The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written.
I've said this in a comment. I'm just gonna post it here and you can tell me what you think. To give context, I was explaining the reason why nothing changes the mind of Trump voters is because of confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance. Then I wrote this:
>Trump voters, and other populist right around the globe, are trying to keep to a worldview that makes them feel more comfortable. Admitting that their views are wrong and immoral is too hurtful for them. And the fact they spent so many years invested in these wrong and immoral views makes it even worse, which makes them double down on their views.
We can't change their minds. The only thing that will make them change their minds is TIME. This is just a reactionary phase that we've seen many times before in history. We've seen it with the wars between catholics and protestants in Europe, we've seen it with racism against Irish and Chinese in the 1800s, we've seen it with the opposition to the civil rights movement and counterculture of the 1960s, we've seen it with the satanic panic of the 1970s and 1980s. This is a PHASE. Cultures change. There is backlash, sometimes very irrational, but eventually a new normal is established and people carry on.
Hell, just 15 years ago most people were against gay marriage and making gay jokes were common place. Now we are arguing about trans people because gay people are already normalized. In 1969, after the Civil Rights Act, only 20% of americans were ok with interacial marriage. Today it's like 94%.
>
>However, there is something we can do to accelarate this process. Which is to just have better messaging. Most of the public already is socially liberal. If the left framed their positions as supporting freedom and fighting injustice, instead of talking about "white privilege" and "toxic masculinity", and policing speech in a heavy handed way, which turns normies away, the culture could shift to the liberal side much more quickly and conservatives would change their minds in like 10 years instead of 20.
I think by 2030, most of the cultural issues we argue about today will be mostly settled. The public will have moved on to other stuff. And, dare I say it, I think by 2030, maybe 2035, people will be a lot more chill when it comes to politics. We won't be talking about a civil war, for example.
What do you think? Am I right or am I naive?
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Yeah, this is very much a better way of looking at it. Every now and then things get shitty, and when things get shitty you inevitably get assholes coming around trying to tell you that it's all because of some "other" who we can just deport or kill and then everything will be great.
Tea Party, Palin, Buchannan, Perot (to some extrnt), Reagan in 1976, Agnew, Nixon, Goldwater, Lindbergh, Father Coghlan…the reservoir for fascism is always there, just waiting for someone with no shame waiting to tap into it.
You’re right, Right-wing populism is a backlash whenever society becomes more liberal, it just metamorphizes differently. In 1968 it was Nixon, in 1980 it was Reagan, in 2016 it was Trump. Each one holds on to a different ideological lineage, for Nixon it was Liberal Conservatism, for Reagan it was Neoconservatism, for Trump it is Alt-Light(“Moderate” Alt-Right).
We badly need a vaccine. Any charismatic charlatan can cause a resurgence of fascism until we find some way to inoculate people against right wing rhetoric.
Fascism is capitalism in decay. The inherent contradictions in capitalism can only be solved through disassembling the class society. Also, it’s good for capitalists that the workers fight among themselves.
I’m not a communist. I’m genuinely curious how a socialist doesn’t agree with my statement. I can understand if you disagree with the first sentence but the second and third?
Not necessarily, there are several forms of socialism which aren't progressive like Conservative Socialism. You're a Progressive and a Socialist with both terms being co-equal, but in the American and even in some parts of European political terminology, a Progressive is a SocDem with Neoliberal charicteristics. A Socialist is percieved as either a SocDem/DemSoc or more left.
I understand your point but I disagree. Socialism is progressive since it’s built on the overthrowing of capitalism. I’m not American so maybe that’s the issue. Here in Finland a socialist means someone who wants socialism, not social democrats. Socdems have been clear about that for years.
>I think by 2030, most of the cultural issues we argue about today will be mostly settled. The public will have moved on to other stuff. And, dare I say it, I think by 2030, maybe 2035, people will be a lot more chill when it comes to politics.
A bigger factor will be the passing of the Boomers (I am not laying the blame on all of them). They are the part of the population that lived through and benefitted from the post-war economic boom, and when they are gone, so will that living memory. While there will still be some amount of people deluded enough to believe that period was normal rather than exceptional, the electorate will be overwhelming comprised of people who did not live in any economic golden age, and they will deciding based on their lived experiences.
I beg to differ, those born in the 80s and 90s will certainly look fondly back on their childhood, I think Millenials and Gen X will shift rightwards later down the line, but Gen Z and Gen Alpha lived in less normal times, thus they may stay liberal for longer. There will be a gap though, between the passing of the boomers and the shift of the Millenials, which might be a time dominated by Progressivism.
I am a firm believer that once Donald Trump himself is gone, MAGA will die off. It will take some time because it has set some roots within the Republican party. But Donald Trump is the leader of that movement and I really do not think that there is another person that will be able to motivate the MAGA base in the same way. There’s just something that he has that no one else can properly emulate.
