Guest post: "We can't compete with Trump's hate - and we shouldn't"

[JosephineMumsnet]

I'm not sure how many Brexits today is supposed to be worth. I started to lose count at around 3am. Then again, the shock is not quite the same as that of the morning of 24 June. If anything, given 2016's track record, it would have felt odd for the US election to go any other way.

Perhaps I have no right to be upset. After all, I'm not even American and even if I was, every expression of dismay will be that of a member of the smug liberal elite (since that is now what anyone who is not virulently right-wing has become). Even so, the parallels between politics in the UK and US seem to be overwhelming. We are witnessing a thuggish take-over by far-right bullies who pose as anti-establishment heroes, men who pretend to smash up the system while their own dominance remains untouched.

Donald Trump – just like the UK's Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage – is someone whose privilege has exempted him from having to follow the same rules as everyone else. He has been able to pose as a rule-breaker even though the normal rules of engagement never applied to him in the first place. Being a woman meant that Hillary Clinton could never have behaved as Trump did and got away with it. Yet precisely because of this she was dismissed as a member of the elite propping up the establishment. But Donald Trump is the establishment and it is rotten to the core.

George W Bush's victory in 2000 might have been bitterly disappointing – not to mention mired in controversy – but this is a disaster of a different order. Bush may have been racist, misogynist, classist, a warmonger, but he was within the bounds of what one might call a small-d democrat. Trump is not.

The dark turn taken by 2016 politics in both the UK and US has involved a shift to mob rule via the threat of violence. Mainstream UK newspapers call judges enemies of the state; Farage calls for Leave voters to take to the streets to 'get even' with politicians intent on 'watering down' the results of a vague, advisory referendum; a female politician is murdered in broad daylight by a far-right activist; and the man who hinted at the assassination of his female opponent is voted into the White House.

A contract has been broken. The likes of Trump and Farage would suggest that it is a contract that has enabled the elite to exploit the people. They would suggest that doing away with the superficial niceties of political discourse rightfully undermines those who use connections and educational advantage to manipulate others. But dispensing with the niceties means nothing if you replace them with threats and even more lies. It simply leaves us with nowhere to go.

I worry about how the left will respond to this disaster. Following Brexit many of us looked to ourselves, seeking refuge in self-blame. After all, if there's something you could have done, then perhaps you could do it now? But I do not want to see conversations about how Democrats should have listened more to 'the people’s' concerns about immigration and racial diversity. Plenty of those who voted for Trump were not the dispossessed; they were white college-educated men, drunk on years of being told that their dominance was under threat. There is no point in the left attempting to appease people who think this way. You just become a fellow hater, albeit someone whose mediocre, half-hearted hate can never compete with the full-blooded, unbridled hatred of men like Trump.

We need something more solid than that. This morning JK Rowling – whom I'd love as our PM – tweeted this: "We stand together. We stick up for the vulnerable. We challenge bigots. We don't let hate speech become normalised. We hold the line." That is what we must do. That is all that we can do. We know who is put most at risk by Trump's victory. The worst thing we could do is to sell them out on the basis that a politics that represents everyone is just too much to ask.

Rich white men are a minority. They do not have the right to intimidate everyone else into submission. This particular battle may be lost but people with compassion, love and the will to do right are not going anywhere.

[noblegiraffe]

Bullshit. Respect for other people's opinion doesn't mean you have to respect lies, smears, conspiracy theories, or the people who spread them.

Especially if you don't think that their motives for saying such things are genuine.

[noblegiraffe]

Oh and I don't think I ever said I was 'respectable', 'progressive' or 'liberal' so please don't argue that I need to be a role model for anyone except myself on here.

[iPost]

There has been lots of talk about the left living in echo chambers and being surrounded with people who agree with you unchallenged. Why should that not apply to the right too?

It applies to all.

However, of late it has become almost a badge of honour to limit what you expose yourself to if you lean left. So, no having a poke around at what your average Daily Mail reader think is important/stupid. And No Platforming anybody deemed "problematic". And liberal use of not just the block button, but block lists.

At the present time people leaning right don't discriminate anything like as much with regards to what they will read, who they will listen to, who they will engage with. They might not agree. In fact they might disagree noisily. But they aren't pulling down the shutters to anything like the same extent, in anything like the same numbers.

That doesn't mean they are immune to making the same tactical error in the future. Just they aren't doing it right now.

