The idea that the only reason Donald Trump won was because he spoke to the forgotten, disenfranchised portion of America that we didn’t care to ever consider is a common thought following the U.S. presidential elections. That to really understand why Trump won, we’d have to try to understand his supporters.
Prior to and following the elections, numerous articles were published that analyzed American citizens who voted for Trump. Often, the people portrayed are those who feel the government is prioritizing immigrants and refugees, and doesn’t care for the working class. Overall, the common theme in this genre of work is that Trump supporters are good people deep down, and that they are simply just a part of the white American low and middle class who feel forgotten and unheard.
Understanding the minds of voters and the circumstances that lead them to make their decisions is important. However, the constant insistence that these people are all good-natured and pleasant at their core is very troubling when placed side by side with inattention to the personal lives of those who will be most affected by Trump’s dangerously discriminatory rhetoric and policies.
Trump has proposed numerous racist and discriminatory policies, including: banning Muslims from entering the country, issuing government ID cards to track Muslims in America, reinstating racially-motivated stop- and-frisk laws, building a wall between Mexico and the US, and deporting Mexicans from America. He has also called Mexicans rapists, and made lewd comments towards women. It is clear here that displaying the kind heartedness of Trump voters is seen as more relevant and important than pushing back against political beliefs that will undoubtedly lead to discrimination and even violence. Furthermore, this kind of thinking shows that those who voted for Trump are not to be held accountable and are not responsible for what will ensue during his presidency.
This narrative has been seen time and time again in Western history, where discrimination and racial violence are seen simply as a misstep, and not a crime. This was seen in Nazi Germany, which tells us that voters chose to elect Hitler for reasons of economic self-interest and ignored the potential danger that faced the Jewish people.
This was also seen following the Civil War. The Lost Cause narrative often tells the story of the Southern farmer who owned no slaves, simply defending himself from the Northern invaders. This ignores the fact that the Confederate’s motivation to go to war against the North centred on protecting slavery as an institution.
In both of these accounts, the voters and the soldiers are absolved from any moral responsibility for the respective outcomes, and their intentions hold more weight than their actions. These revisionist accounts hold weight, and in the case of the American Civil War, the narratives have affected people’s perception of the war, even 150 years later. When asked what their impression of the main cause of the Civil War was, 38 per cent of the respondents said it was the South’s defence of an economic system based on slavery, while 48 per cent of the respondents said it was due to states fighting for their rights. These accounts have even affected school textbooks and academia. President and general Ulysses Grant’s memoirs of the Civil War and many other records recounting the events from the North’s perspective have been pushed aside through a campaign by historians who supported the Lost Cause.
These narratives exempting accountability from those who were responsible for the outcomes are dangerous, as they can severely affect how history is recounted. The famous saying goes “those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it,” so if the true story about Trump voters isn’t told in these elections, we shouldn’t be surprised if we get many more, and far worse ones in the future.
