Claudia Moscovici 
The intriguing and, to many, disconcerting fact that Donald Trump retains his popular base no matter what he does, how many Americans die from Covid-19 or how bad the economy gets has motivated journalists, including myself, to try to gain insight into the mindset of those who seem to support him unconditionally. It seems like Trump might have been right when he boasted four years ago at a campaign rally “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.” Even the mistakenly misogynist “pussy-grabbing” video released shortly before the 2016 election didn’t cost him the white female vote. According to an exit poll, about 53 percent of white women voted for Trump: a disconcerting number given his outspoken and unapologetic sexism.
Despite appearances, the Trump phenomenon that is mystifying his critics is not mainly about the figure of Trump himself. It’s part of a larger ideological polarization between liberals and conservatives that risks taking the United States to the brink of autocracy. It is this battle that has created the right conditions for someone like Trump to assume power and gain such a loyal following in the first place. Some of the political theories proposed by Hannah Arendt in her groundbreaking study of totalitarianism, The Orginins of Totalitarianism, can give us insights into what is happening in America today, even though we are far removed from becoming a totalitarian state. Arendt published her book in 1951, in the wake of the rise of two devastating political movements, Nazism and Communism. One of her key concepts, that of “classes” driven by largely economic self-interest becoming “masses”, driven by loyalty to a charismatic leader and adhering to the party line, are relevant to explaining aspects of Trump’s loyal following, especially when most of his policies go against the economic interests of his largely working and middle class base.
Democrats, and liberal-leaning journalists in particular, have been trying to understand Trump’s unwavering appeal to over 40 percent of Americans. Ezra Klein observed in his September 2nd article in Vox.com that Trump polarizes the right and the left to the point where neither side is willing to budge on their views of his administration. Even after the charges of treason and collusion with Russia; the nearly 200,000 deaths since March due to Covid; the loss of health insurance coverage by 12 million Americans; and his sometimes brutal response to Black Lives Matter protests, Trump’s approval stands at 42.2 percent. As Klein observes, “Everything had happened, and, politically, nothing had mattered. Or, at least, not much has changed.” He proposes that Trump is such an ideologically charged and polarizing figure that Americans respond to his presidency by reverting to tribalism. Nothing will persuade most Democrats to vote for Trump just as very little will dissuade most Republicans from voting for him. (https://www.vox.com/2020/9/2/21409364/trump-approval-rating-2020-election-voters-coronavirus-convention-polls).
This leads us to ask what creates such political polarization in our country today. Thomas L. Friedman has advanced a plausible hypothesis to explain this phenomenon. In his recent New York Times article, “Who Can Win America’s Politics of Humiliation?” he argues that Trump supporters feel demeaned and devalued by the liberal elites that support the Democratic party. He explains that “many of his core supporters actually hate the people who hate Trump, more than they care about Trump or any particular action he takes, no matter how awful.” (New York Times, September 8, 2020) According to Friedman, Trump’s base—particularly working class and middle class males—feel humiliated. They believe that the Democratic party has abandoned them and its members hold them in low esteem: “Humiliation, in my view, is the most underestimated force in politics and international relations. The poverty of dignity explains so much more behavior than the poverty of money… People will absorb hardship, hunger and pain. They will be grateful for jobs, cars and benefits. But if you make people feel humiliated, they will respond with a ferocity unlike any other emotion, or just refuse to lift a finger for you.” (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/08/opinion/biden-trump-humiliation.html)
I think that this analysis, similarly articulated by Michael Moore in a similar fashion when he warned us in 2016 why Trump would win the election, explains a lot about Trump’s support. I’m not sure, however, that I fully agree with Friedman that many Trump supporters feel humiliated by the left. It may be that they are outraged by the sense that the left would like them to feel humiliated by identifying them as a main cause of racism, xenophobia and sexism. Many of them see themselves as the silent majority who have been dis-empowered and stigmatized by liberals. Instead of shame or humiliation, many respond with anger. When the Democrats march to protest discrimination and violence against innocent African American victims–who are undoubtedly targeted disproportionally by police violence due to systemic racism–many on the right respond defensively. The slogan of the protesters, “Black Lives Matter” is often met by Trump voters with the counterclaim that “All Lives Matter.” They feel like they are being blamed and shamed for the history of racism and slavery even when they do not hold racist views and don’t obviously benefit from “white privilege”. Many of them live in poverty, have no access to quality education, hold menial jobs and have few opportunities for advancement. Trump, in his ideological defense of working class and middle class white males in particular, and his corresponding attack on what he calls the “political correctness” of the educated liberal elites, seems to speak their language and air their grievances. That is all, however, that the current President has to offer them. Economically Trump doesn’t serve working class and middle class interests. But, evidently, hearing the President voice their grievances and sense of outrage means a lot to them.
