Trump's campaign plays on resentment of wounded masculinity

Photo: Alex Brandon Associated Press Donald Trump at a political rally in Johnstown, August 30, 2024

Michael Mathes – Agence France-Presse in Johnstown

Posted at 3:26 p.m.

• United States

He is full of praise for tough leaders, he surrounds himself with combat sports champions and is keen above all to project an image of strength: Donald Trump is playing the virility card to the hilt.

Opposed to a Democratic candidate, the outgoing Vice President Kamala Harris, as during his victorious 2016 campaign against Hillary Clinton, he finds himself on the defensive regarding his fluctuating position on abortion.

Kamala Harris is enjoying a surge in support from female voters, as the Republican billionaire has often boasted about having helped repeal the federal guarantee of abortion rights.

But Donald Trump is assiduously courting the electorate that, in no particular order, supports cryptocurrencies, MMA and considers that American society has sunk into “wokeism.”

“He speaks to our generation,” Nick Passano, 37, told AFP, who came to attend a Trump political rally in Johnstown, Pennsylvania (northeast) last week with four other cryptocurrency investors known as the Maga Boyz, all tattooed.

“We need to make our voices heard on the example we want to give to our children, that is, strong and masculine men,” he adds.

The 78-year-old Republican candidate’s combative demeanor, his cheek bloodied, just after escaping an assassination attempt at a rally on July 13, further galvanized this fervor at the Conservative Party convention a few days later.

“If you’re a man in this country and you don’t vote for Donald Trump, you’re not a man,” conservative commentator Charlie Kirk said.

And during the convention, wrestler Hulk Hogan ripped his T-shirt and called him a “gladiator.”

A striking contrast, exploited to the full by his campaign team, with the decline displayed by the incumbent President Joe Biden, 81, weighed down by his catastrophic debate against Donald Trump in June.

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“Persecuted white masculinity”

But the withdrawal of Joe Biden, suddenly replaced by Kamala Harris, 59, has changed the situation.

It is riskier for Donald Trump to puff out his chest in front of a woman of Jamaican and Indian origin than in front of another white man of over 70 years, according to commentators.

Paul Johnson, a professor of communication at the University of Pittsburgh, believes, however, that he will not adapt his message to this change of adversary.

The “Trumpist vision” is to describe a “mean” world, where “real Americans must be prepared to fight for their place, to tell unpleasant and racist truths, and if necessary to use violence,” Paul Johnson told AFP.

This is evidenced in particular by Donald Trump’s frequent reposting of crude sexual attacks against Kamala Harris on his social networks.

His young supporters at the Johnstown rally, for their part, see this as proof of his fearlessness.

“The fact that he is himself is why I love him so much,” confides Wyatt Waszo, a 21-year-old restaurant worker.

But Donald Trump is only riding the wave of the movement macho, according to analysts.

Many conservative radio shows echo what they call “male malaise.” It’s a visceral reaction to globalization and movements like #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, Kristin Kobes Du Mez, a professor of history and gender studies at Calvin University in Michigan, told AFP.

“This idea of ​​white masculinity being persecuted and disdained is very closely tied to the idea of ​​American greatness, which is seen as being under siege,” she said.

And in this worldview, “that greatness can be restored by giving free rein to this rough, even ruthless masculinity,” continued Kristin Kobes Du Mez.

“Trump plays on the fears of losing what we have,” she sums up.

From his On the other hand, Kamala Harris is careful not to place her candidacy under the sign of the unprecedented accession of a woman to the White House.

And Democratic strategists are hoping that the profile of his running mate Tim Walz, a progressive but also a former military man, ex-American football coach, hunter and fisherman, will win him some points on this front.