Donald Trump is winning, and his opponents are adrift. I had the chance to interview Joan Williams, expert on gender and class issues, about similarities between the far right in Europe and the US and priority-setting. Williams recommends that the opponents of the far right put the economic woes of the middle-class front and center. And that they watch their language.
Your book goes beyond Donald Trump as a political phenomenon and draws comparisons to the far right in Europe. Are there similar underlying characteristics?
The deep structures are identical. In the US and in Europe the far right is recognizing and wedging a key class conflict between the middle status and the professional-managerial elite. This conflict is expressed in Europe in many same ways that it’s expressed in the United States. The key carryover is attitudes towards immigration. There is no far-right party that has been successful without centering around immigration. And the reason immigration is such a beautiful issue for the far right is that it distills Economic anxieties and cultural anxieties.
What economic anxieties?
It’s what is called the elephant curve. Globalization lifted millions of people out of poverty in Asia. But at the same time, the deciles of population that pay the price were middle status people in advanced industrialized countries, exactly the group that is veered to the far right. And the far right talks about the losers of globalization and channels the angers of the losers of globalization. And the losers are defined not only in terms of increased inequality between individuals but increased inequality between regions. The neoliberal globalist economy channeled wealth chiefly to a few superstar cities, leaving the countryside and other cities behind. So, the far right understood how to tap into that economic anger and blame it on immigrants.
What about the cultural anxieties?
Immigration also simultaneously tapped cultural anxieties and cultural anger. Because the neoliberal professional managerial elite, of which I’m a perfect example, is very proud of being global citizens. And we have networks that are definitely national and often international. We are proud of that because that’s the way we stress our highest social category, class. To be proud of being a globalist – or in Europe a European – is a way of expressing pride in your social class. Whereas people who are in this fragile middle stress the highest social category they belong to, and that is being Dutch or being English. They are also very rooted in ways that the professional managerial elite isn’t. I argue that we’re in fact as rooted as they are. I feel more comfortable in Santiago, Chile, or Leiden than I do in rural Kansas. But our somewheres are different than theirs. Their social networks, unlike ours, are not national and international. They are very localized.
Why would the middle status people be more tied to local social contexts?
For very specific class-based reasons, one material, one symbolic, as these things often are. The material reason is that middle class families depend on family members and people they’ve known forever for everything from childcare emergencies to help to care for elderly parents, to help with fixing the roof. Things that the professional managerial elite simply commodifies. We pay for them. But in the middle, paying for them is not an attractive option, because you get poor quality because you’re not rich. These are the material bases of their rootedness, and there’s the expectation that parents and children will be in the same social network for their entire lives. Very different, again, from the professional managerial elite. And then finally, they’re very rooted because if you’re the guy who sells toilets, you want to hang out with people who know you’re not just the guy who sells toilets, that you are the deacon at church, that you are a good father, that you are a good citizen, that you are a fine person. Their social honor is not portable in the way ours, the elite’s, is. So, you have this cultural conflict on cosmopolitanism versus rootedness and patriotism. Between the middle and upper. The globalized elite often has caricatured any reference for patriotism or rootedness as unethical racism and that is deeply hurtful. The far right tapped into that and offered to restore honor and dignity of the middle against the cultural affronts of the professional managerial elite.
So, what you call the central class conflict is about immigration?
The central cultural conflict is expressed in terms of immigration, debates over immigration, but also in other ways. In the United States or Hungary, it is also expressed in terms of “traditional family values”.
All of this becomes pretty obvious once you start talking to the middle class you are referring to.
People have been very slow to recognize the central class conflict that’s driving the success of the far right in both Europe and the United States. Because it requires knowledge workers – the reporters and the policy makers – to be able to see that when you have a cultural conflict, it involves two cultures. One of which is «theirs». The other one, «ours», they don’t see as a culture, they just see as reality.
You refer to what the Trumpists call the «liberal media» or «fake news». In your book you show that most journalists in the US are alumni of the elite universities, hence belonging to the cosmopolitan class.
Recognizing the central class conflict, I am talking about requires them to see the social privilege of being able to define what constitutes a real problem.
And that translates into the political realm, does it not? The anti-Trump political parties have a hard time to accept the fact that there are these two realities and somehow reconcile them.
That’s right. The far right filled what political scientists call a representation gap. There was a group that was not represented by any of the mainstream parties, center-right or center-left. That was voters who had who preferred liberal, progressive economic policies and conservative cultural policies. That group was not represented for decades by any mainstream political party until the far right came in and delivered on that set of preferences.
