Philippa Kaur

One of the most bizarre aspects of the United States presidential election has been how difficult it’s been to determine the truth — particularly due to Republican Donald Trump’s candidacy — and if the truth even matters.

White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci walks back to the West Wing of the White House in July 2017. His advice to take Trump symbolically, not literally, likely puzzled Canadian policymakers.
(AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

As former Trump advisor Anthony Scaramucci once noted about the former president: “Don’t take him literally, take him symbolically.” This advice wasn’t very helpful.

The difficulty in determining what is true is symptomatic of the high levels of uncertainty that Canadian policymakers are confronted with regularly in their dealings with their American counterparts.

Voters in the most powerful nation on Earth — and Canada’s neighbour and largest trading partner — are choosing between two starkly different choices on the ballot, and Canada must be attentive and adaptive across a number of policy areas.

Three-part process

Scenario planning provides an effective way to address such high levels of uncertainty. The method can generate difficult and radically different descriptions of the future by way of challenging participants, requiring imaginative interventions and overcoming stability and optimism biases.

At the MacEachen Institute for Public Policy and Governance at Dalhousie University, our team used this method extensively throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, including with members of the tourism industry in early 2021. The method proved to be an effective tool for these organizations in planning for the 2021 tourism season in light of the uncertainty posed by COVID-19.

There are typically three parts to the approach, divided by sessions. The first session establishes the goals the participants wish to achieve in light of their unique challenges and timelines. Goals vary but usually address some aspect of the medium-term success of the organization. Timelines can be anything from a few months down the road to decades from now.

Motivating factors

The group then discusses drivers, which are highly impactful forces beyond their immediate control that will shape the scenarios. Two drivers are selected, often based on supply-and-demand concepts.

During the second session, participants describe four scenarios based on the two drivers, answering questions that include:

What does this scenario look like?
How would we arrive at this scenario?
What are the underlying causes of the scenario?
What are the critical failures and opportunities in this scenario?

Finally, the group names the scenario. The four scenarios are deliberately intended to be different and extreme in order to push people beyond their comfort zones.

At the third session, participants establish how they’re going to judge policies and operational changes knowing that any one of the four scenarios could materialize.

Trade, economy

In terms of scenario planning for the Canada-U.S. relationship, Canadian policymakers could consider U.S. trade policies as the first driver (liberal trade policies vs. protectionist policies) and the state of the American economy as the second driver (it either booms or it sinks into a deep recession).

Policymakers can use a two-by-two matrix to discuss potential strategies in light of the possible scenarios posed by the U.S economy and trade policies.
(MacEachen Institute for Public Policy and Governance)

Organized as a two-by-two matrix, policymakers can explore four plausible future scenarios: either liberal or protectionist trade policies, during either an economic boom or a recession.

Within these four scenarios, policymakers can develop criteria by which to evaluate Canadian policies knowing that any one of these four scenarios could materialize.

There are important things to consider at the design stage.

To start, it can be time-consuming to organize and execute the sessions. You can run remarkably simple and helpful sessions in a day, or extremely involved ones over several months.

The number of participants is flexible. Usually it involves a small to medium-sized group, but individuals can use the two-by-two matrix to think through problems over lunch.

Who’s there matters. We tend to invite people who represent different parts of an organization or sector. That provides legitimacy to the process and satisfies a sense of fair play, and this approach can also help participants accept the conclusions and communicate them broadly.

At the same time, having representatives from each part of the organization can lead to turf wars. It can serve to reinforce existing institutional arrangements rather than challenge, change and in some cases abolish them. Bringing in guest speakers to share best practices from other jurisdictions can help to discuss difficult issues.

The Ambassador Bridge, spanning the Detroit River between Windsor and Detroit, in December 2021. The trade and economic relationship between the U.S. and Canada provides lots of material for scenario planning for Canadian policymakers.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Fred Thornhill

Embracing diversity

Scenario planning exercises also favour elite groups — experts, company executives and clever high flyers who are skilled at imaginative thinking. Turning to these elite groups can be at odds with equity, diversity, inclusion and accessibility principles.

Diverse sources of information can challenge participants to think differently and also help participants to understand the impacts of scenarios to different communities.

Participants also need to be able to speak frankly. Values may differ, and attempts by participants to avoid saying anything controversial can crowd out more nuanced thoughts.

Generally, egalitarian dynamics lead to consensus-seeking solutions. But this doesn’t always result in more radical transformations. In some respects, the four possible scenarios compel participants to consider quite different views, which can be helpful.

Diverse participants in scenario planning sessions can challenge people to think differently.
(Shutterstock)

All of this makes discussing how to judge new programs at the third session more challenging and important.

One way to address these challenges is to have a broad way to discuss and evaluate each strategy. Typically, we examine different parts of the strategy — how an organization gathers information, sets standards and changes behaviour internally — and different criteria by which to judge the strategies (efficiency, fairness and accountability and stability and learning).

An experienced moderator with some professional distance from the group can help to keep the conversation on time, on subject and challenge participants when conventional wisdom starts to creep in.

Public agencies are premised on a command-and-control dynamic, but policymakers increasingly need tools and skills that allow them to anticipate, address and communicate risks over which they have limited control.

