Daily Archives: July 25, 2022

Most analyses of populism emphasise the divide that populist parties establish between the people and a corrupt other. Drawing on a new study, Jos Javier Olivas Osuna argues that this construction of boundaries and borders between people is far less binary than is commonly recognised. His research suggests that populist parties frequently blur boundaries depending on the context, allowing them to create a meta-us that acts as a common front against perceived threats.

Brexit, the Covid-19 pandemic, and Russias invasion of Ukraine which has triggered the biggest refugee crisis in Europe since WWII have brought borders back to the centre of policy debates. Borders are indissolubly linked to notions of sovereignty and citizenship. But borders are not static, they evolve, overlap and are part of domestic and international power struggles.

By making cultural, linguistic, or ethnic differences more explicit, populist leaders contribute to those individual boundaries turning into something closer to a political border. These bordering processes help categorise people and create new, or strengthen existing, distinct collective political identities.

Borders are an essential part of the logic of cultural differentialism (or differential nativism) underpinning the othering and exclusion of migrants, refugees and ethnocultural minorities. Individuals may selectively choose evidence that exacerbates inter-group differences to portray the out-group as inferior.

Figure 1: Equivalential chains in populism

Populist leaders often demonise the underserving other. The elites, the caste, the colonisers and the immigrants who do not really belong to the populists ideal heartland and therefore should be removed from the demos. They argue that the true or authentic people must fight to achieve plenitude and have their country back. As Chantal Mouffe has argued far from having disappeared, frontiers between us and them are constantly drawn, but nowadays they are drawn in moral categories.

Populists compartmentalise society by creating or reinforcing internal frontiers and defining antagonistic equivalential chains which bring together people with different, but comparable, fears, concerns, resentments, and grievances. Borders are an intrinsic component of the populist logic of articulation and interpretative frames that shape how problems are identified and solved. In their attempt to re-enact their ideal heartland and recover a purportedly lost popular sovereignty, populist parties advocate (re)establishing political borders between states and reinforcing internal legal, economic, or cultural frontiers.

Borders and populism in radical right manifestos

Bordering policies highlighted by the borders literature are customarily justified via populist discursive elements, i.e., antagonism, morality, idealised construction of society, popular sovereignty and personalistic leadership. Populist tropes and rhetoric become common tools for those who seek to create new (or modify and strengthen existing) borders. In my research I explore the complex interaction between populism and borders through a content analysis of electoral manifestos ofVox,Rassemblement National(National Rally, RN), the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) and the Brexit Party.

Figure 2: Density of populism and borders references coded per manifesto

As Figure 2 above shows, antagonism is the most salient populist attribute in the Brexit Party manifesto analysed. The populist idealisation of society is the most prominent attribute found in the RN and Vox documents, whereas morality references are the most frequent in the UKIP manifesto.

In the bordering discourse of the RN, references to exclusionary/discriminatory policies and to economic protectionism are very salient. The Brexit Party document emphasises the idea of protecting and recovering Britains sovereignty and the need to prioritise national interests over those of the EU.

Exclusionary policies and protection of British sovereignty are the most common references in the UKIP manifesto. Finally, whereas the Vox EU elections manifesto gives more salience to securitisation, protecting sovereignty and the critique of supranational institutions, the Vox Spanish elections manifesto emphasises identity and culture protection, as well as discriminatory policies.

It is worth noting that borders and populism discursive references appear intertwined. This means that segments of text coded for different categories often overlap for instance an antagonistic reference can be used with moral connotations and expressed to justify a deportation or the need for securitisation. A myriad of intersections between populist and borders were found, as shown in Figure 3 below.

Figure 3: Map of code intersections

Nationality and religion are used to define the ideal society in these othering discourses. For instance, Vox proposes the deportation of illegal immigrants and of migrants who are lawfully in the territory but have committed serious crimes or repeated minor offences, while the RN requests barriers to the naturalisation of foreigners.

These parties articulate a model of society that is founded on traditional, usually Christian, values, which they claim are threatened by out-groups. This argument is often made with reference to Islam and Islamism, which these manifestos associate with radicalism, violence, and a lack of respect for certain democratic rights.