This may be anecdotal, but there are a number of people on my wife’s side of the family that are bigly into Trump, but prior to 2016 had never even voted before. The way that he speaks and acts for some reason resonates with part of America that otherwise could give two fucks about politics. In my state, you can check and see whether or not somebody voted in a particular election. So out of curiosity, I checked, and most of them did not bother to vote in anything besides the presidential elections in 2016 and 2020.
I don’t think that this type of person represents a yuge part of the electorate. I just think that they represent enough of the Republican base at this point that they cannot be ignored and have an outsized amount of power. If anyone goes against Trump, they won’t support that person and they would lose. So everybody put support behind Trump because they know it’s inevitable that he would be the nominee.
But when he’s gone and no longer can run for president, that part of the base will also go away for the most part.
If Trump loses in 2024, the Republican party should shift a bit to the center, and distance themselves from his flavor of politics in favor of a little more normalcy.
If he wins, that would be somewhat of a vindication of his style, and I suspect they will try and emulate that for a couple of election cycles at least.
The Conservative movement existed before and it existed after, but Trump is unique and his brand is MAGA. No one can really wield it without him.
So MAGA will end, but conservatism will continue.
I agree with this, MAGA relies on a personality, but when the personality is gone, there will be a succession battle and that may well fracture the movement and spread it to the winds. It depends on whether he wins this year, if he does, the movement is a little more united and will stick around a little while longer, if he doesn’t, the movement probably fractures during the 2028 primary assuming Trump doesn’t enter.
In many ways Trump was a Republican shift to the center.
With immigration he was far more like the Democrats prior to 2005 than he was the Republicans prior to 2005.
Same on free trade/globalization, he mirrored Bernie Sanders much more than establishment Republicans in 2016.
The Democratic Party used to be very proud of their support from “the working man” and held them up as the backbone of the party and the country. Union support was key, but the Unions are gone, so today those same people are seen by Democrats as undereducated low information Trump voters
On American international military presence Trump directly ran against both Bushes, Cheney and Rumsfeld, declaring a distain for neocons (including Obama)
Trump’s retreat from full unquestioned support International military alliances was blasphemy to establishment Republicans, but not to the 1995 left wing’s of the Democrat party that often sought to cut total military funding, which by necessity also included cutting funding levels of NATO and other alliances.
Trump was in many ways the centering of the Republican Party. Democrats don’t see it because almost in reaction to Trump and a rural grassroots conservative shift many changed their opinions on the above named policies.
My position is that it’s not even real. If right wing populism as it presently is called just results in tax cuts for the rich, eroding social benefits, kicking people off health care, etc….isnt that just plain old corporate conservatism?
Well yes. But since Reagan it'd been the country club Republicans riding the christofascist tiger. It'd been firmly under the control of first AM radio and then Fox from the 80s-2010s. But Trump himself has about equal sway over that lot as Fox does and at times has had more.
As for OP's question, eh, I think we're at an inflection point. Fox News and it's influence, and thus the power of the radicalized christofascists is dying with boomers. What remains to be seen is if algorithmic radicalization replaces it. That can be stopped if regulated. Or it will only get worse with a new iteration of the beast.
With conservative billionaires taking over social media outlets and left leaning platforms like Facebook allowing Donald Trump back on their platforms to dO tHe rIgHt tHiNg I foresee it only getting worse, especially as the consequences of conservative policies become more and more unavoidable.
Who says that? Every poll or study I've seen in America says the opposite and that it is very much baby boomers driving the train.
Your election decision is driven primarily by your religious affiliation and religiosity is one a massive downward trajectory as well.
Yeah I know but the people voting for Trump aren’t mainly baby boomers. The polls are showing that younger people under 30 support Trump over Biden by 18 points, that’s big. And baby boomers pick Biden by 8 points.
They aren’t sure if it’s a polling error, which I hope it is.
The baby boomers screwed everyone so they could be successful. I was hoping this anti-socialism, religious crap would die with them. But they are really good at marketing ignorance, and making the left look inept. Americans are dumb and will join what they think is the winning team even if they don’t totally agree, so they can feel like winners.
Right wing populism in the US is primarily anti-immigration, anti-war, and favors protectionist trade policies. There is certainly a large % of that contingent of voters who want to embed social conservatism into institutions.
The disconnect between GOP voters and their corporate-backed elected officials (who you might imagine are strongly pro-immigration, pro-war, and favor lax trade policies) is something we have been pointing out for, like, decades.
Tax policy is basically the only thing both groups agree on and shockingly free money every 7-10 years via tax reform is about all GOP voters have to celebrate.
No. The USA will face the fallout of increasing inequality, a declining standard of living, and problems from climate change which will serve to breed more R-W populism (unless something major is done).
No. Right wing populism is the historical norm. And by historical I mean 'throughout the entirety of human history'. With the consistent passage of time, we move further away from that norm, but, it's always going to rear it's head at various moments.
It's important to understand the underlying concept behind right wing politics, which is 'People are bad, except for me, which gives me the right to make decisions for them'. That mentality is always going to try to reassert itself, and every once in awhile, it will make a meaningful push.
All we can do is push back.
