From Grievance to Insurrection: Authoritarian Populism Today

How do we understand American politics, especially the polarization that led to the rise, election, a failed insurrection, and potential rebirth of Donald Trump and Trumpism, a unique American expression of reactionary populism that perhaps shades into neofascism? By now, numerous articles, opinion pieces, and books have considered the Trump phenomenon from diverse perspectives. American history and culture, that began with a revolution, and then a constitution that gave disproportionate power to Southern slave states legacies that should be noted. There are indeed a variety of ways to try to understand the ascent of right-wing extremism culminating in the election of Trump. As will be seen, sociology, as the study of society, its structure, classes and groups, its values, its processes of change and reproduction offer a particular slant, but one that is also interdisciplinary. Taken together, we need to ask the following: what led to the rise of authoritarian populisms, what is the future of American democracy, and perhaps many other modern nations as well?

The growing political polarization of the United States began in the late 1960s, as a growing number of progressive movements fostered a conservative backlash and Nixon became president. This trend of progressive movements and change, continued, in the early years of the 21st century, there seemed to be a wave of progressive of movements, the Zapatistas of Chiapas, anti-WTO protests, the World Social Forum, the ‘Pink Tide’ in South America, Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street and so on, Black Lives Matter, 350.org, and # Me Too and so on. But at the same time or in part as a reaction to these progressive movements, as well as the adverse consequences of neoliberal capitalism, we witnessed a growing wave of various reactionary, authoritarian populisms, ethno-racial nationalisms, often with a religious trope especially after 2008 when neoliberal capitalism imploded and left a legacy of economic uncertainty, and then an African American was elected president that was an affront to many white people. Even before the election, many such racists embraced the ‘birther’ notion that Obama was born a Muslim in Kenya, educated in madrasas, and was not a ‘true American’. Among the loudest voices of that lie was that of Donald Trump. We began to clearly see the politics of backlash when the Koch funded Astroturfed Tea Party emerged (see Langman and Lundskow, 2012.) The Tea Party was primarily more rural or exurban, more likely older, white, conservative Christians. Most of the Tea Party rallies and meetings upheld the birther conspiracy, and fears that Obama would bail out the undeserving victims of the housing scam, and provide ‘free’ healthcare to all—a step toward socialism and the demise of American ‘freedom’ which for many is the ‘freedom’ from affording to pay medical bills and or medications. They managed to elect several representatives that became known as the Freedom Caucus which was to become a conservative political force. While the Tea Party agenda was incorporated into the much broader Make America Great Again movement, the polarization of the United States, often seen in ever more pernicious ‘culture wars’ that grew more vicious with the election of Trump and his politics of grievance, victimization, and promises of redemption. But these antidemocratic, reactionary movements spread across the globe that sometimes shade into and indeed cross into fascisms.

While our focus is largely on the United States, we do note how the consequences of social-cultural change, along with neoliberalism, inequality, precarity, and often immigration, often by the undocumented, have led to various reactionary authoritarian populisms to ethno-nationalisms in the United Kingdom, Hungary, India, Poland, Brazil, and of course, Donald Trump. But Varga and Buzogani show the global spread of these various right-wing movements, while Morelock and Narita touched upon Brazil.

Given the long-standing grievances that many people experienced, especially following 2008 implosion and election of Barack Obama, in 2016 Donald Trump entered the Republican primaries and crassly ignored established standards of respect, denigrated the other candidates and openly expressed racist and sexist vitriol. He rejected science, and eventually any aspect of reality he did not like as so-called ‘fake news’. Trump’s support depended on powerful emotions, fear, and anxiety over cultural demise, compounded by economic uncertainty, and like most populisms, anger and ressentiment to the corrupt self-serving elites who have been responsible. As president, he treated the office as a means of personal gain, the ultimate grift opportunity with minimal concern for actual governance and cavalier indifference to actual information whether from his own intelligence agencies or the Center for Disease Control. In place of rational policy proposals, he gave voice to the growing politics of anger, discontent, grievance, and victimization and promised amelioration—‘Making America Great Again’. His supposed support for the ‘concerns’ of the ‘real people’, meaning supporting white supremacy, traditional phallic aggressive masculinity, conservative religious morality, and a sense of ‘national purity’, meaning the exclusion of various racial, ethnic, immigrant, or gender minorities, whose growing numbers and political power were feared by those who feel that undeserving un-American people are taking over the country. To the end, he replaced actual reality (such as losing the election on 2020) with fantasies about restoring his presidency and the imaginary past he claims to represent.

