Leftists who were part of the so-called “Resistance” movement against President-elect Donald Trump in 2016 are now facing a “disillusionment with activism” after the Republican won again this November, political scientists and organizers have realized.
In a Sunday report titled “The Resistance goes quiet,” Axios aimed to explain why the left wing has not erupted into widespread protests like what occurred when Trump beat former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton eight years ago.
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Lisa Mueller, a political science professor at Macalester College, said female Democrat voters are more disappointed than shocked this time around.
“So they didn’t have the same acute trigger to rush to the barricades that they did the first time,” Mueller, who studies social movements, said. “It’s very likely that there is some disillusionment with activism.”
Auburn University political science professor Mitchell Brown concurred, saying, “When you first see something unexpected, it’s really jarring and you react strongly.”
“But the more you see and normalize something that was unexpected … the more habituated you become to it,” she explained.
According to Mark Brilliant, a history professor at University of California, Berkeley, Democrat politicians “are urging their party-mates to look inward, which is always a good place to turn after defeat.”
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The Women’s March was one of the most prominent activist groups organizing events and raising money to support causes against Trump during his first term, but its managing director, Tamika Middleton, told Axios they need to find new ways to mobilize people.
“We have been through a Trump presidency before, so we have some sense of what it is that we anticipate, and also some sense of what we need,” Middleton said. “We know that we need a bigger, more robust movement, which means that we have to be bringing in as many people as possible.”
In a recent episode of the New York Times’ “Daily” podcast, titled “From Resistance to Reflection,” Women’s March co-founder Vanessa Wruble said talks of another march event are “not going over real well.”
While Wruble helped to start the Women’s March on Washington, DC, in 2017, she told the New York Times in 2018 that she was pushed out of the group because she is Jewish, shortly after accused antisemite Linda Sarsour joined the team.
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“Honestly, my first reaction was ‘You know what, America?’ Pardon my French, but fuck it,” Wruble said on the “Daily” last week of Trump’s second win. “If that’s how you feel about it, have it, America. You voted for this. Buckle up. It’s going to get bad.”
While the Women’s March group has scheduled a “People’s March” on Washington, DC, for January 18, the turnout is not expected to match the original 2017 march.
“I don’t know any organizer from the original Women’s March that thinks marching right now is a good idea,” Wruble said.
According to Middleton, who is still a higher-up within the Women’s March, “the exhaustion is real” among anti-Trump Resistance activists who have now seen him elected twice.
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