Empire of resentment Populism's toxic embrace of nationalism

Rosenthal (coeditor, Steep: The Precipitous Rise of the Tea Party), the chair of U.C. Berkeley's Center for Right-Wing Studies, dissects the migration of America's "right-wing populists" from the Tea Party to Donald Trump in this cogent and troubling account. During the 2016 campaign, Rosenthal writes, Trump rode anti-immigrant sentiment to harness the anger of rank-and-file voters who felt they had been betrayed by the Republican establishment during the Obama years. Along the way, the fiscal conservatism that drove the Tea Party movement was left curbside as Trump abandoned neoconservative policies on free trade and foreign affairs. Rosenthal finds parallels to Trump's presidency in the rise of Italian fascism, early 20th-century nationalistic movements, and illiberal governments in present-day Eastern Europe. The populist nationalism behind Trump's appeal and similar developments in Hungary, Poland, and Russia, Rosenthal contends, is driven by opposition to the "common other" (immigrants and refugees) and the forging of a "common identity" in traditional values, religion, and "whiteness." While he stops short of saying that the U.S. is currently threatened by a fascist takeover, Rosenthal is not sanguine about the nation's future prospects, hypothesizing about the dangers that a populist leader more competent than Trump would present. Rosenthal's incendiary claims are supported with copious evidence. Frightening and informative, this lucid exposé makes a strong case that American democracy is under threat. (Sept.)

A cogent political analysis that links the tea party movement to Trumpism. Hillary Clinton may have been better prepared to be president, writes Rosenthal, the chair of the Berkeley Center for Right-Wing Studies, but that doesn't mean that Donald Trump was completely out of his element: He studied right-wing media closely to seize control of the populist revolt that he found there, "convincing America's right-wing populists to migrate ideologically--from the Tea Party's free-market fundamentalism to Trump's anti-immigrant, America-First nationalism." Those populists, in turn, were motivated by resentment: the sense that the power elite were robbing them in order to bestow favors on others--read: nonwhite, perhaps immigrant others--in a nexus of giveaways supposedly orchestrated by the educated class and the mainstream media. Thus the attention on lifestyle issues, since liberals are supposedly recognized by their "cultural capital," something that can be refuted simply by claiming superior intelligence, as Trump has often done, stealing a page from Rush Limbaugh and his claim to "talent on loan from…God." The most important expression of belonging to the populist wave is the claiming of in-group status, a politics of identity that contrasts true believers with others who are not to be considered "real Americans." Certainly, Trump was effective in rallying those believers to his cause, and if they are in a minority, they certainly put the lie to any notion that America is on the road to a post-conservative--and post-racial--future. Rosenthal adds that if the adherents to white supremacist causes have yet to claim their place in the sun after misjudging the public mood in Charlottesville in 2017, they're biding their time. Trump's "hybrid populism" is perhaps best characterized by its breaking down some of the old differences between left and right by scorning the financial elite--though Trump belongs to that class--and engaging in "red-meat scapegoating" of the "Imagined Other" lurking just outside the door. A welcome exposé of the politics of wounded resentment and the manipulators behind it. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.