From Politics as Vocation to Politics as Business: Populist Social Performance and Narrative Fusion in Trump Rallies

Karakaya, Yağmur; Edgell, Penny

doi:10.1093/sf/soab150

Cited by 5 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…These frames are certainly visible in prior mainstream campaigns—as in, for instance, Eisenhower’s use of populism and authoritarianism in 1952, McGovern’s reliance on populism and low pride and avoidance of high-pride frames in 1972, or McCain’s combination of populism with low levels of inclusive nationalism in 2008—but while these campaigns drew on—or conspicuously avoided—two or three of the frames at a time, only Trump in 2016 simultaneously exploited as many as four of them and did so at such high levels of intensity. These findings suggest that mainstream campaigns may have sowed the seeds of populist, nationalist, and authoritarian discourse, but it took a radical politician with a penchant for norm breaking and an instinctive ability to please a reactionary crowd (Karakaya and Edgell Forthcoming; McVeigh and Estep 2019) to combine these frames in a new way—and to capture and further radicalize the country’s center-right party in the process.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…campaigns may have sowed the seeds of populist, nationalist, and authoritarian discourse, but it took a radical politician with a penchant for norm breaking and an instinctive ability to please a reactionary crowd (Karakaya and Edgell Forthcoming;McVeigh and Estep 2019) to combine these frames in a new way-and to capture and further radicalize the country's center-right party in the process.…”

Section: Trends Inmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Politics as Usual? Measuring Populism, Nationalism, and Authoritarianism in U.S. Presidential Campaigns (1952–2020) with Neural Language Models

Bonikowski

Luo²,

Stuhler³

2022

Sociological Methods & Research

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Radical-right campaigns commonly employ three discursive elements: anti-elite populism, exclusionary and declinist nationalism, and authoritarianism. Recent scholarship has explored whether these frames have diffused from radical-right to centrist parties in the latter’s effort to compete for the former’s voters. This study instead investigates whether similar frames had been used by mainstream political actors prior to their exploitation by the radical right (in the U.S., Donald Trump’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns). To do so, we identify instances of populism, nationalism (i.e., exclusionary and inclusive definitions of national symbolic boundaries and displays of low and high national pride), and authoritarianism in the speeches of Democratic and Republican presidential nominees between 1952 and 2020. These frames are subtle, infrequent, and polysemic, which makes their measurement difficult. We overcome this by leveraging the affordances of neural language models—in particular, a robustly optimized variant of bidirectional encoder representations from Transformers (RoBERTa) and active learning. As we demonstrate, this approach is more effective for measuring discursive frames than other methods commonly used by social scientists. Our results suggest that what set Donald Trump’s campaign apart from those of mainstream presidential candidates was not the invention of a new form of politics, but the combination of negative evaluations of elites, low national pride, and authoritarianism—all of which had long been present among both parties—with an explicit evocation of exclusionary nationalism, which had been articulated only implicitly by prior presidential nominees. Radical-right discourse—at least at the presidential level in the United States—should therefore be characterized not as a break with the past but as an amplification and creative rearrangement of existing political-cultural tropes.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Trends Inmentioning

confidence: 99%

Politics as Usual? Measuring Populism, Nationalism, and Authoritarianism in U.S. Presidential Campaigns (1952–2020) with Neural Language Models

