But scapegoating poor whites keeps the conversation away from fascism’s
real base: the petite bourgeoisie. This is a piece of jargon used mostly
by Marxists to denote small-property owners, whose nearest equivalents
these days may be the “upper middle class” or “small-business owners.” FiveThirtyEight reported last May that
“the median household income of a Trump voter so far in the primaries
is about $72,000,” or roughly 130 percent of the national median.
Trump’s real base, the actual backbone of fascism, isn’t poor and
working-class voters, but middle-class and affluent whites. Often
self-employed, possessed of a retirement account and a home as a nest
egg, this is the stratum taken in by Horatio Alger stories. They can
envision playing the market well enough to become the next Trump. They
haven’t won “big-league,” but they’ve won enough to be invested in the
hierarchy they aspire to climb. If only America were made great again,
they could become the haute bourgeoisie—the storied “1 percent.”“the median household income of a Trump voter so far in the primaries
is about $72,000,”lets finally kill the bullshit statement that economic anxiety got Trump elected and just call it racism like it is.
True of every fascist party in Europe too.
QueerAnarchism 