It is January 6, 2021. We are all at least a little bit in the United States of America – at least as observers – when in Washington , in the seat of the American parliament , the members of the two chambers, the Senate and Congress, are in joint session to validate the count of the votes cast by the electors of the 50 states in the November 2020 elections. But something goes wrong, so on Capitol Hill, among the marbles of the temple of American constitutional freedoms, thousands of militants burst : they are the Trumpists , the supporters of the outgoing President Donald Trump.
From the Ordinariness of American Leaders to the Extraordinariness of the Outsider: The Case of Trump
There have been few, if any, truly charismatic leaders in the negative sense of the word in the Republican Party , yet Donald Trump has turned out to be an outsider : he has been a personality exception as an American political leader.
Already in his first interviews in 2016, the aspects that set Trump apart from the rest of the Republican world as we knew them up until then were clearly evident . Donald Trump 's salient characteristics were revealed through his words (and therefore his messages) and his attitude : a man, but perhaps even more so a character, characterized by political inexperience and open racism ; this latter element thus placed itself in disarray, or rather out of balance, with respect to the positions of the Republican Party as a whole . For his supporters, Donald Trump represented, personified, and embodied a real man , who speaks directly to the people without false promises.
Third Millennium: The Origin of Negative Feelings and Disappointed and Betrayed Values in the People
Password addressed directly to the American people. Yes, ok, but what kind of passwords and which "People” I am the focus di Donald Trump? Rewinding the tape, it can be observed that – in just over four years of American history sotto at Trump presidency at the center and at the extremes election campaigns (2016-2021) – America he saw it blossom un movement and it had been simmering in the pot for two decades, made by people disappointed by the myth of theAmerican Dream, weakened and imagined creaking in the souls of millions of Americans, starting from the dawn of the Third Millennium, at whose birth we almost immediately witnessed with astonished eyes the collapse of the Twin Towers in New York (September 11, 2001) due to a terrorist attack plotted by Al Qaeda.
And that wound will never heal. But the idea of living perpetually in crisis has also taken root in the collective imagination of the people, because another wound that opened later – within the first decade of the 21st century – was the events surrounding subprime mortgages , which further weakened spirits due to the economic crisis that unfolded thereafter. All this pain had been cooled by someone, frozen just enough so that it wouldn't completely die, but rather ready to return to the forefront in a warm way as soon as a real man appeared on the media and political scene – in short, in the institutions – with a pretext, or rather, with a promise.
After the Pain of 2001, a Timeline of Hate in Trump's 2015 Speeches
And so, thanks to the figure of Donald Trump , all those repressed feelings and attitudes —sometimes linked to hatred—that could not be expressed (because they were not politically correct ) have resurfaced . It is no coincidence that, just over a year before the start of the 2016 election campaign, Trump had already begun to make his voice and his ideas echo in the minds of Americans... with these words :
“The Mexican government is bringing the most unwanted people to the United States. They are, in many cases, criminals, drug dealers, rapists, etc.” (July 6, 2015)
These are highly dangerous statements, because they are concepts that can potentially become a fixed point in any white person's mind, clouding their rationality, and leading to various emotional states that are then acted out through violence directed against this or that " invading enemy ."
Shortly after, we arrive at 2016, and Trump has refined his rhetoric: Donald has broadened the scope of his enemies and in this case is ready to attack Muslims with statements that see him in favor of closing mosques and creating a specific database for them. And so we return to the question at the origin of the Trumpist movement , Trumpism : to which people has Trump always addressed his speeches?
From Hate to Action: Trump Supporters' Violence on Capitol Hill
Earlier, mention was made of the presence in white people of at least a glimmer of rationality, or rather, a healthy reality principle , which—if properly oriented—can mitigate negative emotions (such as frustration) thanks to an ability to adapt desire satisfaction to adverse situations. But the events that occurred on Capitol Hill in the early afternoon of January 6, 2021, demonstrated how the pleasure principle can prevail over the reality principle, leading to acts charged with violent energy and irreverence.
