>About the only point I am trying to add here, is an attempt to understand psychologically why all this political and policy rhetoric works. It works because in the process of promoting all this nonsense, the promise is continually made that the average joe, the average white male american will soon be back on top running his job, his home, and the society in general. In other words all those Liberal positions on the issues of race, class, and gender are keeping you, Mister Joe Smith from your proper place at the head of the table.
>I hope that puts some flesh on why the constant drone of blood and soil has been going on and why it is supported mostly by white male voters, but increasely less and less by others. It appeals to masculinity, power, and race, in particular the wounded white male ego. In its less nuanced version it is right in line with a long tradition in American politics, which has often been been turned into some form of rightwing populist movement of a much more destructive sort as Chip Berlet outlines in the above quoted work.
Well, I guess the factor I would add is the erasure of class analysis from popular understanding. Therefore, if you are a white guy (since race and sex oppression is all you hear about--all the media will talk about) you should be doing better than you are. If you're not, since there's no analysis of class power, you tend to look at lost privileges, which are also confused with the general decline of working class security in the U.S. That's when you're not blaming yourself. The mirror image of race/sex identity politics--abstracted from class--is what you call white male identity politics. To be clear, this is not the fault of the Black or feminist movements as much as it's the result of anti-communism, although we have to deal with the consequences and therefore have good reasons to help fix the problem.
Jenny Brown