Authoritarian populist movements, if not perhaps neofascist movements, have generated extensive scholarship and journalism that has revealed consistent themes of populisms in general and Trumpism in particular. (There are differences between authoritarian populisms and fascism, but this discussion is outside the scope of the present volume, see Berezin, 2019.) These accounts have shown a long-standing pattern in America history, those groups who identify with a ‘privileged white’, Christian, male, heteronormative domination and authority, facing demographic and/or cultural decline that bring waning privileges, evoking what has been called ‘status anxiety’, a fear of demise and replacement by ‘darker dangerous minorities’, often immigrants, ‘not real Americans’ whose growing numbers and political power means cultural decline. This pattern was already clear in the antebellum South, the Ku Klux Klan, anti-immigrant movements and so on. Most support (in Europe and the United States) comes from people who embrace white racial superiority, patriarchy/sexism, essentialist notions of gender and often, Christian ethnonationalist domination based on inerrant biblical authority. Today, such groups increasingly embrace an ‘illiberal democracy’, a one-party rule and goodly number are likely to support a nihilistic, violent, civil war to tear down American society to maintain their privileges (cf. Pape, 2021). For many people, especially in certain classes, mostly but not entirely the lower middle classes of small businessmen artisans, and/or lower echelon state officials, often various law enforcement officers, especially from rural, small-town, or exurban communities, increasingly embrace a ‘illiberal democracy’, a one-party rule and a nihilistic, violent civil war to tear down American society. But there are small segments of the very rich who support such movements which not only resonates with their prejudices, but promises to keep taxes low and business regulation minimal. There are some segments of managerial and/or professional classes that support these reactionary movements, many of those more upper middle classes, arrested for the insurrection, actually came from blue states, and most came from relatively upscale neighborhoods, which have nevertheless been showing rapid demographic change as upwardly mobile minorities and/or immigrants had moved in—and as such, seen as a threat to their privilege status (Pape, 2021).

Many people fear an imminent civil war, not between uniformed armies on battlefields, but more like Northern Ireland, with constant bombings, kidnappings, and targeted assassinations. Barbara Walter (2022a), having studied civil wars for 30 years, fears that

We may face an era of scattered yet persistent acts of violence: bombings, political assassinations, destabilizing acts of asymmetric warfare carried out by extremist groups, relatively small, loosely aligned collections of self-aggrandizing warriors that have coalesced via social media and think that the only way to combat an irredeemable, non-white, socialist republic is through violence and other extra-political means. (Walter, 2022b)

She has found a consistent pattern leading to civil wars beginning with the (1) decline of democracy, (2) growing factionalization based on ethnic, religious, or racial identity and the exclusion of others, and (3) what she calls ‘downgrading’, when a dominant group faces declining status or prestige, they will often embrace violence to retain power and status.

These various reactionary movements seek to restore an imagined Golden Age, a time when straight white men could easily find stable, secure employment with decent wages, benefits and growing incomes, while their identities went unchallenged. But that era has eroded in face of neoliberal globalization and the social changes that have adversely impacted the ‘real Americans’ whose declining racial and gender privilege makes them feel victimized and angry toward ‘establishment elites’, namely globalists and socialists (often euphemisms for Jews). These ‘phony’ Americans have supported racial equality, sexual equality including freedom for women to control their own sexuality and bodies, gender fluidity and so on and freedom from sexual harassment, sexual violence, and rape. And these ‘corrupt’ elites allegedly stole the 2020 election Trump. Furthermore authoritarian elements in the population, anger and anxiety fueled many grievances and prepared the ground to support an ‘outsider’ who promised restoration of a previous era when racial inequality, gender inequality, heteronormativity, and a ‘Christian’ nation were unquestioned.

