Examining the Cultural Roots of Trumpism

A few days after being inaugurated as President of the United States on January 20, 2025, Donald Trump immediately issued a decision restricting immigrants in the U.S. All immigrants without residence permits in the U.S., estimated to number in the tens of millions, were arrested and deported to their countries of origin. Trump also reinforced the border with Mexico by declaring a state of emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border.

In the first week after the inauguration alone, nearly 2,400 migrants were apprehended by the U.S. Border Protection Agency, with the majority being flown to Mexico and Guatemala. The U.S. government has increased the number of arrests and deportations at a faster pace (dw.com, 29/1/2025).

When addressing the fate of Gaza's residents amidst the Hamas-Israel ceasefire (6/2/2025), Trump once again issued an extreme statement, expressing his desire to take over and own Gaza while relocating Palestinian residents to Egypt, Jordan, or other locations. Trump plans to transform Gaza into an international real estate area.

Trump also wants Europe to strengthen their own defense rather than relying on the US as they have done for the past three decades (16/3/2025). This decision by Trump has left European countries scrambling. The threats of Russian invasions against several European nations seem to be ignored by Trump, and instead, he appears to favor Russia by embracing it narratively.

The next world shock was Donald Trump's decision on April 2, 2025 to impose high retaliatory tariffs (reciprocals tariffs) on 57 countries, including his closest allies such as Israel and European countries. These countries have been considered to only benefit from the price difference in trade commodities, and have caused the US economy to suffer major losses.

Amazingly, Russia, which in the previous administration was considered an enemy, was not subjected to tariff increases. Protests erupted across the globe, ranging from national leaders, allies, and political opponents, even extending to the close circles of Trump's campaign supporters in the U.S. Presidential Election.

Most recently, just days apart, on April 10, 2025, Donald Trump suddenly postponed the imposition of reciprocal tariffs. The plan to impose these tariffs was delayed by 90 days for all countries worldwide, except for China, whose tariffs were instead increased to 104 percent for Chinese products sold in the U.S.

With all these crazy and reckless decisions, the whole world is now filled with uncertainty. Starting from the fate of the war in Ukraine, the fate of the people of Gaza, to the stability of the world economy. The world public is now wondering, who is Donald Trump really? And, will this uncertainty continue?

This paper traces the socio-political approach to historically analyze the setting of US cultural patterns and political behavior in which Donald Trump was able to accumulate socio-political capital and use it to act.

Two French social scientists, Jean-Marie Ruiz and Isabelle Vagnoux, through their article "Examining the Roots of Trumpism: American Illiberalism (2022)" comprehensively and deeply summarize the phenomenon of Donald Trump, which is suspected of being an old-fashioned and fanatical attitude, narrow-minded, and devoid of political and democratic culture. In short, illiberal.

Although the United States has had 47 presidents since the declaration of independence in 1776 and many of them have surprised the world, Donald Trump seems to be the most unique presidential figure in US history.

His character is colorful, combining a strong charisma, but temperamental and popular like a celebrity. Not only that, he is a successful businessman in real estate and was already very famous before becoming president.

Trump's leadership is based on simple, yet striking, emotional, and norm-defying rhetoric. That style of communication is coupled with a tendency towards a cult of personality, and an image that is played up, even if it has no basis in reality. But is the whole phenomenon of Trumpism just because of Donald Trump with his unique character?

It turns out, this is not just about the personality of a Donald Trump as the figure of the young Donald Trump filmed through The Apprentice (2024) with actor Sebastian Stan playing Donald Trump. Instead, Trump's banality is also related to a political journey rooted in US political history.

There is no such thing as a Trump ideology or doctrine or Trumpism, but rather a set of positions and ideas latent in US history that re-emerge from time to time, writes Jean-Marie Ruiz.

“Trumpism” is actually just a political trend that can be seen almost everywhere in the world based on the concept of authoritarianism. This concept was defined in the 1970s by Spanish-American political scientist Juan Linz, who described governments that were neither democratic nor totalitarian.

It is characterized by competitive authoritarianism, a term that describes post-Soviet regimes that have democratic institutions, but are democratic only in appearance in Russia. The excesses of Trumpism are a hallmark of populism that has been around for a long time.