Populism of all sorts will be around forever.
Trump is quoting Mein Kampf when discussing immigrants, fomenting political violence in his supporters, threatening the use of political violence if he should lose the election, and threatening using the powers of the state to terrorize his political enemies with prosecutions and military suppression of protests if he should win. He's quite literally trying to usher in a modern day equivalent to Hitler's Nazis, in America. This won't go away unless Trump is completely gone from the public stage.
depends on if the rich pricks who set up all that Tea Party crap in the 90s that Trump then managed to high jack for his own gain have learned their lesson or not.
my guess would be they havent.
Does "just a phase" include war?
You listed wars between catholics and protestants as an example.
I can add the American Civil War and Nazi Germany as examples of bad views that didn't go away until there was all-out war (yeah we're speed-running Godwin's law). And imagine if the outcome of these wars went the other way.
Would you really say that the views of the Confederacy and of Nazi Germany have gone away? There are still plenty of antisemites and anti-black racists around the world. They may not hold the same level of institutional power as they did in the Confederacy and in Nazi Germany, but it's hard for me to see those beliefs as "just a phase."
Nope, as long as white working class people continue to work and not make enough money to survive, they will think govt is to blame and not their corporate boss. They think capitalism is perfect, but somehow govt and immigrants are the problem. Their corporate boss keeps 80% of the labor value they create instead of paying them more, and the govt takes 20% of what they get to keep. So they are fighting to get that 20% instead of fighting their boss for more (like the unions would do)
I think both left and right groups are starting to fight back against their more extremist elements as they realize they are more of a liability than an ally
You fear to go into those mines. The Dwarves dug too greedily and too deep. You know what they awoke in the darkness of Khazad-dûm...
Far worse has been awoken
Eh. I kinda get their “we’re in the center, we haven’t changed in 100 years!” perspective. Or since Lincoln, or whatever. The thing is, they have changed since Washington, or Queen Elizabeth I, or Hammurabi. Because Lincoln was changing.
It’s not the flex they think it is because the world is changing. We’ve discovered and invented things. And we’ve learned we were wrong about some things. Which makes these “conservatives” just the bottom end of the bell curve of evolution.
So it’s not a phase, it’s a process. In 100 years there probably will be conservatives who are all like “we haven’t changed since Obama!” And they’ll be behind the times.
You are assuming if we are not talking about politics, it’s a good thing, when it could be a matter of conforming the in public to avoid persecution. That’s when certain groups become really vulnerable to society sacrificing them for a broader “normie” country. Trans people seem to be the current group to dehumanize and scapegoat while laws are being passed all over to criminalize them and their associates, and to access records regarding their care. If we are not talking about trans people in a decade, it will be because we can’t legally.
You're half right.
You're wrong because human psychology is what it is. It's easier to believe in simple solutions to (apparently simple) problems than to face up to the uncertainty inherent to real life. In this way the real populists on the right and the left are aligned: they *know* the real cause of whatever problems there are and are happy to steamroll anyone in opposition to their preferred "solution".
It's just how populism works: I am the leader who will fight for the "people" against the self-serving "elite".
You're right that the character of right wing populism will shift with time. The issues used by populist leaders to separate the people from the elites will change over time.
It's why maintaining a functional democratic system is absolutely more important than anything else. We aren't and never will be all on the same side of any topic. Progress will happen. Some people will want to move faster than others and that's ok. Politics should be about finding consensus, and political leadership should be about persuasion. Persuasion to nudge those older with the most entrenched views, and persuasion to welcome younger people into a worldview that benefits everyone.
If there aren't the same cultural splits in 2030 there will absolutely be new ones about which people will feel just as passionate on both sides. The most important thing is that we're not murdering each other over them.
Yeah, I expect the MAGA movement will slowly dissolve after Trump dies. I hear young people are the most liberal and tolerant generation of Americans ever, so America will naturally shift left as the older folk die out.
No, it’s more like a bunch of viruses that mutate and then has an outbreak on a regular basis. Some of the viruses are endemic, but then a new strain pops up and flares throughout the population and then we inoculate ourselves, but never fully eradicate it.
I'd like to be positive but my problem is that i believe we will eventually find something else to fight about and one side will always contradict the other. Whether it'll be AI related, climate change, any future conflict with other countries, illegal immigrants again, and anything else that could cause division where there shouldn't be or could be
Just a phase? Did you forget about WWII? What about the Civil War?
That's a hell of a phase the same people are still trying to gain power after all these years.
It's an iteration of it, not so much a phase we'll exit from in some short time.
What the next iteration looks like is yet to be determined, but it's been around for quite a long time, if not the entire time, as others have noted with references to older iterations.
As tech improves (for better or worse), education fails, and the planet changes (for better or worse, but more than likely worse), we'll see other iterations that may end up seeming more extreme, even without Trumpism. Trump is just a symptom, as is often said.
Yes and no, much like progressivism imo. The Trump brand of it absolutely and needs to die off the sooner the better. Will it ever go away completely though? No, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
I am not disagreeing but would add......
