapitalism/150787/↩
21. ^[21]David Benfell, “Voting for complicity,” Not Housebroken, October 1, 2020, https://disunitedstates.org/2020/09/20/voting-for-complicity/; David Benfell, “The second farce,” Not Housebroken, February 15, 2021, https://disunitedstates.org/2021/02/14/the-second-farce/↩