ARTICLE: Expert on the far right says it's pointless to tell people Donald Trump is bad.

[bdamomma]

https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/expert-on-the-far-right-says-its-pointless-to-tell-people-donald-trump-is-bad-heres-what-we-can-do-instead/?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=3275

snip of article:

Cas Mudde is one of the world’s leading experts on right-wing extremism, populism, democracy and the global new right. Mudde is the Stanley Wade Shelton UGAF Professor in the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Georgia and a contributing writer for the Guardian. He is the author of several books, including “The Far Right in America,” “On Extremism and Democracy in Europe” and “Populism: A Very Short Introduction” (with Cristobal Rovira Kaltwasser). His newest book is “The Far Right Today.”

Has this illiberal, anti-democratic right-wing movement constructed its own reality? Or is it something else?

There are two parts of the far right. On the one hand there are the neo-Nazis who in fact are not very “new” in their beliefs and ideologies. Today’s neo-Nazis stand for roughly the same things as their predecessors.

But the radical right isn’t that much different from the mainstream. The idea of nativism is pretty much based on the idea of the nation-state, which is a dominant principle in most politics, particularly in Europe . For example, the idea that Germany is a country of Germans. If that’s the case, everyone who is not German is a threat.

Authoritarians believe in law and order from their own point of view. They even believe in some version of “democracy.” But for these members of the far right, democracy is pretty much just unfettered majority rule.

How do you make sense of the relationship between what was the mainstream right — here in the U.S., that being the Republican Party — and the more radical elements of the far right?

There are significant differences between, for example, the role of far-right ideas and people within the British Conservative Party, the U.S. Republican Party and Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in France. The mainstream right has pretty much always been pro-market.

Even when they were open to immigrants, they were considered “guests,” particularly in Europe. As guests, they were expected to adjust to the country they were in. Even the whole concept of “tolerance” — which most social democrats, for example, would stand for — is still a hierarchical concept. It means that, I, the real authentic native person, tolerates you, the immigrant. In practice, I have the power to tolerate you. Now, that was never really a problem as long as the number of immigrants was small.

When that number became bigger, it became much more problematic. And you see this in the most extreme form in the United States. One of the key reasons why Donald Trump won in 2016, and why his type of politics win, is a massive fear of the U.S. becoming a “majority minority” country.

A changing society, white fears of becoming a “minority” in “their own country,” and of course 9/11 and rampant Islamophobia helped to create this moment with Trump being president.

Why do Trump’s followers embrace him given that his policies, and that of these right-wing populists more generally, will hurt most of his own rank-and-file supporters, both economically and in other ways?

The vast majority of voters for the radical right, let alone for Trump, are not destitute. They actually have an economic buffer, as Brexit showed. These voters are willing to pay a price for what they consider to be “freedom.” I’m not sure that Trump’s voters, and other radical right voters, are naïve. I believe many of them just find it much more important that there are fewer immigrants around them. In these voters’ minds, it means they will make more money.

To take one example: There are many people in the United States who find it more important to make abortion illegal than to improve their personal economic well-being. Their voices are as rational as that of someone who votes on the basis of their wallet. They are not being misled. There is another myth about Trump’s voters that needs to be highlighted. Some people argue that Trump’s voters see him as some sort of God. They do not. The vast majority, even among his most ardent supporters, see all of Trump’s flaws.


interesting article

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. In other words, "bad" isn't a bug; it's a feature.