A recently republished study on the characteristics of Trump supporters/voters by K. Norman Smith and Eric Hanley of Kansas University provided a very clear understanding of the type of persons finding Donald Trump's leadership appealing. They and other sociologists identify these people as Aggressive Authoritarians. Their study contrasts them from other more benign authoritarian personalities classified by psychologists.
Below is an Abstract of their study.
Abstract
Recently
released data from the 2016 American National Election Study allow us
to offer a multifaceted profile of white voters who voted for Donald J.
Trump in the 2016 presidential election. We find that Trump’s supporters
voted for him mainly because they share his prejudices, not because
they’re financially stressed. It’s true, as exit polls showed, that
voters without four-year college degrees were likelier than average to
support Trump. But millions of these voters—who are often stereotyped as
“the white working class”—opposed Trump because they oppose his
prejudices. These prejudices, meanwhile, have a definite structure,
which we argue should be called authoritarian: negatively, they target
minorities and women; and positively, they favor domineering and
intolerant leaders who are uninhibited about their biases. Multivariate
logistic regression shows that, once we take these biases into account,
demographic factors (age, education, etc.) lose their explanatory power.
The electorate, in short, is deeply divided. Nearly 75% of Trump
supporters count themselves among his enthusiastic supporters, and even
“mild” Trump voters are much closer in their attitudes to Trump’s
enthusiasts than they are to non-Trump voters. Polarization is profound,
and may be growing.
Smith's and Hanley's work is supported by numerous other studies on this very topic from around academia across the globe. This includes studies from U.of Manitoba, U. of Aukland, U. of Southern Denmark, U. of Akron, Harvard, Cambridge, U. of Chicago, Stanford, Princeton and Oxford. It is also supported by studies published by Gallup and the American Academy of Political and Social Science.
Think about this in your own experience among your Trump supporting family and friends. Seems to speak truth to me. Those same characteristics are exhibited by those I know and now do my best to avoid. Why do I shun them? Because their views are toxic to me and the values I try to espouse. Life is difficult enough without this poison. These people are antithetical to everything I think our very flawed society and democracy is attempting to advance for humanity. The European academics who have studied these types of people initiated their work to try to understand how much of Europe embraced fascism. Their work is an attempt to avoid repeating these same mistakes.
Authoritarian figures are not foreign to American society as seen in our history. These are not your bread a butter kinds of conservatives we liberals once were able to make common cause with to solve societal problems. They are brutal, cruel and unforgiving of opposition. We are seeing it now in their refusal to follow difficult but reasonable social norms to spare others of Covid 19 infection and possible death. They advocate the value of the economy over human life. Economies can be restored. Life cannot.
So, I choose to both resist the policies now being advanced by both D.J. Trump and the Republican Party. He has shaped it into a White Nationalist party. I'll remove these people from my life, wary of the harm they wish to visit on my society, country and me.
Smith's and Hanley's work is supported by numerous other studies on this very topic from around academia across the globe. This includes studies from U.of Manitoba, U. of Aukland, U. of Southern Denmark, U. of Akron, Harvard, Cambridge, U. of Chicago, Stanford, Princeton and Oxford. It is also supported by studies published by Gallup and the American Academy of Political and Social Science.
Think about this in your own experience among your Trump supporting family and friends. Seems to speak truth to me. Those same characteristics are exhibited by those I know and now do my best to avoid. Why do I shun them? Because their views are toxic to me and the values I try to espouse. Life is difficult enough without this poison. These people are antithetical to everything I think our very flawed society and democracy is attempting to advance for humanity. The European academics who have studied these types of people initiated their work to try to understand how much of Europe embraced fascism. Their work is an attempt to avoid repeating these same mistakes.
Authoritarian figures are not foreign to American society as seen in our history. These are not your bread a butter kinds of conservatives we liberals once were able to make common cause with to solve societal problems. They are brutal, cruel and unforgiving of opposition. We are seeing it now in their refusal to follow difficult but reasonable social norms to spare others of Covid 19 infection and possible death. They advocate the value of the economy over human life. Economies can be restored. Life cannot.
So, I choose to both resist the policies now being advanced by both D.J. Trump and the Republican Party. He has shaped it into a White Nationalist party. I'll remove these people from my life, wary of the harm they wish to visit on my society, country and me.