A man in Georgia, a Trump supporter, told me recently «We are the reformers and the Democrats and the Republicans in Washington are all against us.»
Democrats go like, “How can people vote for Republicans?” And this gentleman expresses perfectly the message I’ve been trying to send to them, and again it’s a very painful message. The middle class can vote for Trump because they don’t feel that Republicans have delivered for them or the Democrats have delivered for them. And they’re right. Over 90% of Americans used to earn more than their parents. For those born in 1980, it’s only 50/50. Neither party has delivered for them. There’s the elephant curve. They’re very angry.
So, what is there to be done other than fold and join the far right like the Republican party has done in the US? What is an alternative to Trumpism to do? Where are mistakes made, and how can they be corrected?
I think it’s really simple. The first step is to stop talking incessantly about the defense of democracy. What we need to do to defend democracy in the long term is very different from what we need to do to defend democracy in the short term. In the short term, we need to do everything the Democrats are doing, in the courts, on the streets. But in the long term, you need to understand that high inequality predicts low social trust. We have very high inequality in the United States and that has corroded faith in political institutions. So, to be talking about defense of the status quo in the context where people feel quite rightly that they have been screwed by the status quo is a recipe for continuing to fuel the far right. That’s the first step.
Which steps follow?
The second step is to center economic issues. The top issues in 2024 for Trump voters were inflation and the economy. And it’s crystal clear that if the left doesn’t channel economic resentments, we know who will. Number three is to stop talking in a way that signals that the only important audience is college grads. Democrats – and I suspect that the equivalent parties in Europe – talk in a style that is beloved by college grads. Articulate, measured, using fancy language, detailed policy proposals. I mean, the EU bureaucracy is full of idealistic 20-year-olds that are just going to make the world perfect tomorrow without thinking about the impact on the farmer who has to figure out all these regulations and comply with them. A lot of this has to do with talk traditions. Do you use a style which I call in the US the Rachel Maddow style…
… The TV talk master on self-proclaimed left-wing MSNBC…
…very brainiac, «I’m an intelligent person talking to you, another intelligent person». Well, that’s a very comfortable style for me, but it sends unintended class signals that college grads are the only important audience. Mr. Trump does not do that. And neither does Giorgia Meloni. «Trump doesn’t sugarcoat things», said one Trump voter, «and talks very concrete about going to make your everyday life better». That’s the way to talk to Trump voters.
Are you referring to the fad of being «woke», overly politically correct?
When it comes to the culture wars, the left just has to stop getting played. Using the same old playbook, for 40 years in a row. I mean, I am somebody who’s worked on gender, race, and class. And so, I understand why we use fancy language like «Latinx». I understand why we have these culture war issues that express the most deeply held values of the professional managerial elite. But we’re not doing trans kids any favors right now by putting them at the center and handing a loaded gun to the far right. And we just keep handing the loaded guns to the far right over and over in exactly the same way. It just makes you wonder, frankly, who are the intellectuals here?
In your book you say not to cede the anti-elitist rhetoric to the far right. I am thinking of Jerry Brown who spoke against the NAFTA free trade agreement and of Senator Sanders’s filibuster against the Obama budget. They said a lot of the things Trump says. Today’s mainstream left does not.
I think they’re willing to do it now.
Ms. Harris did not.
No. There is a big fight on between the donors who are still very married to the libertarian model of free trade, less government regulation, anti-union, freedom in your private life related to sexualities. What I hope to communicate to them is that if you remain there, again, you’re holding a set of loaded guns to the opposition. And we’ve seen what the opposition will do with them. If you think we have a great business climate right now, definitely don’t change anything.
Who articulates the other side right now?
Well, people like the anti-oligarchy tour…
…Bernard Sanders…
People like Zoran Mamdani…
The Democrat nominee for mayor of New York City…
People who are considered progressives, but also people who are considered moderates. People like a congresswoman from Washington, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, or Greg Casar from Texas. There’s a big bench in the Democratic Party and a lot of talent who know how to do this. The formula is the four steps. Number one, stop talking ceaselessly and only about defense of democracy. Number two center on a stable middle class life. Hard work should yield a stable middle class life. Three, talk in a way that’s unfancy, simple, direct, and explains concretely how you’re going to improve people’s daily lives. And number four, don’t be stupid when it comes to culture wars. Stop playing into the hands of the right when it comes into culture wars.
Language, fighting over gender-sensitive language, is a big thing in our country too. The elites, what you call the college-educated professional-managerial class, think it’s the greatest thing since sliced cheese, and the rest of the people are somewhat irked by it. Should we just stop talking like this?
