White Christian Supremacy vs. Multi-Racial Democracy
Dr. Liliana Mason is faculty at Johns Hopkins University and author of Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity.
In a new article, Activating Animus: The Uniquely Social Roots of Trump Support, she and her co-authors show that "Trump’s support is thus uniquely tied to animus toward minority groups."
She provides key takeaways fro this study:
"First, the people who really like Trump in 2018 are the same ones who really disliked Blacks, Muslims, LGBT+, and Hispanics in 2011. It's NOT THE SAME for the GOP in general, or even for Ryan or McConnell. Trump is drawing on this particular group of people to a unique degree.The new MAGA/anti-MAGA conflict is not an entirely partisan one. It's about white Christian supremacy versus a fully multi-racial democracy. And it's not happening for anyone on the Democratic side. Hating Christians and White people doesn't predict favorability toward any Democratic figures or the Democratic Party. So it isn't "anti-White racism" (whatever that means) motivating the left. It's not "both sides." This means that there is a faction in American politics that has moved from party to party, can be recruited from either party, and responds especially well to hatred of marginalized groups. They're not just Republicans or Democrats, they're a third faction that targets parties.
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Welcome to American Jesus.
My name is Ishii Arsh, who is hosted in partnership with the Kapp Center at UCSB, and I'm joined today by Dr. Liliana Mason, who is an associate research professor at the SNF Agora Institute.
and is a faculty in the Department of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University.
Dr. Mason is the author of Uncivil Agreement, How Politics Became Our Identity.
That's with the University of Chicago Press.
And also has a new book coming next year.
Dr. Mason has been published seemingly all over the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Public Opinion Quarterly, also been featured in many places, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, and NPR.
Just say, Dr. Mason, thanks for taking the time to join me.
I really appreciate it.
Thanks so much for the invitation.
I'm happy to be here.
We are here today to talk about a brand new article, Activating Animus, the Uniquely Social Roots of Trump Support.
And that was published in the American Political Science Review with your co-host Julie Ronski from the University of Mississippi and John Kane from New York University.
As soon as I saw you post about the article on Twitter, I was I wanted to just see if there was any way to have you on, even though I know you have a very busy summer and a lot going on.
And one of the reasons is just this Twitter thread where you really elaborate All conclusions that y'all draw in this article.
So we will get there.
But for me, as somebody who spends his weeks and his hours and seemingly too many of his hours thinking about things like what animates Trump support, it's it's I would say just it really just catches my eye is kind of novel and just at this point incisive in a way that I had never really considered your work really did that.
And so I'm very thankful for just the kind of perspective that y'all bring in this article.
So Can I just begin here?
What type of research did you and your co-authors do for activating enemas?
Like, how did you collect data?
You know, for the layperson to understand how it is you sort of arrive at conclusions.
What is the kind of thing you do as a researcher?
Yeah, well, so we're very lucky because the Democracy Fund sponsors a publicly available survey called the Voter Study Group, and anybody can actually access this data online.
And what they did was they interviewed many thousands of people in 2011.
And then started re-interviewing those people in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, this year, last year, this year.
So they're continuing this, let's call it panel, when you interview the same people over and over again.
And the nice thing about a panel is that if you see changes over time, you know that it's because these people's minds are changing, not because it's a different sample of people.
So we really thought that this would be a useful data source because it's almost like a time machine.
You can go back to 2011, before Trump was really a major political figure.
And then sort of look at the types of characteristics of people before Trump was around that predicted or that were highly correlated with their feelings towards Trump in 2018, so after she'd been president for almost two years.
And so we were really just looking for patterns.
What are the patterns of, you know, what are the things that are the best at predicting Trump's support in the future?
Yeah, that's great.
I mean, I love this, the idea of a time machine effect where you have the same folks and you can really track how their attitudes have or have not changed.
One of the conclusions you draw in the article, and I'll quote here, and board Democratic-linked groups in 2011 predicts future support for Trump regardless of party identity.
You help us non-specialists, non-academics understand what that means?
Yeah, so these were self-reported feelings towards African Americans, Hispanics, LGBTQ+, Americans, and Muslims.
And so these people who felt negative feelings towards these four groups in 2011, We're more likely to support Trump in 2018.
But that effect occurred among Republicans and Democrats and especially among independents.
So obviously the overall level of Trump approval among Democrats is lower than anybody else.
But it's the people who had negative feelings towards these groups in 2011 still had significantly higher approval of Trump by 2018 than people who had warm feelings towards these groups, for instance, even in the Democratic Party.
It's astonishing because usually not much moves partisans, right?
Republicans feel what they feel, Democrats feel what they feel, but this was actually something that was moving people across time.
I mean, what really caught my eye here was something that I think some of us have felt or perceived for a long time, but did not have the data to back this up, which is that Trump's turnout, the Trump coalition, is this group who seems unique.
It's not a Republican group.
It's not a party-identified group.
It's something And yet, did not have the data or the language, perhaps, to kind of zero in on what it was.
And so, I mean, this leads me to a bunch of things.
I want to turn to your truly noteworthy, and I think alarming, Twitter thread about the article.
You elaborate on your findings and draw some pretty arresting conclusions.
And first, it seems that what you're saying is there's a correspondence between folks who really liked Trump in 2018, and in 2011, really Have animus towards or dislike of Black folks, racial minorities like Muslims, folks who are part of the LGBTQ plus community, and Hispanics.
I'll just play devil's advocate really quick, not to be bleak, but is that just a statement about the GOP in general?
How is this just different, you know, in the data than just the run of the mill GOP Republican kind of voter?
Yeah, that was one of the most fascinating things that we found, actually, which is that this relationship only exists for Donald Trump.
So if you and we're predicting that the relationship between these two time periods, we're controlling, basically controlling for partisan identity and age and gender and all the other demographic things.
So we're holding constant all of these things that normally predict approval of Republican figures or the Republican Party.
And what we found was really all those things constant.
This animosity in 2011 predicts approval of higher approval of Trump in 2018, but it does nothing to predict approval of the Republican Party in general.
Or Mitt Romney or Carl Wright.
So these were just the people that we had in the survey to measure against.
But basically, it was this really standout effect where, you know, just regular Republicans, once you take into account their Republican identity, Vincente Amonson doesn't actually predict much, right?
But even taking into account Republican identity, The data monster in 2011 has this really strong relationship with Trump approval.
And he's unique in all of the political figures and the political parties that we tested.
Trump was uniquely attracting this particular group of people, almost sort of like a lightning rocket, right?
He wasn't creating them.
He was, he was drawing, you know, previously people who already filled these attitudes.
He was attracting them, corralling them into one particular political group around him.
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