The white nationalist movement in the United States is nothing new.
Yet, prior to the 2017 "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville,
Virginia, many Americans assumed that it existed only on the
fringes of our political system, a dark cultural relic pushed out
of the mainstream by the victories of the Civil Rights Movement.
The events in Charlottesville made clear that we had underestimated
the scale of the white nationalist movement; Donald Trump's
reaction to it brought home the reality that the movement had
gained political clout in the White House. Yet, as this book
argues, the mainstreaming of white nationalism did not begin with
Trump, but began during the Obama era. Hard White explains how the
mainstreaming of white nationalism occurred, pointing to two major
shifts in the movement. First, Barack Obama's presidential tenure,
along with increases in minority representation, fostered white
anxiety about Muslims, Latinx immigrants, and black Americans.
While anti-Semitic sentiments remained somewhat on the fringes,
hostility toward Muslims, Latinos, and African Americans bubbled up
into mainstream conservative views. At the same time, white
nationalist leaders shifted their focus and resources from protest
to electoral politics, and the book traces the evolution of the
movement's political forays from David Duke to the American Freedom
Party, the Tea Party, and, finally, the emergence of the Alt-Right.
Interestingly it also shows that white hostility peaked in 2012-not
2016. Richard C. Fording and Sanford F. Schram also show that the
key to Trump's win was not persuading economically anxious voters
to become racially conservative. Rather, Trump mobilized racially
hostile voters in the key swing states that flipped from blue to
red in 2016. In fact, the authors show that voter turnout among
white racial conservatives in the six states that Trump flipped was
significantly higher in 2016 compared to 2012. They also show that
white racial conservatives were far more likely to participate in
the election beyond voting in 2016. However, the rise of white
nationalism has also mobilized racial progressives. While the book
argues that white extremism will have enduring effects on American
electoral politics for some time to come, it suggests that the way
forward is to refocus the conversation on social solidarity,
concluding with ideas for how to build this solidarity.
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