The problem, however, is not that the Democratic party espouses a more egalitarian ideology that addresses the impediments and discrimination faced by minorities and women, as Trump and many conservatives claim. That is a positive phenomenon. The problem is when the rhetoric used to identify discrimination of one group causes another discrimination, making the dominant group feel stigmatized and excluded from public discourse.
Unfortunately, our two main political parties are currently engaging in an ideological war that pits Americans against each other while avoiding addressing in a substantive manner the real problems facing this country. Your average American today has fewer job prospects, vastly higher healthcare costs, more debt due to paying for the skyrocketing cost of college tuition, and fewer chances of getting Social Security and Medicare benefits when they grow old than previous generations did. Despite their good will, Democrats, partly because of presssures from special interest groups, partly because of very real impediments posed by the President and Republicans in Congress—have not succeeded either in solving these problems and significantly raising the standard of living of middle-class and working class Americans. As for Republicans, since Ronald Reagan they have adhered to a “trickle-down” economic theory, which stipulates that cutting taxes for the wealthy will stimulate investment in the economy and create jobs. For the most part, this method has failed to improve the lot of the working and middle classes and has helped create a small class of obscenely wealthy people. In 2013, the top ten percent of American families owned 76 percent of the wealth in the country. This trend has only gotten worse during the past seven years, widening the gap between the rich and the poor. Crushed by the rising costs of healthcare, education and housing and plagued by unemployment, the middle class risks disappearing altogether.
While the Democrats attempt to serve the interests of the poor, for a whole slew of reasons, they have not been able to adequately address the growing inequities in American society. The Affordable Care Act passed by Obama in 2010 was a step in the right direction. It has offered affordable health insurance for millions of low income Americans, who would have otherwise been without any healthcare coverage. But it has hurt many middle class Americans, for whom premiums go up by a fourth to a third of the cost each few years. For many working families, health insurance consumes a large portion of their income. Many women have their own set of grievances. Most women in America now work for a living to help support their families (usually earning less pay than men for equivalent jobs). When they arrive home in the evening, they are expected to do more than their fair share of housework and childcare. Covid has only exacerbated gender inequality, since women disproportionately shoulder the burden of navigating working from home and childcare/education. Neither party is offering affordable daycare opportunities for working class and middle-class moms, which used to be an important part of the platform of the liberal feminist movement led by Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem during the 1970’s.
In the absence of social and economic policies that significantly improve the lives of working and middle class Americans, the U.S. is currently locked in an ideological battle that has polarized the country into two different tribes – conservative and liberal – each organized around its own set of victims; each with its own set of legitimate grievances. Due to the current political polarization in America, we are starting to witness the beginnings of what Hannah Arendt depicts in The Origins of Totalitarianism, her insightful book on the rise of autocracy and totalitarian regimes, as a transformation of “classes” into “masses”. When classes become masses, societies run the risk of becoming autocratic. Unlike classes, Arendt explains, masses are amorphous and easily swayed. They’re moved by superficial rhetoric and empty fervor rather than united by a common identity or shared economic interests. According to Arendt, “The term masses applies only when we deal with people who either because of their sheer numbers, or indifference, or a combination of both, cannot be integrated into any organization based on common interest” (The Origins of Totalitarianism, 311). This political and social apathy isn’t enough for people to lend their support to autocratic and totalitarian movements, however. An additional factor comes into play. The masses must come under the spell of charismatic malevolent leaders, such as Hitler and Stalin, who gain control over society and destroy the last vestige of human decency and individualism.
Trump, despite some autocratic tendencies, is far from being a Hitler or a Stalin. To compare him to such murderous sociopaths leaders would be to trivialize the trauma and the carnage these dictators caused in the world. But the almost blind loyalty and fanaticism that Trump inspires in many of his followers, who dismiss proven facts that run contrary to their perceived interests as “fake news” or “liberal propaganda”, is itself very worrisome and indicative of unquestioning mass-like behavior. The masses, Arendt explains, are fanatical rather than ideological (adhering to a firm set of political or economic principles) or idealist (aspiring, utopically, to moral or political perfection). More extreme than a mob, upon which fanaticism has a short-lived hold, the masses can fall under the spell of a charismatic leader even when it’s no longer in their self-interest.