This orientation leads to attacks on anyone who is not a white, conservative middle-aged heterosexual male or woman who support these values. Their goal? To restore their entitlement to the cultural domination and political power from a time when the ‘real Americans’, those like themselves, ruled over the ‘inferior people and cultures’ of racial, ethnic, or gendered minorities, fit for nothing more than subordination and servitude. As Antonio discusses, this dichotomy of ‘friend’ or ‘foe’ was essential for Carl Schmitt, the Nazi era philosopher. Today, reactionary politics similarly target the ‘enemies’ of the ‘ real people’ who seemingly threaten the familiar social relations of recent memory. Their goal? This ‘lost era’ vision takes various forms, ranging from the supposed grit and guns of the 18th to 19th-centuries frontier, to the alleged harmony of slavery in old Dixie, to the clear gender boundaries of the 1950s, to the supposed meritocracy of the Reagan 1980s. Whichever fantasy a person embraces, they imagine the restoration of an allegedly glorious past when everyone ‘knew’ their proper place in the social hierarchy, and everyone was allegedly happy and prosperous, each according to their God-given ability. At the same time, some, and perhaps found in all the reactionary movements of today, recognize their vision as little more than fantasy, and thus, these movements have an underlying nihilism. For example, the rioters who stormed the capitol building had no plan for a new government (maybe a vague notion of restoring Donald Trump), only the destruction of the current one. A few cognitively ascertain that nefarious forces stole the election, and instead enjoy the gratification of faith in a stolen election and the thrill of violent upheaval, much like what has been called the ‘seductions of crime’, in this case, violence for the sake of violence.

For progressive sociologists, clearly the contributors to this volume, and many of the readers as well, the future of democracy is a paramount question. As many of the articles suggest, American democracy did work in 2020—barely. The insurrection on 6 January 2021 was the product of a long-planned coup; the violent invasion of the nation’s capital, was a well-filmed reality, and hundreds have been jailed, that the Republican party today still dismisses, denies, or even justify. Many of the authors have been inspired to continue the work of the Frankfurt School, whose early studies and theories to understand the rise of Nazism in the early-20th century, offers a starting point for understanding the various reactionary movements of today. One of the major aspects of this tradition, still relevant today, was the powerful role emotions, fear, anxiety, and anger that might lead to the embrace of authoritarianism as an ideology and movement that had ‘an elective affinity’ with and underlying authoritarian character structure and receptivity to certain modes of propaganda. For example, Langman, updating the insights of Wilhelm Reich and Erich Fromm, suggests that reactionary as well as progressive movements of today, articulating different notions of identity, values and visions rests upon underlying authoritarian or democratic social character structures.

This collection further integrates historical and contemporary empirical research on class, race, gender, and identity. This work addresses the intersections of capitalist economic, political and cultural crises of legitimacy with emotional distress that drives allegiance to a perceived powerful ‘strongman’ who promise revenge against the various transgressors, an aggression projected to and inflicted upon the ‘enemies’ of the people. Such ‘strongmen’ articulating grievances, targeting ‘blameworthy’ enemies for punishment and with promises that she or he and she or he alone can alleviate the distress, provides a variety of psychic rewards, gratifications, and compensations to the followers, often more salient then economic benefits. Recall the insurrectionist mobs shouting, ‘shoot Nancy Pelosi’ and ‘hang Mike Spence’. And they brought gallows to the insurrection. This is not to suggest a psychological reductionism, nor suggest that supporters of right-wing mobilizations, even extremists are mentally ill. But rather, what are the economic, social, political, cultural forces that dispose social-psychological factors to explain how and why many people follow if not seek out authoritarian leadership, accept erroneous information, and are willing to give their lives for the sake of such causes.

