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.

[Prisencolinensinainciusol]

If Trump can be president why can't JK Rowling be prime minister?

[derxa]

If Trump can be president why can't JK Rowling be prime minister? She isn't an MP.

[merrymouse]

Where was the guest post when Duterte - who had prior to becoming elected, shot thousands of people as Mayor - became President of the Philippines. Where is or was the upset then?

Smaller country, less military power, not in any strategic alliances with UK, no influence over UK politics.

[merrymouse]

If Trump can be president why can't JK Rowling be prime minister?

For a start, she has shown no intention of wanting to be prime minister.

[BeMorePanda]

and yet here you are repeatedly commenting on it rosehip. I look forward to your thread on the President of the Philippines. Or do you want us all to shut up and express no opinion about any politics outside of UK?

wants to create work opportunities esp. for the blue-collars.
Stocks of private prison companies soared yesterday. Because they know that Trump = more poor people incarcerated for long stretches for non-violent crimes (many stemming from the pointless and ineffective War on Drugs - well I say ineffective, it's very effective in the supply of prisoners) and turned into slave workers for the super corporations.

All the while undercutting those blue collar workers jobs that Trump professes to love so much. Let's see what Trump does about that!

[Prisencolinensinainciusol]

Yes but the posts were suggesting it was ridiculous and naive even to want JKR as prime minister. I don't see how that's defensible when Trump has just been elected...

[Southallgirl]

What is a culture? Where does it begin and end? How do you define who belongs to that culture? Which bits of a culture do you pick out when you decide whether it is better or worse?

I think you are being precious. There are newcomers to USA and UK who believe a cheating woman should die, an apostate also should die, boy children are not as disciplined as daughters, and a younger brother is entitled to control an older sister and interfere in her choices. I think infibulation is a violation of females. You know, stuff like that ...... 200 yrs out of step with USA or UK.

[merrymouse]

There are newcomers to USA and UK who believe a cheating woman should die, an apostate also should die, boy children are not as disciplined as daughters, and a younger brother is entitled to control an older sister and interfere in her choices. I think infibulation is a violation of females. You know, stuff like that ...... 200 yrs out of step with USA or UK.

Yes, religious extremism is a problem. Killing and maiming people is illegal in the USA and the UK. Many religious people have dodgy beliefs about women, including Christians and particularly some groups of Christians in the USA. If you think bigotry was outlawed in the USA 200 years ago, you need to brush up on your history.

[merrymouse]

But now some(including student groups) are trying to frighten us with coup literally

Or alternatively they are exercising their right to peaceful protest.

[derxa]

Yes but the posts were suggesting it was ridiculous and naive even to want JKR as prime minister. Yes I was suggesting that. Just as ridiculous and naive as some members of the Tory party wanting Andrea Leadsom to be PM. We don't have a vote in the USA. It's a foreign country made up of many mini countries. Just because the USA speaks English it is completely different to the UK. Trump would never get voted in here. Farage has never managed to even become an MP.

[LookMoreCloselier]

There are big similarities with brexit and now trump and what is happening elsewhere in europe too. People are being stirred up and led to believe that immigrants are the root of all of their problems. We need to look at these things as a whole as they are all linked together and we could be heading for trouble. Some of the replies on this thread are unbelievable.

[FameNameGameLame]

Some of the replies on this thread are unbelievable.

And yet they are real replies from real people who are just as valid and important as you.

I do hope you believe that. I do hope that you believe that the person with what you perceive as the most terrible opinion is just as valid and important as you because if not then you are part of the problem.

The longer you stick your fingers in your ears to what you don't like to hear, the longer this problem is going to be drawn out.

[Reapwhatyousow]

merrymouse - that is a good point and yes language is important so "values" refines my point somewhat over culture. That said, multi culturalism was a failure because of the different and incompatible values involved. I believe the term "attitudinal difficulties" is gaining ground! Oh dear.

[LookMoreCloselier]

Famename I understand people are not happy, they have been lied to wrt what the cause of their problems are and the men promising to make it all right will do quite the opposite. What would you like me to understand?

[FameNameGameLame]

If anyone here actually believes they understand it all or that they have all the answers, then they are more delusional than anyone they are choosing to insult in order to set themselves up as higher than or more clever than.

The fact that there are two sides forming here, both with their fingers stuck in their ears and believing they are right above all others is more 'terrifying' than any of the rhetoric on either side of the divide.

[FameNameGameLame]

Also - those on the far right realise they have joined a side and movement... those who just think they are right, they don't even understand that yet.

