Vox: White riot

This research finds that, contrary to what you’d expect, the "losers of globalization" aren’t the ones voting for these parties. What unites far-right politicians and their supporters, on both sides of the Atlantic, is a set of regressive attitudes toward difference. Racism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia — and not economic anxiety — are their calling cards.

The ongoing surge of immigrants — especially those who venerate a different prophet or have a darker skin tone — is triggering a fierce right-wing backlash around the West. In the US, the anger about Latino immigration has linked up to another racial anxiety: Many white Americans believe their privileged status is being eroded by the past half-century of moves toward treating African American as truly equal citizens. [...]

Prior to Petersen, scholars often thought of ethnic violence in terms of threat (one group turns to violence when it feels threatened by another) or in terms of "ancient hatreds" (long-simmering resentments that have left the groups wanting to kill each other). Petersen argued that while these explanations were correct in some cases, they were incomplete. Clearly, neither theory can explain the difference between Kaunas and Vilnius. Nor did they fit several other case studies in Petersen’s book.

In order to fully understand why ethnic violence happens, he argued, we need to appreciate the role of resentment: the feeling of injustice on the part of a privileged portion of society when it sees power slipping into the hands of a group that hadn't previously held it. Drawing on social psychology, he theorized that one of the underappreciated causes of ethnic violence was a change in the legal and political status of majority and minority ethnic groups. [...]

Far-right party platforms differ from country to country, including on major social issues like feminism and economic issues like the size of the welfare state. The one issue every single one agrees on is hostility to immigration, particularly when the immigrants are nonwhite and Muslim. [...]

Economic factors didn’t seem to matter much. They found little association between the national unemployment level and the prevalence of negative attitudes toward immigration, or an individual’s income and their likelihood of holding such attitudes.

But when they tested measures of cultural resentment — people’s evaluations of statements like, "It is better for a country if almost everyone shares the same customs and traditions" — the results were very different. White European Christians opposed to multiculturalism were overwhelmingly more likely to be immigration skeptics. [...]

Like his European counterparts, Trump has eschewed overt discussion of racial superiority. He claims to have "a great relationship with the blacks" and tweets things like, "I love Hispanics!" He also claims to be an American nationalist standing up against a corrupt elite in hoc to "the false song of globalism." One of his favorite descriptions of his worldview is "America First," a slogan coined by World War II–era isolationists and anti-Semites. [...]

If the Great Recession didn’t cause this, there’s only one obvious explanation: America’s election of a black president. That means we need to turn the "economic anxiety causes racism" theory on its head: It’s racism that causes a certain group of Americans to say the economy is doing badly. Concern about the economy has become, for some, an outlet for anxieties about the country being led by a black man.

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