But scapegoating poor whites keeps the conversation away from fascism’s real base: the petite bourgeoisie. This is a piece of jargon used mostly by Marxists to denote small-property owners, whose nearest equivalents these days may be the “upper middle class” or “small-business owners.” FiveThirtyEight reported last May that “the median household income of a Trump voter so far in the primaries is about $72,000,” or roughly 130 percent of the national median. Trump’s real base, the actual backbone of fascism, isn’t poor and working-class voters, but middle-class and affluent whites. Often self-employed, possessed of a retirement account and a home as a nest egg, this is the stratum taken in by Horatio Alger stories. They can envision playing the market well enough to become the next Trump. They haven’t won “big-league,” but they’ve won enough to be invested in the hierarchy they aspire to climb. If only America were made great again, they could become the haute  bourgeoisie—the storied “1 percent.” 

[–] aaaaaaadjsf@hexbear.net 28 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Yeah, there's a reason rich Trump supporters are referred to as the "boater kulaks" by @SorosFootSoldier@hexbear.net. It is basically what they are. It's a great observation because there are so many similarities. You see this with poorer Trump supporters going against their apparent class interest and siding with Trump and the richer MAGA base, in the same way some poorer peasants sided with the kulaks.

That's my outside observation though. Not American so I could easily be very wrong.

[–] PKMKII@hexbear.net 18 points 1 year ago

I find it tends to be a “big fish small pond” phenomenon. People who are kind of middling, maybe slightly elevated income by national standards but because they live in low CoL/low competition areas they see themselves as upper echelon. They’re the top earners for their podunk small town and thus are resentful they’re not treated as equals by the “urban elites.”

[–] PKMKII@hexbear.net 27 points 1 year ago (3 children)

It’s correct on the class analysis but not exactly groundbreaking; there’s been observations going back to 2016 that what the press and dem partisans identify as a working class MAGA demo are really vulgar petty bourgeoisie. It’s the members of the top 10% of income earners who don’t have college degrees.

That being said, I do think there’s a bit of a lesson in here for the left attempting electoralism within the two party system. There’s more to be gained from seizing local control and then putting pressure upwards on the state-level party than there is trying to get one more squad member elected so they can cast meaningless “no” votes.

[–] marx_mentat@hexbear.net 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

That seems like it's just a mirror of the liberal party to me. The vocal defenders of Biden also seem to mostly be the top 10% of income earners, but with college degrees.

So the only political representation in this country is a bunch of rich people, and the only divide between them is whether their career path involved a college degree or not. Do you stand with Michael Rapaport or Brianna Wu? Democracy!

Your analysis is solid and I think that's a really important lesson that I hope more people take away.

[–] PKMKII@hexbear.net 16 points 1 year ago

Yep, the difference between the two parties is which faction of capital they represent.

Ironically, Trump fits more in the lib party mold (private prep school, Ivy League, east coast urban elite) but he presents like a small business owner. He makes the decisions, who gets hired and who gets fired, slaps his name on everything so his businesses look tangible and not like opaque financialization tools.

[–] plinky@hexbear.net 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But that was always republican base, the interesting part is how they become more focused ideologically and action-ably, instead of guns, god, no taxes, they are doing something electoral instead

[–] PKMKII@hexbear.net 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It was always the base, but up until the second Dubya term it was a base that dutifully got in line and followed marching orders from the GOP establishment, whom they believed was the bulwark preventing socialism from taking hold. That establishment was one of big money and Ivy League (or similar elite universities) education. When the neocon experiment went off the rails the base turned on the establishment. At first that produced the Tea Party, which was fiery and got some electoral wins but was too much of an incoherent mess (see: get the government’s hands off my Medicare). Ironically, Trump and Bannon gave it a focus with paleoconservative revival and broad stroke cultural nationalism (as opposed to the evangelical, biblical literalism agenda that was dead on arrival in the courts) that could be channeled into a movement past the Trump cult of personality.

[–] SkingradGuard@hexbear.net 4 points 1 year ago

You're really good at putting it into words waow-based

[–] RedWizard@hexbear.net 5 points 1 year ago

That being said, I do think there’s a bit of a lesson in here for the left attempting electoralism within the two party system. There’s more to be gained from seizing local control

This has been a pretty consistent message even in the Democratic circles, but there lacked a unified base of leftists interested in electoralism for a long time. I remember a few years ago there was a series of John Oliver episodes that effectively boiled down to "... And these local positions often run unopposed".

I think that base is starting to coalesce as a result of the past few years and fueled heavily by the genocide in Gaza. Regardless of how you feel about each of these candidates you have folks like Cornell West and Claudia De la Cruz running with a relatively descent amount of supporters. The CPUSA is also saying they want to run local candidates, and they report an uptick in membership. Maybe were on the verge of a mass movement, maybe not. Its hard to say.

Local elections, especially in suburbs and small towns would be ripe for disruption. There is a rule on the books where I am that says a party can only have 2/3rds majority in municipal councils. Dems in my area win so hard that the lowest voted Dem has 3x the votes of the highest voted Republican. If you can siphon off enough people you could be in that lower 3rd group easily and bump out a Republican.

There needs to be this kind of strategic analysis in order to gain wins I think. Those wins could build momentum. I worry though that this leftist rise is only a passing wave. Most other leftist rises have gone that way in the recent past. I also worry about a co-opting opportunistic movent that fractures this rise as well. I feel like that's what happened with the occupy movement for example. I don't know how prominent the movement is, but I'm noticing PatSoc coming up in conversation more recently.

This is all off the top of my head, so maybe I'm way off base here. I'm sure someone will tell me of I am lol.

[–] HexbearGPT@hexbear.net 19 points 1 year ago

Our beautiful boaters! oooaaaaaaauhhh

Our car dealership owners! oooaaaaaaauhhh

Our aboveground pool and spa dealers! oooaaaaaaauhhh

Our jetski and ATV salesmen! oooaaaaaaauhhh

[–] SkingradGuard@hexbear.net 10 points 1 year ago

Petit bourgeoisie aligning with the most reactionary figures in the nation? capitaldcolon there's no way

[–] CascadeOfLight@hexbear.net 6 points 1 year ago

I want to also add my thought that this is why Jan 6th went nowhere. As someone else put it, all those car salesmen and landlords and cops showed up there and just milled around waiting for a cutscene to start. Looking at the history of Nazi Germany, the exact same base supplied large adult sons for the brownshirts and blackshirts, but in Germany's case the big bourgeoisie was hurting in a way that gave them an interest in utilizing these footsoldiers to oppress and kill the working class.

Whereas the big players today are totally unconcerned with who's in charge, with lots of financial and tech powerhouses even seeming to prefer the Democrats, and there's no widespread organized labor movement to suppress beyond the capacity of the legal police force cracking skulls. So there's a huge segment of reactionary hogs absoluteley desperate to be turned into weapons, but no one with the wealth and power to do so who wants to actually wield them.