These are terrifying realisations. Much more terrifying than a reality TV star being elected as president.

[bridgetoc]

JK Rowling......In charge of this country? You snivelling lefties do make me laugh. She is the worst type of champagne socialist you could possibly find. Next your be asking for Jamie Oliver or Cumberbatch.

Grow up.......

[MephistophelesApprentice]

I think part of the problem is that people are polarising to the point they can't even recognise the humanity of other people.

I despise racism. I despise misogyny. I despise ableism. I accept information from the effected groups to help me in my struggle to eliminate it completely from my personal ethical matrix.

But when I encounter someone who's behaviour is labelled racist, misogynist or ableist the one common factor is that they are human. They eat. They shit. They bleed. They cry. They feel pain. They are aware of themselves. Many of them love and care for others - and those that don't are often either victims of abuse, neglect or a mental disability. This makes them deserving of greater efforts on my part towards understanding.

I don't have to accept their reality. I have to accept that it's real for them, as real as the experiences that have shaped my own values. I don't have to accept the future their prejudices might produce, but I do have to accept they want their utopia as much as I want mine. Above all else, I have to accept we share a country; share a planet; share a species.

The fact that so many commentators can't make this reach, can't begin to bridge an empathy gap and are hostile to those who try - this scares me. It scares me enormously, because I think you're heading to a place where you can no longer recognise those who disagree as human.

That way is the real, genuine path to grotesque monstrosity and I think that's where their contempt will take us.

[prh47bridge]

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

The problem is that we have not had a politics that represents everyone. The white working class, particularly white working class men, both here and in the USA, have found themselves marginalised. Their standard of living is not improving and may be going down. The world doesn't seem to care about them. If they express concerns about immigration they are shouted down as racists. If they express concerns about Islamic fundamentalism they are shouted down as Islamophobes. And so on. They are dismissed as bigoted and ignorant (or, for those who want to be more polite, "low information voters" - we heard that after Brexit, we are hearing it again after Trump).

Of course, some of the white working class are racist. Some of are Islamophobic. Some are homophobic. Some are misogynist. I could go on. But many of them are none of those things and still find themselves dismissed and ignored. They find their views classed as unacceptable. They look at politics and find that it does not represent them. And when they decide to give the elite a kicking, for example by voting for Brexit, they find many urging politicians to simply ignore them, or trying to find ways of overturning the result.

Trump is a symptom of a deeply divided society. I, like, I suspect, most posters on this site, am on one side of that divide. White working class men are generally on the other side. Lecturing the white working class on why they are wrong and patronising them is not the way forward.

I am worried. There are real dangers here. We are seeing a rise in authoritarian, populist politicians. What is happening is remarkably reminiscent of the 1920s and early 1930s. I hope it does not end the same way, not least because it will be much worse this time if it does. But we are only going to stop it if we stop demonising those with whom we disagree and genuinely build a politics that represents everyone, including white working class men.

[LookMoreCloselier]

Times are hard, it's been a global recession, that makes people more right wing and xenophobic especially when fuelled by these big egos like trump who make promises that they will sort things out by getting rid of all the evil people who are apparently causing the problems. It's not just happening in america and it's potentially a huge problem, moreso than some left wing versus right wing divide. Who knows how it will pan out, I am hoping that brexit won't go ahead now, that other european countries won't go to the right and that trump is trumped by congress on his more crazy plans. All I want is equality and peace and I am fucking sick of being called immature/naive, it's depressing.

[claig]

The majority of whites voted for Trump and it was not only white working class men

"The real 'shy Trump' vote - how 53% of white women pushed him to victory

Early data suggest a clear majority of white women voted Republican, and supporters say Trump’s offensive remarks didn’t affect their decision"

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/10/white-women-donald-trump-victory

29% of Latinos voted for Trump.

It was a rebellion against the political correctness that the ruling class and condescending elites insist on, as many posters on this thread have said.

[FameNameGameLame]

All I want is equality and peace and I am fucking sick of being called immature/naive, it's depressing.

Just to momentarily lighten the tone, this made me laugh out loud! I imagined it being said in a spoilt whiny voice, accompanied with a pout and a foot stomp! 😆

[claig]

The title of teh guest post is

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

That is a total misunderstanding of Trump's appeal. It has nothing to do with hate and it is patronising and condescending and disrespectful of millions of voters (including 29% of Latinos) and the majority of white women to think that it does, and the greater the condescension, the more people will continue to vote for politicians like Trump because he challenges the condescension unlike the rest of the political class.

If left wing progressives want to beat populists, they need to understand why populism exists and what it is about.