SUMMARY: A recent scientific study confirms the longstanding suspicion that white nationalism plays a significant role in the support for Trump and the MAGA movement. The study, conducted by Melissa M. Sloan from the University of South Florida, found a strong correlation between white nationalism, right-wing political beliefs, and resistance to criminal charges against Trump. This conclusion was drawn from an experiment involving 1,300 participants and three hypothetical scenarios related to the January 6th insurrection. The experiment sheds light on the intersection between white nationalism and political beliefs, offering empirical support to long-held observations. The study’s findings provide valuable empirical evidence to substantiate the claims and analyses of Trump and MAGA supporters.
KEYWORDS: White nationalism, Trump support, Scientific evidence, Psychology study, Right-wing beliefs, January 6th insurrection, Trump felonies, #ScienceFact
COMMENT: I would love to hear what you think of these findings and their methodologies. To my mind it is strong evidence of what really is driving MAGA and Trump support and the moral and patriotic failure of the Republican Party.
It’s been clear to all us Trump and MAGA watchers that the attraction to Trump is based on white nationalism. Now, there is scientific evidence to confirm the careful observations and claims made on Ye Olde Blogge and other liberal social media accounts. Count yourselves validated, siblings!
A study conducted way back in May 2022 linked white nationalism with support for Trump. If it is so old, why is it only being reported now? Because it was only recently published in The British Journal of Criminology (But don’t worry is was conducted by good ol’ red-white-and-blue pointy headed socialist commie academic types right here in the “We’re #1 US of A. Melissa M Sloan, from the University of South Florida, was the lead researcher so it was Ron DeSatan approved, right?). The study was summarized in PsyPost, which is good because all but the abstract is firewalled, so you know this is a summary of a summary, although I did get what I could from the abstract.
The data was gathered before it could be sullied by the United States House Select Committee’s investigation of the 6 January Insurrection or any of the other sullying politicized Democrat-led investigations into the bumbling felonious orange crime-bot, I2I4 or I guess that should be C1I3 for convicted once and indicted three times or maybe C34C80+ for convicted on 34 felony counts and charged with 80+ more?
“Our experiment suggests that for a non-trivial number of Americans, the desire to keep the United States a ‘white nation’ appears to be stronger than their desire to ensure that the country is led by a law-abiding president,” the researchers concluded.
Why do Republicans stick with Trump? New study explores the role of white nationalism in PsyPost by Eric W. Dolan on 6 June 2024
So, how did they tease out all of the white nationalist fervor from all the other cognitive dissonance-driven delusions of Trump supporters? They asked them. Yep. They literally just asked them.
The White Nationalism of Trump Supporters Empirically Revealed
Here, let’s dive a bit deeper into the organization of the study so you can judge for yourself.
The Experimental Design
First, they got themselves a representative sample of the country. A representative sample is one matched to the demographics of the population you are studying. For this study, you had to be of voting age, though. They don’t mention how they accounted for the unreachable segment of the population, you know, the ones that won’t answer online polls or phone calls, that kind of thing. They used YouGov to find their participants, though, and YouGov is considered a reliable professional organization, so there’s that.
Then, they randomly assigned their 1300 participants to one of three groups. Each group were asked to imagine that the Select Committee had completed its investigation and released its report. The report would have found:
- NO EVIDENCE, NO CHARGES: The report would’ve said that there was no evidence found of criminal wrongdoing found, so no charges were recommended to be brought against Trump.
- EMAIL EVIDENCE, CHARGES RECOMMENDED: The report would’ve found email evidence of Trump urging the Proud Boys et al. to stop stop their standing back and standing by and get in there and do something for god’s sake because that’s about all the organizational skill that Trump has. This is the fellow who couldn’t get himself to the scene of his own insurrection to ensure that it was actually successful, for fuck’s sake.
- NATIONAL GUARD EVIDENCE, CHARGES: In this version, the committee would’ve found evidence that Trump had prevented the national guard from assisting at the Capitol that day.
The participants were assessed at this point:
- AGREE OR DISAGREE: They were asked how much they agreed or disagreed with the Committee’s findings and recommendations, using a standard Likert scale of strongly agree to strongly disagree.
- POLITICAL VIEWS were assessed.
- RACIAL ATTITUDES were assessed by asking questions like, We need to keep the United States a mostly white nation, which is what God meant it to be.
- DEMOGRAPHIC DATA was collected as a hedge against other confounding factors.
The Findings Based on White Nationalism
After tossing all this data into the statistical cauldron and giving it a good stir, one resounding revelation emerged: Americans who endorse white nationalism and those who hold right-wing political views are more likely to oppose criminal charges against Trump under any circumstances.
- NO EVIDENCE: 82% of the conservative white nationalists agreed with the report and 34% of the non-white nationalists agreeing with the report finding no evidence of criminality.
- EVIDENCE & CHARGES: Support dropped to 35% & 39%, although it is unclear which sets of evidence were supported and whether it is a statistically significant difference. Compare that to 76% and 80% of the non-white nationalists supporting the charging recommendations.
Before you mutter, I told you so! there’s more! Apparently, the lefty white nationalists still weren’t convinced that Trump shouldn’t be criminally charged no matter what evidence was found, it took a combination both having a right-wing political orientation and being a white nationalist to produce these responses:
Of course, there were no liberal white nationalists because that is not a thing. The two are not compatible without lethal amounts of cognitive dissonance involved. However, there were right wing non-white nationalists involved, and the combination of conservative political belief and white nationalism highly correlated with the Trump-supporting reaction to the three “reports” to the point where we can conclude that white nationalist are over represented on the conservative end of the spectrum.