The U.S. election and its aftermath in the weeks and months to come are a salient and consequential example. Scenario planning allows policymakers to challenge their assumptions and have difficult conversations in light of quickly changing events in order to seize opportunities and reduce vulnerabilities. More

Visual images often last in historical and popular memory. This is especially the case in presidential campaigns in the United States, which offer a vast mix of spectacle, surprise and drama.

An historian of political visual culture can no more predict which images are likely to last the test of time than we can know who will win. But we can explain why some historical images from presidential campaigns resonate.

This election season has produced the most media savvy and diverse campaign imagery of all time. Cable news, social media and artificial intelligence have created a whole new universe of image-based narratives.

In this rich visual landscape, here are three images likely to last the test of time.

1. Trump’s ‘fight!’ photo

The uncontroversial front-runner for defining image has to be Evan Vucci’s photograph of Donald Trump being led off the stage in Pennsylvania after surviving an assassination attempt in July.

Trump is surrounded by Secret Service agents after being shot at during a campaign rally on July 13.
AP Photo/Evan Vucci

Many people, including Trump, were quick to elevate the photograph to the iconic status of Joe Rosenthal’s photograph of troops raising the flag on Iwo Jima during the second world war.

Both are photographed from below and feature the national flag above Americans working against adversity to reach a common goal. Both fit squarely into the tradition of wartime photojournalism.

Both photographs enjoyed instantaneous popularity: Trump’s image went viral and the Iwo Jima image was featured on a US postage stamp before the war’s end.

US marines raise the American flag atop Mt Suribachi, Iwo Jima, Japan, in 1943.
AP Photo/Joe Rosenthal

But their greatest similarity resides in the cultural symbolism of the images.

Both accurately represent an historical moment; a specific point in time. But the point in time has been actively selected to fit a narrative. The narratives projected are deeply held mythologised symbols of aspirational patriotism.

Read more:
Elevation, colour – and the American flag. Here’s what makes Evan Vucci’s Trump photograph so powerful

Visual literacy prompts us to think about which images were discounted in the selection of these historically powerful two. Historical legacies and the national mythologies that fuel these lean toward images of success over pictures of wartime death and suffering.

This image of Trump fits all the criteria we would typically and probably unconsciously apply when assessing if an image is likely to have long-term significance.

The baseline characteristic of iconic images is a general bipartisan understanding of what an image “says”. Regardless of whether you agree with the message being conveyed, you understand its social context, why the image is provocative, dramatic or funny (or not), as well as its historical references.

However, contemporary images are not always so straightforward to read – and in a post-truth AI world, it is harder than ever to decipher the visual culture of politics.

2. Brat summer and coconut memes

Kamala Harris’s youth and vision for the future headlined her campaign’s creation of “Kamala HQ”. The strategy adopted the bright green branding and font of Charli XCX’s smash album Brat after the pop star posted on X: “kamala IS brat”.

Social media has been a critical tool in introducing Harris to voters, especially those of voting age for the first time in 2024. The campaign’s use of social media represented young people as engaged and respected decision makers.

Read more:
‘Kamala IS brat’: how the power of pop music has influenced 60 years of US elections

Voters have had more than a century to become accustomed to photojournalism. In contrast, a lot of social media representation has arisen from community activism over the past few years. Reporting from women’s marches this past weekend showed links to the visual culture of the protests that followed Trump’s 2016 election.

Arguably, the most historically significant of this “youth vote” image category are the internet memes of coconuts and coconut trees.

In a 2023 speech, Harris quoted her mother:

You think you just fell out of a coconut tree? You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.

This moment went viral during the 2024 election, and it was not long before people started signalling their support for Harris by adding a coconut emoji to their profile or comments.

The popularity of the coconut meme by Harris supporters indicates a rejection of the derogatory use of the term “coconut” against people of colour “acting white”.

The production and reception of memes by younger voters demonstrates a media literacy and sophistication that also requires continuous fact-checking.

This point was made in Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Harris, which urged her followers to do their own “reliability” checking of information in their feeds after Trump and other conservative figures shared AI-generated images of Swift and her fans allegedly supporting Trump.

3. The televised debate handshake

A key image from the debate between Harris and Trump came in the first few minutes, when Harris crossed the stage to offer her hand. It was the first debate handshake in eight years.

This was a bold action given Trump’s prowling movement on the 2016 debate stage against Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, and his well documented predilection for firm handshakes.

The handshake is representative of the campaign, which has been called “a referendum on gender”. It evoked the image of strong and confident leadership – a central theme as Harris spoke passionately about reproductive rights and abortion.

Televised presidential debates are one of the most keenly watched and analysed moments of the presidential election season. Image is everything.

Their importance is perhaps best indicated by Justin Sullivan’s photograph of President Joe Biden, mouth agape and looking frail beneath the word “presidential” during the June debate this year.

While they rarely lead to an outcome as extreme as a candidate exiting the race, as ended up happening with Biden, the images and soundbites they generate can resonate for decades.

