Right-Wing Radio and the Lonely White Voter

Alex Jones

We have this provocateur at work who brings his stereo to the jobsite every day so he can listen to hours of talk radio: Alex Jones, Limbaugh, Hannity. I call him “provocateur” because, when he and I have to work in close proximity, he locks eyes with me while cranking the volume to truly disruptive levels. He knows I'm a red-state progressive, and he blatantly wants me to say something, so he can claim he's being oppressed by the “lib'ruls.”

So I've learned more about talk-radio politics than I've ever wanted to know. I’ve observed the way these bomb-throwers manipulate anger to retain listeners’ loyalty. I witness the elaborate rituals involved in creating and designating “others” who need loyal right-wingers to control and muzzle them. But of all the lessons I’ve gleaned from this unwanted immersion in the echo chamber, none has struck me more than how friendly it is to insiders.

Recently, Alex Jones paused between enraged rants over “the wall” and scripted plugs for protein shakes and testosterone supplements, to remind listeners how beloved they are. “I’m not the InfoWars,” Jones purred into the microphone, in a tone downright fatherly, though retaining his trademark growl. “You are the InfoWars. I’m just the spokesperson. You make this possible, you and your loyalty and your willingness to go to the barricades.”

In that moment I recalled something Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber wrote, that Christian media companies like Trinity Broadcasting Network often make people feel welcome and loved at times when traditional congregations don’t. They came into people’s homes, shared the Good News, and offered a loving embrace, through the television. Churches, by contrast, have often fallen short in their outreach to shut-ins, the sick, and the poor.

Nadia Bolz-Weber

This willingness to make people feel welcome during their lowest times, correlates strongly with where people spend their money. Bolz-Weber notes that many Christian parishioners write TBN and its member ministries into their wills, excluding the congregations that stood by them during times of good health, but vanished during their convalescence. Likewise, conservative radio lets certain groups feel included when the political mainstream has apparently turned deaf.

We could enumerate various reasons why populations which once served as the backbone of the progressive movement have thrown their lot in with conservatism and the status quo. Republicans do a better job at message management than Democrats, who often lose interest in outreach between election cycles. Certain progressive mainstays, like labor unions, were outright racist and haven’t changed with the times. Et cetera.

Yet I find these explanations unsatisfying, simply because I spend significant time around the demographics which have been abandoned by progressivism. The traditional explanations for progressivism’s decline—both parties’ active courting of Wall Street money, the big-tent coalition sundering into feuding identity groups, old-school racism—are all ancillary to working Americans’ biggest issue. And that is, I propose, that they feel lonely.

Donald Trump’s campaign turned heavily on promises to re-enfranchise “the Forgotten Man,” a vaguely defined figure who, somehow, felt adrift in contemporary politics. He never explained who this “man” was. But judging by the electoral coalition that supported Trump, the largest number of people who threw their weight behind him were White, heterosexual, and predominantly male. Honky dudes believed themselves abandoned in today’s politics.

Georgetown law professor Sheryll Cashin notes that, if you disaggregate the very rich (who, in America, are mostly White), the average wealth disparity between Black and White Americans falls to just $5,000. Now of course $5,000 is lots of money if you don’t have it, but it won’t buy you penthouse access on 5th Avenue. Poor White people in America probably aren’t bad off by international standards, but by American standards, things are pretty poorly.

Donald Trump

In today’s politics, you seemingly have to be already rich to run for office as a Republican. Meanwhile, Democrats have thrown their weight behind identity politics. If you’re White and poor in America today, you feel left behind. No wonder White union-style voters substantially throw their weight behind candidates like Donald Trump or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, political bomb-throwers who basically promise to be different from anything you’ve seen before.

Right-wing radio, like Christian television approaches people who already feel lonely and dispossessed, and offers to welcome them unconditionally. Of course, both are money-driven instruments, whether they seek tax-deductible donations or sell you erectile dysfunction tablets. But they clothe themselves in the robes of righteousness and welcome. Those who would counter their influence, should ask themselves why they haven’t welcomed the lonely yet.