For instance, Vox proposes promoting European values, uniquely embodied in Christian civilisation, the exclusion of Islamic education from public schools and following Hungarys footsteps in creating a government agency for the protection of endangered Christian minorities. UKIP targets a repeal of the 2010 Equality Act which protects Black and Asian minorities. Moreover, UKIP declares that they will promote a unifying British culture and Christian schools in the UK. Meanwhile, the RN declares that they will defend the national identity, values and traditions of the French civilisation.

These parties also antagonise supranational organisations, and in particular the EU. Vox refers to the Europe that asphyxiates political freedom and cultural wealth of its member states, while UKIP claims they will abolish all of the EU-inspired legislation that binds us to EU legal institutions. The Brexit Party promises no further entanglement with the EUs controlling political institutions, and the RN proposes a referendum on EU membership to regain our freedom and control over our destiny by restoring sovereignty to the French people.

Morality is also used to justify exclusion and prejudices against the other. For example, UKIP warns against the systematic and industrialised sexual abuse of under-age and vulnerable young girls by majority-Pakistani grooming and rape gangs, and Vox insinuates that there are NGOs that collaborate with illegal immigration mafias. The RN claims defenders of globalisation are abolishing economic and physical borders to increase immigration and reduce cohesion among the French people, while the Brexit Party accuses the political establishment of conspiring to frustrate democracy over Brexit.

A populist international?

This exploratory analysis resonates with the findings of previous studies highlighting the similarities in othering discourses across populist radical right parties. The similarities found in the bordering policy proposals of these parties are relevant and could be framed within a wider process of discursive alignment between radical right populist parties in Europe.

Although Britain, France and Spain have historically been rivals and still maintain some ongoing border disputes e.g. over Gibraltar, Calais, and fishery rights their radical right parties do not give a high priority in their othering discourses to the citizens of each other. They construct supranational elites, Muslims and non-western European migrants and refugees as the main out-groups. These parties recognise each other and the people they represent as subject to an equivalent sort of exploitation and external threats.

Indeed, populist parties may adopt a flexible strategy and can emphasise or underplay state and supra-state borders creating a sort of hierarchical othering and a meta-us. The joint declaration signed by Le Pen (RN), Abascal (Vox), Orbn (Fidesz), Kaczyski (PiS), Salvini (Lega), Meloni (FdI), and other European right-wing leaders in July 2021, where they agreed to defend together true European values and their Judeo-Christian heritage, seems to confirm this growing notion of a meta-us among radical right populist parties.

The Warsaw Summit, hosted by Mateusz Morawiecki (PiS) in December 2021 and the Madrid Summit, organised by Vox in January 2022, reunited many far-right leaders who pledged to defend Europe against external and internal threats, preserve states sovereignty and Christian values, and prevent demographic suicide. Despite their negative views on the EUs institutions, these parties consider Europe as a civilisational space with physical and symbolic boundaries that encapsulate a distinct identity they embrace in addition to their national one.

Ambiguity about certain borders serves as a unifying discourse that establishes an additional us that encompasses allied right-wing movements across state borders. Putin has employed a similar populist discursive strategy, portraying Ukraine as both an antagonistic other and as part of the self. The selective blurring of borders and overstretched definition of the Russian nation served him as justification for the intervention in Crimea and invasion of Ukraine.

In sum, populist leaders not only build or enhance borders but can also blur existing ones to strategically create new narratives of equivalence and layers of identity and otherness. The construction of a flexible meta-us helps them normalise (re)bordering exclusionary policies and justify their radical policies.

For more information, see the authors accompanying paper in the Journal of Borderland Studies

Note: This article gives the views of theauthor, not the position of EUROPP European Politics and Policy or the London School of Economics. Featured image credit: Vox Espaa (CC0 1.0)

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Borders, exclusion, and the populist radical right 'meta-us' - London School of Economics

Here is the latest edition of the Political Line newsletter curated by Varghese K. George

Here is the latest edition of the Political Line newsletter curated by Varghese K. George

(The Political Line newsletter is Indias political landscape explained every week by Varghese K. George, senior editor at The Hindu. You can subscribehereto get the newsletter in your inbox every Friday.)

Prime Minister Narendra Modi made disapproving remarks on freebie culture and shortcuts that politicians use to win votes, twice within a week, in Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh.

He himself can be accused of using shortcuts to win votes, but the Prime Minister has raised a valid question. There is a need fordifferentiation between cynical populism and empowering welfarism, and Mr. Modi himself must lead a debate on it, as our editorial points out.

