Trump is NOT a “populist”

This past weekend, Jeff Stein alleged in the Washington Post that Donald Trump—after three years of promulgating laws and regulations that helped the rich and hurt the poor and low-income—is suddenly confiscating the working class “populist” turf of Democrats in year four, particularly on issues of trade and spending levels. Of course deficit spending hand-in-glove with tax cuts for the wealthy isn’t a “new” phenomenon for Republican administrations, but Stein claims that the fact that Trump doesn’t “care” and that he opposes the traditional Republican “free trade” policies—and that he isn’t exactly a paragon of so-called conservative “values” in general—means that he is a cause of concern for what Republicans actually stand for these days. But Stein goes further, implying that because Trump is supposedly more “aligned” with the Democrats’ “natural” constituency on such issues, this is a cause for concern for Democrats in 2020.

And it’s all bullshit.

If “populist” means to most people something that appeals to “all” people who are not part of the economic and power elite, then calling Trump a “populist” is clearly false—particularly since he himself is a born member of that elite “class,” and everything he has done benefits himself financially, and his political rhetoric is meant only to maintain his position of power to continue to benefit himself and those of his “class.” So the question is what is the “populist” message that Trump is using that tips the scales in his favor with his working class “base”? You won’t find it in Stein’s piece because he never once mentions them: things like racism,  xenophobia, white nationalism and white grievance. George Wallace was also called a “populist” when he ran for president in 1968 and 1972, and everyone knows what he “stood” for. The UK website Open Democracy called out this hypocrisy last October with a post entitled ‘Populist’ Can Be A Weasel Word For ‘Racist’, and That’s Dangerous. The authors made the case that “populist” is the wrong word to use to describe people like Trump:

While much of the media has been happy to settle for the terms ‘populism’, ‘populist’ and ‘populist parties’, the picture is somewhat different for academics. In 2007, Cas Mudde, one of the foremost experts in the field of populism and political extremism, rightly warned that such parties should be called ‘populist radical right’ as opposed to ‘radical right populist’, as the latter would put the emphasis on populism (a secondary characteristic) away from radical right (which Mudde argued was the core of the ideology). However, this nuance appears to have been lost on many, feeding the growing hype about populism, and avoiding the careful work done by many others on typology and terminology, as well as rigorous analysis, over the years.

The authors continue by observing that “the populist hype has led to a dual process of euphemisation and legitimization, whereby far right parties are described in a less negative manner, allowing their ideas to spread more easily into mainstream discourse. The use of ‘populism’ instead of other more accurate but also negative descriptors has been core to this dual process. This choice has been at the expense of other well-studied terms such as far right, radical right or extreme right.” 

Those “negative descriptors” includes words like racism and white nationalism. As I pointed out previously, the media was extraordinarily reluctant to describe the Tea Party “movement” as racist, despite the fact that the paranoia of the “movement” clearly had a racial dimension, particularly in its conspiratorial responses to a black president. Trump himself with that “birther” nonsense was very much a part of this “movement.” Yet the Tea Party was referred to as “populist,” with its supporters simply opposing what it saw as “socialist” policies, a belief that was always a fraud of the purposely ill-informed.

Meanwhile Trump, regardless of what he feels in his “heart” or when he hypocritically puts the one or two minorities who attend his rallies in the group behind him for the benefit of the cameras, thinks nothing of employing racist and anti-immigrant tropes at every opportunity. Except for Fox News and other right-wing media, everyone knows that Trump has employed the race card on many occasions, and yet there is a refusal to apply the “R” word in regard to what is in the hearts of many if not most Trump supporters—in spite of the fact that Trump’s ugly racial and anti-immigrant rhetoric has not put a dent in his support; they obviously “like” what he is saying and doing, like caging children in concentration camps and denying them medical care when they contract deadly diseases. While Trump said almost nothing about the El Paso massacre which he clearly inspired by his racist rhetoric which continues to this day, his sudden “interest” in anti-Semitic attacks does have a “racial” element to it as well: Jews, or at least those that Trump knows, are all white, and he believes that when push comes to shove, they will side with white nationalism, just as Stephen Miller (who is Jewish) has done. 

People like Stein apparently think that racism and nativism are not “necessary” descriptors in regard to Trump’s false brand of “populism” or that of his base support. But the authors of the Open Democracy piece say otherwise: “One does not have to look far to find deeply problematic uses of the word ‘populism’, lending a sense of democratic legitimacy to politicians and actors otherwise defending deeply exclusionary and elitist politics. While it is of course understandable for journalists and commentators to ensure that their claims are not defamatory, the use of the term ‘populism’ is clearly not neutral. It is not surprising that the term has been openly embraced by some.” It goes on to name far-right racists and politicians who have used to the term “populist” to describe themselves, like France’s Marine Le Pen, Britain’s Nigel Farage, and Richard Spencer and Gavin McInnes in the U.S. Furthermore, 

As a result, racism often seems to be sidelined: not as an overt political tactic, but because people think that the term is too polemical, difficult to define or requires more evidence, sometimes for fear of defamation. It is thus usually only used in the context of the liberal democratic order to describe the most extreme cases, such as instances which link to historical forms such as slavery, biological racism and Nazism or fascism. The process of euphemisation takes place not when racism is in these historical and almost caricatured forms, but in its more subtle and structural manifestations. This facilitates the denial of racism, as we see in the construction of the ‘post-race’ narrative, according to which our societies are said to have overcome racism, bar in its most extreme and exceptional forms. This means that systemic discrimination and subtle forms of racist politics, for example claiming to target religion or culture instead of race, are ignored. While concerns over defamation are understandable, this approach is nonetheless flawed as racism and the mainstreaming of racist ideas in public discourse has a far clearer measurable impact for those at its sharp end, than concepts such as populism, nationalism or nativism.

The authors debunk the claim that we live in a “post racial” world, and that racism is “in the past.” The demonizing and dehumanizing attitude toward Hispanics and Hispanic immigrants in this country that Trump and Miller have fostered clearly reveal as much. Using the term “populism” attempts to undercut and even deny the reality of this racism; “Moreover, when this is called out, accusations of racism are often portrayed as being worse than racism itself, and even at times a kind of reverse racism.” An example was when a UK morning television show host, Naga Munchetty, was suspended for commenting about her experience with “embedded racism in relation to Donald Trump’s ‘go home’ comments. The BBC’s justification was that in an attempt at impartiality, it does not condone ‘calling out people for being liars or racist.’” 

Although there are those in the U.S. media who are willing to call out Trump—especially the Washington Post with its ongoing count—on his many lies, there are few who are willing to make the connection between Trump’s racial and anti-immigrant rhetoric and actions with what his “base” wants as well. This is not “populism,” this is racism, and white nationalism. Period.