How race and identity became the central dividing line in American politics
Updated by Lee Drutman Aug 30, 2016, 10:40am EDT
Mothers of the Movement stand on stage prior to delivering remarks on the second day of the Democratic National Convention at the Wells Fargo Center, July 26, 2016, in Philadelphia. Joe Raedle/Getty Images
In 2016, race and identity has emerged as the central dividing line in American politics. Though race has always lived close to the surface of politics in the US, it has rarely been so explicitly front and center in political campaigns. So how did this happen?
The easy answer is Donald J. Trump. True, Trump was the first modern Republican to win the nomination based on racial prejudice. And, yes, racial resentment does more to explain support for Trump than even ideology.
But Trump is not acting in a vacuum. He is instead riding forces set in motion a half-century ago. His identity-based nomination should be seen as the logical culmination of Republicans' 50-year "Southern strategy" to make politics primarily about race and identity instead of economics.
This history is not just an academic exercise. It's crucial for understanding where politics is headed. Treating Trump's nomination as a historical aberration allows one to think that there is some returning to "normal." Viewing Trump's nomination as a historical culmination suggests instead that there is no going back, and that "normal" is just a name we call a bygone era.
For Republicans, the irony is that this strategy reached its full completion at precisely the moment when it was no longer a winning national strategy.
[.. well, it was written before the election result which caught most pundits off guard, yet i hope that doesn't take away too much from the worth of the article .. have only glanced through it so far and am not up on the history so trusting the feeling it's a reasonably accurate one .. it's long .. ]
[...]
How Obama's election fueled a backlash
When it happened in 2008, Obama's election was widely viewed as a landmark of race relations progress. But looking back, it now seems increasingly clear that his presidency activated a racist backlash among a particular segment of the population.
Political scientist Michael Tesler, for example, has found that "[o]ld-fashioned racism returned to white Americans' party identification in the early Obama era because the country elected an African-American president from the Democratic Party." He also found that whites with strong racist attitudes turned much more sharply Republican following Obama's election, including some who had previously been Democrats.
[...]
How immigration fueled a backlash
Immigration has also contributed. It's important to understand that between 1990 and 2014, the share of foreign-born citizens in the United States went from 7.9 percent to 13.9 percent — a near doubling. The last time the share of foreign-born citizens got this high (about 100 years ago), it provoked enough nativist backlash in the 1920s to largely close the borders for four decades, until 1965.
[...]
And then ... Trump
Now, in retrospect, it becomes increasingly clear how the Republican Party got to a place where it was primed for Trump's white grievance message. Republicans spent the past half-century winning over socially conservative, non-college-educated whites on issues of race and identity, to the point that these voters became the dominant faction within the party. With little else to hold the party together, Republican leaders doubled down on these issues over the past decade. They were also helped out by events.
To be sure, a good number Republicans strongly disagree with Trump's "textbook racism." And many have previously advocated for Republicans to broaden their electoral appeals beyond resentful whites.
Supporters cheer for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump during a campaign rally at the Mississippi Coliseum on August 24, 2016, in Jackson, Mississippi. Photo by Jonathan Bachman/Getty Images
And to be sure, not all of Trump's appeal is based on racism. He was also the only Republican candidate to speak directly to the economic uncertainties that many downscale Republican voters have been feeling, and the only Republican candidate to stand up, at least rhetorically, for Social Security and for taxing the wealthy (even if his campaign platforms have not always reflected these details).
But the reality is that Trump won the nomination with the most explicit racial language we've seen from a modern presidential candidate. His campaign resonated because it connected with a sizable piece of the Republican electorate.
Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say
Russian President Vladimir Putin, in an interview with RT in 2013, said that he wanted to “break the Anglo-Saxon monopoly on the global information streams.” (YURI KOCHETKOV/AFP/Getty Images)
Russia’s increasingly sophisticated propaganda machinery — including thousands of botnets, teams of paid human “trolls,” and networks of websites and social-media accounts — echoed and amplified right-wing sites across the Internet as they portrayed Clinton as a criminal hiding potentially fatal health problems and preparing to hand control of the nation to a shadowy cabal of global financiers. The effort also sought to heighten the appearance of international tensions and promote fear of looming hostilities with nuclear-armed Russia.
