The anger that drives the president’s supporters was visible 50 years ago. As it hardens, they may shift further right
Even if Donald Trump loses, his base will not desert him. Those Maga caps, Trump-branded jackets and gun-butt decals are precious symbols for an estimated 30% of Americans. The “real” America belongs to them; if the election turns out wrong, the base will go to extremes to get it back. In a country of more than 300 million, 30% of people is a lot of extremists.
Trump’s base is in part trying to work out how to use its whiteness as a political tool, conveying purity and nostalgic wholesomeness as well as skin colour. Excluding outsiders – as when Trump called Mexican migrants “rapists” and “criminal cheats” – and segregating people of colour inside the country are justified for the same reason; both groups are regarded as “impure bodies”. But racism alone can’t explain the sneering aggression, the viciousness of the base towards other Americans.
