Donald Trump’s “Political Incorrectness”: Neoliberalism as Frontstage Racism on Social Media

Abstract

President Donald Trump’s popularized “political incorrectness” has become a signifier allowing for backstage, or overt, racist sentiments to become steadily normalized as logical in the public frontstage of political discourse and social media. This normalization is possible under the guise of neoliberal truth telling. In the current context of neoliberalism, touting postracial “colorblindness” and achieved equalities, there is subsequent Trump-backed whitelash against “political correctness,” or an acknowledgement of inequality, in US public discourse. Highly racialized public issues such as immigration and relations between the US and Mexico lead to conversations in which “politically incorrect” white-centric racialized language is used, which has roots in the narratives of neoliberal postracialism and white superiority. Thematic analyses of popular media examples of Trump’s anti-political correctness (PC) rhetoric alongside qualitatively gathered positive social media responses to his “incorrectness” on Twitter exemplify how neoliberal “postracial” ideology can be used inversely to solidify feelings of white superiority and overt racist beliefs.The continued normalization of Trump’s version of “politically incorrect” ideology and language both on and offline can lead to increased racial violence and the continued creation of neoliberal policy with racially disparate impacts.