Biden at the June 27 presidential debate.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

During the first ever nationally televised presidential debate in 1960, Republican candidate Richard Nixon was said to be unwell and refused to wear makeup. Compared to his opponent, Democratic nominee John F. Kennedy, he sweated profusely on stage, creating an image that was disastrous to his eventually unsuccessful campaign.

Between the staged and “gotcha” moments of every presidential campaign, debates provide a unique – and, in 2024, a singular – window into how the candidates relate to each other as humans across an ever-widening ideological divide. More

Americans who heard former President Donald Trump claim that Vice President Kamala Harris previously identified as “not Black” in a July 2024 interview may wonder why he continuously emphasized former President Barack Obama’s blackness during his first presidential campaign.

As a scholar focused on race and gender issues, I recognize that these seemingly inconsistent definitions of blackness are not inconsistent at all. They demonstrate a consistent position on whiteness.

In both cases, Trump implies that the race of his opponent is all voters need to know to determine their characters. It is an ideology that normalizes the dominance and privilege of white Americans within a racial hierarchy.

Making whiteness great again

In the American imagination, white people are often perceived as being more authentically American than other racial groups.

Additionally, Trump and some of his followers see many of America’s strides on civil rights as detrimental to white people. Trump has said that “anti-white feeling” is a significant problem in America. And Republican voters, who are overwhelmingly white, are more likely than the general population to view racism as a bigger problem for white people.

Trump has said he believes America was at its best in the 1940s and 1950s. However, Trump’s long-standing inflammatory rhetoric around race — including his recent racist comments degrading Haitian refugees in Springfield, Ohio — do not simply glorify a time immediately before the civil rights era. They recall an older era.

Calls to “Make America Great Again” hearken back to colonialism, when whiteness — particularly white, male power — was at its peak. The period from 1500 to the 1960s was a time when white men could exercise control over people of color by racially classifying their bodies. And they protected whiteness by passing laws that declared “one drop” of Black blood as enough to declare someone Black.

Whiteness is property, as the legal scholar Cheryl Hines has argued. It’s an asset for those who possess it. It offers benefits like white privilege and the idea of being white as moral and superior.

One-drop statutes, such as the Virginia Racial Integrity Act of 1924, attempted to scientifically define who was Black based on how much African ancestry a person had. Passed in dozens of states in the 20th century, these laws were about maintaining white purity.

More specifically, one-drop statutes reflected a fear that people who were considered white in terms of their appearance but had Black ancestry could reproduce with other white people. This, in turn, would result in the supposed degeneration of the white race.

These laws attempted to legally define Blackness.

Power and dominance

Harris and Obama, the children of immigrants, both have mixed-race backgrounds. Harris is the child of a Black Jamaican father and an Indian mother. Obama is the son of a Black Kenyan father and a white American mother.

However, Trump insists that Harris was “Indian all the way,” while Obama was a “Black president.” For me, this perspective reveals another aspect of Trump’s racial thinking: He appears to believe in the impenetrability and power of whiteness.

Trump sees Harris as capable of dancing back and forth between being Indian and being Black. Yet he has never implied that Obama can dance between being Black and being white.

In a society that often ties physical characteristics to racial identity, many people might find it difficult to imagine Obama as identifying as white. That’s because our society associates his skin tone and hair texture with Blackness.

However, I argue that the inability to view this hypothetical racial dance as possible for Harris and not for Obama is tied to white supremacist beliefs.

These beliefs defend whiteness as being imbued with dominance over other racial groups. This power is reflected in the ability to define the race of others, regardless of how they may identify themselves. And it is reflected in the desire to also limit who can count as white.

Trump does both of those things.

Donald Trump answers questions at the National Association of Black Journalists’ annual convention in Chicago on July 31, 2024.
Kamil Krzaczynski/AFP via Getty Images

A foil to white identity

“She was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago, when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black,” Trump said in July at a gathering of Black journalists.

He added: “So I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black? I respect either one, but she obviously doesn’t, because she was Indian all the way, and then all of a sudden she made a turn and she went – she became a Black person.”

By suggesting that Harris has strategically identified as Black for political gain, Trump implies that there’s a political advantage to being Black in America.

This notion aligns with the racist belief, fueled by white racial resentment, that Black Americans are afforded privileges over whites and Asian Americans.

The sociologist Arlie Hochschild has shown that many white Trump supporters believe circumstances in America have gotten worse for whites in recent decades. They believe many of the gains for people of color — affirmative action and other diversity policies — have been at the expense of the rights of white people.

Simultaneously, Trump’s comments emphasize his own whiteness by using Harris’ and Obama’s race as a foil to his white identity. Research on the construction of race in America shows that whiteness is devoid of meaning without something to define itself against.

For white people who feel many things have been taken away from them in an increasingly multiracial America, Trump is their warrior. He campaigns to protect the white population and culture of America. More

I’m standing in a basement kitchen prodding at a sheep’s liver, looking for marks on its smooth surface. People crowd around to film the proceedings, since I’m here to ask a question that everyone wants to know the answer to: will Donald Trump win the US election?

I’m following instructions that were first written down by the ancient Babylonians 4,000 years ago, and still survive today. Every crease on the liver has a meaning, and cuneiform tablets discovered in modern-day Iraq explain how to interpret them.

