Trump got 63.5 percent of the vote to Clinton’s 32.5 percent in Westmoreland County. The county is now solidly red, but it hasn’t always been. I grew up in Westmoreland County in the 1960s and ‘70s, and the county was solidly blue. Can it change back
Reader Comments: 2018 and Trump Country Cracking, Parts Embrace Democratic Socialism; Young MLK Already Had Socialist Ideas; Medicare; Household Debt; NATO: Time Up; Ken Burns’ “The Vietnam War”; Billy Joel; Meat Surplus; Resources; Announcements
In The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition, Linda Gordon emphasizes broad patterns, making the book more timely than even the headlines of white nationalist outpourings the past months would suggest, writes Scott McLemee. What stands out in Gordon’s book is that the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s tried to create a world unto itself through spectacle, mass communications and branding.
When a Muslim doctor arrived in a rural Midwestern town, "it felt right." But that feeling began to change after the election of Donald Trump. Trump had won Lac qui Parle County, with nearly 60 percent of the vote. Nearly all of Minnesota outside the Twin Cities had voted for Trump, a surprising turn in a state known for producing some of the Democratic Party's most progressive leaders, including the nation's first Muslim congressman.
In the infancy of the Trump presidency, a new community defense network is espousing anti-racist and anti-capitalist politics to build coalitions in cities, small towns, and rural areas across America. Redneck Revolt recruits predominantly poor and working class white people away from reactionary politics. The organization advances an analysis of their class condition and white supremacy’s role in upholding the wealth and privilege of a small, white elite.
Why the white worker theme is harmful. It’s a mistake to racialize an economy that harms the entire working class. What has happened to more whites now is that the market has moved past them as well. It took almost 40 years to get to this point, in the near term no recipe of policy fixes will sufficiently remedy the effects. Democrats need to focus on reversing those long-term trends, but also must have something to offer workers now.
Reader Comments: Impeachment, Not McCarthyism - Differing Reader Views; Who Were Trump Voters; Bernie Sanders, Our Revolution and the Working Families Party; United Front, Popular Front Lessons; Why Corbyn Won; Healthcare for All God's Children; California Single-Payer; A Message to Our Community on 50 Years of Occupation; Resources: When Black Women Succeed, All Women Succeed; Iran 1953: State Department Finally Releases Updated Official History of Mosaddeq Coup; more..
Reader Comments: Comey, Trumpism, Family Trump, Afghan Escalation, Sessions' Dept. of Injustice; Poor Prisons; People's History - Henry Wallace; The Man Who Never Returned; The Investigator; Solidarity Statement for Yale Graduate Union - Add Your Name; Announcements: Resistance Summer; Chelsea is Free; Seattle Labor History Mural; 80th Commemoration of Republic Steel Massacre; Book Tours: In the Fields of the North; The Syriza Wave; Left Forum Opening Plenary additions
Racism, fascism, and working-class Americans. If you’re looking for Trump’s implacable support, Texas trailer parks and Kentucky cabins are the wrong places to find it. Fascism develops over hands of poker in furnished basements, over the grill by the backyard pool, over beers on the commuter-rail ride back from the ball game—and in police stations and squad cars.
Spread the word