Guest Post by Scott Greer
The January 6 anniversary last week drew a lot of opinions. Liberals solemnized the occasion as the new 9/11 and delivered maudlin speeches about how the circus-like crowd almost ended democracy. Conservatives, for the most part, avoided the cringe and either ignored the “celebration” or tried to challenge the prevailing narrative surrounding the day.
Many attempted to explain the anger of the protestors who walked into the Capitol. Liberals say the crowd were terrorists driven into a frenzy by “misinformation” over the FREEST and FAIREST election in human history. The crowd showed Trumpism as it truly is: a fascist and nativist movement that wants to overthrow democracy. Revolver readers know this is ridiculous, but this is the common view among New York Times readers. The paper of record, however, did deign to offer a contrary opinion on what motivated Trump supporters that day. It was provided by former New York Post editor Sohrab Ahmari, an aspiring “post-liberal” intellectual. Ahmari argues that Trump supporters weren’t motivated by hatred for democracy—they were inspired into action by economic anxiety.
While less ridiculous than liberal explanations, this argument also fails to understand the national populist moment. Trump supporters are not primarily outraged over Big Tech monopolies or the gig economy. They’re upset over losing their country and becoming strangers in their own land.
Ahmari claims, “Trumpism appealed to many of its supporters as a response to perceived structural, class-based injustices.” He says the central concerns of the movement were: “stagnant real wages; pervasive health and job insecurity; the disappearance into thin air of America’s industrial base; ruthless labor, tax and regulatory arbitrage by corporations, in the form of offshoring and open borders; the corollary decline in union power in the private economy; the ravages of fentanyl; and, at the level of cultural and ideological production, the rise of Big Tech, with its power to discipline not just what workers do and earn but also what they can say and think.”
But Ahmari says Trump failed to do anything about these ills and the “gig economy, with all its injustices and evisceration of workers as a class, roared on.” He says this failure prompted his populist base to descend into “impotent rage.” The result: January 6.
To summarize, the January 6 protesters were hard-bitten workers outraged over Trump’s inability to eliminate DoorDash. This conflicts with reality.
