Trump mask production line, Japan. Eugene Hoshiko/AP/Press Association Images. All rights reserved.What are the roots and ramifications of Donald Trump’s election? As we reel from this seismic event, Arun Kundnani, political commentator and author of The Muslims Are Coming! (Verso, 2014), assesses its domestic and global significance for the innumerable communities on the frontline, with Trump set to inherit the vastest machineries for war and surveillance ever created. We must not accept this as normal, he argues, and we should match in extremity the coming administration’s rhetoric – while campaigning from the margins, with a genuine programme for change.
Phoebe Braithwaite: What part has racism played in the Trump campaign’s success?
Arun Kundnani: There are two prevailing ways that people have been looking at the Trump victory. One is focused on class and the other is focused on race. A lot of people are saying this is the revolt of the ‘losers’ in globalisation, focused on the white working class. Actually I don’t think the data supports that, because the most striking thing about the numbers is that support for Trump is not associated with poverty. It is correlated with race. Across all ages, every income category, and across men and women, more whites voted for Trump than Clinton and more non-whites voted for Clinton than Trump.
