The Tea Party, Donald Trump and the Cooptation of the White Nationalist Movement

• In Event: Populism and Extremism on the Rise: Why, How, Who?

Abstract

In 2017, Americans were both shocked and horrified by the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, during which disturbing images of white nationalist protestors wearing Klan robes and carrying Nazi flags were broadcast around the world. Worse, Trump, as President, was reluctant to criticize them in spite of the fact that a young counter-protester, Heather Heyer, was viciously murdered by a white supremacist who participated in the rally. This rally, as well as other public expressions of support for Donald Trump by white nationalist figures, has led many political analysts to conclude that the white nationalist movement has become reinvigorated and now plays a significant role in American politics. How can we explain this alarming development?

Social scientists have long sought to understand the growth of this dangerous subculture, citing the role of economic decline and frustration, as well as increased anxiety regarding the political and cultural threat posed by growing nonwhite and Latinx populations. Such explanations are at best incomplete as they fail to capture the inherent contingency of social movement mobilization, and how extremist ideology is translated into political action. The need for greater theoretical attention to causally proximate factors in this literature is underscored by recent trends in the total number of white hate groups in the United States. Based on data from the Southern Poverty Law Center, after reaching a record 762 active chapters in 2010, by 2016 the number of active white hate groups reached the lowest level ever seen since the SPLC began reporting this data in 1997. Unless we are willing to believe that the rise of white nationalism surrounding the 2016 election is merely an illusion, the explanations that have been offered to explain the contemporary rise of white hate groups surely fail to explain the organizational dynamics of the movement over the last decade.

In this paper, we argue that the growing importance of white nationalists in American politics has resulted from the co-optation of white nationalists into mainstream political organizations to further their goals in ways that they believe will be less costly and more effective. One of the most important developments that set this process in motion, we argue, was the rise of the Tea Party Movement (TPM). Prior to the emergence of the TPM, the most ardent white racists had few options for participating in the white nationalist movement beyond the traditional white hate groups, such as the Klan, Neo-Nazi’s, or other racist fringe groups. Participation in these groups is potentially costly because they are viewed as deviant by all but the most extreme racists and they are often targeted by law enforcement. The TPM offered white supremacists an opportunity to avoid these costs and participate in conventional politics, which suddenly became attractive due to the presence of sympathetic Tea Party candidates and elected officials. Although the Tea Party movement has declined over the last few years, we argue that it served as an important conduit for white nationalists, through which they became mobilized into conventional politics and eventually, the Trump campaign.

We test our argument using two types of empirical data. First, we review the content of white nationalist discussion boards to provide evidence of our general theoretical arguments regarding the motivational calculus of white nationalists.  We find evidence that white nationalists were very aware that they are highly stigmatized as members of white hate groups and that they believed this was counter-productive to movement success. Many of these activists came to believe that both the TPM and Trump campaign could be successful in advancing white nationalist goals while minimizing the personal costs of being a white nationalist activist. To the extent that these views reflect a broader group of white nationalist activists, it seems quite plausible that the TPM and the Trump campaign absorbed at least some energy from the white nationalist movement.

Second, we present county-level analyses of the determinants of hate group organizational “death,” which we operationalize as the year in which a white hate group ceases to be active (after at least one year of activity). Thus far, we have completed the analysis for one of the most notorious categories of white hate groups – the Ku Klux Klan. Our analysis consists of 918 active Klan chapters across all U.S. counties, over the 2000-2017 period. In this analysis, we test the hypotheses that KKK chapter death is positively related to (1) the presence of a Tea Party organization in a county and (2) aggregate support for Donald Trump in 2016 . Consistent with a co-optation process, we find support for both hypotheses.
 

Authors

• Richard C. Fording, University of Alabama

• Sanford F. Schram, Hunter College, CUNY