(2024-01-14) Tufekci A Strongman President These Voters Crave It

Zeynep Tufekci: A Strongman President? These Voters Crave It. For her and many others, she said, his most important quality was strength: He had the fortitude to keep the country safe, avoid new wars and ensure the economy hummed along... Sharp readily conceded that not everything Donald Trump said was great, but she saw that as part of the right personality to be president. “You gotta be a little crazy, maybe, to make sure other countries respect and fear us,” she said

Many people may be driven by fear of him because he’ll do what he says he’s going to do, and he’s not afraid to talk about it.

I first began attending Trump rallies eight years ago,

Rather than the bumbling celebrity I expected, I encountered a politician laying the groundwork for a powerful political realignment around subjects too readily brushed aside by the bipartisan establishment (elite) in Washington, such as the loss of manufacturing in the United States; those left behind by globalization and trade, especially trade with China; the legacy of the Iraq war and U.S. involvement in foreign wars in general; and, of course, immigration.

The authoritarian label has been attached to Trump by critics for years, especially after he sought to overturn the 2020 election results

I have studied and written about authoritarianism for years, and I think it’s important to pay attention to the views and motivations of voters who support authoritarian politicians

Around the world, these politicians are not just getting elected democratically; they are often retaining enough popular support after a term — or two or three — to get re-elected

Authoritarian leaders project qualities that many voters — not just Trump voters — admire: strength, a sense of control, even an ends-justify-the-means leadership style.

What I heard from voters drawn to Trump was that he had a special strength in making the economy work better for them than Biden has, and that he was a tough, “don’t mess with me” absolutist, which they see as helping to prevent new wars.

Debbie Finch leaped to her feet when Trump walked into the arena, and like many around us, she started filming. Finch defies stereotypes of Trump supporters: She’s Black and is concerned with racism, which she says greatly affects her life and that of her children. She doesn’t deny there are racists among Trump’s supporters, but as far as she’s concerned, that goes for Democrats, too. She told me she supports Trump because the economy was better under him

Projecting strength and being seen as authentic are common themes among other leaders whom political scientists would call “competitive authoritarians.” In their regimes, many of the basic tenets of liberal democracy are violated, but elections, largely free of widespread fraud, are regularly held. Many political scientists place Narendra Modi of India (his party recently won major victories in state elections, and a third term is possible), Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey (on his third term as president, after three stints as prime minister) and Viktor Orban of Hungary (in his fourth consecutive term) in this category.

In Iowa, Trump praised Orban himself before telling a cheering crowd: “For four straight years, I kept America safe. I kept Israel safe. I kept Ukraine safe, and I kept the entire world safe.”

Charisma is an underrated aspect of political success — and it’s not necessarily a function of political viewpoint. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama oozed it, for example, and so does Trump.

Charisma is so central to politics that Max Weber, a founder of sociology, included charismatic authority (along with legal authority, as in republics and democracies; and traditional authority, as in feudalism or monarchy) as one of three types of power people see as legitimate.

Some Trump supporters told me that whatever happened was carried out by a fringe faction that did not represent Trump’s base.

I pressed many Trump supporters about the events around Jan. 6, 2021, at the Capitol. I didn’t encounter a single outright supporter of what happened, but many people explained the events away

Cheryl Sharp, too, told me that she doesn’t worry about all the talk of Trump being a dictator. For her, biased mainstream media is misrepresenting him. “He was making the point that he’d use executive orders on Day 1, like the others do — executive orders bypass Congress, but that’s how it’s done these days,” she said. “He was being sarcastic, not saying he’d be a real dictator.”

It’s easy to see why Trump’s political message can override concerns about the process of democracy for many. What’s a bit of due process overstepped here, a trampled emoluments clause there, when all politicians are believed to be corrupt and fractured information sources pump very different messages about reality?