Armed with this knowledge, it’s possible to calculate the answer to any question, so long as it is yes or no, by adding up the number of positive or negative signs and seeing which comes out on top.

Since this liver had an overwhelming number of bad omens in it, I concluded that it declared no for Trump this time. Though in 2016 this method predicted a win well before he had won the Republican nomination, and in 2020 foretold that he would not be reelected that year.

Will Trump win the US election?

What started as an entertaining talk for a university open day has since become a serious part of my research – not because I sincerely believe in it, but because it gives us some of the earliest evidence in history for how human beings reason and think.

Looking at livers also makes a serious underlying point about how humans have coped with uncertainty throughout history, and still struggle to today. People have developed techniques as varied as astrology, tarot cards and even peering into entrails in response to the agony of not knowing, or the strain of trying to make a difficult decision.

Given the level of feeling invested in this election, it’s a unique moment where perhaps we can appreciate that, in this respect, we are not so different from those who lived thousands of years ago, even if our methods of looking into the future are different.

Asking the entrails

Developed in its classic form in Babylon, entrail divination was practised throughout ancient Mesopotamia, the written history of which spans from the 3rd millennium BC to the 1st century AD.

It was enormously important in all sections of society – a standard part of political decision-making at the royal court, but accessible to all. Budget options were even available for those who could not afford a sheep.

People addressed their questions directly to the gods and believed that at the moment of asking, the answer would be written on the entrails. This could then be “read” by a diviner trained in this esoteric language.

A map of Mesopotamia, a historical region in modern-day Iraq.
aipsidtr / Shutterstock

Sitting in the British Museum is an archive of real questions that were asked by the king of Assyria (a kingdom in northern Mesopotamia) in the 7th century BC. All kinds of affairs of state were put before the gods. Are the Egyptians going to attack? Has the enemy taken the town under siege? And will the governors return home safely?

Reading the archive, you get a real sense of nerves on a knife-edge as the king waited for news from far away, wanting to know what had happened to his troops and trying to decide what to do next.

Not only did he ask them about what would happen in the future, but he also consulted them on possible courses of action. Should the Assyrian army go to war? Should the king send a messenger to make peace? Asking the opinion of the gods would have helped him feel more confident in his next steps.

The Babylonians did not have elections. But that did not mean the king could do whatever he wanted. It was important for his public image to have the gods onside, as well as for his own reassurance.

Whenever a powerful official was appointed, the entrails would be read to ensure the gods approved. The head of the army, high priests and other important positions were all subject to this requirement. On one occasion, even the choice of crown prince – and hence the future king of Assyria – was put to this test.

Interpreting the entrails was held to almost scientific standards of exactitude. Diviners worked in pairs or groups of up to 11, checking each other’s work to make sure they got it right. This was not a vague or woolly process, but a real attempt to ensure “accuracy” that could not be manipulated to simply come up with the answer that the king wanted to hear.

Modern forecasting

We all want to know what the future has in store, and have come up with ingenious ways of trying to find out, from opinion polls and data modelling to Paul the octopus, who developed a reputation for picking the winners of football matches during the 2010 World Cup. But are our methods really any better than looking inside a sheep?

As all investors are warned, past performance does not guarantee future results. Yet the only data we have to inform our predictions comes from the past, and most of our models can’t take into account “unknown unknowns”.

As many experts have found, predicting the future is a difficult business: opinion polls can lie and people change their minds, while economists have often been blindsided by a sudden crash.

Read more:
Harris nudges ahead of Trump in the polls – but could the economy prove her downfall?

A Babylonian clay liver used for divination in Mesopotamia from 2050–1750 BC.
Science Museum Group Collection, CC BY-NC-ND

Since liver divination only answers “yes” or “no”, it is going to be right 50% of the time just through the law of averages. Despite its randomness, its success rate may well have seemed convincing at the time.

And when we trust the authority of the source, it’s easy to find a way to explain away a wrong result – the prediction got halfway there, answered a different question, or would have been right if x hadn’t happened.

We shouldn’t be blind to the weaknesses of our own methods. We are often wrong, and the Babylonians could sometimes be right. More

Donald Trump’s rally at Madison Square Gardens in New York City on Sunday, October 27 was called a “carnival of grievances, misogyny and racism” by the New York Times. The event, which came just over a week before the election, was a hostile and partisan affair. Trump doubled down on his assertion that one of America’s gravest threats is from “the enemy within”.

Trump’s rhetoric is a manifestation of the increasingly polarised nature of US politics, whereby hostility from one group towards their perceived enemies is amplified across social media platforms. Yet Trump’s comment about an insidious “threat” hints at a darker undercurrent of division, with the threat of violence.

A June 2024 poll by the University of Chicago suggested that there was more support for violence against Trump than in his favour – 10% of respondents agreed that “the use of force is justified to prevent Trump becoming president”, compared to 6.9% who believed violence was justified “to restore Trump to the presidency”. Two months earlier, a Marist poll revealed that 47% of Americans believed that another civil war was likely in their lifetime.