Can we actually make a distinction between good welfare and bad welfare? Two experts discuss the question here, and they agree that it is contextual.

I had argued earlier that politicians have come to a conclusion that providing jobs has become difficult if not impossible due to the rapid changes in our production models. In democracies, they negotiate with the voters on a minimum welfare package in exchange of support.

Rituals of governance

In a bulletin ahead of the monsoon session, the parliament secretariat reminded members that they should not use the premises for demonstration, dharna, strike, fast or for the purpose of performing any religious ceremony.

This was a routine reminder that goes out before every session, but the question of religious ceremony is curious as only a few days earlier, a religious ritual accompanied the unveiling of the national emblem atop the new Parliament building that is under construction.

In December 2020, Mr. Modi had presided over the groundbreaking ceremony for the construction of the new building, complete with Hindu rituals.

Opposition parties questioned the propriety of the event and the PMs role in it, on at least three counts. One, Parliament is the legislature and the Prime Minister is head of the government and part of the executive. The Speaker of the Lok Sabha and Chairman of the Rajya Sabha should have been in the lead roles for the event. Two, all political parties should have been invited. Three, a religious ritual undermined the secular nature of the Indian state.

While the first two points are evident, the secularism point is a bit complicated. In Tamil Nadu, where the storied atheism of Dravidian politics is supposedly a determinant of government action, nearly all ground-breaking ceremonies for construction of new government buildings follow Hindu rituals. Even after the DMK came to power, some Ministers and the Chief Ministers son, Udhayanidhi Stalin, a legislator, have participated in ceremonies conducted by Hindu priests at government functions. This is despite government orders and even a HC directive to the contrary.

An MP of the ruling party stopped Hindu rituals at a government event recently, and the BJP has questioned his conduct.

Kejriwal for federalism!

Thumbs down: L-G Vinai Kumar Saxena (right) has advised Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal not to attend the event. file Photo PTI| Photo Credit: -

Arvind Kejriwals emergence as a politician was founded on a campaign for power to the people. Decentralisation in his plans meant that mohalla sabhas, or local councils, would decide everything about governance. That was before he came to power.As Chief Minister of Delhi since 2015, he has been a different person, following the playbook other CMs practise total centralisation of power, brooking no dissent, never taking questions from anyone and certainly not from journalists. He supported the disbanding of the State of Jammu and Kashmir by the Centre in 2019. But whenever it is convenient for him, Mr. Kejriwal reminds the Centre of federalism.

The Centres refusal of permission for him to travel to Singapore, for example, turned out to be an occasion for Mr. Kejriwal and his party to remember the norms of federalism.

The Delhi LG thinks that the conference that Mr. Kejriwal was planning to attend in Singapore was for mayors, and the themes of the conference were not for chief ministers. It is clear that the BJP wanted to deny Mr. Kejriwal an opportunity to grandstand abroad. Bad faith all the way.

Hindi in the south, English in the north

P.T. Usha.

The nomination of athlete P.T. Usha to the Rajya Sabha is part of the BJPs continuing efforts to expand its foothold in Kerala. Mr. Modi has in the past inducted Malayalam actor Suresh Gopi into the Upper House. Though the BJP has not made any immediate electoral gains in Kerala, its approval rating among the Malayalis is certainly on the rise. Ms. Usha took the oath in Hindi, and this must have warmed the cockles of many Hindutva hearts.

Two sisters from Arunachal Pradesh singing a Tamil patriotic song written by the great Tamil poet and freedom fighter Subramania Bharati, which was retweeted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has caused some social media excitement. I am delighted and proud to see this. Kudos to these shining stars of our Yuva Shakti from Arunachal Pradesh for furthering the spirit of Ek Bharat, Shreshtha Bharat by singing in Tamil, the PM posted in English and Tamil. You can watch the outstanding singing also here:

Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel tries to blend his regional identity politics with English aspiration. At his Bhent Mulaqat (Meet or Greet) programme, he asks school students a few questions in Chhattisgarhi language and the latter reply in English. The children who feature in these interactions are the students of Swami Atmanand Government English Medium Schools (SAGES) that the government pitches as a major highlight of a pro-people image it is attempting to build.

