Troll Nation, with Amanda Marcotte

About this Episode

The election of Donald Trump in 2016, like most of his campaign, came as a shock to many Americans. In Troll Nation Amanda Marcotte argues that Trump's election was the inevitable result of American conservatism’s degradation into an ideology of blind resentment. For years now, she contends, the purpose of right wing media, particularly Fox News, has not been to argue for traditional conservative ideals, such as small government or even family values, so much as to stoke bitterness and paranoia in its audience. Traditionalist white people have lost control over the culture, and they know it, and the only option they feel they have left is to rage at a broad swath of supposed enemies ― journalists, activists, feminists, city dwellers, college professors ― that they blame for stealing “their” country from them.