Thus, several of the authors deal with the role of political economy and its crises, the nature of culture/ideology and the class basis of political orientation, the tendencies toward social mobilization, and the social psychological factors that influence people’s beliefs and impel people to act. This is not to reduce politics to psychology nor focus entirely on Trump, who is a symptom of the economic and cultural contexts of our times that long antedate his arrival on the scene, namely, the growing toleration for social diversity and the adversities of globalization, growing inequality, and precarity. This severe crisis of neoliberalism that began with the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2007 and exploded as the financial crisis of 2008, led to a variety of ‘legitimation crises’ as banks forced millions from their homes in foreclosure, and as millions more lost their jobs and savings. Moreover, the progressive movements of the 1960s challenged the privilege of white, heteronormative, and often Christian males. These factor, in turn, disposed many to anti-democratic, authoritarian ethno-racial nationalisms, consistent with American mythology, that only needed a believable ‘strongman’, who, like most fascist leaders, articulating grievances, targeting ‘blameworthy’ enemies, promises to assuage humiliation, restore a better time, and punish those responsible. She or he claims that she or he, she alone can alleviate the distress, provides a variety of psychic rewards, gratification, and compensations, often more salient than economic benefits. This is not to suggest a psychological reductionism, nor suggest that supporters of right-wing mobilizations, even extremists are mentally ill. But rather, what are the structural factors, economic, social, political and cultural that influence the social psychological level to explain how and why many people follow if not seek out authoritarian leadership, accept erroneous information, and are willing to give their lives for the cause—as did many now deceased Trump supporters who rejected vaccines, masks, and denied the reality of COVID-19. (The epidemiologists have shown that COVID deaths have been several times higher in counties that voted for Trump that for Biden.)

In this recent social context then, the authors in this collection seek to explain the rise of reactionary populisms if not and American fascism with the intersection of race/ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, as the key variables of generational change, and on the other side, the reaction to restore a supposedly lost American paradise. Working from different perspectives, these contributions look at the cultural values, political views, religious beliefs, personality traits, emotional reactions, and wild conspiracies that constitute the contemporary American right-wing. Whether they can overthrow democratic government one way or another, whether through control of elections, or Civil War, is beyond the scope of this special issue, but as these essays show, millions of Americans want to destroy democratic, pluralist society, and if democracy dies in the hearts and minds of the people, no constitution, legal, or political system can save it.

Authoritarian populisms typically construct and widely distribute a variety of false narratives—especially conspiracy theories. As Hermann Goering made clear, if a clear-cut lie is repeated often enough, a number of people, already primed and motivated to believe it, will accept it as a truth. In his classical analysis of the ‘paranoid style’, Hofstetter (1964) illustrated a long-standing American tendency to embrace conspiracies styles that ‘evokes the sense of heated exaggeration and suspiciousness’ that is quite often behind conspiracy theories and/or culture wars that often result in moral panics, such as fear of control by the Illuminati, Masons, the Pope, and the Red Scare of the 1920s followed by McCarthyism that view dangerous communists in the government and media. Today, this can be seen for example that Critical RaceTheory is widely taught in public schools, it is not, and teaches students to hate the United States, pedophiles are everywhere and school-based sex education ‘grooms’ young children for homosexuality. For the most part, these conspiracies serve to allay fear, anxiety, uncertainty, and limited knowledge. These political conspiracies typically involve critiques of corrupt, if not evil elites and nefarious cabals. Such conspiracies often become the basis for establishing communities of meaning for heretofore atomized, powerless populations that join together and mobilize to address and indeed fight these ‘evils’.

Today, the Internet has facilitated the rapid spread of both information and indeed, misinformation. Thus, for example, most Republicans really do believe with all their hearts and souls that Trump really did win the election and a nefarious cabal orchestrated a vast conspiracy to steal it. Notwithstanding, almost every court case was thrown out including many judges who were supported by Trump. This biggest of the ‘big lies’ of course culminated in the violent 6 January insurrection which is discussed by Antonio. Any conspiracy that offends an authoritarian’s sense of self-righteousness will work, and the more elaborate and viciously exotic, the better, such as the long-dead Hugo Chavez control of voting machines through Internet connected thermostats, to COVID as a Chinese bio weapon, and the Q-Anon believers who think that Trump was attempting to ‘save innocent children’ from Satanic cannibal pedophile Democrats and Hollywood celebrities, and various dog whistles for Jews who control the entire world. The rapid dissemination of such beliefs was clearly enabled by the Internet, social media. Thus, several authors, Lundskow, Morelock and Narita, MacMillan and Rush, Di Maggio and Connor and MacMurray address the role of conspiracy theories especially the COVID as Chinese bioweapon hoax, the ‘stolen election’, and the Q-Anon crusade against cannibalistic pedophiles.