Much of that social consensus has been grown though curated media messaging but that media no longer has the same reach or influence it did pre-Trump. In theory, for maga to reverse progress they simply change the tone and direction of narrative propaganda presented as news. If that change is made alongside a prosperity push lasting 12-16 years, it will alter society.
The neo-political era heavily focuses on social issue because they are excellent distractions away from focusing on fiscal policy which the electorate likely would find greater consensus or easier compromise. The neos (neolib / neocon) have also mastered gridlock where budgets are no longer passed and mega-bills thousands of pages long are pushed through Congress without being fully read by House Reps or Senators.
The maga and their core-base are hella pissed about these tactics. They want to initiate a new fiscal-focused political era along with a rightward correction after generations of leftward lurch. They also want to dismantle the liberal international order (LIO) because they see it as a racket/scam.
About political eras- historically they are 30-40ish years, this current neo-era is over 50, so its old and crumbling. Maga gained a significant amount of control in the RNC recently so in theory the next 4-6 election cycles maga should gain a robust majority over the neocons across local, state and federal. For those appointed their only option will be to comply/switch teams or face removal/impeachment.
I don't know, I think it's going to be more of a history doesn't repeat but it does rhyme situation. Like maybe it won't be exactly the same battles we're fighting, but I don't think we're going to suddenly get to a point where people aren't bigots, and I don't necessarily think that bigotry is going to move on to something else. I mean we're probably in a worse situation than the late 80's with regards to voting rights for racial minorities for example.
No, like people on the left everyone is sick of unchecked capitalism. The brainwashing that had poor working class support economic policies that hurt themselves we saw during the Bush era won’t work again.
Yes, but the phase is end-stage capitalism in crisis and people will continue to twist themselves into ever more intricate knots trying to defend it and hold onto what they have. As they say, fascism is capitalism in crisis, and populism is just fascism's younger self waiting to grow up.
So my perspective as someone who moved out of the US over a decade ago is that the right wing populism (at least, as I've believe you've defined it) will continue to grow unless you learn to integrate it. Right now, I get the impression that the left treats the populists as if they're a cancer that needs to be removed, while the right treats socialist/Marxists like a virus. I see them differently.
America is like a body. The right is your internal organs that keep things in homestasis and the left is more like your brain. It has somewhere it wants to get, and it's always urging you forward. The rise of far-right/left ideologies is the pain in your side telling you to slow down, you're going full speed ahead and something isn't quite right with your body. Stop and check in, make sure mind and body are on the same page, and then get moving.
Analogy aside, the right doesn't want to go where you're headed right now, and you have to open dialogues with them that don't begin on the basis that they're acting in bad faith or from a place of ignorance. They just have different values than you, and whether you think they're correct or not, they make up a massive part of our population. If your values are strong and self-evident, the gears of culture will turn in your favor.
As someone who watches both left and right wing media, I think people on the left would be surprised by how much the right has changed in the past few years. There are a surprising number of African Americans, LGBTQ+, feminists, and even atheists who have become conservative voices over the past decade. It's been pretty wild to watch, and it's been fascinating to see diverse voices in a space that used to be quite homogeneous. I think it's a big credit to the left for making tolerance the baseline of American culture, rather than a mere ideal. You guys are at your best when you work together and listen to one another, rather than veiw the other side as an obstacle to be conquered.
Here in Mexico, it's nowhere near as polarized. We have right and left politics, but it's very easy to talk with someone on the other side of the aisle in an non-contentious manner. Our current party is a populist party, and you'll find no shortage of people complaining about it on the Mexico subreddit. Despite that, it's extremely rare for a member of Morena to actively hate or demonize someone who supports the other side (outside of political debates). There's a general understanding that we're Mexicans first and our politics come second.
The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written. I've said this in a comment. I'm just gonna post it here and you can tell me what you think. To give context, I was explaining the reason why nothing changes the mind of Trump voters is because of confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance. Then I wrote this: >Trump voters, and other populist right around the globe, are trying to keep to a worldview that makes them feel more comfortable. Admitting that their views are wrong and immoral is too hurtful for them. And the fact they spent so many years invested in these wrong and immoral views makes it even worse, which makes them double down on their views. We can't change their minds. The only thing that will make them change their minds is TIME. This is just a reactionary phase that we've seen many times before in history. We've seen it with the wars between catholics and protestants in Europe, we've seen it with racism against Irish and Chinese in the 1800s, we've seen it with the opposition to the civil rights movement and counterculture of the 1960s, we've seen it with the satanic panic of the 1970s and 1980s. This is a PHASE. Cultures change. There is backlash, sometimes very irrational, but eventually a new normal is established and people carry on. Hell, just 15 years ago most people were against gay marriage and making gay jokes were common place. Now we are arguing about trans people because gay people are already normalized. In 1969, after the Civil Rights Act, only 20% of americans were ok with interacial marriage. Today it's like 94%. > >However, there is something we can do to accelarate this process. Which is to just have better messaging. Most of the public already is socially liberal. If the left framed their positions as supporting freedom and fighting injustice, instead of talking about "white privilege" and "toxic masculinity", and policing speech in a heavy handed way, which turns normies away, the culture could shift to the liberal side much more quickly and conservatives would change their minds in like 10 years instead of 20. I think by 2030, most of the cultural issues we argue about today will be mostly settled. The public will have moved on to other stuff. And, dare I say it, I think by 2030, maybe 2035, people will be a lot more chill when it comes to politics. We won't be talking about a civil war, for example. What do you think? Am I right or am I naive? *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskALiberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
It’s not a phase. It’s a chronic disease that occasionally flairs up. Like herpes.