How is this self-defeating attitude possible? Arendt elaborates: “identification with the movement and total conformism seem to have destroyed the very capacity for experience, even if it be as extreme as torture or fear of death” (The Origins of Totalitarianism, 308). Totalitarian and autocratic movements transform ordinary human beings into philistines. Arendt describes “the philistine” as a middle class individual who is isolated from his social class. Empathy and social bonds weaken. The philistine focuses so much on his own narrow needs that he views victims as “Others” rather than as fellow human beings. “Nothing proved easier to destroy than the privacy and the private morality or people who thought of nothing but safeguarding their private lives,” Arendt elaborates. “After a few years of power and systematic co-ordination, the Nazis could rightly announce: ‘The only person who is still a private individual in Germany is somebody who is asleep’” (The Origins of Totalitarianism, 338-9).
I am not arguing that the United States has become a totalitarian or even an autocratic regime at this point. But the seeds of the development of autocracy have been sown. This is not just because of Trump, who is indeed a charismatic leader for his staunch supporters and who does sow division in the country. It’s more due to the fact that, for decades, the two main political parties in this country have substituted offering socioeconomic policies that address the economic needs of the majority of the American people with a diversionary ideological warfare against each other.
The Democrats claim to fight for the rights of oppressed and discriminated groups: African Americans, minorities, women, immigrants. But unless the progressive wing of the Democratic party becomes strong enough to enact economic policies that address the inequities and disadvantages of these groups, all they will truly offer is reasons to feel that the other political party is far worse for them. So often you see Joe Biden supporters state that they will vote “for anyone but Trump” or for “any functioning adult” rather than affirm their support for Biden. In turn, under the Trump administration, the Republican party has launched a highly effective and vitriolic ideological battle against liberals and their values. They claim to represent the majority of Americans in putting down the so-called “political correctness” of the liberal elites. But they have little substantive to offer that improves the lives of average middle-class and workingclass Americans. In fact, quite the contrary. Not only did Trump cut taxes for the rich, but he plans to deplete the last vestige of social support most Americans may have in the future. As a response to Covid-19, he suspended the Payroll tax which funds Medicare and Social Security. If elected in November, Trump vowed to eliminate it altogether, stating: “If I’m victorious on November 3rd, I plan to forgive these taxes and make permanent cuts to the payroll tax.” These cuts, experts predict, would deplete the funds for Social Security and Medicare by 2023.
I believe that the only way we can emerge out of this ideological warfare between the Right and the Left is by asking more of our political parties and not allowing divisive ideological rhetoric to divert us from our needs. We need to demand social and economic policies that improve our standard of living. The Republicans can reclaim their patriotism by strengthening American ties to our European allies in NATO and offering veterans quality benefits. They can prove their fiscal conservativeness by balancing the budget: something they seem to care about far more when Democrats are in office. In turn, the Democrats could rebuild their ties to the working and middle classes, whose allegiance is slipping, through bolstering unions that fight for better pay, benefits and work conditions; through giving their best to pass Medicare for all; raising the minimum wage and improving the lot of the working class.
Above all, as Friedman’s article implies, both parties need to start listening more to the needs of all people – including white males – not just to those in groups they feel are most deserving of their attention. We have not yet entered the realm of autocratic, much less totalitarian, mass society as described by Hannah Arendt in The Origins of Totalitarianism. But for as long as our two main political parties offer the American people a war of ideologies that leads to mutual disdain and tribalism, we are approaching the danger zone. The popularity of Donald Trump is not the cause of this mass phenomenon, even though he exploits and stokes political antagonisms. As many have stated, Trump is the symptom not the cause of American divisions. His unwavering popularity over the past few years is the sign of the growing despair of large segments of American society who feel disempowered and blamed for their very identity, all the while knowing that they are not truly privileged; in fact, that they are worse off than their parents’ generation. For many working and middle class Americans, in the absence of either party offering viable socioeconomic solutions to their problems, fighting against their perceived political adversaries and venting their spleen is the only power they have left.
