Over the past month, the American and international media have offered countless analyzes and opinions on the US elections and Donald Trump’s victory. Pundits blamed the loss on various communities that refused to vote for Democratic candidate Kamala Harris or on the Democratic Party that failed to address their grievances.
Obviously, the Harris campaign could have done more to deliver a consistent message to some of these communities, but the Democrats lost this election because they didn’t ignore Americans’ concerns about the economy, immigration or “woke” politics. Hold more water.
It’s easy to understand what happened on November 5th if one zooms out and considers the bigger picture in US politics over the past decade and a half. With his electoral victory, Trump won the cultural war in 2009 with the rise of the Tea Party movement and social media.
The way to reverse Trumpism in US politics and defeat it at the polls is to devise a strategy aimed at fighting and winning this battle again.
A culture war is being waged
The Tea Party movement emerged in 2009 when Barack Obama took office with promises of a progressive agenda. It stood in opposition not only to the Democratic Party but also to the “Republican establishment”, pushing various populist narratives. Its agenda and drive helped Republicans win a majority in the House of Representatives in the 2010 midterm elections, demonstrating the popular appeal of its anti-establishment rhetoric.
During the second Obama term, right-wing ideologue Stephen Bannon and right-wing financiers Robert and Rebecca Mercer, along with military propaganda experts at the UK-based Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL), translated the Tea Party’s message into a coherent, more nuanced one. Professional communication style. This strategy sought to weaponize social media and wage a culture war, polarizing American society and pitting large swathes of voters against perceived cultural elites.
Bannon’s collaboration with SCL led to the founding of Cambridge Analytica in 2013, which was hired by the Trump campaign in June 2016. A now-defunct political consultancy harvested millions of Facebook profiles without permission and developed big data models to influence specific voters. Battleground states exploit the fears and core concerns of voters with personalized political ads on issues such as the economy, terrorism and immigration.
The campaign reached a wide range of groups across the left-right divide. Black Americans hit back at Trump opponent Hillary Clinton’s old problematic statements with messages calling black youth “superpredators.” Trump muddied the waters among the anti-war left by emphasizing that he was against the Iraq War and in favor of Clinton.
Right-wing Americans’ fears about national security, Muslims and immigration are amplified with imagery that incites fears of terrorism and chaos if the Democrats win. Trump appealed to white working-class communities in the Rustbelt who previously voted for Obama and promised to serve their interests by halting immigration, renegotiating international trade agreements and prioritizing industrial development in rural America.
Commissioning of campaign in elections
The themes and tactics of the first Trump campaign laid the groundwork for what was to come. The relentless stream of Trumpist messaging never stopped — not when he was in government, and not when, after losing to Joe Biden in November 2020, he fueled the movement that led to the Capitol riots in January 2021.
During Trump’s 2024 re-election campaign, culture war momentum helped turn objective reality into a fantasy world where the American economy was said to have reached a state of disaster and immigrants were responsible for virtually every ill of American society — from high housing costs to high. From low wages to gun violence, to the opioid crisis.
The Republican ticket has used fake news and emotionally charged narratives that have fueled frustration on a number of issues, not only immigrants but also transgender people, progressive activists, Democratic leadership, and resentment and hatred against Harris.
Thus, many Trump voters did not cast their vote based on some material reality, where economic hardship and unsustainable high immigration were indisputable facts. They voted based on perceptions of these issues, created by widespread messaging that effectively propagated them.
These culture-war tactics violate victim groups’ fundamental rights to freedom from harm and discrimination. They distort the rules of democracy by attempting to diminish the ability of voters to make informed, autonomous choices about important issues that affect them.
This does not mean, as contemporary campaign studies show, that voters are simply deceived into having no agency in the matter. That’s more obvious this time than in 2016, when Trump was still new to national politics.
People vote strategically, to varying degrees, and the extent to which they buy politicians’ messages also varies. Accounts on the ground suggest that many have actively embraced Trumpist exclusionary and bigoted sentiments. Propaganda targets, as philosopher Jason Stanley argues in his book How Propaganda Works, bear some responsibility for letting their guard down and thus allowing themselves to be captivated by the propagandist’s stories.
In contrast, three months of intense campaigning by the Harris-Walz ticket was not enough to provide a successful defense for Trump’s culture war campaign. After Biden withdrew from the race in July, he tried to shore up his base, but made notable mistakes, such as refusing to engage meaningfully with the pro-Palestinian movement while seeking endorsements from establishment Republicans who were the first victims of Trump’s culture war. .
Defeating Trumpism
So how will the Democratic Party and its allies fight back, especially during a Trump presidency where Republicans have full control of Congress and a comfortable majority on the Supreme Court?
While the first thing Democrats and progressive forces need to do is to have a clear and open debate to chart a way forward, acrimony and fragmentation will not serve them well: the tougher the infighting, the stronger Trump and his administration. That is.
The opposition should consider uniting on two broad fronts. One is pushing for far-reaching regulatory reforms of the social media space, such as ending the arbitrary rule of tech billionaires, who are largely responsible for enabling and monetizing the Republican information ecosystem.
Here, they can learn from the EU Digital Services Act, the first far-reaching domestic regulation of tech platforms; The EU Commission has already taken a strong stance against Elon Musk’s X for refusing to comply with the rules. Passing similar regulations in Congress may not be an option in the short term, but laying the groundwork could mobilize a broader public concerned about the growing dangers of social media manipulation and its impact on their lives.
A militant approach is needed to sensitize people to the need for respectful democratic debate informed by science and accurate information and the human rights harms caused by hate speech. Progressives must reframe these issues with forward-looking and engaging narratives—the Harris campaign’s repurposing of “freedom” is a good starting point.
A second front on which Democrats and progressives must unite is to forge a bold and broad vision of the future that is in radical contrast to Trumpism. This new perspective must uncompromisedly endorse humanism, racial and economic justice for American citizens and immigrants, protection of LGBTQ rights, and global solidarity. This includes ending military support for Israel and working together with other countries to tackle climate change and epidemics.
An equally widespread communication counterattack using moral, hopeful, populist narratives is needed to revive political participation and restore faith in the fundamental values of democracy and equality.
The challenges facing progressive movements in America are not isolated. Right-wing populists are following a similar playbook adapted to local circumstances in Europe and other parts of the world.
A multinational coalition of leftist and centrist forces can counter global Trumpism. The latter thrives on division, polarization and the dehumanization of those who think and act differently. Countering its toxic politics and rebuilding an electorally competitive alternative requires unity, compassion and a deeply humanitarian spirit.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.
