PRO-TRUMPERS AND EGALITARIANISM

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by John Spritzler

March 8, 2021

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[The URL of this article is https://www.pdrboston.org/pro-trumpers-egalitarianism ]

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Please see the Postscript June 12, 2022 at the end of this article, about the "Jan. 6 hearings" dominating the airwaves lately.

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In order to see how pro-Trumpers responded to my pro-egalitarian message--"Let's remove the rich from power to have real, not fake, democracy with no rich and no poor"--I went to a pro-Trump rally in the summer of 2016 to ask random people at the rally if they thought the message was a good idea or a bad idea. Here's what happened.

 

First, let me tell you about the rally. Officially the rally was one in support of the 2nd Amendment, called by the Massachusetts Gun Owners Action League (GOAL, sort of a local chapter of the NRA), in response to a move by the state's Democratic Attorney General to limit what kind of guns could be purchased. The rally was in front of the Massachusetts State House in Boston. It was a very hot day and there were several hundred people--three or four hundred I would guess--at the rally when I arrived, all listening to speeches by people standing in front of the State House.

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All of the people were white. Almost all of them had MAGA caps. Many held American flags and had NRA insignia shirts. Most were, I believe, from more rural parts of Massachusetts, not the liberal city of Boston.

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I came with a bunch of PDRBoston.org buttons that said "Let's remove the rich from power to have real, not fake, democracy with no rich and no poor" and I also was wearing a T-shirt with those same words in a large font.

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People were focused on the speaker in front when I arrived at the rear of the rally and everybody's back was turned to me. So I tapped random people on the shoulder and when they turned around I asked them, "Do you mind if I ask you a question about this button?" as I handed them a button to read. Everyone was willing to hear and answer the question, so I then asked, "Do you think what the button says is a good idea or a bad idea?" I asked fifty random people this question. What happened?

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Forty-three of the 50 random people (86%) said it was a good idea and gladly accepted the button when I offered it to them; many pinned it on themselves right on the spot. A woman at the rally who had bottles of cold water (it was a very hot day), in appreciation for the message I was spreading, insisted I accept a bottle from her!

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Four of the 50 people (8%) responded with verbal (though not physical!) hostility. One said that we have a capitalist society and people have a right to get rich. Another said, "Now we have a billionaire on our side" (referring to Trump being in support of the right to bear arms.) The other two said things similarly hostile to the egalitarian button's message.

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Three people shrugged their shoulders and said they didn't know what they thought.

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THINK ABOUT THIS!

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Eighty-six percent of these pro-Trumpers thought the egalitarian idea was a good idea and most of them even pinned the PDR button with the egalitarian message on their shirt!

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Only eight percent of the these pro-Trumpers were hostile to the egalitarian idea.

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And yet, virtually nobody knows that there is so much support for the egalitarian idea among pro-Trumpers. In fact, not even the pro-Trumpers know this. How could they? The people who are leading these pro-Trumpers never talk about egalitarian ideas or goals. They talk about ideas such as the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms--ideas that anti-egalitarians as well as pro-egalitarians might agree with. This way, the pro-Trumpers who are pro-egalitarian never learn that they are a majority standing side by side with an anti-egalitarian minority who sharply disagree with them on fundamental values.

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The Gallup Poll Co. certainly will not ask pro-Trumpers if they think the egalitarian message is a good idea or a bad idea. I discovered this when I offered to pay the Gallup Poll Co. to do a survey asking a random representative sample of all residents of the United States this question. I spoke with Gallup people about doing such a survey, but didn't say what the question was at first. Gallup was all willing to take my money and do the survey but as soon as we started talking about the details of the question--that it was the same question I had asked the pro-Trumpers at the rally--the Gallup people said they would not do such a survey. You can read the full story of this and see the emails between Gallup and myself here. The ruling class and its corporate elite absolutely do not want people to know that they are the majority in thinking the egalitarian message is a good idea.

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Most (about 86%) pro-Trumpers would join and support an egalitarian revolutionary movement if they saw one (which unfortunately they do not see today, not yet). Yes, about 8% would be hostile to an egalitarian revolutionary movement; these are the pro-Trumpers, of course,  who get prominently displayed by the mass media.