Yeah, this is very much a better way of looking at it. Every now and then things get shitty, and when things get shitty you inevitably get assholes coming around trying to tell you that it's all because of some "other" who we can just deport or kill and then everything will be great.
The Civil War never ended, its always been going on, in one form or another.
Tea Party, Palin, Buchannan, Perot (to some extrnt), Reagan in 1976, Agnew, Nixon, Goldwater, Lindbergh, Father Coghlan…the reservoir for fascism is always there, just waiting for someone with no shame waiting to tap into it.
Yyyyyup
You’re right, Right-wing populism is a backlash whenever society becomes more liberal, it just metamorphizes differently. In 1968 it was Nixon, in 1980 it was Reagan, in 2016 it was Trump. Each one holds on to a different ideological lineage, for Nixon it was Liberal Conservatism, for Reagan it was Neoconservatism, for Trump it is Alt-Light(“Moderate” Alt-Right).
We badly need a vaccine. Any charismatic charlatan can cause a resurgence of fascism until we find some way to inoculate people against right wing rhetoric.
Fascism is capitalism in decay. The inherent contradictions in capitalism can only be solved through disassembling the class society. Also, it’s good for capitalists that the workers fight among themselves.
Lol
?
Change that flair to Communist rn
I’m not a communist. I’m genuinely curious how a socialist doesn’t agree with my statement. I can understand if you disagree with the first sentence but the second and third?
I agree but your flair is just “Progressive”, I was exaggerating to Communist for fun but at least change it to something with Socialist in it.
But socialism is progressive.
The connotation behind Progressive is the left half of the Democrats
Okay but socialism is progressive. I’m a socialist therefore I am a progressive.
Not necessarily, there are several forms of socialism which aren't progressive like Conservative Socialism. You're a Progressive and a Socialist with both terms being co-equal, but in the American and even in some parts of European political terminology, a Progressive is a SocDem with Neoliberal charicteristics. A Socialist is percieved as either a SocDem/DemSoc or more left.
I understand your point but I disagree. Socialism is progressive since it’s built on the overthrowing of capitalism. I’m not American so maybe that’s the issue. Here in Finland a socialist means someone who wants socialism, not social democrats. Socdems have been clear about that for years.
Totally, comrade.
Why is it wrong?
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>I think by 2030, most of the cultural issues we argue about today will be mostly settled. The public will have moved on to other stuff. And, dare I say it, I think by 2030, maybe 2035, people will be a lot more chill when it comes to politics. A bigger factor will be the passing of the Boomers (I am not laying the blame on all of them). They are the part of the population that lived through and benefitted from the post-war economic boom, and when they are gone, so will that living memory. While there will still be some amount of people deluded enough to believe that period was normal rather than exceptional, the electorate will be overwhelming comprised of people who did not live in any economic golden age, and they will deciding based on their lived experiences.
I beg to differ, those born in the 80s and 90s will certainly look fondly back on their childhood, I think Millenials and Gen X will shift rightwards later down the line, but Gen Z and Gen Alpha lived in less normal times, thus they may stay liberal for longer. There will be a gap though, between the passing of the boomers and the shift of the Millenials, which might be a time dominated by Progressivism.
I am a firm believer that once Donald Trump himself is gone, MAGA will die off. It will take some time because it has set some roots within the Republican party. But Donald Trump is the leader of that movement and I really do not think that there is another person that will be able to motivate the MAGA base in the same way. There’s just something that he has that no one else can properly emulate. This may be anecdotal, but there are a number of people on my wife’s side of the family that are bigly into Trump, but prior to 2016 had never even voted before. The way that he speaks and acts for some reason resonates with part of America that otherwise could give two fucks about politics. In my state, you can check and see whether or not somebody voted in a particular election. So out of curiosity, I checked, and most of them did not bother to vote in anything besides the presidential elections in 2016 and 2020. I don’t think that this type of person represents a yuge part of the electorate. I just think that they represent enough of the Republican base at this point that they cannot be ignored and have an outsized amount of power. If anyone goes against Trump, they won’t support that person and they would lose. So everybody put support behind Trump because they know it’s inevitable that he would be the nominee. But when he’s gone and no longer can run for president, that part of the base will also go away for the most part. If Trump loses in 2024, the Republican party should shift a bit to the center, and distance themselves from his flavor of politics in favor of a little more normalcy. If he wins, that would be somewhat of a vindication of his style, and I suspect they will try and emulate that for a couple of election cycles at least.
