Former President Donald Trump’s supporters say they hold him as a source of true information over their family, friends, and religious leaders, according to a new CBS News/YouGov poll out on Sunday.
Former President Donald Trump’s supporters say they hold him as a source of true information over their family, friends, and religious leaders, according to a new CBS News/YouGov poll out on Sunday.
I really think that many moderates and liberals simply don’t understand the grasp that he has over some people. This is how post WW1 Germany became Nazi Germany right before WW2.
We can make fun of it. We can complain about it. But what I rarely see is people studying it and trying to understand both the draw and the origins of this deadly attraction.
As much as we want to simply call these people “stupid” or “clueless” (which many people in this thread have already one) but it is much deeper than that. In fact taking that simplistic approach only makes it that much easier for him to recruit more people. The Left is so quick to minimize the hardships that many Trump supporters have faced in the past which might have pushed then to join his cult. If you constantly push groups away and this cult is openly embracing them and saying they understand their pain, then you can’t be surprised when you hear headlines like the one for this story.
I’ve been fascinated with how the religious right has stood behind someone so obviously out of line with their ‘principles’. There actually have been people doing interesting work on that front, if you know who/where to look. I’d definitely recommend the book “Jesus and John Wayne” by Kristin Kobes du Mez, which chronicles the growing power of conservative Christianity in government starting back in the 40s through the election of Trump, and how electing Trump really was an expression of their values, not a departure from it. Podcasts like “Conspirituality” and “Straight White American Jesus” also try to take an honest look at the cultishness and where it’s coming from. What’s hard is that deradicalization is hard and often has to be done one person at a time. When we have one percent of the country needing to be deradicalized, maybe we can find people to go talk and make connections with each person. When it’s 30% of the country, that’s a much different proposition. Maybe society can figure out how to do that better–Conspirituality sometimes talks about how cults differ as leaderless, online only groups. Maybe social media can also reach people… But it won’t if kids can’t find information online that challenges the worldviews their parents want to program into them.
And recently, that Amazon Duggar documentary “Shiny Happy People” came out, and it’s not a bad entry point to understand the issues I’m talking about either. I think it does a good job to show how these ‘throwback’ values play on nostalgia too act as an on ramp for people to raise their children in–children who are then encouraged to be literal warriors for Christ–or their GOP allies.
Further, doing so will galvanize their support for their guy.
People like to imagine that making it obviously shameful to follow a guy would discourage people, but if you are open to considering the guy, you just get pissed, dig in, and let your persecution complex run wild. Famously, Hilary Clinton did a misstep in calling Trump followers “deplorables”. Which might have been an apt word to describe his die-hard adherents, but a much broader population took that as an insult, that the perception of “it’s us or them” had been validated. Even if they didn’t believe in Trump “per se”, the culture is absolutely support your guy, no matter what, or else the bigger evil other guy will ruin your country.
No one wants to believe they are being conned, that they are being manipulated. That the person they believe in is so bad. In the rare case where someone admits they were for Trump, but now recognize that he is a bad person, they are still likely to face ridicule for having ever been in a situation to fall for Trump’s shtick.
I agree. Fundamentally, these folks that support him now are not doing well. It’s not the same for everyone. Some are feeling disenfranchised from parts of daily life, some are experiencing undesired change, some are terribly unhappy and don’t know where to point their frustration, etc. Trump isn’t a likely cult leader. He isn’t very charismatic like we normally associate cult leaders. But he came with the right message at the right time and for a very large segment of our population, that message made sense to them. It gave them a REASON for how they were feeling, even if they didn’t understand their own feelings in the first place.
When the day comes that the spell is broken, society must be ready to re-engage with these people in a meaningful way. Otherwise we are doomed to repeat it with the next person to show up and given them another reason.
The part that is fascinating to this Canadian, is that a lot of his supporters’ hardships are increased by the policies of the GOP. The demographic that is the largest recipient of federal social aid in the US is poor white people in the South and Midwest. Yet they continually vote for the party that has a clear policy of eliminating these programs.