Two teams of independent researchers found that the Russians exploited American-made technology platforms to attack U.S. democracy at a particularly vulnerable moment, as an insurgent candidate harnessed a wide range of grievances to claim the White House. The sophistication of the Russian tactics may complicate efforts by Facebook and Google [id.] to crack down on “fake news,” as they have vowed to do after widespread complaints about the problem.
“They want to essentially erode faith in the U.S. government or U.S. government interests,” said Clint Watts, a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute who along with two other researchers has tracked Russian propaganda since 2014. “This was their standard mode during the Cold War. The problem is that this was hard to do before social media.”
The researchers used Internet analytics tools to trace the origins of particular tweets and mapped the connections among social-media accounts that consistently delivered synchronized messages. Identifying website codes sometimes revealed common ownership. In other cases, exact phrases or sentences were echoed by sites and social-media accounts in rapid succession, signaling membership in connected networks controlled by a single entity.
PropOrNot’s monitoring report, which was provided to The Washington Post in advance of its public release, identifies more than 200 websites as routine peddlers of Russian propaganda during the election season, with combined audiences of at least 15 million Americans. On Facebook, PropOrNot estimates that stories planted or promoted by the disinformation campaign were viewed more than 213 million times.
Some players in this online echo chamber were knowingly part of the propaganda campaign, the researchers concluded, while others were “useful idiots” — a term born of the Cold War to describe people or institutions that unknowingly assisted Soviet Union propaganda efforts.
The Russian campaign during this election season, researchers from both groups say, worked by harnessing the online world’s fascination with “buzzy” content that is surprising and emotionally potent, and tracks with popular conspiracy theories about how secret forces dictate world events.
Some of these stories originated with RT and Sputnik, state-funded Russian information services that mimic the style and tone of independent news organizations yet sometimes include false and misleading stories in their reports, the researchers say. On other occasions, RT, Sputnik and other Russian sites used social-media accounts to amplify misleading stories already circulating online, causing news algorithms to identify them as “trending” topics that sometimes prompted coverage from mainstream American news organizations.
This followed a spate of other misleading stories in August about Clinton’s supposedly troubled health. The Daily Beast debunked [ http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/08/25/wikileaks-plays-doctor-gives-hillary-clinton-fake-disease.html ] a particularly widely read piece in an article that reached 1,700 Facebook accounts and was read online more than 30,000 times. But the PropOrNot researchers found that the version supported by Russian propaganda reached 90,000 Facebook accounts and was read more than 8 million times. The researchers said the true Daily Beast story was like “shouting into a hurricane” of false stories supported by the Russians.
This propaganda machinery also helped push the phony story that an anti-Trump protester was paid thousands of dollars to participate in demonstrations, an allegation initially made by a self-described satirist and later repeated publicly by the Trump campaign. Researchers from both groups traced a variety of other false stories — fake reports of a coup launched at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey [ http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/08/06/how-russia-dominates-your-twitter-feed-to-promote-lies-and-trump-too.html ] and stories about how the United States was going to conduct a military attack and blame it on Russia — to Russian propaganda efforts.
The final weeks of the campaign featured a heavy dose of stories about supposed election irregularities, allegations of vote-rigging and the potential for Election Day violence should Clinton win, researchers said.
“The way that this propaganda apparatus supported Trump was equivalent to some massive amount of a media buy,” said the executive director of PropOrNot, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid being targeted by Russia’s legions of skilled hackers. “It was like Russia was running a super PAC for Trump’s campaign. . . . It worked.”
He and other researchers expressed concern that the U.S. government has few tools for detecting or combating foreign propaganda. They expressed hope that their research detailing the power of Russian propaganda would spur official action.
A former U.S. ambassador to Russia, Michael A. McFaul, said he was struck by the overt support that Sputnik expressed for Trump during the campaign, even using the #CrookedHillary hashtag pushed by the candidate.
