If you think 2024’s presidential will be a twisted do-over of 2020, think again. It’s feeling a lot more like 2016.
Having spent years researching on the frontiers and then the battlefields of nationalist-populist media, right-wing influencers, and MAGA politics, I’m here to tell you that those very same communities are reheating dishes they cooked in 2016, with a fresh sauce of “I told you so.” A few core themes dominated their chorus at the time:
Border Politics and Multiculturalism: Because of a weak border, refugees, foreign labor, and enemies are entering and weakening America. They are hurting us culturally, religiously, economically, and national security-wise
Establishment Elites are out of touch with “the People:” Feeder schools to elite institutions like finance, law, government, media, and academia are training un-American, reactionary revolutionaries (who are also anti-Semitic) who are instigating mass protest and social unrest
Globalism vs. Nationalism: Prioritizing global economic and security issues hurts us domestically more than taking a risk on isolationism
These are the very drumbeats I’m hearing again as the Right reacts to the War in Israel and Gaza. They were also very powerful, shapeshifting memes in 2016. Standing for “America First,” railing against out-of-touch “Elites” and critiquing “globalists” for leading us to a path of war can – without context – be seen as left or right politics of common sense, even legitimate reactionary critiques of unfettered capitalism, economic inequality, and military interventionism.
(If you’re unfamiliar with my work, I have written a lot about the “vibe” politics of MAGA. These slogans don’t need to offer specific answers, but they do have to be resonant to daily life–a shared “vibe.” This is part of their power.)
Eight years later, have Democrats, mass media, and “the culture” – hell, Republicans themselves! – fully contended with the positions posed by the MAGA Right encapsulated in these slogans?
Similarly, issues 2 and 3 above could easily map onto a more reactionary left politic (e.g. Biden and blob-elites aren’t listening to progressive coalitions’ call for ceasefire; “the military-industrial complex’s” priorities are put ahead of American healthcare, veterans needs, education, inflation). Remember, it was frustration with the “center” or “establishment elites” which brought both Trump and Bernie Sanders into the arena in 2016. The Biden-Trump 2020 election was as much a reaction to the pandemic as it was to Trump.
The current anger directed at the costs and realities of American militarism — during an administration facing a botched Afghan withdrawal, a costly war in Ukraine, and now a Middle East ally’s war — is or will invite a re-visitation of the frustrations with the “establishment” that we saw in 2016.
While many things are different from 2016 — most significantly, an indicted Twitter-less Trump who has both won and lost elections, an outsider-made-insider-made-pariah— this election is not a repeat of 2020 simply because of a Biden-Trump rematch. Fighting “fascism” might not be an effective rallying cry in 2024. This moment has more in common with where we were in 2016.
Perhaps lessons reside there as well.
This week’s post explores some of those nationalist-populist rallying cries re-surging on social media this month.
The Enemy Within
A core concern of nationalism (and in some ways, of any functional socialist project) is who gets to benefit from membership of that collective. This concern necessarily asks, “Who are we? Who are they?” “We” vote, self-govern, pay taxes in, and get benefits out. Relatedly, part of self-governance requires shared language and values in how to adjudicate differences. What happens when certain groups are perceived as “other” within society? As a threat to cultural, social, and economic cohesion?
Right now, many parts of the Right — from the intellectual to the conspiracist— are pointing to the most violent factions of reactionary Pro-Palestine protest movements as proof of the national security risks posed by multiculturalism (sometimes code for “Islam”). They point to Hamas’s guerrilla terror tactics and vows to eradicate Jews everywhere as evidence for needing stricter border security. This is not far off from what we saw circa 2016.
The 2016 American presidential election happened on the back of Brexit, which was informed by the 2015 migrant crisis in Europe. Lest we forget in 2015, nearly 1 million people arrived in Europe from wars in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and throughout Africa. Many of these migrants were of Muslim heritage. Quickly, conflicts erupted throughout Europe concerning the impact religiously observant Muslims and war-traumatized young men would have on secular culture, economics, already strained social safety nets, and security. (For more on this, see a Brookings series I contributed to in “The One Percent Problem: Muslims in the West and the Rise of the New Populists.”)
European concern about immigration and Islam spread beyond the usual confines of conservative parties. British tabloid intellectual Douglas Murray exploded in popularity with a book The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam, a 2017 best-seller that explored “a continent and culture caught in the act of suicide” facing declining birthrates, failed multiculturalism, massive immigration, and self-loathing wokeism. Anecdotally, I can’t stop seeing Murray among conservative influencer feeds — recently showing up to a 12,000 person event with Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson in London’s O2 arena — as well as otherwise lefty but pro-Israel friends’ Instagram stories. He has been on a drumbeat, a kind of “I told you so” spree outlining all the ways certain reactionary pro-Palestine protests and resistance tactics are threatening European cohesion and national security — not to mention campus antisemitism. He has called for protestors glorifying Hamas to be deported from the UK.
