Class Politics and the Reactionary Electorate

The recent election in Turkey resulted in a failure of left parties to unseat the ruling AKP, thought to be weak on the economy, as a result of its threat to personal freedom, and mired in corruption but it turned that campaign into one about security concerns to win an outright majority. While the Scottish National Party saw incredible gains in recent UK elections (at the expense of Labour in Scotland), overall the Conservatives increased their hold on Parliament, gaining a net 24 more seats. The Conservatives in Canada suffered a major defeat to the centrist Liberals, a result foreshadowed by the Conservative losses in Alberta months before. And in the USA, while everyone focuses on the upcoming presidential elections of 2016, conservative Republican candidates managed gains in local elections. At the same time, the leading candidates or strong challengers running for president in the USA are those politicians who appear to come from outside the political mainstream – candidates like Bernie Sanders for the Democrats and Donald Trump and Ben Carson among the Republicans. Each, in their own way, caters to a large and growing segment of dissatisfied voters. What is troubling is how the electorate seems not to take responsibility for those officials they elected to national office in the past, and how class politics is being set aside in favor of a populist right-wing rhetoric. There are several well-rehearsed tropes that try to explain this growing reactionary tendency among white working-class Americans. The combination of increased immigration and the expectation that in the near future the population will be ‘majority minority’ has created a perverse sense of loss of status, and has given rise to cries like ‘take back our country’ to rally people whose only legitimate concern is a loss of perceived privilege (Dietrich, 2012). That is, there are no concrete ‘harms’ inflicted on these voters, but the patina of victimization is applied in a sort of perverse reversal. Victims of discrimination and exclusion are suddenly cast as the perpetrators of these same actions, with cries of ‘reverse discrimination’ and a general assault on efforts at multi-cultural and racial diversity in societies (Moore and Bell, 2011). Conservative political agendas like anti-abortion, anti-immigration, gun rights, and what is more generally combined under the rubric of the ‘Tea Party’ hold sway at rallies where the clearly articulated purpose is to respond to the way they perceive they are under assault, contending this country has lost its ‘core’ Christian values, complaining how ‘big’ government is interfering with their rights to live productive and happy lives (though many have noted the incongruity of posters and banners calling on the government to keep its hands off Medicare). Benefits that accrue to most working whites are seen as earned or deserved, yet social supports for those in need (ironically, a majority of those receiving aid are white but the perception is that this is a boondoggle for non-whites) earn the label of ‘entitlement’ and are thereby undeserved. 620353 CRS0010.1177/0896920515620353Critical SociologyEditorial editorial2015