President Donald Trump’s most ardent supporters are motivated by their prejudices, not economic concerns, social scientists contend. Will Democrats stop trying to win their votes?
In January, Smith and his University of Kansas colleague, associate sociology professor Eric A. Hanley, published a 47-page paper deconstructing the Republican president’s appeal. Building on decades of scholarship about the lure of authoritarianism and their own analysis of American voting psychology in 2012 and 2016, the social scientists make an argument that some may find offensive and others unsurprising.
It goes something like this: Trump’s biggest supporters are motivated by bigotry and want him to hurt the people they dislike.
Note: There’s a lot to unpack in this article, and this just seems to be the hook.
It’s not always necessary to believe in white supremacy to support white supremacist policy. It would be sufficient to just be a psychopath who is white.
If you have no empathy, no capacity for compassion, give zero shits about justice or the greater good of society, and you believe that putting racists in power will help people of your own race, that’s what you’re going to do. Because it might help you, personally, to get ahead.
I think there are more of these people in the Republican party than there are those who actually think the white race is superior and deserves to rule.