Stupid statements and actions if only challenged in the gentlest terms will proliferate

I haven't seen any call from people who lean right to adopt a gentler language. If anything they talk of a need for more robust debate. What they, and some left leaners, have been saying for quite some time, is that if people thought hurling labels around (rather than debating the point on the table) was going to win over the hearts and minds needed to win when it matters, they were wrong.

And they appear to have been right about that. Twice. So far.

So I guess the question is, do left leaners still want to win ?

And if they do, is it not worth considering that a change of tactics might be worth a punt ? Rather than doing the same things all over again and hoping for different results.

[derxa]

I read the Daily Mail and the Guardian online every day. The opinion writers churn out the same old biased crap every day. The most interesting thing is the comment section under the article. The comments for the Mail are almost always right wing/UKIP type stuff. A lot of support for Trump from USA commentators. It was no surprise to me that Trump won. The Guardian commentators are fed up with PC stuff and are increasingly right wing. A lot of the Guardian political articles don't allow comments at all. What you make of that I don't know.
Don't shout at me that I shouldn't be reading these two. It gives an interesting of what people really think.

[iPost]

I think part of why the Guardian pulled comments is cos it costs too much bandwidth, and they are having to belt tighten.

They should have left GUT alone, that was so simple, and much cheaper to run. But they wanted more control (I think) and dragged comments back under the line. Kicking and screaming.

[Roussette]

derxa
I read the same as you although DM rarely and only for the sidebar of shame and sleb twaddle. On Guardian, just when I want to comment I can't, very irritating. I have been hooked on the US press during this election though and also a couple of other forums which have been 'enlightening' and made me feel very very sane!

[noblegiraffe]

At the present time people leaning right don't discriminate anything like as much with regards to what they will read, who they will listen to, who they will engage with.

This view is based on what, exactly? I've seen plenty of people dismiss stuff because 'it's from the Guardian' or 'the privileged views of a liberal elite' or even 'it's from the mainstream media and they're run by the establishment'. Yes there is a tumblr generation who block and no-platform and safe-space and whatnot but that can't be extrapolated to 'the right listen more than the left'. I've been on the The_Donald subreddit and that's just as closed-minded from the other side.

[iPost]

This view is based on what, exactly?

18 months of spying on observing them in their natural online environments.

[derxa]

Roussette I have found your gentle and restrained interactions with claig hilarious.

[noblegiraffe]

I see, Ipost. You followed some people on Twitter and you think you can extrapolate from that a sweeping statement about how left and right leaning people behave?

[Roussette]

Derxa..
claig is a character (I sometimes think MN needs more like her!) and TBH she put up with quite a lot from me and others. I did admire her blind faith in DT and her persistence and tenacity even if I don't agree!

[FameNameGameLame]

Just out of interest where is the Guest Poster? Is it not usually customary that they interact a little with the people who are commenting?

[Southallgirl]

What Claig has said all along (and I now see it clearly) is that the media was working against Trump, which is hardly objective. All the TV presenters and journalists here and in USA were and continue to be hostile towards Trump. She always said that the whole media were against him because they are part of the rot that promulgating untruths and imports terrorists into both countries.

The intelligence and role of political journalist has taken a huge dip for me recently, especially when several of them have stated they never thought that Trump could win. Even the senior, very experienced Christiane Amanpour said the same on TV this morning. But why didnt they see it coming? I did, Claig did, others on MN did - and we are not journalists with access to rallies or in a position to fire questions at politicians.

This suggests that they have no intuition, are shortsighted and without imagination. Or, they were deliberately fomenting hostility against one candidate. Quite frankly, if they are this crap or non-objective in their jobs they should find another one.

[Badders123]

I find claig's posts quite interesting too in a baffled horrified way :)
I am trying very hard to try and see any positives I can and mostly failing
I agree that the political machine in both Westminster and Washington got it badly wrong.
But calling every single person - inc people like me who grew up poor on a council estate and find farage and trumps views vile and dangerous - as the "liberal elite" is - dare I say it - a similar mistake?
The voting patterns in the us and here were VERY different, something people aren't really addressing IMO.
Here the eu ref was largely won in poor areas (with little or no immigration but that's another story)
In the us trump was voted in by white mc men, poorer people voted for Clinton.
So what does that tell us?
I've no idea.
As I said, im trying to find the positives...trump is so so out of his depth that he will probably be impeached.
Maybe he and Putin could be another Reagan and Gorbachev?
He doesn't really care about most things that right wing republicans do
...abortion, health care, lgbt rights.
He is not religious and doesn't pretend to be
People are talking about a right wing revolution - I don't know if that's happening - sometimes it feels like it.
I think all this political upheaval is caused by a very simple thing...for the first time in the west the next generation will not be as well off as the current one. Life will not be better for my children. People are angry and don't understand why this is.
The earth has finite resources as do societies and until we all understand that and alter our behaviour nothing will change.

