Here we go again: Trump supporters are "lonely"


Below is just the latest iteration of a repeated Leftist stratagem:  An attempt to find something psychologically wrong with people who disagree with them.  

It goes back at least as far as that great example of psychological projection by some Berkeley Marxists led by Theodore Adorno in 1950.  The Berkeley  authors claimed that conservatives were "authoritarian", despite the glaring fact that the great authoritarian regimes of the time were socialists -- Stalin's Communists, Hitler's National Socialists, China's Maoists etc etc.  In that case it was clearly the Marxists who were pychologically warped.

Below is a small excerpt from a long and rambling article that is too long to reproduce in full here -- but I give the link for those who want to read it all.  The article marshalls a long series of mostly anecdotal evidence in support of the author's contention that people flock to Trump to alleviate their loneliness.

I don't doubt that there are some people who fit that description.  I remember some individuals like that from my studies of the extreme Right back in the '70s.  But they were exceptions. The more central members of the extreme Right were in fact highly social and socially skilled.  So the examples of lonely people described by the author below  were probably accurately described.  But the author's implicit claim that they were typical is the problem.  It is the old argument from example fallacy. You can "prove" anything that way.  She has no evidence that her interviewees represented any group.  Only a randomly sampled social survey could show that

And I really do have to laugh at that point.  The Left are so consistently crooked and selective when discussing evidence of any kind that I found what I expected when I looked up the survey evidence she does quote.  She puts up an impressive-looking graph that is evidently supposed to support what she says.  I looked up its source.  It appears to come from here or some related site.  It proves nothing whatever about how Trump supporters  feel  It is just about how Americans in general feel.  What a hoax!

Leftists are great projectors so you can be sure that it is really Leftists who are lonely and need support from shared political activity.  I observed something of that recently when Leftist demonstrators were active near where I often have breakfast.  The demonstration was clearly a great social occasion for the central figures.  They spent a lot of time chatting to one another and were clearly in a high and friendly mood.

That's just anecdote too but what is food for the goose is food for the gander.

Noreena Hertz

As early as 1992, researchers began to pick up on a correlation between social isolation and votes for the far-right Front National’s Jean-Marie Le Pen in France. Across the Atlantic, a 2016 poll by the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy revealed Donald Trump voters to be significantly more likely to report having fewer close friends, fewer acquaintances and to spend fewer hours a week with both than supporters of either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders.

Similarly, in my conversations with far-right voters across the globe, isolation was a recurring theme. Eric in Paris told me of the loneliness of urban living, and of the joy he derives from his regular Wednesday Rassemblement National (RN, formerly the Front National) gatherings, of afterwards going out for group drinks, of handing out posters and flyers together. He’d checked out other political parties on the road to Le Pen, the populist left included, but found RN’s community particularly welcoming.

Giorgio in Milan shared how thankful he is to the League led by Matteo Salvini for the dinners and parties he had started going to: “They’re called committees, they’re like get-togethers for people in the party. And they’re very nice, actually. You can meet a lot of people. We sing, and there’s a really strong feeling of tradition.”

Think too about the success of Donald Trump’s election rallies in 2016 and you can see why he has been so desperate to get them going again for his 2020 campaign. The sea of red-clad folk, sporting matching “Make America Great Again” hats, badges and T-shirts — these are communal events that make people feel part of something bigger. They provide a sense of identity, a kind of kinship that many of his supporters find increasingly hard to get elsewhere.

Salvini uses similar tactics in Italy, invoking intimate words such as “mamma”, “papà” and “amici” (friends). It may be a cynical co-opting of family, but it’s successful. So too are the Belgian festivals sponsored by rightwing populist party Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest). Here, supporters split their time between anti-immigration speeches indoors and an outside festival that includes face-painting and bouncy castles.

But it’s not just their emphasis on nearly tribal experiences that explains why today’s rightwing populists have proven so successful at appealing to those for whom the traditional bonds of the workplace, religious institutions and the wider community have broken down.

Their success also lies in this: an appeal to the feeling of exclusion and marginalisation that many citizens have come to experience in recent years, a sense of being ignored, even abandoned, by those who hold political and economic power. Think of Trump’s rallying cry that “The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer” or Marine Le Pen’s oath to serve “a forgotten France, a France abandoned by the self-appointed elite”. It’s an appeal that lands strongest with those who feel newly forgotten and abandoned.

More HERE



1 comment:

  1. Sticks and stones? Not today, son, and not tomorrow eitherOctober 5, 2020 at 10:16 PM

    Trump became president of the USA due to this promise and he has delivered on making America great again. He is of course no magician that can use wishful thinking to fix what appears to be massive deterioration of what is still the greatest country on Earth. Trump is the right man for the job at this point in time and he can hold the fort like no other Republican or Republican in name only. For one, are there currently any conservative folks as thick skinned as Trump?

    Trump is a president and also a shaker of trees and all sorts of interesting fruits fall to the ground.

    "Republicans believe in forgiveness for your actual sins and Democrats believe in hating you for imagined sins. That difference has emerged as the major theme in this country." - Scott Adams

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