I’ve been struggling with the same troubling mix of emotions for the past six years: horror at Donald Trump’s election, disbelief at what transpired in the nation’s capital, relief when the most damning evidence of his wrongdoings emerged, and a near-religious hope that the GOP might regain some semblance of sanity. With its loud apocalyptic predictions, my cautious optimism lingered throughout the midterm election season. After the election, I experienced a fleeting moment of genuine assurance. Trump was never president, though, and when I watched him declare his candidacy for president in 2024 this week, that hope was overshadowed.
I’m not referring literally. Despite the fact that he repeatedly broke the oath and etiquette of the office as well as basic decency, he did serve a term. As a kind of protest, many Americans, including myself, began to claim that he was not the president.
However, I now think that the protest was too narrowly focused. As witness after witness detailed a fiercely anti-democratic environment in the White House that was emitted by Trump but bigger than him, this realisation began to dawn on me during the hearings on January 6. They discussed the intolerance and intransigence that had spread not only to the nation’s capital but also to towns and cities outside of Washington, D.C., which were feeding the atmosphere and also consuming it. All of these places were a part of an ecosystem that was thriving in some way across the entire nation.
Then it dawned on me: Trump was and still is the leader of a culture—specifically, a culture of white supremacy—rather than a country, the Republican Party, or even a cult.
Actually, this is worse than it seems. White supremacy is frequently viewed as an isolated dynamic, racism, or the “evil” America, even by highly “woke” Americans. But many people are unaware that white supremacy is a far deeper and more pervasive cultural phenomenon. It is about racialized power, the presumption that white people (mostly men) have the right to establish and uphold the social and moral order as they see fit, frequently in support of ideals that on the surface appear admirable, such as tradition or family.
The presidency, electoral politics, the Constitution, the application of the law, democratic values, liberalism, and decency are all incidental in this society. They will never be as important as white people’s inalienable right to power.
White supremacy has always had a strong attraction in America. It has always been a part of who we are. The culture of white supremacy has become fully, almost joyfully mainstream in 2022 under the increasingly flimsy cover of conservatism, substantially bolstered by the internet, social media, and major media outlets like Fox News. Republican policy agendas have been supplanted by constant criticism of social justice and critical race theory; voter suppression is openly practised; and Jan. 6, an attempt to overthrow democracy by a majority-white minority, has received less-than-unanimous condemnation from GOP leadership.
Similar to a Category 5 cyclone, the anti-abortion movement, science denial, and the pro-total gun rights movement have all combined to strengthen the white supremacy society during the past 40 years. Some of the participants in these movements might not believe that they support white supremacy. But that is precisely what they are doing by supporting laws that hurt and jeopardise people like me.
Trump has ruled over this phenomenon as the recognised culture-warrior-in-chief since 2016. And because he has done a good job, he will continue to receive support from “the base,” or the millions of culture warriors. But what is particularly concerning is that this culture will continue even if Trump doesn’t win any elections. Trump will have devoted adherents in his culture war as long as he continues to be Trump — unashamedly xenophobic, prejudiced, and right in every situation. Elections are merely a formality.
This is hazardous because in 2022, the culture war is moving closer and closer to direct conflict. The majority of the violence in American history has been committed by white people against the so-called “Other” – Native Americans, Black people, and immigrants of colour. But in the current culture battle, Trump’s opponents are all the same Other: the 54% of Americans, according to the most recent FiveThirtyEight poll, who oppose Trump or Trumpism and believe that democratic growth is the more authentic route for Americans.
The culture warriors championing the cause are regular people from suburbs around the nation, not only Proud Boys or Oathkeepers. In her study “The Rise of Political Violence in the United States,” which was published a year ago in the Journal of Democracy, Rachel Kleinfeld discovers that the right is largely responsible for political violence and white supremacy. But what is most concerning is how widely accepted it is. According to two recent surveys, a majority of Republicans concur that “the American way of life is fading so fast” that “they may have to use force to maintain it,” according to Kleinfeld. On the surface, many of these Republicans don’t seem to fit the usual picture of an extremist. She writes, “Those committing far-right violence are older and more established than the ordinary terrorist and violent criminal. Far-right violence is specifically planned violence rather than spontaneous hate crimes.” They frequently have careers, are married, and have kids. Attending church or participating in community organisations increases the likelihood of having violent, conspiratorial thoughts. They belong to a concentrated community that shares their ideals, so they are not isolated “lone wolves.”
According to Kleinfeld, those who are violent attack white women (such as Nancy Pelosi or Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer) just as frequently as they target people of colour, and the two forms of violence often go hand in hand. Overall, she asserts, “the Republican Party and Donald Trump, in particular, will safeguard the way of life of white Christian men in the United States, which is under cultural and demographic threat and requires defending.” This is the fundamental belief that “unites right-wing communities who condone violence.” As an illustration, after the Justice Department searched Mar-a-Lago, rumours of civil war increased dramatically — by about 3,000%.
The “focused community” of violent white nationalists operates in opposition to the other focused white group, which essentially holds the opposing viewpoint. An existential threat to “their way of life” is posed by this white community of atheists just as much as it is by Black people, women, LGBTQ persons, immigrants, and other Others. White protesters surrounded and yelled “fucking n——-r” at a Black cop in one of the most memorable scenes from the Capitol riots to be documented on camera. However, the audience demanded that Vice President Mike Pence, who is white, be hanged.
Many things came out of Trump’s win, but the most important was how it abruptly exposed internal conflicts among white people. Consider Liz Cheney, a congresswoman from Wyoming and committee co-chair. The most glaring indication yet that white racism is driving the Republican Party is Cheney’s complete ejection from the organisation. Cheney was a close buddy of Trump and was extremely well-liked in her state. Up till the uprising. Her condemnation of that incident ended up being the only thing her formerly adoring audience cared about; it made no difference that she continued to represent their staunchly conservative views on abortion, taxes, and a number of other everyday issues. While progressive thinkers like Thomas Frank speculate about what might be wrong with Kansas, Cheney’s supporters were voting based on identity rather than policy, as white people have done for years.
In her book Caste, due out in 2020, civil rights historian Taylor Branch and author Isabel Wilkerson discuss the ongoing racial conflict in the United States and possible solutions. In light of this, Branch asks, “How many people would choose whiteness if given the option between democracy and whiteness?” The two “let the question hang in the air because neither one of us wanted to hazard a guess at that one,” according to Wilkerson.
Nearly three years later, we don’t need to hazard a guess; according to a FiveThirtyEight poll on Trump support, about 41% of respondents opted for the latter.