Working-Class Culture as Political Participation: Reading Trump as Revolt Against a Middle-Class Public Sphere

Abstract

The 2016 election cycle and ensuing presidency of Donald Trump has been attributed in large part to his support among working-class whites (Gest 2016, p. 193; Tyson and Maniam 2016). Their reasons for support, however, are open to interpretation. This article will suggest that elements of Donald Trump’s public communication style and ethos align with elements of working-class culture, language use, and knowledge construction. Trump’s anti-institutional, anti-government rhetoric reifies these components of working-class culture because of institutions’ and government’s deep foundations in middle-class culture, language use, and knowledge construction—and the working-class’s, especially the white working-class’s, alienation from these institutions, with the result being anger or apathy (Lareau 2003; Jensen 2012; Gest 2016). These values are often embedded in a master narrative that defines white working-class life as one of victimization (Hochschild 2016; Gest 2016; Cramer 2016). The article next suggests that Trump’s oft-used rhetorical framework of not just immigrants as threat, but of immigrants as protected and valued by institutions that overlook white workingclass concerns (Gest 2016), opens up one possible persuasive framework to legitimate Trump’s xenophobia and racism through white working-class attitudes.

How COVID Vaccination Hesitancy, Social Class, and Economic Inequality Reveal a New Dimension of Public Trust

“…This theme may be a rhetorical commonplace, used to gin up anger, as with Trump's rhetoric. However, as I've argued, 'others benefiting' is not simply a convenient (Trumpian) commonplace, but is an often held working-class belief about institutions, as evidenced in the COVID non-compliance interviews, as well as multiple workingclass ethnographies from Gest (2016), Lareau (2003), and my rhetorical scholarship (Kohn, 2018).…”

“…Consequently, we see that strong blame is not cast outward, toward other groups, in the COVID data: rather, there is only a recognition, but not high resentment, that some class-based groups (the middle class and above) seem to benefit more from institutions. Moreover, the strongest reasons for not complying with vaccine requests are not due to blame or anger toward other demographics or sub-groups (i.e., immigrants) that I identified in Trump's working-class appeals (Kohn, 2018); rather, reasons for non-compliance in the COVID interviews are centered by a basic feeling of 'Why should I comply? What has the institution or government ever done for me?…”

“…Thus, Trump's rhetoric and success as a politician stands as testimony to a working-class belief that institutions do not serve the working class, but only other groups. This anti-institutional sentiment in Trump's rhetoric is one reason for his popularity with America's white working class (Gest, 2016;Kohn, 2018). Alternatively, a less conspiratorial, yet antigovernmental conservative small government movement dating to the Reagan years (Aune, 2001, p. 129) also explains the decline in trust because, in Reagan's words, 'government is the problem.'…”