Trump has won the culture war

Over the past month, American and international media has offered a myriad of analyses and opinions on the US elections and Donald Trump’s victory. Pundits have pinned the blame for Democratic candidate Kamala Harris’s loss to various communities who supposedly refused to vote for her or to the Democratic Party for failing to address their grievances.

Certainly, the Harris campaign could have done more to push a consistent message reaching out to some of these communities, but the idea that the Democrats lost this election because they ignored the Americans’ concerns about the economy, immigration or “woke” politics does not hold much water.

It is much easier to understand what happened on November 5, if one zooms out and considers the bigger picture in US politics over the past decade and half. With his electoral victory, Trump won a culture war that started with the rise of the Tea Party movement in 2009 and social media.

The way to wrestle US politics back from Trumpism and defeat it electorally is to devise a strategy aimed at fighting back and winning this war.

Waging a culture war

The Tea Party movement emerged in 2009 as Barack Obama took office with promises of a progressive agenda. It stood in opposition not only to the Democratic Party but also to the “Republican establishment”, pushing a variety of populist narratives. Its agenda and drive helped the Republicans win a majority in the House of Representatives in the midterm elections in 2010, demonstrating the popular appeal of its anti-establishment rhetoric.

During the second Obama term, far-right ideologue Stephen Bannon and right-wing financiers Robert and Rebekah Mercer got together with military propaganda experts from UK-based Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL) to translate the message of the Tea Party into a coherent, highly professionalised communication approach. This strategy sought to weaponise social media and wage a culture war, polarising American society and pitting large swaths of the electorate against perceived cultural elites.

Bannon’s collaboration with SCL led to the founding in 2013 of Cambridge Analytica, which was hired by the Trump campaign in June 2016. The now-defunct political consulting firm harvested millions of Facebook profiles without authorisation, and developed big data models to influence specific voters in battleground states with personalised political advertisements that exploited voters’ inner fears and anxieties about key issues, such as the economy, terrorism and immigration.

The campaign reached a broad range of groups across the left-right divide. Black Americans were hit with messages that put the spotlight on Trump opponent Hillary Clinton’s older problematic statements about Black youth as “superpredators”. Trump also muddied the waters among antiwar left-wingers with false claims that he was against the Iraq war and emphasising that Clinton was in favour.

Right-wing Americans’ fears about national security, Muslims and immigration were amplified with imagery evoking the spectre of terrorism and chaos if the Democrats won. Trump appealed to white working-class communities in the Rustbelt who previously voted for Obama and promised to serve their interests by stopping immigration, renegotiating international trade deals, and prioritising industrial development in rural America.

Deploying propaganda in elections

The themes and tactics of the first Trump campaign laid the basis for what was to come. The relentless stream of Trumpist messaging has never really stopped – not when he was in government, and certainly not when, after losing against Joe Biden in November 2020, he fuelled a movement that led to the Capitol riots in January 2021.

During Trump’s 2024 re-election campaign, the momentum of the culture war helped him warp objective reality into a fantasy world where the American economy allegedly reached near catastrophic status, and migrants were to blame for virtually every ill of American society – from high housing costs to the opioid crisis, from low wages to gun violence.

The Republican ticket used fake news and emotionally charged narratives that amplified frustrations about a range of issues into resentment and even hate against not only migrants, but also transgender people, progressive activists, the Democratic leadership and Harris herself.

Thus, many Trump voters did not cast their vote on the basis of some material reality where economic hardship and unsustainably high immigration are undisputed facts. They voted based on perceptions of these issues created by pervasive messaging that effectively amounted to propaganda.

These culture-war techniques violate the scapegoated groups’ fundamental rights to freedom from harm and discrimination. They also pervert the rules of democracy by attempting to reduce voters’ ability to make informed, autonomous choices about key issues that affect them.

As contemporary propaganda studies show, this does not mean that voters have been simply duped as if they have no agency in the matter. What Trump stands for was much clearer this time than it had been in 2016, when he was still a newcomer to national politics.

People do, to varying degrees, vote strategically, and the extent to which they buy into politicians’ messages is also variable. Accounts from the ground suggest that many have actively embraced Trumpist exclusionary and bigoted sentiments. The targets of the propaganda, as philosopher Jason Stanley argues in his book, How Propaganda Works, bear some responsibility for lowering their guard, and thus letting themselves be captured by the propagandist’s stories.

In contrast, three intense months of campaigning by the Harris-Walz ticket was not enough to put up a successful defence to Trump’s culture war propaganda. They tried to galvanise their base after Biden’s withdrawal from the race in July, but made significant mistakes, such as refusing to meaningfully engage with the pro-Palestinian movement, while seeking endorsements from establishment Republicans, who had been the first casualties of Trump’s culture war.

Defeating Trumpism

So how do the Democratic Party and its allies fight back, especially during a Trump presidency in which the Republicans have full control of Congress and a favourable majority in the Supreme Court?

The first thing that Democrats and progressive forces need to do is to recognise that, while frank and open debate is needed to chart a way forward, acrimony and fragmentation will not serve them well: the harsher the infighting, the stronger Trump and his administration will be.

The opposition should consider uniting on two broad fronts. One is demanding far-reaching regulatory reforms of the social media space that would put an end to the unbridled rule of tech billionaires, who bear a huge responsibility in enabling and monetising the Republican information ecosystem.

Here, they can learn from the EU Digital Services Act, the first far-reaching transnational regulation of tech platforms; the EU Commission has already taken a strong stance against Elon Musk’s X for its refusal to comply with the rules. Passing similar regulations in Congress won’t be an option in the short term, but doing the groundwork can mobilise the broader public who is concerned about the growing dangers of social media manipulation and influence in their lives.

A militant approach is needed here to sensitise people about the need for respectful democratic debate informed by science and accurate information, and about the harms to human rights posed by hate speech. Progressives should refashion these topics with forward-looking and engaging narratives – the Harris campaign’s reappropriation of “freedom” could be a great starting point.

The second front on which Democrats and progressives must come together is crafting a bold and wide-ranging vision for the future that is in radical contrast with Trumpism. This new vision should uncompromisingly endorse humanism, racial and economic justice for American citizens and migrants alike, protection of LGBTQ rights, and global solidarity. This includes stopping military support for Israel, and working together with other countries to tackle climate change and pandemics.

An equally wide-ranging communication counteroffensive is required, one that uses ethical, hopeful, popular narratives to revitalise political participation, and restore trust in the fundamental values of democracy and equality.

The challenges that progressive movements face in America are not an isolated instance. Right-wing populists are advancing in Europe and other parts of the world, following a similar playbook adapted to local contexts.

A transnational coalition of left-wing and centrist forces could counter global Trumpism. The latter thrives on division, polarisation and the dehumanisation of those who think and act differently. Unity, empathy and a deeply humanistic attitude are needed to counter its toxic politics and rebuild an electorally competitive alternative.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.