As a report from Chatham House recently observed, the US is more divided “along ideological and political lines than at any time since the 1850s”. And according to another report from UK-based think tank, the Foreign Policy Centre, Americans have “increasingly grown to hate supporters of the other party, viewing their capture of political power as not merely unfortunate but illegitimate”.

Americans have regularly articulated a preference for living among people who share their political outlook. And they have expressed a stronger aversion to dating, living, working or socialising with supporters of another party. These views point to a state suffering the ills of sectarianism.

Those who have observed sectarianism around the world know all too well the chaos that such divisions can wreak. In the Middle East, for example, politically charged religious difference has had a devastating impact on political, economic and social life. Hundreds of thousands have been killed and millions displaced from their homes across Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Libya because of violence along sect-based lines.

Trump speaking at a campaign rally in New York’s Madison Square Gardens that was marked by racist comments, coarse insults and threats about immigrants.
Sarah Yenesel / EPA

The US may be a long way from these scenarios, but there are some early warning signs. Competing forms of what American social theorist Irving Howe calls “epistemological authoritarianism” – or a sense of certainty that is zero-sum and rejects those of the other – can be easily seen across America’s political landscape.

Protests and counter-protests have played out both on the streets and online over abortion, gun laws and LGBTQ+ rights, as well as on university campuses over the war in Gaza. Elite entrepreneurs with political capital have also positioned themselves on opposite sides of sensitive issues to cultivate support.

Take, for example, Donald Trump’s false allegations that Democratic states executed babies after birth, or that migrants in Springfield, Ohio, have been eating pets. Such comments quickly spread across social media, regardless of their veracity. For Trump’s followers, truth matters less than the ability to justify their position on a particular issue. The stance taken by political communities is increasingly polemic and predictable.

Such dynamics are, of course, also shaped by local contexts. But the growing politicisation of social identities in recent years, and the increasing political importance of social issues, has created a landscape where difference is broadly antagonistic.

In this situation, grievance becomes a means of reinforcing in-group cohesion and disdain for the other. In such a landscape, society becomes divided into mutually distrustful camps set apart by a form of emotional polarisation that takes on political meaning.

It is the emotional dimension that is key here, as this is the foundation upon which political and social enmity is built. Supreme Court decisions, for example, relating to emotionally charged issues such as abortion, have strong mobilising potential on both left and right.

Entrenched differences

Elections often exacerbate uncertainty and division, as the 2020 US presidential election and its fallout demonstrate. According to Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (Acled), a research group that analyses occurrences of political violence around the world, demonstrations and far-right activity peaked around the 2020 election. This reached a crescendo with the events of January 6 2021 when Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol building.

Far-right activity has dropped during Biden’s administration. But a number of far-right groups have recently become active in the run-up to the election. Meanwhile, divisions over abortion, LGBTQ+ mobilisation, and the war in Gaza have contributed to a precarious environment.

Indeed, a vast majority do not think that next week’s election will solve the issues that America faces. In a recent poll, 70% of respondents believe that things in the US are going “in the wrong direction” – a view shared more by Republican respondents (94%) than Democrat respondents (41%). And 19% of Republicans think that if Trump loses the election, he should declare the results invalid and do whatever it takes to assume office.

Pro-Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building in Washington DC on January 6 2021.
lev radin / Shutterstock

The schisms across the US are real and the pieces are not easily put back together. Narratives of division will continue to spread as election fever increases, further deepening the rifts in American society. And sectarianism will become the broad frame through which political and social life is viewed.

This need not necessarily become violent. But it can easily become entrenched. The increasingly hostile exclusion of “the other” in all its forms, along with a growing willingness to breach established norms and rules, requires a step back from the brink before it is too late. More

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has repeatedly denounced immigrants who enter the U.S. illegally and the danger he says that poor immigrants of color pose for the U.S. – often using hateful language to make his point.

In early October 2024, Trump took his comments a step further when he questioned immigrants’ faulty genes, saying without support that “Many of them murdered far more than one person, and they are now happily living in the United States. You know, now a murderer, I believe this, it’s in their genes. And we got a lot of bad genes in our country right now.”

It was far from the first time Trump has invoked eugenics – a false, racist theory that some people, and even some races, are genetically superior to others.

In 1988, for example, Trump told Oprah Winfrey during an interview: “You have to be born lucky in the sense that you have to have the right genes.”

In 2016, Trump said that his German roots are the reason behind his greatness:

“I always said that winning is somewhat, maybe, innate. Maybe it’s just something you have; you have the winning gene. Frankly it would be wonderful if you could develop it, but I’m not so sure you can. You know, I’m proud to have that German blood, there’s no question about it. Great stuff.”

And in 2020, Trump again alluded to his belief that bloodlines convey excellence:

“I had an uncle who went to MIT who is a top professor. Dr. John Trump. A genius. It’s in my blood. I’m smart.”

Trump’s repeated and countless comments about white people’s racial superiority to people of color have prompted some comparisons to the Nazis and their ideology of racial superiority.

The Nazis are indeed the most infamous believers of the false idea that white, blue-eyed, blonde-haired people were superior to others – and that the human population should be selectively managed to breed white people.