Bonikowski

Luo²,

Stuhler³

2022

Sociological Methods & Research

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“…Furthermore, inviting your political rivals to present their views on air is presented as just a bad deal, in which an actual good (precious airtime) is sacrificed for a symbolic good, a noble façade, with no real-world returns (such as ratings or political power). 11 Universalist pretensions thus contradict Trumps’ model of “politics as business” (Karakaya & Edgell, 2022 ). Being “fair and balanced” may be labeled “politically correct” since it is viewed merely as a “pathetic” attempt to make oneself look better, gain symbolic profits.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Trump’s criticism of PC as incapacitating hypersensitivity, dangerous lack of manly toughness, and excessive adherence to rules, was not restricted to the political field per se; it also applied to sports, which played a key role in his populist rhetoric (Karakaya & Edgell, 2022 ). In a 2015 interview, Trump voiced a concern that the NFL may “soften the game up too much,” whereas football is essentially a “violent game.” When Fox host Colin Cowherd suggested the NFL must “make every effort to make the game safe” because of “litigious reasons,” Trump responded: “don’t make it too politically – you know, what we’re doing in this country now, everything has to be… don’t make too politically correct, right?” In 2019, after the horse that finished first in the Kentucky Derby was disqualified for veering out of his lane and impeding other horses, Trump similarly criticized the disqualification as typical of “these days of political correctness”: a “rough” race on a sloppy track is not the place to stick to the rules.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why did Trump call prayers politically correct? The coevolution of the PC notion, the authenticity ethic, and the role of the sacred in public life

Schwarz

2023

Theor Soc

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Trump’s crusade against PC played a key role in his political rhetoric and resonated well among his supporters, yet his notion of PC differed greatly in meaning from earlier uses of the term and was used to denounce a much wider range of socio-political behaviors. Based on a systematic analysis of Trump’s use of this notion, I identified five main normative propositions organizing Trump’s anti-PC rhetoric. Viewed together, these propositions add up to a rehabilitation of White working-class culture but also outline an emerging late-modern version of the authenticity ethic, whose power extends far beyond the working class. This ethic (as manifested in Trump’s anti-PC rhetoric) transforms the role of morality and the sacred in political drama and in symbolic struggles over social worth. Rather than presenting his commitment to moral values, ideals, and allegedly-universal rules, Trump used anti-PC rhetoric to expose and criticize the symbolic self-interests of others who speak on behalf of these values, rules, and ideals to claim superiority (and thus ironically mimicked the sociological critique of symbolic violence to legitimize bigotry). Yet, the sacred is not completely banished from political drama: authenticity as a principle of worth guiding moral evaluation and argumentation is revealed as a sacred in denial . The case of Trump’s anti-PC rhetoric thus allows theorizing the implications of the authenticity ethic for the dynamics of social struggles over recognized worth and for the role of ideals in the presentation of self in politics and beyond.

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“…On the one hand, he makes use of an irreverent and rough-hewn sense of humor with which he lacerates the elites, immigrants and political correctness, generating bonds of solidarity in the audience. On the other hand, the use of sports metaphors portrays his character as a winner at all costs (Karakaya and Edgell 2022).…”

Section: Binary Differences: Evangelism and Culture Warsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Emergence of Regressive Heroism in Current Far-Right Populism

Perez-Agote

Salcedo

2023

Religions

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The purpose of this paper is to analyze the ways in which heroic leadership is manifested in current right-wing populism. Based on the distinction between heroic modernity and postheroic modernity, a genealogy of the heroic populist leader is proposed. This figure is analyzed by following the hero’s life process in three moments: recognition of his charismatic exceptionality, the struggle to carry out his mission of salvation and the inevitable consequences of the struggle, which cannot be anything other than victory or defeat. Throughout these three phases of heroic action, the way in which the populist hero manages his charisma and intervenes in the culture wars will be shown. Finally, after accompanying him on this ritual journey, it will be understood why populist heroism adopts a regressive model of heroism. It is concluded that extreme right-wing populist heroism is regressive in character, both in its personal and institutional deployment. As a regressive force, it is a source of instability and conflict in postheroic modernity.

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From Politics as Vocation to Politics as Business: Populist Social Performance and Narrative Fusion in Trump Rallies

Cited by 5 publications

References 51 publications

Politics as Usual? Measuring Populism, Nationalism, and Authoritarianism in U.S. Presidential Campaigns (1952–2020) with Neural Language Models

Politics as Usual? Measuring Populism, Nationalism, and Authoritarianism in U.S. Presidential Campaigns (1952–2020) with Neural Language Models

Why did Trump call prayers politically correct? The coevolution of the PC notion, the authenticity ethic, and the role of the sacred in public life

The Emergence of Regressive Heroism in Current Far-Right Populism

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