[CaesiumTime]

Please remember this when saying "the people voted Trump in"

[CaesiumTime]

Trump spent most of Obama's Presidency calling him a Kenyan born Muslim. Trump never "got over it."

[Badders123]

Quite.
And to clear, I think it the republican congress that will impeach him.

[noblegiraffe]

All this talk of 'I saw it coming, why didn't the media/politicians/everyone else?' seems to me to be people smugly patting themselves on the back for 'seeing' that Trump was massively popular, appealing to x and y groups, people were shy voters and whatnot when in fact they were just lucky in their prediction. Trump has not been elected on a tide of popularity, but because of the college system. It is now being projected that in the popular vote Hillary will be the second most popular candidate in history behind Obama.

Hillary didn't lose because she didn't connect with voters, because Trump was more popular. Hillary lost because her votes were in the wrong places. And I don't believe that a lot of people who were saying that Trump would win based it on careful examination of geographical voter patterns. I thought he would win, and my reasoning was because 2016 has been shit so far. That doesn't mean I'm better at election analysis than anyone who said Hillary would win.

[Southallgirl]

All this talk of 'I saw it coming, why didn't the media/politicians/everyone else?' seems to me to be people smugly patting themselves on the back

No it isnt! What are you on about. Genuine question: world media, but especially USA and the talking heads on UK TV all got it wrong. Maybe there was one or two that I didnt see, but the point is where was the critical thinking, the intuition that journalists are renowned for, the spotting of tell-tale signs of a possible deviation to an unpopular candidate, and based on what they must hv been hearing.

It's because they failed in their fucking smugness to identify and 'read' how desperate some people are. Those voters felt they had nothing to lose by trying DT. And they knew if they had voted Hilllllary it would hv been more of the same status quo.

[Southallgirl]

Hillary lost because her votes were in the wrong places

In that case during her campaign she should hv made the extra effort to visit those blue-collar States that thru the College system generate the most votes.

Loads of little and big things she did wrong. For a start, Jay-Z and his wife was a mistake. That must hv cost her campaign a $1 million fee, and what was it supposed to convey? Not a freebie.

[noblegiraffe]

It's because they failed in their fucking smugness to identify and 'read' how desperate some people are

You misunderstand. I don't think that the people who 'correctly' predicted a Trump victory did it because they thought that actually, Hillary is more popular but Trump is going to win the electoral college. Posters like Claig were posting in a manner that suggested that Trump was going to be carried to the White House on a revolutionary tide of popular support.

Trump won the White House, yes. But popular support he did not.

[derxa]

Even the senior, very experienced Christiane Amanpour said the same on TV this morning.
Or, they were deliberately fomenting hostility against one candidate
Well in the case of Christiane Amanpour that would be true. Her husband is James Rubin
"James Phillip "Jamie" Rubin (born 1960) is an American former diplomat and journalist, and served as US Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs in the Clinton Administration from 1997—2000. He writes a regular column on foreign affairs for The Sunday Times of London, and is contributing editor to The New Republic, writing regularly on foreign affairs.[1] He was Visiting Scholar 2013–14 at the Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford."
I can only imagine what was said in their house about Trump's victory.

[Southallgirl]

The electoral college system has been in place in USA for decades and decades. You might as well say that previous election results also may not hv reflected popular support, and merely came to pass because of the e.c. system.

It's pointless going down that road because everyone knows that different amounts of votes are ascribed to different States. With that in mind, surely it is incumbent on every political journalist to do a bit of thinking. They just did not catch the vibe, or have enough imagination to consider a win for Trump, because they were too busy being over-confident and propping up the bars.

I can't comment as to why Claig was posting in the way she did, but the point remains - She was right.

[noblegiraffe]

And in that case, I was right. Trump won because 2016 is shit and that was the shittest possible outcome. Well done me for my insight.

[Southallgirl]

Trump won because 2016 is shit

Noble - But you have not demonstrated any inkling or prescience for what you consider to be a catastrophe.