The Politics of Losing

The Ku Klux Klan has peaked three times in American history: after the Civil War, around the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, and in the 1920s, when the Klan spread farthest and fastest. Recruiting millions of members even in non-Southern states, the Klan’s nationalist insurgency burst into mainstream politics. Almost one hundred years later, the pent-up anger of white Americans left behind by a changing economy has once again directed itself at immigrants and cultural outsiders and roiled a presidential election.

In The Politics of Losing, Rory McVeigh and Kevin Estep trace the parallels between the 1920s Klan and today’s right-wing backlash, identifying the conditions that allow white nationalism to emerge from the shadows. White middle-class Protestant Americans in the 1920s found themselves stranded by an economy that was increasingly industrialized and fueled by immigrant labor. Mirroring the Klan’s earlier tactics, Donald Trump delivered a message that mingled economic populism with deep cultural resentments. McVeigh and Estep present a sociological analysis of the Klan’s outbreaks that goes beyond Trump the individual to show how his rise to power was made possible by a convergence of circumstances. White Americans’ experience of declining privilege and perceptions of lost power can trigger a political backlash that overtly asserts white-nationalist goals. The Politics of Losing offers a rigorous and lucid explanation for a recurrent phenomenon in American history, with important lessons about the origins of our alarming political climate.

Rory McVeigh is professor of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame. He is the director of The Center for the Study of Social Movements and past chair of the Collective Behavior and Social Movement section of the American Sociological Association, and past co-editor of American Sociological Review. His research focuses on identifying structural foundations of social conflict and investigating long-term consequences of social movement mobilization. Much of his recent work uses experimental designs to uncover mechanisms involved in the defense of power and privilege.  He is the author of The Rise of the Ku Klux Klan: Right-Wing Movements and National Politics (University of Minnesota Press, 2009) and (with Kevin Estep) The Politics of Losing: Trump, the Klan, and the Mainstreaming of Resentment (Columbia University Press). He has published numerous articles in sociology’s leading journals, including American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, and Social Forces. 

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