McFaul said Russian propaganda typically is aimed at weakening opponents and critics. Trump’s victory, though reportedly celebrated by Putin and his allies in Moscow, may have been an unexpected benefit of an operation that already had fueled division in the United States. “They don’t try to win the argument,” said McFaul, now director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. “It’s to make everything seem relative. It’s kind of an appeal to cynicism.”
The Kremlin has repeatedly denied interfering in the U.S. election or hacking the accounts of election officials. “This is some sort of nonsense,” Dmitry Peskov, press secretary for Putin, said last month when U.S. officials accused Russia of penetrating the computers of the Democratic National Committee and other political organizations.
RT disputed the findings of the researchers in an e-mail on Friday, saying it played no role in producing or amplifying any fake news stories related to the U.S. election. “It is the height of irony that an article about “fake news” is built on false, unsubstantiated claims. RT adamantly rejects any and all claims and insuations that the network has originated even a single “fake story” related to the US election,” wrote Anna Belkina, head of communications.
The findings about the mechanics of Russian propaganda operations largely track previous research by the Rand Corp. and George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs.
“They use our technologies and values against us to sow doubt,” said Robert Orttung, a GWU professor who studies Russia. “It’s starting to undermine our democratic system.”
The Rand report [ http://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html ] — which dubbed Russian propaganda efforts a “firehose of falsehood” because of their speed, power and relentlessness — traced the country’s current generation of online propaganda work to the 2008 incursion into neighboring Georgia, when Russia sought to blunt international criticism of its aggression by pushing alternative explanations online.
Putin, a former KGB officer, announced [ https://www.rt.com/news/putin-rt-interview-full-577/ ] his desire to “break the Anglo-Saxon monopoly on the global information streams” during a 2013 visit to the broadcast center for RT, formerly known as Russia Today.
“For them, it’s actually a real war, an ideological war, this clash between two systems,” said Sufian Zhemukhov, a former Russian journalist conducting research at GWU. “In their minds, they’re just trying to do what the West does to Russia.”
RT broadcasts news reports worldwide in several languages, but the most effective way it reaches U.S. audiences is online.
Its English-language flagship YouTube channel, launched in 2007, has 1.85 million subscribers and has had a total of 1.8 billion views, making it more widely viewed than CNN’s YouTube channel, according to a George Washington University report this month.
The content from Russian sites has offered ready fodder for U.S.-based websites pushing far-right conservative messages. A former contractor for one, the Next News Network, said he was instructed by the site’s founder, Gary S. Franchi Jr., to weave together reports from traditional sources such as the Associated Press and the Los Angeles Times with ones from RT, Sputnik and others that provided articles that often spread explosively online.
“The readers are more likely to share the fake stories, and they’re more profitable,” said Dyan Bermeo, who said he helped assemble scripts and book guests for Next News Network before leaving because of a pay dispute and concerns that “fake news” was crowding out real news.
Franchi said in an e-mail statement that Next News Network seeks “a global perspective” while providing commentary aimed at U.S. audiences, especially with regard to Russian military activity. “Understanding the threat of global war is the first step to preventing it,” he said, “and we feel our coverage assisted in preventing a possible World War 3 scenario.”
'We got some Hillary b****es on here?' Trump supporter gets up and goes on a bizarre rant in the middle of a flight - much to the dismay of his fellow passengers Epic rant: The Donald Trump supporter got out of his seat and started yelling out screams of praise for the president-elect on a recent flight, much to the shock of other passengers.
Pizza Gate has taken over social media so much so that mainstream news outlets are covering it, and accounts and videos covering it are being suspended and censored. What is the truth behind #PizzaGate?
[from the November 24, 2016 Infowars Nightly News]
On this LIVE Black Friday, Nov. 25 edition of the Alex Jones show, we discuss the attempt by Green Party activist Jill Stein to steal the presidency from Trump by demanding recounts only in states where Trump won. Citizen-journalist Mike Cernovich reveals what's going on. Also, social commentator Mark Dice breaks down America's consumer culture and zombie reaction to Black Friday sales.