The fact that this latent political culture is promoted by an unusual and charismatic personality like Trump, in today's era of social media and highly networked society, has helped to exert substantial influence on a wide area and pushed the world situation into a frenzy.

Illiberalism in the style of Donald Trump's political moves is increasingly taking the form of a ruler who relies on a conservative populist political style, namely respecting democracy, the right to elect and be elected to power, but once in office, they use the state to seize the fundamental rights of citizens, neutralize supervision, weaken the rule of law, and control the media.

Illiberal leaders implement a distorted form of democracy in which the supremacy of law is seen as an obstacle to popular sovereignty and democracy. Thus, illiberalism is perhaps the most appropriate term to describe Trumpism.

Historian Richard Hofstadter in 1955 identified the emergence of this type of populist conservative movement at the end of World War I in the 1920s. Hofstadter explained the shift in American society to populist conservatism as a result of disillusionment with the “lost paradise” of the once rural United States, protected from the evils of the world by its geographic isolation, into a mechanized, urbanized, bureaucratized, and even internationalized realm.

Most Americans at the time still yearned for a return to the old individualism and isolation, and were dismayed to find that conservative leaders were incapable of restoring them. Conservatives, especially in rural America, began to look askance at the new face of the country, where women were free and working, blacks had the right to vote, and the non-white immigrant population was growing.

In response to these developments, which were seen as dangerous to classic American values, the populist conservative reaction developed into a movement using the slogan “America First”.

In turn, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) movement emerged and laws that drastically restricted the entry of immigrants during the era of US President Calvin Coolidge in 1924. Trump's father is even suspected of having attended a KKK rally in New York in 1927.

In the late 19th century, the America First Committee tried to prevent the US from entering World War II, but failed. Conservative voices then lost support as the US took on a new international role as the savior of the world (free world) and was pushed into the role of world policeman by the decline of Great Britain's role and prestige.

Quite a long time after America was immersed in the role of world policeman as a result of victory in World War II, American political culture experienced a “reincarnation” with the once-glorious ideas of conservative populism.

This is because the US experienced a great recession in 2007–2009 which triggered a variety of resentments and frustrations from the lower middle class who felt the impact on their standard of living. In addition, the working class, especially blacks and Latinos, also found their fate abandoned as victims of the subprime mortgage crisis and the massive corruption of the US banking system. As a result, right-wing conservatives blamed the federal state.

The election of Barack Obama, the first black president, was a watershed moment for white supremacists, nationalist conservatives, and populists. Not surprisingly, most Republicans blocked all of Obama's proposed reforms as an attack on the functioning of democracy, contributing to the extreme polarization of American politics to this day.

Tapping into this fertile ground of disillusionment, fear of downward social mobility, resentment, nativism, racism, extreme nationalism, protectionism, and the Christian right, Trump instinctively revived paleoconservative and populist ideas and swept to a surprise victory in 2016. Trump also continues to rally the masses ahead of the 2022 midterm elections and the 2024 presidential election.

Earlier, in 1992, Pat Buchanan, communications advisor to Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan, became a supporter of the movement. He ran for president and revived the slogan “America First.”

His “paleoconservative” program called for lower taxes, less immigration, a tougher stance on the culture wars that have divided the country, a greater focus on domestic policy, and a return to protectionism and forms of isolationism. The America First slogan was captured in Pat Buchanan’s speech at the Republican National Convention:

“Our resolve is to put America first, to make America first again, and to keep America first. For 50 years, we have liberated, defended, and helped countries all over the world. It is the right and just thing to do. But now, we must start paying attention to the forgotten Americans here in the United States.”

The speech, which emphasized culture wars and conservative values, was not immediately accepted by most Republicans. However, it laid the foundation for the current revival of American conservatism, which has undoubtedly reached its climax with the election of Donald Trump.

This rhetoric was also used by Donald Trump in the 2024 US presidential election campaign.

“My friends, this election is not just about who gets what. It’s about who we are. It’s about what we believe in and what we stand for as Americans. There’s an identity war going on in this country. A culture war that’s as important to the kind of country we’re becoming as the Cold War itself. Because this is a war for the soul of America.”