Meanwhile, in Rajasthan, the gradual conversion of the existing Hindi medium government schools into English medium has spelt trouble for students. Protests have erupted across the State over the admission process which involves forcible shifting of students.

I just finished Violent Fraternity: Indian Political Thought in the Global Age by Shruti Kapila. If you are interested in history or political philosophy, you will find this book outstandingly original. This book resets the historiography of the Indian national movement. For one, it questions the notion that the principle of non-violence guided and shaped Indias national movement. You may read the review here, and listen to an interview with the author. An abridged version of the interview may be read here.

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Political Line | The debates around populism and welfare politics, secularism and religion, Centre and States relations and more - The Hindu

Last week, Boris Johnson addressed parliament as prime minister for the last time. He leaves Downing Street under a cloud of disgrace, fined by the police for breaking the law, and up before a privileges committee inquiry into whether he misled the Commons that could result in him facing his constituents in a recall petition. His parliamentary swan song showed the same disdain for high office he has held throughout his premiership.

Johnsons tenure as prime minister may be all but over, but the first week of the head-to-head stage of the race to succeed him suggests that his spectre will haunt British politics for some time to come. MPs on Wednesday selected former chancellor Rishi Sunak and foreign secretary Liz Truss as the two candidates who will be put to Conservative members to select as prime minister. Johnsonian populism looks set to dominate the contest. The debate about tax cuts at a time when public services, particularly the NHS, are being increasingly run threadbare has taken centre stage, with Truss promising to reduce taxes to a level that even her own economic adviser admits could spike interest rates to 7% and Sunak promising to be as radical as Thatcher on economic reform, without saying anything about what that means. Truss has sought to blame the French passport control for travel chaos at Dover and Folkestone last week conveniently ignoring the impact of Brexit and the fact that the British government reportedly refused to fund an expansion of border infrastructure at Dover to help the port cope. Despite the climate crisis, Sunak has pledged to make it more difficult to build onshore wind farms, as a sop to the Conservative activists with whom they are unpopular. Truss has promised that all remaining EU-derived regulation would be allowed to expire by 2023 far sooner even than on Johnsons timetable which, given the limitations of the parliamentary timetable, would inevitably mean a whole raft of employment and consumer rights disappearing overnight, with no democratic legitimacy for this.

Truss and Sunak are products of Johnsons premiership, elevated by him to the great offices of state as a reward for their perceived loyalty and willingness to swing behind his agenda. Between them, they illustrate the extent to which the toxicity and lack of integrity Johnson has brought to British politics since chairing the Vote Leave campaign will outlive him in the Conservative party. Populism reaping short-term electoral rewards by pretending there are simple answers to complex national issues and scapegoating others for these problems is a heady drug. Once a politician has lied to the public that leaving the EU will free up hundreds of millions of pounds a week for the NHS, or that the UK had no veto to prevent Turkey joining the EU, or that the Northern Ireland protocol does not involve a border in the Irish Sea, telling another convenient untruth becomes ever easier. This is where we are today, with one of the two main contenders to be prime minister obstinately insisting against the economic consensus that her tax cuts will cut inflation, increase growth and swell the coffers of the exchequer. Populism has a limited shelf life. There is only so long politicians can pretend things that happen on their own watch is somebody elses fault, and that if only voters direct their anger somewhere else and give them a bit longer, things will turn around. The Conservative party will before long suffer the electoral consequences of privileging the niche ideological interests of its Eurosceptic right flank above the national interest. But that moment has not yet arrived: the candidates are directing their pitch to be prime minister to the 160,000 or so Conservative members who get an exclusive say in picking our next prime minister. And so, while Britain faces profound questions about how to repair the damage 12 years of spending cuts have done to public services, our role in averting the worst impacts of global heating, the post-Brexit role of the UK in a changing world, and our productivity and housing crises, our governing party remains mired in a contest in which the two candidates for prime minister compete to signal just how Eurosceptic they are a full seven years after the EU referendum, and over who can more authentically channel a prime minister from the 1980s.

It is a reminder that Johnsons resignation was a necessary but insufficient step in the process of rebuilding trust in our political institutions and restoring integrity to public life. The Conservative partys problems run far deeper than Johnson the man. It has been infected by his character, purged of anyone who dared call out his attempts to ignore parliament, stripped of any capacity to renew itself in government or to even begin to articulate a coherent vision for the country that goes beyond tax cuts or blaming the EU for Britains ills.

