2026 Reports

The Politics of Emotions in the Age of Trumpism: Right and Left Variants

Dougherty, Kevin

This paper analyzes the political importance of emotions in the age of Trumpism – particularly loss and sadness, shame, fear, distrust, anger, and hope - and how political actors both on the right and the left have tried to activate and channel those emotions. Political life is often portrayed as the realm of reason and interests. However, any careful analysis of politics shows that the mobilization of emotions is an intrinsic part of politics and a force for good as much as ill. Right wing actors – most notably Donald Trump -- have been quick to recognize and mobilize emotions. There is every reason to think that his Republican successors will also be speaking strongly to people’s emotions. For many on the left, political appeals relying on emotions are deeply disquieting. Appeals to emotion are associated with the vicious rhetoric of European fascist leaders in the 1930s and 1940s and their American analogues on the far right then and now. Yet emotions can be very important to left policy and politics. The great progressive surges of the New Deal and the Great Society could not have happened without the role of emotions such as fear, anger, and hope in driving the rise of the labor movement of the 1930s and the civil rights and successor movements of the 1950s through 1970s. For the left, there can be no escape from the need to understand and harness emotions in politics. An appeal to the pervasive sense of loss, shame, fear, and anger in our society may be crucial to winning back a substantial portion of the working class voters – both white and nonwhite – captured by Trump. Moreover, if powerful emotions are spoken to only by the right, they are likely to be mobilized and taken in directions quite inimical to the values of the progressive left.

Keywords: politics, emotions, Trump, Trumpism, right wing, left wing, progressive, populism, social movements, anger, hope