No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump's Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need

by Naomi Klein

If there is a single, overarching lesson to be drawn from the foul mood rising around the world, it may be this: we should never, ever underestimate the power of hate. Never underestimate the appeal of wielding power over “the other,” be they migrants, Muslims, Blacks, Mexicans, women, the other in any form. Especially during times of economic hardship, when a great many people have good reason to fear that the jobs that can support a decent life are disappearing for good. Trump speaks directly to that economic panic, and, simultaneously, to the resentment felt by a large segment of white America about the changing face of their country, about positions of power and privilege increasingly being held by people who do not look like them. The intensity and irrationality of the rage Trump and his strongest supporters reserved for Barack Obama, the years of feverish desire to strip him of his Americanness by “proving” he was Kenyan, thereby rendering him “other,” cannot be explained by anything but race hatred. This is the “whitelash” that CNN commentator Van Jones named on election night, and there is no doubt that for a considerable segment of Trump’s voters it is a ferocious force.