There will eventually be an electoral price to pay for this. But at the moment, the country is locked into being governed by its fourth Conservative prime minister in just 12 years, with no democratic mandate for their agenda beyond a constitutionally meaningless seal of approval from Conservative party members. If Truss or Sunak really marked the shift from Johnson they claim to be, they would hold a general election to secure a mandate soon after they become prime minister. The fact that this is unlikely reflects the extent to which they are creatures of Johnson, both of whom have embraced and benefited from his unscrupulous approach to governing Britain.

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The Observer view on how Boris Johnsons spectre haunts the Tory leadership race - The Guardian

In her testimony to Congress about the Jan. 6 riot, Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Donald J. Trumps then-chief of staff Mark Meadows, reported that President Trump knew the crowd gathered outside the White House Ellipse was armed with guns, knives, spears, flagpoles and body armor. Even as rioters later at the Capitol called for Mike Pences hanging, according to Ms. Hutchinson, Mr. Meadows said the president doesnt want to do anything and he thinks Mike deserves it. Ms. Hutchinson reported that Mr. Trump refused to calm the protesters, though he was repeatedly urged to do so by staff including White House counsel Pat Cipollone. Ms. Hutchinson said she overheard the president say something to the effect of, You know, I dont fing care that they have weapons. Theyre not here to hurt me. They can march to the Capitol from here.

In this testimony and others throughout the Jan. 6 congressional hearings, the anger and violence of the day were portrayed as an aberrant breach of the political traditions of the United States. And the actions of Mr. Trump and his associates to overturn the 2020 election surely were. But the actions of the crowd were not a breach. They were the outcome of our political culture, ironically and tragically the underside of that cultures success.

Donald Trump lost the 2020 election by seven million votes and 74 seats in the Electoral College. His claims of winning were refuted in over 70 lawsuits, twice by the Supreme Court, and by his own attorney general, William Barr. To understand why a third of U.S. voters nonetheless believe the big lie (some enough to commit violence) and whyin the big picture30 to 40 percent of Americans see Trumpist populism as a remedy to their problems, we need a long-view exploration of how they got there.

What in the countrys political history and present socioeconomic circumstances makes right-wing populism seem like the best path? The question is especially poignant as, after four years in office, Mr. Trump managed no major health care, job training, education, immigration or infrastructure program, all of which are popular with voters. As for his 2017 tax cut, a columnist in the business journal Forbes wrote, The biggest winners were corporations and the households that get income from corporate profitsnot the middle and working classes but the wealthiest Americans.

So why does Trumpist populism spark support? First, we can understand populism overall as a way of responding to way-of-life, economic and status-loss duresses that finds a solution to these problems in us-versus-them thinking. Identifying us and them draws from historical and cultural notions of society (whos in, whos not) and government (its proper size and role). Traditional notions of us and them have not only the ring of familiarity but of authority. They feel both natural and ethically right.

We can trace each part of this populist progression, from duress through history and culture to the us-them shift over the last half century.

American Duresses

The economic duresses that many Americans face include un- and under-employment, especially in old industry regions, prodded somewhat by globalized trade and substantially by automation and other productivity gains, the latter accounting for 88 percent of U.S. job loss. This loss disproportionately burdens those without college degrees. Notably, areas with higher numbers of jobs threatened by automation tended to give strong support to Mr. Trump in 2016.

Way-of-life shifts include changes in gender roles, technology, demographics and the sense that life is harder, less familiar and less fair than a generation ago. In 2018, before the Covid-19 pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported a decline in American life expectancy for two of the previous three years, prodded by deaths of despair and social isolation.

Status loss entails the fear of losing ones respectable place in society and falling below those one is currently above. The issue, researchers Stephen Reicher and Yasemin Ulusahin write, is not status itself but status loss that provokes efforts to restore the rightful order of things, often through non-mainstream politics precisely because mainstream strategies have been ineffective. Those most attracted to the political right between 2010 and 2016 were high-school-only whites with middle-class incomes concerned that opportunities were shrinking and their respectable place in America was under threat.