The anxiety about immigration and extremist Islam crossed the pond in the 2010s too. Republicans stoked fear that ISIS and Ebola were coming across an unprotected southern border. Trump found a battle cry in “Built the wall!” Senator Ted Cruz aired a campaign ad featuring a scorpion roaming the desert, a jab at President Obama for not using the term “radical Islamic terrorism” to describe Al Qaeda and ISIS. Today, similar themes occupy the ambient politics of MAGA TikTok and Twitter.
Already I’ve seen narratives on social media highlighting the fears of Hamas or “military aged males that have come here and are a standing army,” having entered through the Southern border. The concern has also pierced mainstream outlets like ABC. There is a belief that some kind of domestic terror attack could occur on American soil — all thanks to a weak border.
Highly visible rallies in support of Palestinians often are heavily populated by Muslim and Arab Americans. Couple this with TikTok videos showing protest speakers “glorifying the martyrs” and you’ve just hit on the American 9/11 nerve that conflates Islam and Arabs with terrorism in the popular imagination—and that headspace is the breeding ground for Islamophobia.
The terrorist actions of Hamas are undeniably horrific. Yet concern for innocent Palestinians or calls for a ceasefire based on strict anti-war principles can quickly be assumed by opposing parties as automatic support for terrorism. Of course, praising Hamas as “martyrs” or “freedom fights” as has happened at some of these protests certainly doesn’t help this assumed conflation in the Right-Wing imagination. This can revive “Muslim Ban” calls that we saw circa 2016 and 2017. Campus activist Charlie Kirk tweeted the following calling for the deportation of “anti-American invaders:”
Woke Campuses and Hypocritical Elites
Another theme of 2016 electoral chatter was the “out of touch” nature of our elite universities, who feed our most powerful leadership and financial institutions. Perhaps most visible in current national media and domestic debate are campus wars around Israel-Gaza – it sometimes feels like these campus conflicts are more prominent than the stabbing deaths of a Rabbi in Detroit or a Muslim toddler in Illinois both emanating from antisemitism and Islamophobia.
Reactionary statements from allies of Palestinian liberation did their cause no favors in celebrating the infamous hang gliders – as a Chicago BLM chapter did – or in issuing statements like Harvard Palestine Solidarity Groups’ that claimed they “hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence” the day of the attack. The lack of empathy felt like a gut punch to many Jewish students and alumni. Such proclamations as the attacks were still unfolding showed a callousness emanating from people who would prefer to be right about their postcolonial praxis instead of demonstrating the complicated compassion true peace-building requires.
Conservatives have long made “wokeism” or “political correctness” or “leftism” on elite college campuses a fixture in their media, even though much of the modern conservative movement was born on said campuses. Yet the current campus protests, videos showing protestors harassing Jewish students, quick statements, and the very real antisemitic threats occurring (see the Cornell student arrested for death threats lobbed at Jewish students) are giving fuel to their validation fire. Earlier in 2023, I wrote about how the vibes were off at CPAC given the constant culture war fodder felt played out – current campus wars have proven otherwise. “The only good news to come out of this mess in the Middle East is that we are witnessing the collapse of wokeism,” said Megyn Kelly on her Sirius show. Much of the Right sees these protests and statements as validating their claims that elite campuses have incentivized pro-terrorist sympathies.
Many employers in Big Law and on Wall Street have made it clear to universities that they will not hire student signatories to certain solidarity statements, even rescinding some job offers. Outside groups have also doxxed students in those groups, making their faces visible on billboard trucks that roam Harvard, UPenn, and Columbia campuses–a move that has caused administrators headaches and left many students rattled. Donors, advisors, or board members (case in point: Bill Ackman) fed up with campus management have vowed to withhold donations or have resigned. Conservative influencers have been sure to amplify these efforts in their feeds.
Many MAGA influencer voices have blamed campus leftism for downstream effects in governance, policy, cultural sympathies, and the mass protests of the past decade. As of Saturday night, many influencers are pointing out the protests unfolding at the White House. As protestors vandalize the White House gates, Dan Bongino posts: “THE ENEMY IS ALREADY HERE.” Charlie Kirk has called for a “November 4th committee” to investigate vandalism and protests at the White House – because “fair is fair,” gesturing to the committees set up after January 6th.
There might be an instinct to ask “So are they FOR Biden now? How can this be the Democrats' fault when a Democrat is in the White House?” but a critique does not have to be coherent in order to be lobbed, in order to have impact. Weakness in the progressive-liberal coalition has been smelled. Drawing attention to that fracture is good for business. It’s a vibe.
