At key moments throughout US history, white male anger has been privileged over national security, progress or basic welfare

A friend recently asked: “Do you think the United States will survive the anger of white men?” As blunt as the question is, the core element is not so far-fetched. In fact, the majority of white men (and women ) who voted in the presidential election in 2024 have rallied around a man who has called for the “ termination of the constitution ”, vowed to be a “ dictator ”, and threatened to deploy the US military against Americans. They support a man who is a convicted felon , an adjudicated rapist , a proven liar , who has been fined nearly half a billion dollars for fraud, who incited an insurrection that injured 140 police officers, and who mismanaged the Covid-19 pandemic causing hundreds of thousands to die needlessly.

The fact that Donald Trump’s candidacy was even viable, given that horrific track record, was because of the support of white men. White men, whose anger was on full display at Madison Square Garden as they spewed racist, misogynistic venom. White men who attacked poll workers and also voters of Kamala Harris. White men who chafed at the thought that their wives and girlfriends would not vote for the man who thought it was “ a beautiful thing ” that reproductive rights had been destroyed. And, as the New York Times reported, the downwardly mobile, frustrated “white men without a degree , [who] have been surpassed in income by college-educated women”.

Carol Anderson is the Robert W Woodruff Professor of African American Studies at Emory University and the author of White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide