The 2020 U.S. presidential election, Trumpism and the roots of negative distrust

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The 2020 U.S. presidential election, Trumpism and the roots of negative distrust

Президентские выборы 2020 г. в США, «трампизм» и истоки крайнего недоверия

Эрик Альфред Олсен Амстердамский университет, Амстердам, Нидерланды

Эта статья описывает роль крайнего недоверия приме-нительно к президентским выборам 2020 г. в США, в особенности в от-ношении кампании и сторонников президента Дональда Трампа. Автор изучает негативную риторику в отношении президентской кампании, привлечение ультраправых военных групп для достижения желаемого результата и общий политический дискурс президентской кампании Трампа и его соратников, а также то, как эти элементы способствовали созданию опасной ситуации внутри Соединенных Штатов Америки, при-ведших к штурму Капитолия в столице США 6 января 2020 г. Кроме того, он исследует, как рассеивание теорий заговора, страх и дезинформация привели к непосредственной деградации процесса президентских выбо-ров в США и ситуации, в которой впервые за всю историю США передача власти от одной администрации президента к другой прошла не гладко. В завершение делается вывод о том, что активное использование крайнего недоверия среди избирателей способствует политической и национальной нестабильности, не только становясь угрозой для развития национального кризиса, но и способствуя признанию недействительным всего процесса выборов президента в США.

Ключевые слова: социальное недоверие, параноидальный стиль, Трамп, «трампизм», QAnon, выборы 2020, передача власти, президент.

The 2020 presidential election has presented unprecedented political challenges at both the governmental level as well as among an increasingly fractious electorate. If one factor can be cited for maintaining the almost 250 years of stable government in the United States, it would be the smooth transition of power from one presiden-tial administration to another. Despite some heated campaigns, the contest has always ended with one side claiming triumph and the de-feated concluding that they would honor the loss and endeavor to win four years later. The 2020 election, like many things in our lives that year, was different. These concerns were articulated by Peter Nicholas in his The Atlantic article, “Trump Could Still Break Democracy's Biggest Norm”¹. What would happen to the American Experiment, not just in the short term but for the future of the United States, if a sitting President refused to honor election results and intended to stay in office despite the two and a half centuries of stable government and precedent?

At the governmental level, officials and stakeholders have already begun to address this concern. At the end of July this year The Boston Globe reported that in late June a bi-partisan group including, “political operatives, former government and military officials, and academics” met online to engage in a role-play exercise on how a contested election would play out. Among the scenarios gamed, included: if President Trump refused to concede a loss, publicly hinted that he might not con-cede, and then how far he would go to try and retain the Presidency? In every scenario the group concluded that there would be varying levels of street violence and political deadlock. In each case where a close re-sult was gamed, the 11 weeks between the election and Inauguration Day was dominated by political maneuvering by both candidates as the Trump side rallied his supporters and sought to use every lever of power available, the Biden people tried to fight through the courts and neither side was willing to concede. The overall conclusion was that in what is likely to be a close election in November, there are few actual mechanisms to prevent a Constitutional crisis especially if, as antici-pated, President Trump used the vast authority vested to him in order to retain power. However, the results of the election did not turn out to be close at all, Biden won the 2020 contest by a significant share of electoral college votes over President Trump.

Now that the election has been decided decisively in favor of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, despite unsuccessful legal challenges from the Trump campaign to invalidate the results from certain states, the worst fears of some have been realized. Facing likely criminal prosecu-tion in the city and state of New York, President Trump vainly called upon his supporters to demand that he be installed for a second term regardless of the actual election results. On 6 January 2021, the day that both chambers of Congress were set to certify the results of the Electoral College and formally recognize President-elect Biden as the 46^th President of the United States, thousands of supporters of Donald Trump converged on the National Mall. These supporters were treated to speeches from not only the President, but his children as well as close advisors such as former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani. All of whom extolled their patriotism and commitment to overturning the election results, with Trump even admonishing the crowd that they would only win through the use of force against Congress members. The day ended with hundreds of Trump supports storming the Capitol building, and disrupting the election certification until police were able to restore order and expel the insurrectionists.

How did the United States get to this point? In order to answer this, I would like to discuss the phenomenon of Negative Distrust in American politics. What do I mean by “Negative Distrust”? As opposed to “Positive Distrust” that is marked by healthy skepticism, Negative Distrust creates distorted images of one's political opponents through statements made by politicians, supporters and media personalities. Eri Bertsou in his article, “Rethinking Political Distrust”, noted that most scholarship has in the past focused on issues related to positive aspects of trust. His work instead focused on the concept of what he termed, “political distrust”. Bertsou contrasts these two concepts, arguing, “that citizen distrust of government and political institutions poses a threat for democratic politics and clarifies the relationship between the distrust observed in established democracies and classical `liberal distrust', which is considered beneficial for democracy” [Bertsou 2019, pp. 213-214].

Marc Hetherington and Jonathan Ladd in their article, “Destroying Trust in the Media, Science and Government Has Left America Vul-nerable to Disaster”, examine the attacks made by President Trump on essential institutions and how this has translated into negative distrust amongst his support base. However, the authors are quick to point out that Trump's attacks are not without precedent, “It is easy to think these are just examples of Trump's unorthodox political style. Yet he is merely the apotheosis of a political approach that has animated much of the conservative movement for a half century or more: undermining trust in the media, science and government”.

The seminal treatise on negative distrust is Richard Hofstadter's es-say, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” first published in Harper's Magazine in 1964. Hofstadter used the term “paranoid style” to discuss negative distrust, which he clearly framed as a pejorative. He wrote, “I call it the paranoid style simply because no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspira-torial fantasy that I have in mind”. The main subject Hofstadter used to illustrate his thesis were the supporters of Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) in the leadup to his 1968 presidential ambitions. Goldwater, in a pe-riod that produced many such figures, was an exceptionally right-wing hawk. The ferocious nationalism expressed by Goldwater was notewor-thy even in this hyper-nationalist period.

Of Goldwater's followers, Hofstadter wrote, “In recent years we have seen angry minds at work, mainly among the extreme right-wingers, who have now demonstrated in the Goldwater movement how much political leverage can be got out of the animosities and passions of a small minority”. He added, “In the paranoid style, as I conceive it, the feeling of persecution is central, and it is indeed sys- temized by grandiose theories of conspiracy”. Hofstadter noted that unlike clinical paranoids, those of the political persuasion see threats not to their individual self, but to the country at large, their cultural identification or more abstractly their way of life. Perhaps one can find some contemporary relevance when this is applied to people who decried that they had “lost their country” following the election of Barrack Obama [Walker 2011], or more recently to supporters of the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement headed by President Donald J. Trump [Eddington 2018].

Hofstadter reminds us of an important point. That he is not a clini-cian who is making a diagnosis, but instead when Hofstadter discusses the “Paranoid Style”, it is how it applies to otherwise normal function-ing people. He wrote, “It is the use of paranoid modes of expression by more or less normal people that makes the phenomenon significant”. So where does this political paranoia amongst mentally healthy people originate? The first thing that Hofstadter points out is how this form of negative distrust manifests, “Style has more to do with the way ideas are believed than with the truth or falsity of their content”¹⁰. He then noted that political rhetoric drives political psychology and the most severe forms of negative distrust are linked to movements in which one finds severe discontent. One only need look at the last two presidencies in the US to see how the paranoid style manifested in the opponents of Barrack Obama and then in supporters of Donald Trump. These people, not coincidentally largely make up the same group.

The Election of Barrack Obama 2008 and the Tea Party

When President Obama was first elected to office in 2008 there were two distinct groups that appeared. The first group were those people who voted for and supported Mr. Obama. The second, who are of interest here, are those people who voted against and stood in opposi-tion to Obama's presidency. The sense of outrage and rejection that this second group expressed was without historical precedent, their reliance on Negative Distrust was even more so. In a paper delivered to the an-nual meeting of the American Political Science Association in 2011, Alan Abramowitz of Emory University discussed the rise of the anti-Obama movement in a paper titled, “Partisan Polarization and the Rise of the Tea Party Movement”. Abramowitz noted that the emergence of the Tea Party movement was in line with an increasingly conservative trend amongst Republican Party voters since the 1970s and that Tea Party members represented the most conservative members amongst Republicans, and therefore the most outspoken elements relying upon Negative Distrust rhetorical styles. Moreover, “While conservatism is by far the strongest predictor of support for the Tea Party movement, racial hostility also has a significant impact on support” [Abramowitz 2011]. Much in the same vein that Hofstadter described the Goldwater movement as one where the rightwing political elite played upon the fears and prejudices of Republicans, so too does Abramowitz see the rise of the Tea Party movement and rhetoric associated with it in much the same light. He writes,

It is clear that right-wing organizations such as Americans for Pros-perity and Freedom Works have provided important logistical support for the movement and that conservative media figures, mainly associated with Fox News, have played crucial roles in publicizing and encouraging attendance at Tea Party rallies. However, these efforts could not have succeeded without the existence of a large, receptive audience among the public [Abramowitz 2011].

In their work Change They Can't Believe In, authors Christopher Parker and Matt Barreto noted many of the same trends in their analy-sis of Tea Party members. The authors asserted that Negative Distrust political rhetoric originating from those associated at all levels of the Tea Party had relied upon conspiratorial language in order to press their points. Assertions often utilized misinformation and referenced conspiracy theories [Parker, Barreto 2014]. The practice was so perni-cious that analysis by the news verification site Politifact had routinely labeled Tea Party associated statements as ranging from “Mostly False” to their most deceptive label, “Pants on Fire”. Among the most dishon-est statements was that Obama's presidency was illegitimate because he was not a natural born U.S. citizen as required by the Constitution. Increasingly, conspiratorial calls to produce birth records by far-right voices in the media and among the public, including future President Trump, would hound Obama through his entire two terms in office.

1. The Election of Donald Trump,

MAGA and the Post-Election

Response amongst Trump Supporters

If the election of Barrack Obama evidenced how political opponents relied upon the Negative Distrust to explain the ascendency of a partic-ular president, the 2016 election of Donald Trump was unprecedented in the scope and degree to which Negative Distrust manifested from the new President's supporters. For those who voted for and supported President Trump, one theme popularized from his campaign was the simple slogan, “Make America Great Again”. A statement that carried with it the culmination of decades long elements of Negative Distrust-based ideology sown into and amongst the most conservative elements of the American public, government and media structures.

One can see the “Make America Great Again” movement as the nat-ural successor to the waning Tea Party movement. This slogan encapsu-lated the anxieties, hopes as well as the evolution of white conservative politics and its reliance of negative distrust rhetoric. As a retrospective term it harkens to some past Neverland where white conservative vot-ers held absolute supremacy over the national discourse. It harnesses a longing among its supporters for a return to a white-dominated society seen as lost to a collection of race-traitors, racial and gender minorities, leftists and their collaborators, in both government and the media. Cen-tral to this mentality among proponents is the sense of embattlement and victimhood. Moreover, Donald Trump was often portrayed as being the torchbearer for these disenfranchised conservatives who feel that the destiny of the country is one in which their ideology is supreme.

The most intense form of negative distrust in this narrative mani-fested as failures of government, the media and other institutions in safeguarding the white conservative. Sean Eddington in his article, “The Communicative Constitution of Hate Organizations Online: A Semantic Network Analysis of `Make America Great Again' ”, wrote that “... Donald Trump, has long been characterized as a beacon for and mouthpiece of hate speech in both offline and online contexts...” [Ed-dington 2018]. He adds, “Whereas journalists have sought to link his [Trump's] rhetoric to hate groups, and have successfully demonstrated a mimicked rhetoric that is used by groups, this study found direct con-nections within the text corpus to #MAGA both in the overall semantic content and in the hashtag network” [Eddington 2018]. Eddington noted that the MAGA hashtag served through Negative Distrust ap-peals as a means of uniting white supremacists. Moreover, it served as a potent political tool for rallying supporters and their distrust of govern-ment and social institutions with their perception of being betrayed and victimized. At its heart MAGA capitalizes on negative distrust instincts among the conservative and rightwing portions of the electorate.