But the Nazis didn’t originate these ideas. In fact, the Nazis were so impressed with many American eugenic ideas that they incorporated them into their racist, antisemitic laws.

Root of eugenics

The British scientist Francis Galton, a cousin of the evolutionist Charles Darwin, first developed the theory of eugenics in the 1860s, and it gained a foothold in the U.S. and Britain around this time.

Eugenics sets racial identity, and especially white identity, as the most desirable and worthy.

By the dawn of the early 1900s, much of the American eugenics scholarship looked down on American immigrants from any place other than Scandinavia, thus coining the term “Nordicism.”

In the late 19th and early 20th century, immigration to the U.S. was at its peak. In 1890, 14.8% of people living in the U.S. were immigrants. Many people felt concerned about immigration in the U.S., and there were many prominent eugenicists in America. Two of the most famous were Madison Grant and Lothrop Stoddard.

Both were avowed white supremacists who advocated for scientific racism. They wrote popular and widely read books that helped shape American and German law in the 1920s and 1930s.

Grant, Stoddard and other theorists in the U.S. embraced eugenics as a way to justify racial segregation, restrict immigration, enforce sterilization and uphold other systemic inequalities.

Stoddard attacked the United States’ immigration policies in his 1920 book, “The Rising Tide of Color: The Threat Against White World-Supremacy.” He wrote: “If the present drift is not changed, we whites are all ultimately doomed. … We now know that men are not, and never will be equal. We now know that environment and education can only develop what heredity brings.”

Another prominent eugenicist was Harry H. Laughlin, an educator and superintendent of the Eugenics Record Office, a now-defunct research group that gathered biological and social information about the American population.

Laughlin wrote an influential 1922 book, “Eugenical Sterilization in the United States,” which included a chapter on model sterilization laws. The Third Reich used his book and laws as a template when implementing them in Germany during the height of the Nazi period.

Laughlin also regularly testified before U.S. Congress, with this 1922 testimony representative of his message to lawmakers: “Immigration is essentially and fundamentally a racial and biological problem. There are many factors to consider, but, from the standpoint of the future, immigration is primarily a long time national investment in human family stocks.”

Eugenicists, including Laughlin, have long been specifically preoccupied with Norwegian genetics – believing that America is under attack when immigration occurs from non-Nordic countries.

In November 1922, Laughlin said, “Some of our finest and most desirable immigrants are from Norway.”

In 1924, Congress approved the Immigration Act, which severely limited immigration to the U.S., established quotas for immigrants based on nationality and barred immigrants from Asia.

It was only following the end of World War II and the Holocaust that eugenics fell out of favor and lost its prominence in American thinking.

Trump’s recycling of history

Fears over foreign immigrants weakening the U.S. were popular a century ago, and Trump and many of his followers still embrace them today.

Trump has promised that he will carry out mass deportations of immigrants living in the U.S. illegally, forcibly detaining immigrants in camps and removing 1 million people a year.

In April 2024, Trump used dehumanizing language to express his apparent belief that immigrants are unworthy of empathy. “The Democrats say, ‘Please don’t call them animals. They’re humans.’ I said, ‘No, they’re not humans, they’re not humans, they’re animals.’”

Trump has also promoted eugenicists’ obsession with Scandinavia and the superiority of white people.

In 2018, Trump spoke about immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador and Africa, saying “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?”

In the same meeting, Trump also reportedly suggested that the U.S. should instead draw in more people from countries like Norway.

In April 2024, Trump again embraced this idea of Scandinavian superiority, saying that he wants immigrants from “Nice countries. You know, like Denmark, Switzerland? Do we have any people coming in from Denmark? How about Switzerland? How about Norway?”

A dangerous flash to the past

A person running for president in 1924 would seem more likely than a candidate in 2024 to espouse this now-discredited point of view.

President Calvin Coolidge ran for election on an “America First” platform in 1924, with the slogan only falling out of favor after groups like the Ku Klux Klan embraced it around the same time.

The idea of America First, at the time, denoted American nationalism and exceptionalism – but also was linked to anti-immigration and fascist movements.

When Coolidge signed the heavily restrictive 1924 Immigration Act into law he stated, “America must remain American.”

One hundred years later, Trump calls to mind an America First mentality, including when he regularly reads the lyrics to a song called “The Snake” during his rallies as a way to explain the dangers of welcoming immigrants into the U.S. The civil rights activist Oscar Brown wrote this poem in 1963, and his family has said that Trump misinterprets the song’s words.

‘I saved you,’ cried that woman.

‘And you’ve bit me even, why’

‘You know your bite is poisonous and now I’m going to die.’

‘Oh shut up, silly woman,’ said the reptile with a grin,

‘You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in.’ More

Jezebel has long been used as a slur against women who are considered too self-confident, too independent or too close to power – particularly when they happen to be Black. From Beyonce to Nikki Minaj, US vice-president and Democratic Presidential candidate Kamala Harris is only the latest in a long line of women of colour to be on the receiving end of the slur.

But beneath the use of Jezebel’s name as a way to paint powerful women as promiscuous lies something even more sinister: the threat of sexual violence for those who will not submit to white patriarchal control.

