The left must stop excusing Trump voters.

There is a glaring contradiction – and dare I say, political correctness – emerging among my fellow left-leaning liberals trying to wrap their heads around a Trump victory, and doing so by subtly excusing those voters. This couldn’t be more highlighted than in the way they are responding to the often violent protests that are breaking out against his election.

The contradiction is this;
1) Protesters are completely responsible for their own individual actions (this is correct) and must be condemned, without any wider context discussed.
2) We must not condemn Trump voters as moral agents willingly empowering a very bigoted (and also, we mustn’t call it or them bigoted) platform, and instead we must look at the wider context.

The subtle implication is clear; The left is responsible entirely for both, that protesters are violent lefties unable to accept the result of a democratic election, whilst those voters who elected Trump are amoral victims of the left’s inability to craft a narrative of change. I resent this position, because it seems to excuse or deflect from the individual choice that grown adults have made, to empower and embolden a racist, misogynistic, disability mocking, dangerous platform, onto others for not stopping it. It is a feigned outrage. To be outraged at protests (I say protest, not violent protest…. the latter is completely unacceptable and must be punished), but not at voters who consciously empower bigotry, is puzzling at best.

Indeed, I’ve seen liberals insist that conservatives didn’t protest Obama’s election, and that this is protesting is anti-democratic and embarrassing for the left. It’s as if they have chosen to believe that when very divisive language is met with protest, it is the protest that must be condemned. And secondly, It’s as if they have consciously chosen to forget the ‘go back to Africa’ signs at rallies, Confederate flags waving outside the White House or at rallies attended by Sarah Palin & Ted Cruz, or the inviting of people like Ted Nugent (a man who once said “I’m beginning to wonder if it would have been best had the South won the Civil War”)by Republicans as some sort of Patriotic hero to Presidential events or the refusal by Senate Republicans to accept any nomination on time, or the shut down of government, or the demands for birth certificates over the past eight years. It’s like they’ve decided those opposing that sort of vicious shit, are to blame, and see no irony in their new found refusal to condemn it all as hideously bigoted and those who vote to empower it, as embracing that bigotry. The GOP created this atmosphere over the past eight years. They legitimised it. They fostered it. But suddenly, the subtle line here is that Trump voters and Republicans are victims.

This doesn’t happen with any other section of society, for my fellow liberals. We rightly highlight that embracing Islamist principles and the bigotry it permits is the fault of the individual first and the narrative they’ve embraced, and reject groups like CAGE attempting to shift blame onto everyone but the individual. We accept that a wider context exists that entrenches those ideas, but it is the individual first and foremost that we highlight as the culprit. We do not strip those people of their moral agency. Similarly, we accept that – despite presenting themselves as anti-establishment – we will liberals will not vote for a Jeremy Corbyn-led left wing that openly supports violent regimes across the World, and includes a host of anti-Semitic groups and individuals. That is a line we do not cross. Nor do we excuse. Whether left or right, religious or not, the reasoning remains the same.

That the left hasn’t been able to craft a suitable narrative for the electorate to cling to is clear. And as a result, it leaves a festering pot of bigotry to fill the gap. This is an obvious point. Like saying without cold water, there’s just burning hot water. It’s also why the US election wasn’t so much a victory for Republicans given that their share of the vote stayed practically untouched since 2012 and 2008, but that the Democrat share of the vote plummeted. This is such an obvious point, it doesn’t require making. How the left responds and seeks to craft a narrative focused on those abandoned by globalisation over the past thirty years, is important. This, I accept.

The left hasn’t known how to speak to blue collar communities for decades. How to reinvigorate unions to ensure fair wages, secure jobs, and safe environments, when unions have been decimated by the right for so long, is a challenge. How to answer concerns on immigration, without endorsing or legitimising often racist narratives is another massive challenge that no one has touched for far too long. I get that.

But I would also say that the left needs to go on the offensive; absolutely shame and fight the grotesque mentality that seems to have permitted so many to empower to the highest office in the World, a man with 75 pending court cases, a man who mocked the disability of a reporter, a man who believes that China invented climate change, a man who uses phrases like “grab them by the pussy”, a man who has several women claiming sexual assault against them, a man who publicly expressed a desire to ban all Muslims from entering the US, a man who’s likely appointee to Treasury Secretary is ex-Goldman Sachs with a number of court cases against him for how he treated foreclosures (including one judge referring to his company’s actions as ‘repulsive’), a man who’s choice for VP echoes religious fundamentalists across the planet when he claims same-sex relationships are a sign of ‘societal collapse’, a man who called Mexicans rapists, a man who spent a large part of the Presidency of the first African American to hold that office demanding a birth certificate to prove he was American.

We must hear real concerns about immigration and about economic globalisation, we must formulate a narrative of change, but we must also refuse to stroke the egos of those who think using those concerns negates the bigotry they also willingly endorsed and empowered. We must not treat those voters like victims. They are not. They have – through their own moral agency – chosen to empower horrific human traits. We must – through argument and persuasion – alienate the mentality that they have embraced to ensure it is defeated. It must be called out, it must be demonised, and it must be demolished. The right has been on the attack for decades and it has clearly worked. The left must now do the same.