President Donald Trump’s most ardent supporters are motivated by their prejudices, not economic concerns, social scientists contend. Will Democrats stop trying to win their votes?

In January, Smith and his University of Kansas colleague, associate sociology professor Eric A. Hanley, published a 47-page paper deconstructing the Republican president’s appeal. Building on decades of scholarship about the lure of authoritarianism and their own analysis of American voting psychology in 2012 and 2016, the social scientists make an argument that some may find offensive and others unsurprising.

It goes something like this: Trump’s biggest supporters are motivated by bigotry and want him to hurt the people they dislike.


Note: There’s a lot to unpack in this article, and this just seems to be the hook.

  • ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world
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    7 hours ago

    “Centrist” pundits be like: “No, it’s the democrats, who went too far by language policing whites for calling blacks a historically accepted word blacks use in rap music, and other double standards, especially within law enforcement, favoring blacks over other races.”

  • socsa@piefed.social
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    19 hours ago

    The entire problem is very specifically that they lie about the economy in lockstep, and the media reports it and then idiot centrists are like “oh yeah I guess the economy is bad? People keep talking about it so it must be true.”

  • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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    20 hours ago

    Wasn’t this settled way back when?

    Anyway, I seem to remember that digging deeper on donvict’s base after Hillary’s deplorables “gaffe” (not a fucking “gaffe” to tell the goddamn truth about awful people) found that she was basically correct - a portion of them are racists, xenophobes, homophobes, misogynists…

  • angstylittlecatboy@reddthat.com
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    19 hours ago

    They should never have been trying to court his “most ardent” supporters to begin with. It’s the swing voters and non voters they need. (And the centrist agenda isn’t the way to do it.)

  • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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    20 hours ago

    It goes something like this: Trump’s biggest supporters are motivated by bigotry and want him to hurt the people they dislike.

    Hence his supporter whining that he’s not hurting the people he “needs” to be hurting. I’m sure many of us personally know people just like this and most definitely do get a chubby when they think about someone like donvict actively harming certain segments of society.

  • kittenzrulz123@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    1 day ago

    Hmmm, I wonder if the political base that waves Confederate and nazi flags, serves a fascist dictatorship, and works alongside fascists globally might be racist? What a real head scratcher that is, who knows really

    /s