I don’t think so. I mean, you’re talking to a gender person who helped invent some of this. It’s a little bit of a complex message. In the United States one Trump ad said «Kamala cares about they and them – Trump cares about you». Now that attracted transphobic people for sure. But it also probably attracted a much larger group of people who were ticked off that the number one and two issues for them, inflation and the economy, were not at the center of the Democrats’ campaign. That said, I think just throwing all of this under the bus is a little bit too simple. Why don’t we first try talking about the economic issues that people care about, number one. But number two is understanding the water that we swim in. Cultural progressives like me need to understand that vocabulary that we invent to try to reverse the way that ordinary language invisiblizes power differentials is heard in different ways. We hear it as admirably idealistic. But people who aren’t college grads hear it as an affectation of elites. You have to understand class dynamics or you’re going to hurt the people you care about.
So, you talk differently to different classes of people?
Social entrepreneurs who are trying to push the envelope are always going to talk differently, and they have to. One commentator in the US called it faculty lounge talk. Whether they should insist that politicians who have to win elections talk in the same way, that has to change. Because that insistence just feeds the far right and further victimizes the groups they’re trying to change.
In your book you point to the issue of gay marriage as one model on how to succeed.
The gay marriage movement changed messaging and the way they talked. But the only reason they could change messaging is that they shifted priorities to connect with the moral intuitions of ordinary people. The gay liberation movement was focused on sexual liberation and on legal recognition of a wide range of relationships. They thought marriage was done and not interesting. I talked for the book to one of the leaders of the movement that gained gay marriage, and he said that he realized that «our people», ordinary people, not doctors and lawyers, wanted marriage. So, the gay marriage movement didn’t abandon LGBTQ issues, but they realized that if you want to persuade people, you have to talk their language and you have to connect with the moral intuitions of ordinary people. The gay marriage movement shows that it can be stupendously successful if you do it. In fact, the LGBTQ movement was much more effective at destigmatizing gay sex by championing gay marriage.
Are you saying you can translate this approach to different social issues?
Yeah. It’s really a two-step. The first is saying, are you really that affected by trans kids? don’t you really rather care about hard work, yielding a stable middle class life? And then figuring out what is an issue that will help the LGTBQ movement move forward, the next step, by connecting again with the moral intuitions of everyday people. That is the model.
You were talking about the European Union as one element of the global culture. Switzerland is not a member, but the European Union is our biggest market. We need that access, and we are about to vote on yet another bunch of treaties solidifying it, one of them making immigration easier. Our debate will be exactly what we discussed now. It will be the elitist, globalist against the localized patriotic Swiss, and immigration will be at the center. How would you argue if you were a Swiss?
First of all, don’t call people racists or the like for being anti-immigrant. If you do that, you kind of lost the battle already. Secondly, I would point to the really low birth rate which means that fewer young people are going to be working very hard to support a lot of old people. And the only way to avoid that is to allow in immigrants so that our elders can age with dignity, to care of our grandmothers and to serve us are lattes. These immigrants are ordinary working-class people who want exactly what ordinary middle class Swiss people want. They want to work hard to achieve a stable life for their families. Faith, family, stability, that’s what they worship.
The second generation is actually more successful in many ways than the average.
You’re asking me what I would say if I were Swiss. I would not say that because it makes the people in your audience feel like losers. In the United States, we link immigration to small business. Many workers in the middle dream to stop being an order taker and become an order giver by owning a small business. But who do they employ? They need dishwashers. They need clerks. So, if you care about small business, you need immigrants.
Would you make a difference between legal and illegal immigration? The Trump administration defends its deportations by saying they are aimed at criminals and lawbreakers.
Trump actually is rounding up people who have been class workers for decades and kicking them out, people living solid middle-class lives. And attitudes towards immigration are changing when Trump is, is rounding up ordinary middle-class hard-working people. His support on immigration has fallen, according to some measures, 10 full points in six months.
How about defending a criminal’s right to stay?
For the left to be defending immigrants with criminal records, I’m sorry. That is going to end up hurting all immigrants and going to fuel the far right. One of the other elements of middle-class people is that they are rule followers. That’s what their job requires and what their culture trains them up to do. So, if you say to a rule follower, «I am going to defend rule breakers, and if you don’t agree with me, you’re a racist», that’s not going to end well.
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Joan Williams is an American legal scholar (University of California college of the law, San Francisco) who has widely published on social class issues and the “diversity, equality and integration” (DEI) approaches that are currently cast out by the Trump administration. Her latest book is Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back. St. Martin’s Press, (2025)