The Rascal Multitude and the Basket of Deplorables:
how the power of the masses is to be feared in an age of Trump
You know that thing you have most feared, which has been working its chill for months through the inner areas of your mind?
It has finally happened.
And now your fear is increased in magnitudes. What will happen next, now that the US have chosen a President Trump?
Back in August this year, I did some rough-and-ready research into the balance of popularity between Clinton and Trump. I did the research on Amazon, on the US website (amazon.com), looking up items of Trump v. Clinton election paraphernalia. What came up most were ‘Make America Great Again’ baseball caps, along with t-shirts with anti-Hillary slogans, and other small items with a clearly Trump and ‘MAGA’ agenda.
In contrast, there were much fewer decidedly pro-Clinton popular items.
This was a clear indication of a certain ‘popular vote’. Not in terms of actual sales, but rather in the white public’s imagination of what they want.
In May, I wrote about the riot that occurred in Perth, Scotland in 1559, the opening salvo of the Scottish Protestant Reformation. At the heart of that riot was a crowd of followers of the preacher John Knox, who were fired up by his call for change and reformation, and who rampaged through Perth for three days — largely pulling down four Catholic monasteries of the city. This was a riot largely based on a need for some kind of change, against the privileges of class and religious elitism, and settling old scores.
In an account written several years later, John Knox described the rioting crowd as the ‘rascal multitude’.
‘the whole multitude came together, not the gentlemen or those that were earnest professors [of the faith], but the rascal multitude’.
Knox, History of the Reformation in Scotland, p.149
It is clear, from this position of hindsight, that Knox himself considered the crowd and their actions to have gone beyond his control.
‘Finding nothing to do in that church [the parish kirk of St Johns], these [people] ran without deliberation to the Grey and Black Friars, and, notwithstanding that these monasteries had within them very strong guards for their defence, their gates were forthwith burst open.
‘Idolatry was the occasion of the first outburst, but thereafter the common people began to look for spoil.’ (p.150)
The destruction that they caused most likely served Knox’s interests in the medium term, but in the short term it could have brought on a scale of relation from the authorities (in the form of the Catholic Queen Regent, Marie of Guise and her French army) that would have destroyed his then still budding Protestant movement in Scotland.
But, in the long term, the rascal multitude in Perth in May 1559 started the revolution that very quickly transformed Scotland into a Protestant nation.
My thoughts back in May explored in part what there is to say about the idea of the ‘rascal multitude’ — the power of a crowd, a mass movement that does the work of a political ideal or leader. Such a rascal multitude can quite literally be the motor of history, sweeping aside not only buildings but also the interests and positions of those who seek to maintain power. At the same time, it can also be a self-serving crowd, more motivated by an interest (as hinted at by Knox) in spoil and loot than any ideological change.
Since May we have seen such a rascal multitude deliver Brexit in the UK and the Trump victory in the US.
Indeed, this rascal multitude in Perth is echoed through history, in the many uprisings and insurrections that are variously lauded or decried by politicians and historians, and both. Such a rascal multitude caused the Boston Tea Party, the Selma marches, the Arab Spring, the Iranian Revolution, and much more. It could also describe the anti-British protestors in Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar in 1919, and the rioters of Watts in 1965 and Brixton and Toxteth in 1981.
That is, there is no simple way to classify and evaluate the power and the purpose of a rampant rascal multitude. It is indeed something to be feared by all — by both those who stand with and against it.
Of course, applying this to the US election of November 2106 does have its problems. The election was not won in numbers by Trump supporters (the self proclaimed ‘Deplorables’), since it is becoming very clear that Clinton gained a majority share of the popular vote (currently heading towards 2 million). What Trump’s supporters gained was a series of wins where it mattered — a turn out of voters in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Florida, and in particular a turnout of voters of white background who were not matched by similar turnouts of African Americans in support of Clinton.
This is the rascal multitude of the moment: a group of white Americans who have taken the opportunity to ‘take back control’ of ‘their country’.
This is the ‘Brexit-plus-plus-plus’ that Trump predicted. It is a victory for a white identity that has continually had power, albeit often hidden within structures of exclusion rather than one that is blatantly ideological.
As Courtney Park West has remarked, the 2016 election was about asking America:
How do you like your racism: blatant or systemic?
The former was clearly on offer from Trump, but the latter was what came with the choice for Clinton.
It is clear that the rascal multitude of the 2016 US election were not satisfied by the structural racism and inequalities of recent politics. Nor did they like either the rise or the white backlash against the Black Lives Matter movement. They wanted a blatantly racist president in the White House, together with a cabinet, advisors, and supporters from the far right (i.e., ‘alt-right’) and the KKK.
There is no doubt that America — and much of the western world — faces difficult years ahead with this lurch towards racism and nativist, white nationalism. This is what the rascal multitude have taken the chance to support this time around.
There is very significant fear among a range of people — people of colour, LGBTQ, Muslims, women, Latinx, and many more. As writers such as Shaun King have already documented, a significant portion of this victorious rascal multitude is already expressing itself viciously and violently against the targets of Trump’s rhetoric.
My only hope is that the long-term counter reaction against this reactionary movement may prove to be of greater value. There is no doubt that much of America is in a state of shock and disgust. The victory of a misogynist, white nationalist Trump will (hopefully) have blown apart the complacency of much of liberal white-American identity.
The US is still in the process of moving out of the near apartheid society of Jim Crow, which was only overturned a few decades ago. As writers such as Ta-Nehisi Coates have argued, the structures of racism that built up over two and a half centuries of slavery, and a further century of segregation and lynch-based in/‘justice’, have not yet been effectively challenged and over turned.
For a long time, a white-privileged rascal multitude has asked its leaders to keep control of America for them at all costs. In November 2016 they have done so very blatantly.
It has not worked well so far to pretend otherwise.
Hopefully, there is another rascal multitude forming out of this moment of fear, shock, and anguish, ready to overturn both the blatant and the systemic assumptions of white nationalism at the heart of American politics.
Malory Nye is an academic and writer who teaches at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. He can be found on Twitter (@malorynye) and on his website, malorynye.com.
He produces two podcasts: Religion Bites and History’s Ink.
Malory Nye is also the author of the books Religion the Basics (2008) and There Shall be an Independent Scotland (2015).