Even though all us smarmy smarty smarties knew this all along, studies like these are important to verify our conclusions and give empirical support to our snarky, sarcasticky, and profaney remarks. Remember, Aristotle believed that that heavier objects fell faster than lighter objects of a similar shape. It wasn’t until Galileo tested it out that we found out different.
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Image Attribution
This image was generated using Poe’s Playground – v2.5 bot using the prompt, An image showing white lab rats, labelled Trump supporters, running a maze, and all exiting the hole on the right side, but not on the left.
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Categories: Cognitive Psychology, Racism
The Psy of Life 
A) C34C80+ was the worst Droid ever featured in the Star Wars canon.
B) This study is the least surprising since the groundbreaking article “Water found to be wet” (published in the prestigious No Shit Sherlock Captain Obvious Journal of No Duh Findings. )
The VERY FIRST THING he did after descending the Golden Escalator was ranting about brown criminals a-coming to rape our wives, and immigrants “coming from shithole countries.” He wasn’t subtle
His entire campaign from the start was blatantly pure white nationalism grounded in hatred of the first Black president. We’re only having to rely on these findings because the worthless state of ‘journalism’ which is constitutionally unable to clearly call ‘white nationalism’ what it is.
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Howdy Bruce!
Definitely the bumbling braying felonious corruption bot that C34C80+. Can’t ever seem to do anything right, but is always trying to grab your shit with both hands.
I always come back to Aristotle being so sure that he could just reason his way to truths and Galileo demonstrating that experimentation was necessary to support or challenge the intuitive conclusions. While it seems obvious, having empirical evidence is necessary to support a premise. Because this experiment was well designed, its conclusions are pretty solid, but it isn’t without limitations. Luckily, there is other evidence that white nationalism is the core-value of MAGA, Trumpism, and the Republican Party.
Unfortunately, the mainstream media isn’t going to change its tune on Trump and MAGA based on this or any other evidence. They are still going to make excuses for MAGA and Trump and look for other reasons for Trump’s support and popularity. Our job is to keep pointing out the obvious and shame shame shame those who support white nationalists.
Huzzah!
Jack
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Honestly ‘White Nationalism’ has been explicitly and consciously a ‘core value’ of the Republican party since Nixon co-opted the Jim Crow Democrats with the ‘Southern Strategy’ and Reagan’s courtship of the ‘Moral Majority which was itself a movement rooted in White Supremacy..
It is not mere coincidence that Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond changed parties; Strom Thurmond had run for President as an open White Supremacist in 1948 as the Dixiecrat candidate. It is not mere coincidence that the former Confederacy pretty much flipped en masse to the Republican Party between the 60’s to the 80’s.
These are statements of fact that don’t really need empirical data to ‘prove’…
What has been a scandal (as you noted) is the Mainstream Media’s refusal to believe what they say, and to endlessly twist themselves into pretzels to tell us that what Republicans are telling us to our faces somehow isn’t really what they believe.
They fell all over themselves trying to tell us that Trump’s rallies weren’t exactly what we saw with our own lying eyes.
Witness their endless ‘Cletus Safaris‘ to diners in red states to interview these mysterious and exotic ‘Trump Voters’; telling us over and over and over again that these people were ‘economically anxious’ not really authoritarian or white supremacist, ignoring the actual data showing that the median Trump voter was typically wealthier than the median American, and they came from places with long, long histories of white supremacism and Christian Nationalism.
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Honestly, for-profit media is the death of democracy. Profits produce intense cognitive dissonance, massive motivated reasoning, and all-consuming confirmation bias. They need a horse race, so they report on a horse race whether there are two horses racing or not, it is always neck-and-neck, and it is always a photo finish because that is what drives the clicks, shares, and likes.
Ain’t no one saving us but ourselves.
Jack
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That study does a good job of making the connection between the White Nationalism, Right Wing orientation, and refusal to believe that Trump should ever be prosecuted for any crime. From there, it is a very short step to feeling he is being unjustly persecuted, and through him, themselves.
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Howdy Bob!
The motivated reasoning of right-wing white nationalists has been laid bare by this study. The conclusion that Trump shouldn’t be prosecuted no matter what he does is pretty obvious given the various reactions to evidence of wrong-doing and no evidence of criminality. Hopefully the study will get wider attention in the media, but I doubt it.
Huzzah!
Jack
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The dynamic is so clear that to not join the chorus is to be marked as a RINO or worse and chastised or kicked out of the party (if only into retirement). The white Christian Nationalists are authoritarians and theocrats. The chosen leader will be held as infallible until he is not and is overthrown, or killed.
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That’s the thing. How much cognitive dissonance and motivated reasoning do you have to have to remain a part of the Republican Party if you’re not full on evangelical Christian white nationalist? What the actual fuck, right?
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I think the motivated reasoning is simple. If you area Republican politician and you don’t join the chorus now, and then Trump wins, your political career is over, and that may not be the worst thing that happens to you. Fear of loss beats hope of success every time. And, even the remaining “moderates” have fully bought the rule that winning is the only thing that matters.
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Howdy Bob!
That is a great application of the behavioral economist principle that people abhor change unless it is to avoid a sure loss. Fear of loss motivates our most basic behaviors. I think there is one caveat, though. They don’t believe they will be punished by voters for anything that they do. That’s another good use for Trump in addition to his being a wrecking ball of democracy, blame him if democracy isn’t destroyed and they actually must stand for reelection in a real election with the possibility of losing.
Huzzah!
Jack
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Hmmm – Yes, he would make as good a scapegoat as a messiah. I keep thinking of a song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIwbeEGXj5E
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