Already a subscriber?These days, I think a lot about Donald Trump. When the monthly economic reports come out, I think: Will this help elect Trump? And, I confess, I’ve started to ask myself the same question when I look at the unrest on American college campuses over Israel and the Gaza Strip.
But Republicans were quick to use the excesses of the student protest movement to their advantage. In 1966, Ronald Reagan vowed “to clean up the mess at Berkeley”, and was elected governor of California. In 1968, Richard Nixon celebrated the “forgotten Americans – the non-shouters; the non-demonstrators”, and was elected to the presidency.
In June 2013, millions of Brazilians took to the streets demanding better schools, cheaper public transportation, and political reform. But, Bevins laments, “just a few years later, the country would be ruled by the most radically right wing-elected leader in the world, a man who openly called for a return to dictatorship and mass violence” – uber-Trumpian figure Jair Bolsonaro.
In fact, if you are guided by instincts and values honed in such places, you may not be sensitive to the ways your movement is alienating voters in the working-class areas of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Georgia. You may come across to them as privileged kids breaking the rules and getting away with it.