Because white evangelical Protestants comprise a significant share of Mr. Trumps supportaccording to many polling sources, 84 percent voted for him in 2020, compared with 50 percent of Catholicsit is worth looking at duress as experienced by this group. White evangelicals face the three sorts of duress described above plus membership loss and a growing sense of cultural and political marginalization in an increasingly secular, multicultural and socially liberal country. They have decreased as a share of the population, from 23 percent in 2006 to about 15 percent in 2020, while Catholics remain steady at about 20 percent. More than two million left the Southern Baptist Convention, Americas largest denomination, between 2006 and 2020. As Robert Jones, founder and president of the Public Religion Research Institute, notes, with this status loss, a real visceral sense of loss of cultural dominance has set in.

The present sense of marginalization comes on top of decreasing cultural dominance since the late 19th century, spurred by industrialization, urbanization, changing social norms and non-Protestant immigration. Part of the evangelical response was the embrace of apocalyptic doctrines that reflected anxieties about the future even as they isolated evangelicals and reinforced the sense of being sidelined. In the 20th century, these anxieties were sparked by the 1925 Supreme Court decision in the Scopes case that allowed theteaching of evolution in public schools, as well as the 1962 decision in Engel v. Vitale that prohibited school-organized prayer. The 1960s youth counterculture, the civil rights and Great Society anti-poverty programs, the worry that Democrats were soft on Communism, and the feminist and gay rights movements furthered the white evangelical sense of loss of cultural dominance.

For many conservatives, religious and not, the Republican New Right of the 1970s and 80s promised relief: small-government economics, social conservativism (including opposition to abortion), resistance to outsider disruptions of local norms and law, and anti-Communist foreign policy to defeat the biggest of big (atheistic) governments. Moving from conservatism to the political right, these voters supported Ronald Reagan and both Bushes to serve as president. Catholics remain more evenly divided between the parties, in part because they are more divided on small-government-ism and immigration.

But the shift to the right in American politics failed to relieve the duresses of the day, and way-of-life, economic and status-loss duresses persisted, yielding both representational deficiency, where citizens feel unheard in Washington and so are more open to political extremism, and efficacy deficiency, where people move to the extremes to at least do something to be effective on their own behalf. The duresses since the 1970s were aggravated by President Obamas enlargement of the governments role in health care, in regulating business and in environmental protectionmoves against small-government-ismand by the 2015 legalization and public acceptance of same-sex marriage.

All told, the accumulation created the ground for us-them thinking. While addressing the complex sources of economic and way-of-life duress may seem daunting and futile, the rights efforts against a traditional them may be simpler and may thus provide quick feelings of effectiveness.

Us-Them Thinking and Its Historical Roots

With duress or fear of duress, the usual focus on oneself, family and community flips outward to constraining a them ostensibly responsible for the duress. It is a common defense mechanism. Vamik Volkan, who studies the psychology of extremism, writes, The more stressful the situation, the more neighbor groups become preoccupied with each other.

But which other? The identification of the other emerges from history and culture. In America, the traditional othersgovernment and outsiders (minorities and new immigrants)were set in place in the earliest colonies. Covenantal political theory, brought by the Puritans and others not conforming to Europes government-established churches, saw society as a covenant among sovereign people. Any ruler out for himself could be deposed for covenant violation. Covenantalists were wary of governments, authorities and outsiders who might disturb their way of life. The 1620 Mayflower Compact sought not only to establish covenantal government in Massachusetts Bay but also to constrain non-Puritan outsiders. Aristotelian republicanism, a second building block of American political culture, also emphasized the community, the polis, and citizen participation in running it. It too was wary of tyrants. Liberalism, our third component, emphasized individual freedom and was equally wary of government meddling and control.

Anti-authoritarian wariness of government was especially persuasive in America as many immigrants had fled oppressive political systems. The harsh frontier, too, advised self-reliance, trust in ones local community. and caution about interloper authorities and outsiders.

On one hand, suspicion of government birthed a democratic critique of authority and the robust, localist, civil society Alexis de Tocqueville admired. What political power, he wrote, could ever carry on the vast multitude of lesser undertakings which the American citizens perform every day, with the assistance of the principle of association?... No sooner does a government attempt to go beyond its political sphere and to enter upon this new track than it exercises, even unintentionally, an insupportable tyranny.