The personalization of power is one of the most obvious characteristics of President Donald Trump, who often makes decisions based on instinct rather than consulting with his advisers or cabinet officials. Likewise, his uncompromising opposition to any form of checks and balances has been another hallmark of Trumpism, something that is completely out of step with the American liberal tradition.

The liberal tradition believes that individuals should be able to act as they wish, as long as this does not infringe on the freedom of others, and to shape their lives according to what is important to them, in keeping with the pluralistic view of society that characterizes liberal democracies.

In contrast, Trumpism’s personalization of power, bordering on a cult of personality, is deeply troubling. This is clearly illustrated by Trump’s refusal to engage in fair competition, to recognize the value of pluralism, and to reject the legitimacy of the opposition.

During his four years in office, the US Democratic Party was seen as an enemy to be destroyed rather than a political opponent. Trump has continuously attacked anything that limits his freedom of action to act on the Democrats. This also explains the attack by hundreds of his supporters on the Capitol Hill building, US, on January 6, 2021, to prevent Trump's defeat in the 2020 election.

It is no wonder that the polarization of society in the US that has evolved into a “culture war” for decades has reached its peak during President Trump’s term in office.

In Trumpism’s model of political culture, the media is suppressed. Investigative journalism like the Washington Post and the New York Times, which have repeatedly demonstrated the importance of preventing abuse of power, are branded “enemies of the American people.”

In the view of Trump supporters, the ideas spread by the liberal media that smack of atheism and moral relativism are a recipe for decline, and must be fought by any means possible. They believe that a culture war needs to be waged to dismantle the cultural hegemony enjoyed by liberals since the 1970s, to redefine popular culture in conservative terms and gain political benefits from it.

In contrast, the fate of the media that supports Trumpism. The most influential conservative media, including Fox News and Breitbart News, continue to provoke to win the battle of minds, deconstruct the liberal narrative, and replace it with a national conservative narrative.

Furthermore, Trump and the conservative forces that support him are using critical race theory (CRT) as a bogeyman to scare their voters into engaging in a new battle in the name of identity.

CRT is a movement of thought that first emerged in the 1970s as a way to raise awareness of ongoing racial discrimination in US society and initially involved the application of Frankfurt School critical theory to highlight the role of law and power structures in discrimination.

This concept highlights the nature of discrimination based on the ethnic or social origin or gender of the victim. The weaponization of CRT for political purposes was facilitated by the environment that favored Trump's rise to power during his term.

The death of a black man, George Floyd, by white police in the US in May 2020, for example, became a stark illustration of the reality of systemic racism, legitimizing the views of critical race theory (CRT) advocates and leading to widespread mobilization against racism. These events increased polarization, giving each side more reasons to oppose the other.

White nativist Americans, wedded to a traditional view of US history that emphasizes the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) component, view CRT advocates and anti-racist activists as internal enemies, who must be silenced at all costs to save America and regain control, at least of the national narrative.

Trumpism has capitalized on this anxiety from the start and has continually stoked it to weaponize it and unite right-wing conservatives under its banner. Opposition to critical race theory (CRT) has been used to spearhead this strategy, reviving McCarthyism in its stigmatizing and hysterical form.

Anything related to CRT was stripped of federal funding, and racial equity and diversity training for federal employees was canceled, and many Republican-controlled states banned all references to CRT in public schools.

Conservative media has played this contrived role where CRT is almost non-existent on liberal media, like CNN or MSNBC, but abundant on Fox News, resulting in an extreme politicization of the debate.

In the Trump era, the Christian right’s drift toward Christian populism has found expression in conservatism and a Republican Party whose illiberal tendencies have continually come to the surface. Trump has become its savior, its chosen one, whom it defended and supported in 2016, 2020, and will probably continue to do so in the future.

By tracing the origins of Trumpism in America and the vitality of the currents that permeate it, this analysis helps us understand the reasons behind Trump's astonishing rise and the possibility of his long-term survival with the Republican Party in the United States. (LITBANG KOMPAS)