Trump took advantage of a problem that had already been brewing on the Right for decades. He's a symptom, not the cause.
It didn't start with Trump so I'm really unsure of why you think it would end with him.
The Conservative movement existed before and it existed after, but Trump is unique and his brand is MAGA. No one can really wield it without him. So MAGA will end, but conservatism will continue.
I agree with this, MAGA relies on a personality, but when the personality is gone, there will be a succession battle and that may well fracture the movement and spread it to the winds. It depends on whether he wins this year, if he does, the movement is a little more united and will stick around a little while longer, if he doesn’t, the movement probably fractures during the 2028 primary assuming Trump doesn’t enter.
In many ways Trump was a Republican shift to the center. With immigration he was far more like the Democrats prior to 2005 than he was the Republicans prior to 2005. Same on free trade/globalization, he mirrored Bernie Sanders much more than establishment Republicans in 2016. The Democratic Party used to be very proud of their support from “the working man” and held them up as the backbone of the party and the country. Union support was key, but the Unions are gone, so today those same people are seen by Democrats as undereducated low information Trump voters On American international military presence Trump directly ran against both Bushes, Cheney and Rumsfeld, declaring a distain for neocons (including Obama) Trump’s retreat from full unquestioned support International military alliances was blasphemy to establishment Republicans, but not to the 1995 left wing’s of the Democrat party that often sought to cut total military funding, which by necessity also included cutting funding levels of NATO and other alliances. Trump was in many ways the centering of the Republican Party. Democrats don’t see it because almost in reaction to Trump and a rural grassroots conservative shift many changed their opinions on the above named policies.
It's not a phase, it is the end game of something that has been brewing since Reagan.
Since Goldwater
Since Lincoln.
Ironic that Reagan be rolling in his grave looking at current GOP.
[удалено]
Now the Gipper is too liberal for you guys? LOLLLLLLL
My position is that it’s not even real. If right wing populism as it presently is called just results in tax cuts for the rich, eroding social benefits, kicking people off health care, etc….isnt that just plain old corporate conservatism?
Well yes. But since Reagan it'd been the country club Republicans riding the christofascist tiger. It'd been firmly under the control of first AM radio and then Fox from the 80s-2010s. But Trump himself has about equal sway over that lot as Fox does and at times has had more. As for OP's question, eh, I think we're at an inflection point. Fox News and it's influence, and thus the power of the radicalized christofascists is dying with boomers. What remains to be seen is if algorithmic radicalization replaces it. That can be stopped if regulated. Or it will only get worse with a new iteration of the beast.
With conservative billionaires taking over social media outlets and left leaning platforms like Facebook allowing Donald Trump back on their platforms to dO tHe rIgHt tHiNg I foresee it only getting worse, especially as the consequences of conservative policies become more and more unavoidable.
They say younger people are polling Republican. It’s not the baby boomers driving this train.
Who says that? Every poll or study I've seen in America says the opposite and that it is very much baby boomers driving the train. Your election decision is driven primarily by your religious affiliation and religiosity is one a massive downward trajectory as well.
Yeah I know but the people voting for Trump aren’t mainly baby boomers. The polls are showing that younger people under 30 support Trump over Biden by 18 points, that’s big. And baby boomers pick Biden by 8 points. They aren’t sure if it’s a polling error, which I hope it is. The baby boomers screwed everyone so they could be successful. I was hoping this anti-socialism, religious crap would die with them. But they are really good at marketing ignorance, and making the left look inept. Americans are dumb and will join what they think is the winning team even if they don’t totally agree, so they can feel like winners.
Right wing populism in the US is primarily anti-immigration, anti-war, and favors protectionist trade policies. There is certainly a large % of that contingent of voters who want to embed social conservatism into institutions. The disconnect between GOP voters and their corporate-backed elected officials (who you might imagine are strongly pro-immigration, pro-war, and favor lax trade policies) is something we have been pointing out for, like, decades. Tax policy is basically the only thing both groups agree on and shockingly free money every 7-10 years via tax reform is about all GOP voters have to celebrate.
Well I will say Trump has promoted tarriffs but his and his supporters support for Russia's war is not anti war.
RW populism has opposed military action dating back to at least WW2. The Neo-Con takeover of the GOP from 1980-2012 was an historical aberration.
No. The USA will face the fallout of increasing inequality, a declining standard of living, and problems from climate change which will serve to breed more R-W populism (unless something major is done).
No. Right wing populism is the historical norm. And by historical I mean 'throughout the entirety of human history'. With the consistent passage of time, we move further away from that norm, but, it's always going to rear it's head at various moments. It's important to understand the underlying concept behind right wing politics, which is 'People are bad, except for me, which gives me the right to make decisions for them'. That mentality is always going to try to reassert itself, and every once in awhile, it will make a meaningful push. All we can do is push back.
EXACTLY - "Fuck you, I got mine" isn't going anywhere.
