https://fair.org/home/the-tired-trope-of-blaming-trump-on-liberal-smugness/

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One might expect a political science professor like Alexander would be eager to cite professional research or an academic study or two to finally prove the liberal-smugness effect. Notably, neither he nor his fellow conservatives ever bother with this step—and the mainstream op-ed editors giving them a platform don’t seem to care. Instead, it is enough to simply state the claim as self-evident, or to quote a handful of random people who make sweeping claims about the abuse they face from unnamed liberals, as a way to justify what could just as easily be fairly predictable, baked-in support for Trump by Republicans.


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a University of Maryland working paper that studied reactions to the 2016 election cast doubt on the premise of liberal shaming driving conservatives further toward the right. As it noted, there was no statistically significant evidence of a backlash by conservative voters when confronted with liberal critiques of Trump being racist. In fact, the paper found that conservative racial animus in response to liberal election messaging was rooted in pre-existing biases, which is why those same conservatives also rejected claims of Trump’s racism that came from Republicans. Or, as the paper concludes:

"Racially conservative whites are resistant to a racialized counter-strategy. In other words, they are motivated to reject information critical of their preferred candidate because it is inconsistent with their existing racial attitudes and views about the candidate."

This study dovetails with an analysis done by The Nation (5/8/17) of pre- and post-election surveys which found that racial resentment, not economic anxiety, played an instrumental—and consistent—role in support for Trump during the last presidential campaign.


Harris et. al. are at best just enabling conservatives to prolong their avoidance of this introspection via their pseudointellectual drivel, and at worst can be legitimately blamed for being the actual ... (vanguard? storm front? I think I need a thesaurus) who are fueling the alt right.

https://www.wired.com/story/sam-harris-and-the-myth-of-perfectly-rational-thought/
https://www.splcenter.org/20180419/mcinnes-molyneux-and-4chan-investigating-pathways-alt-right


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