Breaking: Democrat Counter-Coup Against Trump in Progress
Published on Nov 25, 2016 by The Alex Jones Channel
Calls for a recount and the erroneous assertion that Hillary won the popular vote are fueling the latest sneak effort by the globalists to rip the control out of the hands of the rightful heirs. The American Patriots. Meanwhile, terror sleeper cells are waiting to be activated across the Republic.
VIDEO: Donald Trump " It would take bombs to take down the WTC "
Published on Nov 25, 2016 by The Alex Jones Channel
The day of the 911 WTC tragedy Trump spoke with channel 9 television in New York and made the obvious connections to controlled detonations in the buildings. Proving that he has been awake all along.
Michael Flynn: Racist Anti-Islamist National Security Adviser
Published on Nov 23, 2016 by Mike Malloy
President-elect Donald J. Trump has offered the post of national security adviser to Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, potentially putting a retired intelligence officer who believes Islamist militancy poses an existential threat in one of the most powerful roles in shaping military and foreign policy, according to a top official on Mr. Trump’s transition team.
General Flynn, 57, a registered Democrat, was Mr. Trump’s main national security adviser during his campaign. If he accepts Mr. Trump’s offer, as expected, he will be a critical gatekeeper for a president with little experience in military or foreign policy issues.
Mr. Trump and General Flynn both see themselves as brash outsiders who hustled their way to the big time. They both post on Twitter often about their own successes, and they have both at times crossed the line into outright Islamophobia.
They also both exhibit a loose relationship with facts.
Published on Nov 26, 2016 by The Alex Jones Channel
Those in the central government pervert the very checks against their power in order to usurp more power. We’ve seen with the FISA act, intended to stop the violations of the 4th Amendment by the CIA/NSA, but used by them to rubberstamp dragnet surveillance it was created to stop. In the same way, we should move beyond “War on Christmas” stories and look at the real issues involved — establishment of religion vs free exercise of religion — a vital part of free speech in a free country.
[from the November 25, 2016 Infowars Nightly News]
Jeff Sessions As Attorney General: An Insult To Justice
Published on Nov 23, 2016 by Mike Malloy
In 1986, President Ronald Reagan nominated Jeff Sessions, then a United States attorney from Alabama, to be a federal judge. The Republican-controlled Senate rejected Mr. Sessions out of concern, based on devastating testimony by former colleagues, that he was a racist.
Three decades later, Mr. Sessions, now a veteran Alabama senator, is on the verge of becoming the nation’s top law-enforcement official, after President-elect Donald Trump tapped him on Friday to be attorney general.
It would be nice to report that Mr. Sessions, who is now 69, has conscientiously worked to dispel the shadows that cost him the judgeship. Instead, the years since his last confirmation hearing reveal a pattern of dogged animus to civil rights and the progress of black Americans and immigrants.
Based on his record, we can form a fairly clear picture of what his Justice Department would look like.
Trump: Castro Was a Brutal Oppressive Dictator, Pope: Castro was a Saint.
Published on Nov 26, 2016 by The Alex Jones Channel
Castro's vile ways are now worshiped by the traitor media, his sins are being swept under the rug as they burnish his legacy to hide the vile results of totalitarian communism.
There is more to the legend of Fidel Castro than most people know, Alex breaks down the true story of the reverberation of his life on humanity.
Fuck Trump: Obama Should Put Merrick Garland On the Supreme Court
Published on Nov 23, 2016 by Mike Malloy
Come January, President Barack Obama will be consigned to the sidelines as Donald Trump occupies the Oval Office and begins the work of dismantling his legacy. But there is one action that Obama could take on January 3, 2017 that could hold off some of the worst potential abuses of a Trump administration for up to a year. Obama can appoint his nominee Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court on that date, in between the two sessions of Congress.