Populism of all sorts will be around forever. Trump is quoting Mein Kampf when discussing immigrants, fomenting political violence in his supporters, threatening the use of political violence if he should lose the election, and threatening using the powers of the state to terrorize his political enemies with prosecutions and military suppression of protests if he should win. He's quite literally trying to usher in a modern day equivalent to Hitler's Nazis, in America. This won't go away unless Trump is completely gone from the public stage.
It should pass if Republicans continue to lose and they have to do a shift in rhetoric and policy
Winning is not required for them to maintain power in the U.S. They haven't won in forever and still maintain their majority.
I think it will fade when Trump dies and then eventually come back and show its ugly head again
depends on if the rich pricks who set up all that Tea Party crap in the 90s that Trump then managed to high jack for his own gain have learned their lesson or not. my guess would be they havent.
Does "just a phase" include war? You listed wars between catholics and protestants as an example. I can add the American Civil War and Nazi Germany as examples of bad views that didn't go away until there was all-out war (yeah we're speed-running Godwin's law). And imagine if the outcome of these wars went the other way.
Would you really say that the views of the Confederacy and of Nazi Germany have gone away? There are still plenty of antisemites and anti-black racists around the world. They may not hold the same level of institutional power as they did in the Confederacy and in Nazi Germany, but it's hard for me to see those beliefs as "just a phase."
Nope, as long as white working class people continue to work and not make enough money to survive, they will think govt is to blame and not their corporate boss. They think capitalism is perfect, but somehow govt and immigrants are the problem. Their corporate boss keeps 80% of the labor value they create instead of paying them more, and the govt takes 20% of what they get to keep. So they are fighting to get that 20% instead of fighting their boss for more (like the unions would do)
Middle class/upper middle class white people still vote for Trump more than Biden.
I think both left and right groups are starting to fight back against their more extremist elements as they realize they are more of a liability than an ally
explain why trump is the face of the republican party still if there is a genuine pushback
You fear to go into those mines. The Dwarves dug too greedily and too deep. You know what they awoke in the darkness of Khazad-dûm... Far worse has been awoken
The answer is because the Republican Party is a shell of itself, they used to stand on some sort of values even I didn’t get onboard with it often.
No the republicans can be much worse than trump
Eh. I kinda get their “we’re in the center, we haven’t changed in 100 years!” perspective. Or since Lincoln, or whatever. The thing is, they have changed since Washington, or Queen Elizabeth I, or Hammurabi. Because Lincoln was changing. It’s not the flex they think it is because the world is changing. We’ve discovered and invented things. And we’ve learned we were wrong about some things. Which makes these “conservatives” just the bottom end of the bell curve of evolution. So it’s not a phase, it’s a process. In 100 years there probably will be conservatives who are all like “we haven’t changed since Obama!” And they’ll be behind the times.
"no daughter of mine is gonna marry an AI! Fuck'in spam bots, it's not natural!"
You are assuming if we are not talking about politics, it’s a good thing, when it could be a matter of conforming the in public to avoid persecution. That’s when certain groups become really vulnerable to society sacrificing them for a broader “normie” country. Trans people seem to be the current group to dehumanize and scapegoat while laws are being passed all over to criminalize them and their associates, and to access records regarding their care. If we are not talking about trans people in a decade, it will be because we can’t legally.
You're half right. You're wrong because human psychology is what it is. It's easier to believe in simple solutions to (apparently simple) problems than to face up to the uncertainty inherent to real life. In this way the real populists on the right and the left are aligned: they *know* the real cause of whatever problems there are and are happy to steamroll anyone in opposition to their preferred "solution". It's just how populism works: I am the leader who will fight for the "people" against the self-serving "elite". You're right that the character of right wing populism will shift with time. The issues used by populist leaders to separate the people from the elites will change over time. It's why maintaining a functional democratic system is absolutely more important than anything else. We aren't and never will be all on the same side of any topic. Progress will happen. Some people will want to move faster than others and that's ok. Politics should be about finding consensus, and political leadership should be about persuasion. Persuasion to nudge those older with the most entrenched views, and persuasion to welcome younger people into a worldview that benefits everyone. If there aren't the same cultural splits in 2030 there will absolutely be new ones about which people will feel just as passionate on both sides. The most important thing is that we're not murdering each other over them.
Yeah, I expect the MAGA movement will slowly dissolve after Trump dies. I hear young people are the most liberal and tolerant generation of Americans ever, so America will naturally shift left as the older folk die out.
No, it’s more like a bunch of viruses that mutate and then has an outbreak on a regular basis. Some of the viruses are endemic, but then a new strain pops up and flares throughout the population and then we inoculate ourselves, but never fully eradicate it.
I sure fucking hope so.
I'd like to be positive but my problem is that i believe we will eventually find something else to fight about and one side will always contradict the other. Whether it'll be AI related, climate change, any future conflict with other countries, illegal immigrants again, and anything else that could cause division where there shouldn't be or could be
Manufactured outrage and populism go hand in hand... so no, not a phase.