The supporters of Donald Trump , the Trumpists , stormed the American parliament building. Paradoxically, in contrast to what was put in place (violence prostrated among the marbles of the temple of American constitutional liberties ), they did not want the return of the pain experienced in 16-17 years at the beginning of the Third Millennium without Trump's promises , without their real man.
The thousands of militants had just become excited during a rally of Trump himself, where the outgoing President had reiterated his intention not to concede victory to Joe Biden , the Democratic man who legitimately defeated him in the November 2020 elections. The political leader's desire to remain in office illegitimately and the uprising of his people to keep Trump himself in his place, in the institutions , caused thousands of these last Trumpists to march towards the Capitol in order to interrupt the session of Congress for the formal passage with which Congress was preparing to invest Joe Biden , the President-elect, with his office, two weeks before his swearing-in.
Trumpism, Trumpists
In short, the Trumpists, with their commitment to establishing themselves as a social movement, could be discussed sociologically through the lens of Manuel Castells , the theorist of the three types of movements and social identities that arise in response to the globalization of information flows and networks. The first type is based on legitimacy . Therefore, by overriding Castells's theory regarding this recent Trumpism , we note that this model of movement—and its respective identity—arises from its distortion of the Constitution's incipit, "We the people," which resonates in online echo chambers and then quickly propagates offline (a march) to become truth and reality.
The Trumpists were born from Trump , from Donald Trump alone, or rather from Trump and themselves ( American individualism ). Here emerges the exception that proves the rule. Castells had envisioned a type of legitimizing movements and identities manifest in society's dominant institutions and generated, among others, by political parties , from which Trump, however, distanced himself.
The Trumpist corps formed within civil society, outside of state institutions but with legitimate access to state power. Castells's discussion continues with the discussion of two other types of social movements and identities: resistance movements and project movements . From this perspective, the type of resistance movements and identities finds its foundation in religious fundamentalism, race and ethnicity, and the culture of excluded groups.
QAnon, Proud Boys, and more
In the wake of this reading of the social phenomenon we are calling Trumpism, it is possible to trace the promises and beliefs that stirred in the soul of Donald Trump and transferred into the imagination of his millions of supporters, including those belonging to sects or extremist groups of various kinds ( QAnon and the Proud Boys are just two examples), who have given form and substance to the movement that we freely interpret below (based on sources from Thompson D. in The Atlantic) with some representative mottos: "We want to return to being a nation with an ideal of individualism where failure is inconceivable and where if you get fired or are unemployed you don't count as an individual because you don't generate profit!", and again: " Trump, you are our only hope! You are the hope of We the movement ... We, the real people ."
The voices mixed in these hypothetical slogans (which are a condensation of concepts extrapolated from the mass and new media) belong to individuals who make up the white people disillusioned with the American Dream . The people who wanted to be reborn and survive in this new world order, which they must oppose alongside Donald Trump . These are supporters who, 14 days before Biden 's inauguration , attacked American democracy because of the ambiguous messages Trump himself sent to his electorate, thus fomenting and incentivizing domestic terrorism with words like: "Stand Back and Stand By."
Politics highly specialised of Donald Trump and the "repairs" that Joe Biden will have to implement
Trump has unleashed a war against democratic institutions , he has transformed the presidency into a reality show in which accusations and abuses have been indulged (<<L'Internazionale>> special supplement, “Biden's victory”).
However, we are talking about the West and what, until proven otherwise, was and is a nation that exported democracy to the world, despite its fractures, visible internal divisions, and wounds that do not heal in the short term, stemming from centuries of inequality and oppression . What we witnessed was a powder keg that exploded: the gunpowder was already there with historic white nationalist organizations, with highly questionable democratic policies, as oppressive and discriminatory attitudes too often prevailed (particularly in the last Trump administration). It will be Joe Biden 's job to overturn Donald Trump 's policies , turning America's clock back four years.
Simone Frezzato and Giulia Ricci
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