Alt-Wrong Video clips of a meeting of the National Policy Institute, a white supremacist/alt-right group, show speaker Richard Spencer leading a Nazi salute. http://www.snopes.com/alt-right-hail-trump-salute/
Trump Supporter Tries To Intimidate Clinton Voters Aboard Delta Flight https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoFvqWbYd_k Donald Trump supporter berates 'Hillary B*****s' on plane - removed by user https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4xYyeIeRuA "Any Hillary b****es on here" - Proud Trump Supporter goes on a bizarre rant in the middle of a fli[ght] [actually, just after boarding, plane still hadn't left gate - the guy was not removed from flight - video taken by Emma Baum, who was on MSNBC Live with Joy Reid c. 4:30p 11-25-16] - removed by user https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60TMAKeP2TU Man Calls Passengers “Hillary Bitches” During Pro-Trump Rant On A Flight https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_Brj77_00Y
'We got some Hillary b****es on here?' Trump supporter gets up and goes on a bizarre rant in the middle of a flight - much to the dismay of his fellow passengers Male passenger got out of his seat and embarked on a pro-Trump rant It was on a Delta Airlines flight from Atlanta to Allentown Video of the speech is now being spread on Facebook 'Donald Trump is your President. Every god damn one of you. If you don't like it, too bad,' the man says No flight attendants are seen trying to stop the man It follows a similar incident on an United flight after the election http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3968954/We-got-Hillary-b-es-Trump-supporter-gets-goes-bizarre-rant-middle-flight-dismay-fellow-passengers.html
Trump threat to American foundations best met with civic activism The Rachel Maddow Show 11/9/16 Rachel Maddow makes the case that American citizens who feel that the foundations of American civic life are threatened by the presidency of Donald Trump have a to-do list to protect those foundations through participation in civic groups. Duration: 15:44 http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/trump-threat-best-met-with-civic-activism-805380675880
Anti-Trump protests grip cities nationwide The Rachel Maddow Show 11/9/16 Vaughn Hillyard, reporter for NBC News, talks with Rachel Maddow from outside Trump Tower in New York City where thousands have gathered to protest the election of Donald Trump. Similar protests are taking place across the country. Duration: 5:19 http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/anti-trump-protests-grip-cities-nationwide-805307459637
US transitions of power peaceful but not always smooth The Rachel Maddow Show 11/9/16 Michael Beschloss, NBC News presidential historian, talks with Rachel Maddow about how Hillary Clinton's winning of the popular vote adds to tensions around the election of Donald Trump, and awkwardness in past presidential transitions. Duration: 4:40 http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/us-transitions-peaceful-but-not-always-smooth-805391939918
Women's reproductive rights brace for fight under Trump The Rachel Maddow Show 11/9/16 Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood, talks with Rachel Maddow about the threat women's reproductive rights will face from the Trump administration with a Republican Congress and a likely large Supreme Court majority. Duration: 7:23 http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/women-s-reproductive-rights-brace-for-fight-805397059512
Election Day 2016 update The Rachel Maddow Show 11/9/16 Rachel Maddow rounds up which states have yet to be called in the 2016 presidential election, and looks and some of the down-ballot winners and ballot initiatives from Tuesday night. Duration: 2:58 http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/election-day-2016-update-805404739505
How the U.S. Constitution curtails Trump The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell 11/9/16 For all those worried about what power President-elect Trump could wield, Lawrence reminds us that our Founding Fathers already put something in place to protect us from that: the U.S. Constitution. Duration: 12:50 http://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/how-the-u-s-constitution-curtails-trump-805393987518
Tavis Smiley reacts to Donald Trump's election The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell 11/9/16 PBS host and author Tavis Smiley says racism, sexism and classism received the "GOP seal of approval" in last night's election of Donald Trump. Smiley joins Lawrence to discuss his reaction to the presidential election. Duration: 6:39 http://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/tavis-smiley-reacts-to-donald-trump-s-election-805393475898
Don't treat Trump as 'normal' The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell 11/9/16 Will the 'Normalization' of Donald Trump's behavior begin in the media or will his outrageous language and beliefs be scrutinized? Writer Anand Giridharadas joins Lawrence. Duration: 4:38 http://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/don-t-treat-trump-as-normal-805392963757