Another manifestation of the modern incarnation of negative dis-trust in the Trump era is the conspiracy theory/group known as “QAnon”. Unlike traditional conspiracy theories that tends to either focus on one event such as: the U.S. moon landing, the JFK assassination or the 9/11 terror attacks, and target as the culprit of the conspiracy one group such as: Jewish people, Catholics, the CIA, or Freemasons; the QAnon conspiracy theory instead encompasses a wide variety of smaller con-spiracies and perpetrators from foreign states, to Hollywood figures and politicians, to institutional actors such as the CIA and the major media. Claims made include such things as Michelle Obama is actually a man in disguise making President Obama a closet homosexual, to secret caves where babies are raised and harvested for sacrifice in order to maintain the youth of the satanic worshipping elites such as Hillary Clinton, Ellen DeGeneres, and other people in politics and the entertainment industry. The Covid-19 pandemic is claimed to be a Deep State inven-tion where the subsequent vaccine is not what it is purported to be but instead a way to control the population via microchips. 5G technology is also purported by QAnon followers to be another mind control tech-nology. Donald Trump, according to adherents, is singularly in place to stop it all, and is backed by patriotic elements of the military¹¹.

QAnon conspiracy rhetoric originated in October 2017 from the 4Chan website message boards and an anonymous poster calling itself “Q”. The individual or group identifying as “Q” claimed to have a high- level U.S. security clearance known as “Q clearance” and disseminated messages to adherents via “breadcrumbs” or “Q drops”. While identi-fying people, groups or conspiracy theories that are in opposition to white conservative American values, the messages were also laced with pro-Trump propaganda. Because of the wide-ranging accusations lev-eled by “Q”, even supporters admit that it is all unprovable, but that they believe it nonetheless. The manifests as the essence of Negative Distrust that strikes at the heart of Hofstadter's thesis in the 1960s and presents an existential threat to democratic institutions as evidenced on 6 January in Washington, D.C.

In the post-election milieu, this hyper-loyalty to President Trump has metastasized into a national crisis. Since 3 November and the pre-sumptive win by Joe Biden, Donald Trump sought to marshal his forces in and outside of government to challenge the electoral results with the goal of overturning the election. After a spate of losses in state and federal courts the President curried favor amongst sympathetic Con-gress members to object the Congressional certification of the Electoral College results to take place on 6 January 2021.

In the most stunning turn of events, after a rally held that day led by Trump and his children, the attendees stormed the Capitol and broke into the building while Congress members were in session certifying the election. Footage of the event captured the insurrectionists claim-ing their purpose was to overturn the election and take control of the government. While the political fallout is still playing out, there were calls from Congress members, within the media and even amongst al-lies of the President to either immediately remove Trump from office through the use of the 25^th Amendment or by impeachment and convic-tion in Congress.

Moreover, the desperate attempt to coup the government was not merely ill planned, but ill conceived. Historically most members of Congress have shown a great deal of pride in their role and in their institution. This direct attack was not merely on the body of the Congressional members, the Capitol building, but also the symbolic institution of Congress itself. The resulting fallout led to an immediate drop in support amongst supporters of the President according to Pew Research Center findings. Bi-partisan statements were made by party leaders reiterating their allegiance to the government, the Constitution and to Congress and in the strongest terms condemned not only the insurrectionists, but the President as well for his role in the debacle. In the days following the attempted insurrection of the government, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi along with other members began issuing an impeachment threat in the final days of President Trump's term. The most notable aspect of these calls has been their bi-partisan nature in a time of otherwise hyper-partisan politics, and a full-throated rejection of Negative Distrust rhetoric aimed at invalidating the 2020 election results. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell stated on the Sen-ate floor in response to efforts by some Congress members to overturn the election results,

We're debating a step that has never been taken in American history, whether Congress should overrule the voters and overturn a presidential election. I've served 36 years in the Senate and this will be the most important vote I ever cast. President Trump claims the election was stolen, the assertions range from certain local allegations to Constitutional arguments to sweeping conspiracy theories... If this election were overturned by mere allegations from the losing side our democracy would enter a death spiral. We would never see the whole nation accept an election again.

