Abstract
Arguments about where to situate Trump’s politics seem to identify Trump as a fundamentally new phenomenon: either a radical departure from classical conservative commitments or a neo-fascistic threat to the American democracy. In any case, such approaches foster an ‘end is nigh’ kind of anxiety that is rooted in willful forgetting about how deeply America’s history of white supremacy runs. I argue instead, that the politics of the right have not substantively changed because of Trump, but that they reflect Trump’s distinctive style—one rooted in the Trump brand, which Trump has developed over several decades. The politics of ‘draining the swamp’ or ‘making American great again’ has clear connections to classical liberalism, exceptionalism, white supremacy, and nativism, and these are not new politics in the United States. What is new is how this politics is presented. It has been re-packaged, in Trumpian style, to produce a viscerally violent politics that appears new and is designed to feel threatening to those who oppose it.
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Notes
- 1.
The Trump International Hotel organization’s decision to market its DC hotel using an image of the White House is one example, although when faced with pressure, the organization pulled the products that feature this image (Shepherd 2019).
- 2.
For example, after the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, Trump blamed “both sides” for the violence but also noted that both sides contained “very fine people” (Klein 2018). After being criticized for fomenting anti-Semitism that contributed to the Pittsburgh Tree of Life Synagogue attack, Trump tweeted that the media was the “true Enemy of the People” that was sowing division (Rogin 2018).
- 3.
Beyond closing borders, ‘America first’ also reflects an isolationist impulse. Trump’s foreign policy of withdrawal and disengagement declining commitments to collective security organizations like NATO evince a belief that America has gotten a bad deal (Kupchan 2019).
- 4.
See John Higham, Strangers in the Land and Robin Jacobson, The New Nativism.
- 5.
This argument is made in more general terms, but with reference to the American context, in Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
- 6.
See, for example, The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander.
- 7.
As early as The Art of the Deal, the “winners and losers” theme is prevalent (pp. 30, 59) and Trump asserts the importance of always negotiating from a place of strength (p. 53). He also offers this insightful bit about the press: “one thing I’ve learned about the press is that they’re always hungry for a good story, and the more sensational the better” (p. 56).
- 8.
Jacob T. Levy and Greg Sargent both identify this as an authoritarian impulse. As Levy puts it: “Sometimes—often—a leader with authoritarian tendencies will lie in order to make others repeat his lie both as a way to demonstrate and strengthen his power over them” (2016).
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Kessel, A. (2020). A Wolf in Wolf’s Clothing: The Trumpian Style™ in American Politics. In: Oswald, M.T. (eds) Mobilization, Representation, and Responsiveness in the American Democracy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24792-8_3
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