"Pride paradox": Sociologist Arlie Hochschild on Trump's manipulation of white working class voters

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"Pride paradox": Sociologist Arlie Hochschild on Trump's manipulation of white working class voters
"Trump brilliantly prospected for white, blue-collar shame, found it, converted shame to blame and set it on fire"

By Chauncey DeVega
Senior Writer
Published September 30, 2024 6:53AM (EDT)


(Salon) With slightly more than a month until Election Day, the polls show that Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are basically tied. Political scientists, historians, and other experts are describing the 2024 presidential election as one of the closest in modern American history. For those outside of the so-called MAGAverse, Trump’s popularity, even after more than eight years, remains a riddle. Unfortunately, the future of American democracy may be decided by their inability to break the Trump Code. The mainstream news media’s failure to decipher Trumpism has repeatedly led them to normalize the wantonly corrupt ex-president’s extremely malignant behavior.

In her new book “Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right,” leading sociologist and author Arlie Hochschild has taken on the task of trying to explain Trump’s powerful appeal for and power over “white working class” voters and other downwardly mobile Americans. She argues that Trump speaks to their grievances, pain, rage, and feelings of lost pride, manhood, purpose and honor.

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I am a product of and a proud member of the Black working class. That background and growing up with white working class people have given me great insight into Trump and his appeal that many of my colleagues from more upper class, if not rich white, backgrounds lack.

Your working-class background gives you access to an important mode of communication — one that many if not most journalists and reporters do not yet have. One of the reasons I wrote “Stolen Pride” is to help us all become bilingual by understanding the language and logic of Trump and his appeal. You can take what Donald Trump says literally, and by doing so miss what is being said emotively. In red states, and Appalachia in particular, that I write about in "Stolen Pride," there is a story of struggle, loss, poverty and addiction.

..... That story in my opinion can be generalized more broadly to a national story about the large percentage of Americans who are white and lack college degrees, and who are now downwardly mobile. Over the last two decades, noncollege whites have suffered a decline in wages and property. So, they’re worse off than before. But they’ve also become worse off than both whites with BAs, and Blacks with or without BAs. So, they feel headed downward. ..... Trump has brilliantly prospected for white, blue-collar shame, found it, converted shame to blame and set it on fire. ..................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2024/09/30/pride-paradox-sociologist-arlie-hochschild-on-manipulation-of-working-class/