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"Yes, Trump's an asshole, but he's OUR asshole"

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Many and arguably most pro-Trumpers know that Trump is an asshole, and sure, they'd rather have a decent leader championing them in their hostility to the ruling elite that so obviously holds them in contempt and treats them like dirt. But they follow the only national leader there is who does champion them, despite the fact that he's an asshole.

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WHAT ABOUT RACISM?

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First of all, many people who voted for Trump had earlier voted for Obama.

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Secondly, Trump's appeal to white working class people was that he did NOT accuse them of being guilty for (and benefiting from) systemic racial discrimination against non-whites. In contrast, liberals such as Hillary Clinton told--and tell--white working class people that they are indeed guilty because they benefit from systemic racial discrimination against non-whites--that they enjoy "white privilege" (and the word "privilege" as everybody knows means a benefit.)

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Well, the fact is that on this question, Trump's appeal was based on the truth and Hillary Clinton (and the liberal establishment) were--and are--telling a lie.

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If you don't understand this, I suggest you read Martin Luther King, Jr.'s explanation in a speech he gave (read and listen to his speech here and also read the articles linked to near the top) about how Jim Crow laws harmed, not benefited, the poor whites. MLK, Jr. explains what many people today don't grasp--because the ruling class works hard to prevent them from doing so--, that among ordinary people AN INJURY TO ONE IS AN INJURY TO ALL.

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The ruling class has worked very hard to persuade white working class people that anti-racism is code for anti-white. This is precisely what Affirmative Action was designed to do, as I explain here. The liberal wing of the ruling class has been using its false framework on race (i.e., the lie that racial discrimination benefits working class whites) to deliberately drive whites into the waiting arms of racist white nationalist leaders whose pitch is that they are merely defending whites against unfair attacks on them carried out in the name of anti-racism. I discuss this in some detail here.

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So yes, it is true that many pro-Trumpers are very confused about race, and unfortunately do believe that anti-racism is code for anti-white, and do not know the truth about the fact of systemic racial discrimination against non-whites (read here how the War on Drugs is designed to make them think that blacks and Hispanics are "criminal races") and do not know that such racial discrimination harms ordinary whites as well as the obvious non-white victims. An egalitarian revolutionary movement would make the truth about these things widely known. So yes, we have work to do. But the notion that most pro-Trumpers don't want to know the truth and would be hostile to it is flat out false.

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Most pro-Trumpers want the egalitarian goal that requires removing the rich from power. When they learn that racial discrimination against non-whites is used by the rich to foment fear and resentment and mistrust between ordinary whites and non-whites in order to destroy their solidarity and prevent them from being able thereby to remove the rich from power, then guess what? These pro-Trumpers will be ANGRY at the fact of racial discrimination, and will view the perpetrators of it as their enemy.

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Yes, there are KKK-type racists (such as David Duke, and others) who view pro-Trumpers as potential recruits to the white nationalist organizations they control; this is why they support Trump. These racist leaders recruit by denying they are racist and insisting that their organizations are simply for defending white people against unjust discrimination against them that is done today in the name of "anti-racism." Read about how these racist leaders operate in "What do 'white supremacists' believe?" and read how liberal establishment leaders help them to recruit good and decent white working class people in "America's Liberal Establishment Has Done the Heavy Lifting to Recruit Working Class Whites Into White Supremacist Organizations."

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DIVIDE AND RULE

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The ruling class--the billionaire plutocracy--uses its mass media and pundits and politicians to divide-and-rule us. One of the great divides currently in play is that between those who voted for versus against Trump. The ruling class wants each group to view the other as its immoral fundamental enemy. Let's not let the ruling class get away with this Big Lie.

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Postscript June 12, 2022: The mass media is now saturating the airwaves with hearings about the January 6, 2021 pro-Trump attack on Congress, characterizing it as an "attack on our democracy"--a flat out lie since we do not have a democracy, only a fake democracy that is in fact a dictatorship of the rich with the trappings of democracy only.

 

These hearings are for the purpose of divide-and-rule, to turn one half of the population even more passionately against the other half, and thereby prevent the growth of a movement that champions the values and interests of the vast majority of the general public against the ruling billionaire plutocracy: a movement that has egalitarian revolution (see "What Is An Egalitarian Revolution" for details) as its explicit goal.

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The "January 6" hearings apparently aim to prove that Trump wants to be a dictator. Maybe he does. But what Donald "Our wages are too high" Trump, the individual, wants is not what the great majority of pro-Trumpers want, and we should never forget that key fact.

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