Rational observers have seen Trump as an ill-informed, politically inexperienced bumbler, and consequently, cannot understand, much less to explain, how his followers could exalt him as a great leader who will Make America Great Again. To understand Trump’s appeal, we need to understand the power of emotion to override rational considerations. Specifically, we need to understand the power of charisma in the Weberian sense, the belief that certain people or things possess supernatural powers. While most ‘objective’ observers have seen Trump as an ill-informed, politically inexperienced bumbler, it becomes difficult to understand how for many people he is seen as a charismatic leader, which, in the tradition of Weber, means that he is seen by certain groups, already predisposed, as having certain ‘superior’ qualities enabling him to perform ‘miracles’ such as making America great again, restoring white, male, Christian domination. But the sociological analysis of charisma as seen in papers by Joose and Zelinski, charisma is bestowed by a receptive audience, and for those so disposed, Trump articulated a berserk anger, indeed sadomasochistic aggression toward the transgressors, both the evil, ‘socialist’ elites responsible for adversity, and the various subaltern Others, interlopers, who are not really ‘true’ members of the nation—but are threats to the real America.

Moreover, for his religious followers he promised to uphold and empower conservative, if not fundamentalist Christian values as clearly seen in pro-life, homophobic policies, and the movement of the American Embassy to Jerusalem, religious, some right-wing pastors embracing ‘Last Days’ theologies have seen him as the prelude to the ‘second coming’. For the true believer who sees the divine in the Leader, there legitimacy depends on their perceived ability to battle supernatural enemies and performs miracles, in the case of Trump, he promised to turn back time and restore the ‘real America’ and to rid the country of all Others, the ‘socialist globalist elites, and the subalterns who violate the “real American” ideals – including the uppity women lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (LGBTQ), various non-white minorities and immigrants, and Muslims. This perceived cleansing supersedes or will somehow magically correct concerns about material problems, such as tax structures and laws that favor the rich and soak the middle and lower incomes, or a massive military budget with minimal investment in social services and infrastructure, and no national health care. For a broader range of Republicans, typically lower middle-class small business owners, he promises the restoration of prosperity and security, especially given the aftermath of 2008 that did see many small businesses go bankrupt. Many of his supporters erroneously believe that large numbers of subalterns getting ‘more than they deserve’ because of corruption, ‘woke elites granting special and unfair privileges that allegedly discriminate against white people who are feeling “left behind”.

Moreover, as some of the papers note or imply, we are now in a transitional period, what Gramsci called an ‘interregnum’, the period in which the old is dying and the new has not yet been born. At such times of economic, cultural, and political paradigmatic shift, all sorts of ‘morbid symptoms’ emerge. If the extensive videos of the insurrection are not sufficient, the recent increases in violent crimes and murders, organized looting, bullying, harassment, disruptive behavior, voter suppression laws, and open rejection of verified elections results surely fit the definition of morbid symptoms. We should however note that while this collection has been largely concerned with the anger of the various reactionary, populist, nationalist if not fascist tendencies, we might note that at the same time as an insurrectionist mob invaded the capitol, a huge multicoalition racial of progressive young people organized and mobilized voters in the state of Georgia, a traditionally conservative state, elected an African American and a Jewish senator. Far less evident in the daily news, the rising cohort of the young, Gen Z, the Zoomers, reacting to both the economic realities for young people today and a strong antipathy toward Trump, are the most liberal, progressive generation in the history of the United Stated. Will they spearhead an inclusive, democratic, multiracial society? Only time will tell, and they will need allies.

Toward this end, we offer these essays to understand how a crisis of democracy in the United States and elsewhere developed, and why illiberal and fascist states increasingly appeal to certain segments of the population. We consider sociocultural, social psychological, and political-economic factors. Above all, we hope to contribute to a dialogue and to social action that will unmask and delegitimate ideologies of fantasy and hate, and instill a sense of reality and solutions to social problems based in science, compassion, and justice.