Just before 2016, I saw this video that I wish I could find again. This journalist went somewhere in the Rust Belt to talk to these (overwhelmingly white) people. Of course, she got the usual “We believe in God, Guns and Country, and active trying to change that… Yada yada” stuff. But the interesting part was when she had an exchange with some fellow that went sort of like this (from memory):
“So, you’ve voted Republican all your life?” “Yep.” “And in your lifetime, have things gotten better, of worse for you?” “Oh, way worse.” “So… You keep voting for the same party, and your situation never get better?” “Yeah. But it could…” “Right, but it hasn’t. So why not try voting for the other party and seeing?” “Yeah, but it could!”
I’m not sure how you fix this type of “logic”.
I tried finding that video a few times the last few years, and couldn’t. Maybe it’s time to try again.
It is all about messaging.
Republicans are masters are connecting with people and selling them a cart full of lies. These people could sell icecubes to eskimoes.
On the flip side, Democrats couldn’t sell a starving person a free meal. It is infuriating to watch. Democrats can make big wins and they are afraid to celebrate them because of asinine “liberal guilt”… because god forbid someone somewhere might not be doing so good, so we shouldn’t celebrate our successes. It is exhausting dealing with these people. They will suck the fun and excitement out of a room.
The Democratic party should be acting as the “hype man” right now for Biden’s successes as President. Reminding people where we were and how much we have accomplished. They should have been doing this for the last year, but even if they started now, it wouldn’t be terrible. Will it happen? I doubt it. They should also go on the offensive and attacking Trump and the entire GOP but Dems tend to be too spineless to ever do that.
Oh, we know that Trump and Fascism have a strong grasp on certain people; that is why we have been alerting everyone since 2015. We know the history and the extreme dangers to the planet that someone like Trump is. We won’t rest until the threat is removed.
You can’t remove the threat without understanding it. Simply calling his supporters “idiots” don’t do it. And that has been done countless times in this thread already. Yeah it feels good to make fun of them and call them names, but without understanding their motives and their history and what led them to be MAGAts, someone new will simply come along and take his place when he finally keels over and drops dead. The WHY is the single most important thing in this situation and far too many of times when I bring up the fact that these folks feel marginalized, I get downvoted and simpletons just scream out “no, it’s because they are RaCiSt”.
We will take care of them once Trump is removed from the election. These types will expose themselves, and thousands will break the law to express their anger their fascist leader won’t be President. The best way to eliminate the right is to put up barriers, and they will show themselves and destroy themselves simultaneously. The job of actual American citizens is to shame them and prevent them from being part of civilized society because of their actions. We MUST make examples out of them, or we will continue down this cycle repeatedly.
All you are doing with that strategy is radicalizing them even further. If they break the law, then by all means throw the book at them - the current punishments that J6 people are getting is pathetic. These people should have been tried for treason.
But if it some random Joe 6-Pack who likes Trump but hasn’t hurt a fly and had no part in J6, then your method only makes things worse, quite frankly. You are proving to these people that the gob’ment IS after them. Their delusion has now become a reality.
You need a stick and carrot approach. The stick is harsh punishments when they do something bad, but the carrot is to entice them to enter normal society and leaving all that craziness behind. Minimizing their problems and struggles only makes thinks worse. This whole idiotic idea of “white privilege” which is the left loooooves to go on and on about is part of the problem.
And let’s be clear here. Even when Trump is gone, these people will be looking for their next Dear Leader. Luckily no one on the horizon had the pull that Trump has had. No one in decades has had his pull. And we might not get another “Trump” like person for years to come.
But none of this stuff addresses the underlying reasons why these folks fall for this stuff. part of it is seeing their future has reduced economic advancement compared to prior generations. Many - but not all - of these people are probably just barely getting by. They might even see their kids have it potentitally worse. No upward mobility makes people do crazy things.
They will all end up in prison and we move on. This is what has to happen to finally get past the American Civil War. We have to show that the United States has no place for them, force them to leave the nation. That is how we move forward.
