Riling Up the Base

Riling up the Base argues that stereotypes (especially those relating to immigration, race/ethnicity, and gender), not policies, secured Trump’s election win and the ongoing support he enjoys.

From his 2015 campaign announcement through his presidential term and in his time out of office, Donald Trump has used stereotypes as a routine feature in his rhetoric. This book defines them as a crucially important strategy for attracting, retaining, and energizing voters. Covering topics like persuasion, agenda setting, critical race theory, and semiotics, the authors use a holistic and interdisciplinary approach to unpack how Trump motivates his base.

This book provides a full aggregate explanation of the seemingly mesmerizing attachment and adoration his core supporters feel by explaining the way seemingly disparate theories work both alone and together to expose the mechanisms at play.

• Analyzes the psychology around stereotype use and connects to Donald Trump’s methods
• Meets growing interest in political communication, racial & ethnic politics
• Looks at Donald Trump’s stereotype communication in a theoretically integrated way

Anastacia Kurylo is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Communication at Brooklyn College. She has published six books on stereotypes, cultural communication, and group identity, including The Communicated Stereotype: From Celebrity Vilification to Everyday Talk, Building your Social World: Constructing Reality through Interpersonal Communication, and most recently Communicated Stereotypes at Work.

Ian Reifowitz is SUNY Distinguished Professor of Historical Studies at SUNY-Empire State University. He is the author of three books, including The Tribalization of Politics: How Rush Limbaugh’s Race-Baiting Rhetoric on the Obama Presidency Paved the Way for Trump, and Obama’s America: A Transformative Vision of Our National Identity.

Stereotypes are standard tools in political discourse, but Donald Trump’s successful dependence upon them set him apart. Kurylo and Reifowitz draw upon the latest theories in social psychology and media studies to explain Trump’s extraordinary success in persuading about a third of the American public that a host of stereotypes about identity groups are true representations of reality. Through skilful repetition, timing, and a rare instinct for cultural context, Trump manages to overcome the conventional suspicion of stereotypes as unfair. Rather, in Trump’s hands, these stereotypes come across as the opposite of bias. He tells it like it is! Riling up the Base is a distinctive contribution to our age’s effort to explain the Trump phenomenon.

- David A. Hollinger, University of California, Berkeley, and author of Christianity's American Fate: How Religion Became More Conservative and Society More Secular

In Riling Up the Base: Examining Trump's Use of Stereotypes through an Interdisciplinary Lens, Ian Reifowitz and Anastacia Kurylo extensively analyze Donald J. Trump’s ability to exacerbate various stereotypes for his political benefit. In contemporary society, one would think that a presidential candidate would choose not to engage in inflammatory language about race, gender, sexual orientation, and immigration. Yet Trump has used a different tactic to mobilize massive support among his base while also gaining enough support from other constituencies so that he can win and then recapture the office of the presidency. Reifowitz and Kurylo’s examination allows us to understand how and why he did this and encourages us to think about the implications of Trump's rhetoric for future candidates and campaigns. In America, we like to believe that American voters don’t base their vote choices on factors such as race, gender, and immigration status, but Trump has proven that they do.

- Dr. Sharon D. Wright Austin, Professor of Political Science, The University of Florida and author of Political Black Girl Magic: The Elections and Governance of Black Female Mayors

From Riling Up the Base we learn exactly why Trump’s stereotype strategy worked: we’re all so busy and our feeds and our scrolls move so fast that we don’t have time to absorb and critically examine information. Kurylo and Reifowitz show that this creates vulnerabilities: we rely on heuristics and shortcuts and feelings instead of deliberately and carefully examining messages. When we’re overwhelmed with information, we’re easily led and manipulated by political figures like Trump. Ultimately Kurylo and Reifowitz help us to understand the success of a political candidate like Donald Trump in a world awash in communication and democratic erosion. As we learn from Riling Up the Base, the propaganda tactics of name-calling and outrage weaken our democracy.

- Dr. Jennifer R. Mercieca, Professor, Texas A&M University, Department of Communication and Journalism and author of Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump

This study applies numerous interdisciplinary concepts about social identity and group dynamics to multiple cases of communication strategies in Donald Trump’s political campaigns and presidency. The richly detailed analysis will be instructive for teaching and scholarship in political science, public communication, and presidency studies.

- Meena Bose, Peter S. Kalikow Chair in Presidential Studies and Professor of Political Science, Hofstra University, and author of Executive Policymaking: The Role of the OMB in the Presidency and Evaluating the Obama Presidency