An increasing number of Christian nationalist personalities have taken to claiming that the vice-president is a Jezebel spirit. Notably, televangelist Lance Wallnau appears in multiple videos on X (formerly Twitter) claiming that: “with Kamala you have a Jezebel spirit, a characteristic in the Bible, that is a Jezebel spirit. The personification of intimidation, seduction, domination and manipulation”.

Nor is Wallnau shy about connecting his use of Jezebel to Harris’s race: according to his video, the fact that Harris is Black makes her even more of a seductive Jezebel than Hillary Clinton: “the spirit of Jezebel in a way that will be even more ominous than Hillary [Clinton] because she’ll bring a racial component, and she’s younger”.

Jezebels old and new

Different versions of Jezebel are found in the Old and New Testaments, but both are associated with power, independence and sexuality. In 1 Kings, Jezebel is a queen from Sidon (present-day Lebanon). She ruled along with her husband Ahab and refuses to worship the biblical God; she continued her traditional worship of Ba’al.

Her authority in her marriage and in politics attracted the prophet Elijah’s negative attention. Elijah utters a prophecy that: “The dogs shall eat Jezebel” (1 Kings 21:23), and indeed, 2 Kings 9:32-37 says that the prophecy is fulfilled.

Knowing her life is in danger, Jezebel puts on her make up and does her hair to prepare to meet her enemy.

Death of Jezebel. Engraving by Gustav Doré (1832-1883)

As religious studies academic Jennifer L. Koosed writes, while her self-beautification is used to sexualise Jezebel, “these acts are those of a proud and powerful queen” who boldly meets the man who is about to have her thrown from a window. Jezebel’s bloodied body is trampled by horses and her corpse utterly destroyed.

Her violent death and the desecration of her body, which is consumed by dogs, dehumanises Jezebel. The Bible presents this as apt punishment for a woman who was so bold as to defy her husband’s traditions and maintain her independence.

When we meet another Jezebel in the New Testament, the process begins again. In Revelation 2, Jezebel is a prophet, a rival of John the Seer, who travels to different early Christian communities and teaches them. John, the author of the Book of Revelation, imagines Jesus writing to the community who allow themselves to be taught by her. In that letter, the voice of Jesus declares that the punishment for this woman, who dares to be a leader, is rape. John uses vitriolic language to paint Jezebel as sexually immoral, but his complaint is with her authority.

Long and damaging history

The Bible frequently paints female characters as unacceptably sexual, or threatens them with sexual violence, in order to maintain its patriarchal hierarchy.

Definition of the word Jezebel in a religious dictionary.
Shutterstock

For example, as biblical scholars such as Renita J. Weems have pointed out, Hosea 1-3 uses the metaphor of God as (abusive) husband and the people of Israel as their (abused) adulterous wife in order to convince the Israelites to worship God again.

The infamous figure of the “Whore of Babylon” in Revelation 17-18 echoes that divine threat: her control over the kings of the world, her opulence and her sexuality all make her God’s enemy – and her punishment is sexual humiliation and violence.

Kamala Harris has been labelled Jezebel since at least as early as 2021 when pastor Steve Swofford as “Jezebel Harris” and pastor Tom Buck tweeted: “I can’t imagine any truly God-fearing Israelite who would’ve wanted their daughters to view Jezebel as an inspirational role model because she was a woman in power.”

Buck doubled down on his comments the next day, saying, “For those torn up over my tweet, I stand by it 100%. My problem is her godless character. She not only is the most radical pro-abortion VP ever, but also most radical LGBT advocate. She performed one of the first Lesbian ‘marriages.’ Pray for her, but don’t praise her!”

Understood in the context of the attack on women’s rights by Christian nationalists and their allies, giving Harris the name Jezebel connects the biblical threats with the move to criminalise abortion access and even divorce – to take power away from women and restore it to the patriarchal Christian structure.

While Jezebel is a clearly misogynist term, it has long been used in particular to dehumanise Black women. Racist stereotypes about Black women as hypersexual Jezebels were used by slavers to justify their rape of enslaved women. Even after the end of slavery, this use of the name persisted, as did the racist stereotype about Black women’s sexual availability to justify sexual violence. And Black women continue to experience sexual harassment and abuse at much higher levels than white women.

So, when Christian nationalists urge their followers to “confront this Jezebel spirit” we can’t forget that confronting Jezebel is violent – in the Bible confronting Jezebel means her death or her rape. These veiled threats should not be taken lightly.

Femicide is an ongoing crisis. A woman is killed by a man every three days in the UK and three women are killed by men every day in North America. Sexual violence against women is also rampant and is a weapon in the patriarchal arsenal for subduing independent women.

Calling a powerful woman like Harris a Jezebel, then, isn’t just an offensive slur – it carries with it the persistent threat of racist violence and sexual assault. More

Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and Republican contender Donald Trump could not be more different – and this split between them extends far beyond politics and into their fashion choices.

While Harris tends to wear form-fitting pantsuits and feminine tops, Trump opts for ill-fitting, boxy, navy suits and long red ties.