Dude, there were about 170M people registered to vote in the US.
We are talking about 20% of 170M people.
That’s 34M people.
Our current prison population is already considered way too high compared to other industrialized nations and its at “only” 1.2M people.
You’re not understanding the enormity of the problem.
No, we fully understand the numbers. Most of those 34 Million are 65 plus so removing them from the civilized population won’t damage the economy outside of maybe Florida. As for arrest, you only need to lock up about 2% for the rest to shut up and color.
They already consider Democrats to be nazis (for whatever idiotic reason that they have come up with)… and how does simply rounding up people simply because they voted a certain way not exactly what fascists would do? If the majority of those people weren’t radicalized, then doing what you just said absolutely would. Again, if they break the law (such as J6) then by all means throw the book at them, but being a complete douchebag doesn’t automatically mean you’ve committed a crime.
One thing I’d like a better understanding of is the percentage of people that really are rabid Trump supporters vs the people who just voted for him because he was the Republican candidate. I feel like the polls at this point are worthless and we really won’t know how many of them there really are until the primaries. Maybe we will get a better view after the debates.
Anyway, I’m curious if you or anyone else has stats as to how many cult members there really are?
I personally don’t have a problem with Republicans. l think low taxes, small, government and even religion are a valid world views. I don’t necessarily agree with it, but I understand why they do, I just wish they backed someone who respected our institutions.
They claim about 60% of GOP votes. That translates to about 20% of all voters are hardcore MAGAts. Even if that number is rounded up a little, I would say at least 15% are the rabid Trump supporters you are talking about. That’s roughly 25M people. That is not an insignificant number of people. Then there will be a ton of other votes for Trump and the GOP simply because some people will vote for their party regardless.
Now in THEORY I could agree with you that having a party push for low taxes and small government isn’t bad. But the GOP hasn’t believed that in decades. They might still campaign on that message because who doesn’t want their taxes lowered, but there is absolutely nothing “fiscally responsible” about that party and every time they gain power, they prove that.
And that is my personal biggest worry is that if Trump somehow doesn’t win the GOP nomination, some other Republican could step up and start singing the same “lower taxes” bullshit that they’ve been trying for ages but ultimately when they get power they will try shoving religion down our throats, cut abortion rights even further, cut taxes - but only on the ultra wealthy, which will leave the rest of us with even more massive deficits - and increased spending on military programs we simply do not need.
Republicans have proven time and again that they do not deserve support.
There appears to be a good example of Spain in the 30s before the civil war. Both sides saw each other as the devil incarnated. There was no talking with each other,no middle ground. Bloodshed was the only way they were going to sort it out in the end.
Except that the Left doesn’t really see Trump and MAGAts as being “devil incarnate”. They kind of do, but they spend more time writing funny memes or posting snarky comments on Twitter than anything else. They are simply not taking as seriously as they should.
The Right sees this as war. Not in political discord and verbal debate, but as an actual fight for survival.
They’re not actually in a lot of pain. Their struggles with poverty and drugs aren’t fundamentally different than those of the left.
What they actually are is secretly hateful and bigoted, and those beliefs are deeply rooted cultural beliefs for them. Trump just made it socially acceptable for them to be openly hateful like they’ve wanted to be for so long, and gave them the promises of fulfilling their white nationalist dreams, so they jumped all over his dick.
It’s not actually that complicated. I had the misfortune of growing up around their ilk, and have rolled with them for two years because of the lockdowns, so I know the score.
You have a rather simplistic view of this. That might be true for what you saw, but please don’t project this to all MAGAts out there. The Left’s insistence of always turning EVERY goddamn thing into a race issue only makes matters worse and completely misses a whole ton of underlying causes that we as a society should be looking at. If the Left could keep themselves from getting race-baited for even 10 minutes, we might be able to accomplish something one of these days.