In the aftermath of the failed coup a number of disturbing al-legations have been uncovered about the goals of the insurrection-ists. Among them was how prepared they were on the 6^th of January. A significant number of the Trump rally attendees arrived with arms, including Molotov cocktails, pipe bombs and other devices such as police-style zip tie handcuffs and various forms of bulletproof vests, ballistic helmets and similar gear. During the insurrection five people were killed in the immediate event or in the aftermath, including two police officers. One particularly disturbing video shows one Capitol police officer laying on the steps leading into the Capitol building as the violent mob began to beat him with various implements including flagpoles carrying the American flag and improvised weapons such as a fire extinguisher. This officer later died from complications result-ing from the trauma. Moreover, the formerly pro-police sentiment amongst these hardline Trump supporters has begun to turn. Where only six months ago groups such as the 3%'ers, Proud Boys, Boogaloo Boys and other pro-Trump white nationalist groups made dramatic expressions of support for the pro-police “Back the Blue” movement that opposed Black Lives Matter and other police reform efforts, these same right-wing groups are now repudiating the police as traitors in the strongest terms possible. Only a few nights after 6 January a Proud Boys demonstration in Salem, Oregon had supporters stepping on a “Back the Blue” flag and challenging police in the streets until they were forcibly dispersed by authorities.

Conclusion

With the electoral loss of Donald Trump and his failure to secure a second term in office, and the anticipation of legal action by the At-torney General of New York State awaiting his return to civilian life, Trump has not easily given into defeat. His supporters, exhibiting the worst aspects of Negative Distrust, likewise already primed to believe that his loss could only come about by the cheating of Biden support-ers, have roundly rejected this outcome. This places the United States into very dangerous territory where for the first time in the history of the Republic, a smooth transition from one president to another or a smooth continuance of an administration from one term to an-other was not accomplished. The most dramatic example of this was the 6 January Trump rally and subsequent storming of the Capitol building by his supporters in an effort to halt the Constitutionally mandated ratification of the Electoral College and finalization of the victory of Joe Biden.

In U.S. history there have always been sophistic politicians, intel-lectuals and media figures interested in gaining either political power or monetizing the anger and outrage of a target group. During the tenure of Donald Trump and coming to an apex in the 2020 election and sub-sequent months, the paranoid style of American politics as practiced in the 21^st century has taken on new shapes. Among those groups who claim their ultimate allegiance to the country and Constitution, we saw members trying to stage a violent overthrow of the government in order to install their chosen leader. This is not merely a difference of political tastes, but formed an existential threat to the society as a whole and the most dangerous expressions of a reliance on Negative Distrust to guide political perceptions and actions.

If politicians and other figures in society choose to play to the basest fears and prejudices of their voter bases, they are in danger of creating a Frankenstein-type monster whose capacity for mischief and existential damage cannot be overstated. In the days after 6 January, Trump-aligned groups and individuals were still conspiring to overturn the 2020 results. These events are still unfolding, and the extent of the impact of Donald Trump, QAnon, and Trumpism in general is impos-sible to illustrate. However, as investigations are conducted by both government and media actors, areas of further research into the impact of the Negative Distrust as manifested in the Trump era can be better understood.

References

presidential election social

1. Abramowitz, A.I. (2011), “Partisan Polarization and the Rise of the Tea Party Move-ment”, APSA Annual Meeting Paper, available at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/ papers.cfm?abstract_id=1903153 (Accessed 9 Aug. 2020).

2. Bertsou, E. (2019), “Rethinking political distrust”, European Political Science Review, vol. 11, issue 2, pp. 213-230, available at: https://doi.org/10.1017/ s1755773919000080 (Accessed 9 Aug. 2020).

3. Eddington, S.M. (2018), “The Communicative Constitution of Hate Organizations On-line: A Semantic Network Analysis of `Make America Great Again' ”. Social Media + Society, vol. 4, issue 3, available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305118790763 (Accessed 9 Aug. 2020).

4. Parker, C.S. and Barreto, M.A. (2014), Change they can't believe in: the Tea Party and reactionary politics in America, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.

5. Walker, C.E. (2011), “ `We're losing our country': Barack Obama, Race & the Tea Party”, Daedaus, vol. 140, no. 1, pp. 125-130, available at: https://doi.org/10.1162/ DAED_a_00064 (Accessed 9 Aug. 2020).

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