No. 10259 [Reply]
It's taken me a while, but I think I understand why Trump is so popular in /pol/. The population of /pol/ is largely comprised of young, teenaged, white, suburban, males living in privileged middle-class households. In this social milieu, conformity is a valued survival trait. The ability to look and sound like everyone else is how a young man keeps his place in the social hierarchy. However, what sets the young men in /pol/ apart is that they spend a significant amount of time online where they can be anonymous. Why? Because, by and large, they are not able to "blend in," not able to pass for "normal," and as a result they have spent most of their short lives near the bottom of what they regard as the most important yardstick for social importance.
One need only look at the savage bullying, the toxic displays of what teenaged boys regard as masculinity, and the desperate attempts to look dominant – but which are really just domineering – by young men whose ideas about what a "man" is come from comic books and Hollywood action movies.
Donald Trump epitomizes what the young men of /pol/ regard as dominant: loud, bombastic, rude, threatening, crass, and obsessed with material concerns about wealth and power. And the narrative he presents of an uncouth outsider smashing down the walls of snobby intellectuals is one we've seen used by everyone from Adolf Hitler to Pol Pot with great effect, leading to the same sort of fierce tribalism and xenophobia displayed in /pol/.
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