Globalists and Global Aid
The bongo drum beat of MAGA bots was “GLOBALIST.” Shit healthcare for veterans? Stop financing “regime change wars.” Crap wages for American workers? Stop the race-to-the-bottom trade with China. Multinational bodies like the UN or WHO critique us? Use the money we give to them for domestic causes instead.
$3.8 billion dollars in annual aid to Israel is a lot of aid. Yes, a lot of that is what essentially amounts to friends-and-family discounts at Raytheon that we float in our national balance sheet. Giving $75 billion (as of September 2023) to Ukraine is also a lot to float. American military interventionism became a target (at least rhetorically) on the Right in 2016, with the “America First” mantra which can be equally applied to domestic as to foreign policy principles. Yet like all good memes, “America First’s” meaning is in the eye of the beholder.
Some conservatives in rural areas may not find street-solidarity with ceasefire protestors in urban places – often organized by anti-war, Arab, or progressive communities. Yet they can find their concerns about the cost of war, the impact on Christians, or why Trump would be a better leader delivered by suit-saddled MAGA men on podcasts and X, formerly known as Twitter. For instance, Jack Posobiec has not called for a ceasefire, but has focused concern on Israel’s bombings of Christian churches in Gaza.
On the extreme end, Jackson Hinkle caught my attention in part because his account has grown –to the tune of 1.5 million in the past 30 days. He is a former guest on Tucker Carlson and OANN, who has been blaming “zionists” for trying to get him banned from X. He regularly posts “ISRAEL is a TERRORIST STATE.” Hinkle, of course, is a fringe outlier even in MAGA land; he calls himself a “MAGA communist.” Before the war in Israel-Palestine broke out, he was an outspoken critic of American military aid for Ukraine.
Many of these MAGA personalities have long criticized American aid to Ukraine in what they see as a wasteful war that Ukraine will inevitably lose. Candace Owens of the Daily Wire recently made this point. She followed up with a Tweet “No government anywhere has a right to commit a genocide, ever.” The comments are chaos – with some assuming she is talking about Israel, others thinking she is talking about Hamas. It feels like the comments are a veritable A/B test of audience opinion.
If this war drags on, it will not be surprising for more isolationist Republicans to call for limits to aiding Israel–though I would imagine in small numbers. Yet the “vibe” of isolationism that MAGA and “America First” carries is a powerful and relatable meme–irrespective of the policies actually carried out.
“What if they were right?”
Some liberals — many Jewish, some not— are looking at these things and wondering of their right-wing peers, “What if they were right?” An entire cottage industry of articles have come out of this question in the past month.
That question alone has caused many folks aligned with progressive principles to fall into something of an epistemic tailspin, a mental clusterfuck, a political heartbreak as they feel anti-racist or pro-Palestine liberation movements have disregarded their pain and Jewish death as a necessary byproduct of a freedom fight. That said, this isn't necessarily a red pill and is unlikely to cause some kind of “swing to the right, vote for Trump” moment (especially because Biden has been unrelenting in his support for Israel). Instead, it is a political and cultural K-Hole, full of grief and confusion.
What if they were right about the seriousness of campus extremism? What if they were right about antisemitism within progressivism’s ranks— notably witnessed last in the Women’s March leadership anti-semitism scandal?
Alternatively for certain liberals with less a taste for movement anti-war efforts often laden with liberal arts school language, what if, after the economic inflation and seemingly never-ending conflicts, these right-wingers were right about American war-mongering and the need for isolationist America First foreign policy… allies be damned? A right-wing co-optation of anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist positions, wrapped up in a rhetoric that feels more accessible than “decolonize Israel!”
For years, I have seen the power of this rhetorical judo — where accusations of “hate speech” and calls to “stop the regime change wars” are coming from a Right-Wing mouth, not a Left-Wing one. In 2008, Fox News embraced country music songs like “Shuttin’ Down Detroit” and working-class rhetorics in an effort to build trust among working-class audiences screwed by the financial crisis (see Reece Peck’s Fox Populism: Branding Conservatism as Working Class). Speaking the language of someone’s grievance goes a long way to building trust – even if the solutions offered do not necessarily solve the problems at hand. In that sense, this could be a moment where solidarity made between liberals and progressives fractures with a hammer of doubt forged by right-wing influencers and tabloid intellectuals. It could even be a moment for recruitment.
We rarely collectively explore the messy frontiers of policy and political debates until they become literal battle fronts, bloodied and violent. As Americans, we find ourselves again in a moment of urgently asking about borders, elites, establishments, aid spending, what is “American,” and what is moral, not unlike 2016.
A Note:
If you’re reading me for the first time, I’m a researcher who spent many years studying conservative social media influencers as well as nationalist-populist movements around the world. Similarly, my work is informed by proximity to progressive and liberal politics. What I say here should not be seen as a validation of a set of beliefs, but an observation of them. It is also a blog, not a source of news. I do my best to fact-check and as always, I’m open to corrections offered in good faith.