But under duress and us-them shift, the heritage of community and local pride may turn to a self-protective, my-community-in-struggle mindset against outsiders. Wariness of oppressive government and elites may turn to suspicion of government and elites per se, whose activities and programs should be limitedexcept to constrain outsiders. In short, the very anti-authoritarianism and community building that contributed much to American vibrancy may create self-protective and aggressive us-them worldviews.

This us-them shift is about as American as you can get. The Shays and Whiskey rebellions, armed revolts against state and federal government, erupted with the very birth of the country, in 1786 and 1791. The anti-immigrant Naturalization Act of 1790 and the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798, which also included anti-immigration provisions, were also part of our founding.

Not only was the Civil War fought against Washingtons interference in local governance and in support of slavery, but the Souths response to defeat was also a mix of anti-government suspicion and resistance to outsiders. After Reconstruction, the Confederacy was imagined into a lost cause of Christianized white supremacy and noble resistance to federal interlopers. Discriminatory immigration laws were enacted in 1873, 1882 and 1924 and enjoyed national, bipartisan support. Discrimination and voting restrictions targeted not only African Americans but also immigrants from Asia, Mexico, and southern and eastern Europe, both Catholic and Jewish.

Us-Them Politics Today

Though the federal government grew along with the nation, wariness of Washington and outsiders retains a vaunted place in American identity and practice. One example, much in the news with the summer 2022 mass shootings in Buffalo, N.Y., and Uvalde, Tex., is the gun rights movement. Though Americans use guns for a range of reasons (self-protection, sport), the political mobilization is spurred by fear that the government will turn tyrannical. An assault-weapon ban, David French explained in the National Review in 2018, ...would gut the concept of an armed citizenry as a final, emergency bulwark against tyranny. In a 2017 poll, three-quarters of American gun owners associated gun ownership with freedom. Ninety-one percent of Republican and Republican-leaning gun owners reported that gun ownership is essential to their freedom.

Government-wariness combines with outsider-wariness in opposition to federal social services, even among beneficiaries of those services. In 2017, those who would have lost $5,000 in government health insurance subsidies had President Trump succeeded in overturning Obamacare still said they would vote for Mr. Trump for re-election, by 59 percent to 36 percent. Though increasing numbers of Americans benefit from government programs, resistance to them has grown on the view that other people, perceived as undeserving, lazy minorities and immigrants, are being given our tax dollars by the corrupt federal government. Where these views are embraced, whites, including those who benefit from government assistance, vote to restrict it.

Seventy-two percent of Republicans believed immigrants use more than their fair share of social services, according to a 2012 poll released by the Pew Research Center, 63 percent believed that immigrants increase crime, and 57 percent felt that whites face a lot of discrimination. These anxieties may persevere even when economic and law-enforcement records do not support them. Immigrants commit fewer crimes than native-borns, and of the 40 million people who were below the poverty line in 2019 (and thus would have qualified for the largest share of government assistance under President Bidens American Rescue Plan), 17.3 million identified as non-Hispanic white, less than half that number were Black (8.2 million), and 10.1 million were Hispanics of any race.

Immigrants are also disproportionately entrepreneurial job creators, contributing robustly to the tax pool: $30 billion in the second generation and $223 billion for the succeeding one. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine concludes that immigrants childrenthe second generationare among the strongest economic and fiscal contributors in the population.

Hunting Where the Ducks Are

When Donald Trump first ran for president, Americas us-them frameworks were not new. But they were animated by Mr. Trump and others who tapped into and reinforced suspicion of Americas traditional thems. That was Mr. Trumps appeal: He would fight the deep state, the D.C. swamp of government insiders and their elite media fake news, Mexican rapists and drug dealers, and foreigners who cheat Americans in trade. As the Jan. 6 riot demonstrates, people are willing to fight hard for the guy they believe is fighting for them.

Us-them thinking, with its simple explanations and clear path of actionget the thems!is appealing. But it is also concerning. Solutions to economic and way-of-life problems that emerge from us-them thinking are based on the distortions that duress itself prodsfrom a sense of community to exclusionary communities, and from wariness of oppression to wariness of government. Good solutions do not come from distortions. So the original duresses remain, to the continued harm of the distressed communities and to prod further rounds of us-them anger. Who benefits? Those who animate us-them anxieties for political and economic gain. Theres a name for that. Its called hunting where the ducks are.

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The Jan. 6 riot shocked Americans. Maybe it shouldn't have. - America Magazine