Donald Trump’s campaign to become president of the United States was shocking for many people. His negative representations of racialized immigrant groups were one of the most controversial aspects of the campaign, leading to frequent accusations of racism. This study explores how his supporters responded to such accusations. Discussions of racism within a pro-Trump reddit community, called “The_Donald”, were analyzed. The_Donald users adamantly denied that Trump’s statements or proposed policies were racist. Their dismissal of these accusations drew on and extended the logic of color-blind racism. They argued that such accusations were merely cynical political tactics and advocated that Trump supporters respond to them as such. Their favored response strategies superficially resembled genuine debate but were apparently intended to incite emotional responses from accusers and to compel them to disengage from conversations. The article discusses these strategies in light of the ongoing polarization of political debate around immigration.
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Brandley, ben & Marco Dehnert
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Bucholtz, Mary
2019. The public life of white affects. Journal of Sociolinguistics 23:5 ► pp. 485 ff.
Davis, Alyssa J. & Heather Hensman Kettrey
2022. Clear and Omnipresent Danger: Digital Age Culture Wars and Reactions to Drag Queen Story Hour across Diverse Subreddit Communities. Social Currents 9:1 ► pp. 25 ff.
Haynes, Jeffrey
2020. Right-Wing Populism and Religion in Europe and the USA. Religions 11:10 ► pp. 490 ff.
HAYNES, Jeffrey & Ömer Faruk CENGİZ
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Lorenzo-Dus, Nuria & Lella Nouri
2021. The discourse of the US alt-right online – a case study of the Traditionalist Worker Party blog. Critical Discourse Studies 18:4 ► pp. 410 ff.
Ortiz, Stephanie M.
2021. Racists without racism? From colourblind to entitlement racism online. Ethnic and Racial Studies 44:14 ► pp. 2637 ff.
Squirrell, Tim
2019. Platform dialectics: The relationships between volunteer moderators and end users on reddit. New Media & Society 21:9 ► pp. 1910 ff.
Subtirelu, Nicholas
2023. Decommodifying Spanish-English bilingualism: aggrieved whiteness and the discursive contestation of language as human capital. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 2023:282 ► pp. 91 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 3 may 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.