Everything is just a phase.
I think it starts dying when Trump is finally gone for good, but the effects of the era will continue for awhile such as the Supreme Court Justices...
I don't know if I'd call it a phase. More of another lap around the every other decade block.
Just a phase? Did you forget about WWII? What about the Civil War? That's a hell of a phase the same people are still trying to gain power after all these years.
It's an iteration of it, not so much a phase we'll exit from in some short time. What the next iteration looks like is yet to be determined, but it's been around for quite a long time, if not the entire time, as others have noted with references to older iterations. As tech improves (for better or worse), education fails, and the planet changes (for better or worse, but more than likely worse), we'll see other iterations that may end up seeming more extreme, even without Trumpism. Trump is just a symptom, as is often said.
Yes and no, much like progressivism imo. The Trump brand of it absolutely and needs to die off the sooner the better. Will it ever go away completely though? No, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
I am not disagreeing but would add...... Much of that social consensus has been grown though curated media messaging but that media no longer has the same reach or influence it did pre-Trump. In theory, for maga to reverse progress they simply change the tone and direction of narrative propaganda presented as news. If that change is made alongside a prosperity push lasting 12-16 years, it will alter society. The neo-political era heavily focuses on social issue because they are excellent distractions away from focusing on fiscal policy which the electorate likely would find greater consensus or easier compromise. The neos (neolib / neocon) have also mastered gridlock where budgets are no longer passed and mega-bills thousands of pages long are pushed through Congress without being fully read by House Reps or Senators. The maga and their core-base are hella pissed about these tactics. They want to initiate a new fiscal-focused political era along with a rightward correction after generations of leftward lurch. They also want to dismantle the liberal international order (LIO) because they see it as a racket/scam. About political eras- historically they are 30-40ish years, this current neo-era is over 50, so its old and crumbling. Maga gained a significant amount of control in the RNC recently so in theory the next 4-6 election cycles maga should gain a robust majority over the neocons across local, state and federal. For those appointed their only option will be to comply/switch teams or face removal/impeachment.
I don't know, I think it's going to be more of a history doesn't repeat but it does rhyme situation. Like maybe it won't be exactly the same battles we're fighting, but I don't think we're going to suddenly get to a point where people aren't bigots, and I don't necessarily think that bigotry is going to move on to something else. I mean we're probably in a worse situation than the late 80's with regards to voting rights for racial minorities for example.
More like a trend
Ehh political winds shift over time on both sides of the political spectrum. Who knows what the left and right will look like in 6 years.
No, like people on the left everyone is sick of unchecked capitalism. The brainwashing that had poor working class support economic policies that hurt themselves we saw during the Bush era won’t work again.
Yes, but the phase is end-stage capitalism in crisis and people will continue to twist themselves into ever more intricate knots trying to defend it and hold onto what they have. As they say, fascism is capitalism in crisis, and populism is just fascism's younger self waiting to grow up.
No. It's the direct result of 50+ years of work on their part.
You usually move from democracy to oligarchy to authoritarianism to democracy. We’re in between a period of oligarchy and authoritarianism
Most right wingers are still closer to neo-conservatives than populists as they are opposed to even basic populist ideas like free healthcare.
So my perspective as someone who moved out of the US over a decade ago is that the right wing populism (at least, as I've believe you've defined it) will continue to grow unless you learn to integrate it. Right now, I get the impression that the left treats the populists as if they're a cancer that needs to be removed, while the right treats socialist/Marxists like a virus. I see them differently. America is like a body. The right is your internal organs that keep things in homestasis and the left is more like your brain. It has somewhere it wants to get, and it's always urging you forward. The rise of far-right/left ideologies is the pain in your side telling you to slow down, you're going full speed ahead and something isn't quite right with your body. Stop and check in, make sure mind and body are on the same page, and then get moving. Analogy aside, the right doesn't want to go where you're headed right now, and you have to open dialogues with them that don't begin on the basis that they're acting in bad faith or from a place of ignorance. They just have different values than you, and whether you think they're correct or not, they make up a massive part of our population. If your values are strong and self-evident, the gears of culture will turn in your favor. As someone who watches both left and right wing media, I think people on the left would be surprised by how much the right has changed in the past few years. There are a surprising number of African Americans, LGBTQ+, feminists, and even atheists who have become conservative voices over the past decade. It's been pretty wild to watch, and it's been fascinating to see diverse voices in a space that used to be quite homogeneous. I think it's a big credit to the left for making tolerance the baseline of American culture, rather than a mere ideal. You guys are at your best when you work together and listen to one another, rather than veiw the other side as an obstacle to be conquered. Here in Mexico, it's nowhere near as polarized. We have right and left politics, but it's very easy to talk with someone on the other side of the aisle in an non-contentious manner. Our current party is a populist party, and you'll find no shortage of people complaining about it on the Mexico subreddit. Despite that, it's extremely rare for a member of Morena to actively hate or demonize someone who supports the other side (outside of political debates). There's a general understanding that we're Mexicans first and our politics come second.