Nah, it’s mainly a race issue. Do not confuse your 1 semester course on modern history in college with my 40 years of suffering under the heel of vile racists both Black and white. The MAGA movement is mostly made up of racist whites who think like this and dumbasses who sympathize with them thinking they’re the exception simply because the MAGA cultists choose to tolerate them to better enable them to manipulate others.
You’re the problem. You’re just the type that helps radicalize others.
@Hazdaz @pinkdrunkenelephants
Nah. You’re the issue here.
Take it like a “man”.
The only one being problematic and immature here is you, friend. My life experience might be inconvenient for you but it trumps any of that carefully crafted nonsense intended to convince people to sympathize with Trump supporters you conjured up (or wrote with Chat GPT, I don’t know).
Rather than trying to understand their pain, my opinion is that the US right wing voter is under the control of one of the largest propaganda networks in history. The evangelical church, the billionaires that own local TV stations (Sinclair), Fox News, AM radio, and now social media echo chambers have led to a complete epistemic closure of the American right. Facts cannot penetrate that wall. Science cannot penetrate that wall. No amount of Democrat messaging can penetrate that wall. Seeing something with their own eyes cannot penetrate that wall.
History teaches us that this kind of propaganda leads to a very bad ending. Civil war, genocide, authoritarian dictatorship… pick your poison. America needs to find a way to dismantle the right wing propaganda apparatus, without that I see no hope. (I know, doom and gloom.) I sincerely hope I’m wrong.
You don’t see earnest studying of it because both established parties enjoy the “Go Sports Team” dynamic it’s part of.
One of the most frustrating aspects of this whole situation is listening to the absolute braindead takes I hear from the left. There’s a lot of coastal elitism going around and it almost makes want to side with the magats just out of spite. I hear armchair socialists who have never done a day of physical labor in their lives making fun of farmers while stuffing their faces full of cheetos made from corn grown in Iowa. The few attempts I’ve seen to reach across the isle have been from the patronizing position of “we need to teach these hateful know-nothings in flyover country about their privilege and how to vote properly”, instead of trying to learn why they believe what they do and how best to reach them.
I know that they’re wrong. I know this because I was raised in a stable household by loving parents and was given a good education, but I get why they’re angry. To be honest, I’m angry too.
What the fuck are you talking about?
I’m talking about years of cultural division and social neglect which have helped construct a funnel on top of the populist to fascist pipeline, into which an entire generation of young midwestern men are being dumped.
I know these people, they are my family and friends. Many of them started out as promising future-socialists. Then they looked to people who were supposed to be their allies in coastal blue states, and were immediately met with ridicule and derision. This provided a chance for fascists to swoop in and say “fuck those assholes, come roll with us and we’ll change the system together”. A lot of young men naïvely took the bait, and were radicalized in short order.
Christian fascism relies on a persecution complex, and you(collectively) have been helping feed into it.
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I agree that the coastal elitism is terrible, but please realize that that’s not something “the left” does. It’s something that liberals do. The Bernie-type left generally doesn’t do that type of thing, and has suffered similar kinds of attacks from Clinton/Obama liberals for it (ex: being called “Bernie-bros”). They very much understand that racism and misogyny accusations are wielded as weapons by liberals when given the slightest opportunity. As far as I know, this has been an internal rift within “the left” that has severely hobbled it since the 60s/70s, promoting capitalist and elitist liberals instead.
Can I upvote this more than once??
This is very, very spot-on.
And the fact that someone here has downvoted you speaks volumes to the very point you are trying to make!
The Left is extremely exclusionary and in many ways has HELPED Trump more than almost anyone else. Yes he’s a piece of shit. Yes he deserves to die in jail, but stop pushing groups away because eventually they could end up falling for MAGA propaganda. We are already seeing reports of how an alarming number of white male teens are joining right wing groups. What does the Left do? Make it worse by calling out bullshit like “white privilege” or calling them “incels” or simply “racist”. These guys are just kids and they hear one side that is constantly degrading males and constantly blaming whites… well what the fuck do you think those teens are going to do? They are going to find a group that accepts them. It is so obviously and yet so infuriating how the Left can’t see what they are doing.