All American politicians often wear American flag pins on their lapels, as well as red, white and blue clothing. But my research shows how fashion plays an important, symbolic role in politics that goes far beyond patriotism. A person’s appearance reflects their identity and how they want others to perceive them.

It makes sense that political campaigns often work with professional stylists to dress and style their top candidates, as a way to define and reflect politicians’ different personalities, identities and policy positions.

Kamala Harris arrives to speak at the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 22, 2024, wearing a dark blue pantsuit.
Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

Harris’ professional, feminine look

Harris typically wears an updated version of Hillary Clinton’s famous power pantsuits.

While Clinton’s pantsuits during the 2016 presidential campaign had rigid silhouettes that did not show the shape of her body, Harris’ pantsuits are more relaxed and less formal.

As a senator, Harris, alongside other Democratic female politicians, wore a white pantsuit to commemorate and celebrate the suffragettes.

Harris now typically wears dark, bold hues, almost monochromatic ensembles, with either dark high heels or sneakers.

At the Democratic National Convention in August 2024, Harris accepted the presidential nomination wearing a perhaps unsurprising navy blue pantsuit with the standard politician’s American flag pin on the lapel. She topped off the look with medium-heel dress shoes and a dark blue pussycat bow blouse, sometimes also called a lavallière. The pussycat bow blouse, which was popularized in the 1970s among professional women, is a feminine version of a traditional tie.

This type of tie has a soft, floppy bow at the neck that can be tied in numerous ways.

Harris’ decision to regularly wear pussycat bow blouses shows that she has a feminine flair, and it’s also a nod to past feminist icons who wore that type of bow.

When Harris wears sneakers – which are often Chuck Taylors – with a pantsuit, it reminds me of how the actress Helen Hunt’s character wore practical commuter sneakers with business clothing in the 1990s and 2000s “Mad About You” TV series.

The unlikely combination of a pantsuit with sneakers shows that Harris is a busy, professional woman – who is also youthful, energetic and relatable to other women.

Walz’s American dad style

Tim Walz speaks at a campaign rally in Volant, Pa., on Oct. 15, 2024, wearing one of his signature flannel shirts.
Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

Harris’ running mate, Tim Walz, has also received public attention for his clothing choices.

At the Democratic National Convention in August, former President Barack Obama remarked about Walz regularly wearing plaid, flannel shirts. “You can tell those flannel shirts he wears don’t come from some political consultant. They come from his closet, and they have been through some stuff,” Obama said.

Walz’s typical outfits, including plaid shirts, jeans and a well-worn suit with the shirt collar unbuttoned and no tie, signals that he is authentic and relatable to the average American.

This unofficial uniform also helps cement the public perception of Walz as an archetypal American coach and dad.

The Harris-Walz campaign has capitalized on Walz’s image by selling merchandise that seems like something out of his closet.

The campaign’s camouflage hat, which spells out “HARRIS WALZ” in a bold, orange font, has become an extremely popular item – selling out and resulting in the manufacturer scrambling to find materials and sewing machines to make more hats.

Donald Trump and JD Vance attend a 9/11 remembrance ceremony at the World Trade Center at Ground Zero in New York City on Sept. 11, 2024.
Adam Gray/AFP via Getty Images

Vance’s and Trump’s aesthetics

Republican politicians also show who they are, or who they want to be, through their fashion choices. Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance, for example, has noticeably changed his appearance from when he first became involved in politics a few years ago to when he became a senator in 2023.

In 2017, Vance often wore jeans, a button-down, open-collar shirt and an unbuttoned blazer during his book tour. When he was elected as a senator in 2023, he began wearing suits and ties.

More recently, Vance began dressing in the unofficial Make America Great Again uniform, consisting of a tailored dark blue suit, red tie and white shirt with dark shoes. With this outfit choice, Vance is wrapping himself in red, white and blue, referencing the American flag and signaling his patriotism.

Trump wears a nearly identical political uniform that has become instantly recognizable and closely associated with conservative politicians.

When Trump selected Vance as his running mate in July 2024, Vance also dyed his gray hair to brown to possibly appear more youthful. Perhaps it became more important for Vance to appear younger after 81-year-old President Joe Biden stepped down from the Democratic ticket and 60-year-old Harris became the presidential candidate.

Beyond the campaign, in February 2024, Trump released 1,000 pairs of limited edition high-top sneakers called “Never Surrender.” These shoes, which quickly sold out, were covered in gaudy, gold lamé and had an American flag printed around the collar of the sneakers.

I recently found several examples of pairs of Trump sneakers for sale on eBay and other online shops for thousands of dollars.

People at a Trump rally in Las Vegas hold a pair of his gold sneakers on Sept. 13, 2024.
Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images

Fashion on both sides

Harris’ monochromatic blouses and pantsuit with sneakers combination, alongside Walz’s Midwestern dad outfits, will likely help the campaign’s effort for its candidates to appear as relatable to many working class voters and women.

Likewise, Trump’s classic MAGA red hat and tie, in addition to Vance’s similar uniform of navy blue suit, white button-down shirt and red tie, evoke their focus on masculine conservatism.

The candidates’ styles don’t tell voters any details about campaign promises or political policies, but they do give an idea of who the candidates think they are. More