Ian Reifowitz

Riling up the Base argues that stereotypes (especially those relating to immigration, race/ethnicity, and gender), not policies, secured Trump’s election win and the ongoing support he enjoys. From his 2015 campaign announcement through his presidential term and in his time out of office, Donald Trump has used stereotypes as a routine feature in his rhetoric. This book defines them as a crucially important strategy for attracting, retaining, and energizing voters. Covering topics like persuasion, agenda setting, critical race theory, and semiotics, the authors use a holistic and interdisciplinary approach to unpack how Trump motivates his base. This book provides a full aggregate explanation of the seemingly mesmerizing attachment and adoration his core supporters feel by explaining the way seemingly disparate theories work both alone and together to expose the mechanisms at play.

Riling up the Base argues that stereotypes (especially those relating to immigration, race/ethnicity, and gender), not policies, secured Trump’s election win and the ongoing support he enjoys. From his 2015 campaign announcement through his presidential term and in his time out of office, Donald Trump has used stereotypes as a routine feature in his rhetoric. This book defines them as a crucially important strategy for attracting, retaining, and energizing voters. Covering topics like persuasion, agenda setting, critical race theory, and semiotics, the authors use a holistic and interdisciplinary approach to unpack how Trump motivates his base. This book provides a full aggregate explanation of the seemingly mesmerizing attachment and adoration his core supporters feel by explaining the way seemingly disparate theories work both alone and together to expose the mechanisms at play.

Our national identity is defined by what it means to be an American and whom we include and why when we talk about "the American people." A country's national identity is fluid, and Ian Reifowitz argues that President Barack Obama, by emphasizing the ideals Americans hold dear, hopes to redefine ours in a fundamental way. Obama's conception of America emphasizes two principles of national unity: First, all Americans, regardless of their heritage and cultural traditions, should identify with America as their country, based upon shared democratic values, a shared history, and a shared fate. Second, America should embrace all its citizens as active participants in one "family." Reifowitz explores Obama's belief that strengthening our common bonds will encourage Americans to rectify the injustices and heal the racial divisions that still plague our country.We have the opportunity to demonstrate to the world that a society of many races and cultures can truly become one people. In facing terrorism, violent fundamentalism, and other security issues, Obama's response centers on a powerful, inspiring, and truly inclusive American narrative. By bolstering America's identity as diverse yet unified, he aims both to counter the anxieties and fears that radicalism stokes and give proponents of religious and political freedom a model they can defend. The stakes couldn't be any higher in determining America's future.

This book examines attempts to cultivate an Austrian identity based on a civic rather than an ethnic conception of a national community. It focuses on the ideas of Joseph Samuel Bloch, an Austrian-Jewish writer and politician who sought to cultivate a civic identity to unify the nationalities of multiethnic Austria. Bloch called for a hyphenated Austrian consciousness that respected the desire to protect pre-existing ethnic, cultural, religious, and linguistic bonds while building transethnic ties based on citizenship. This study also analyzes the ideas of his mentor, Adolf Fischhof, another Austrian-Jewish reform-minded politician. Finally, it compares Bloch's ideas to those of other Austrian reformers of various ethnic and political backgrounds in order to discover how they conceived of a supraethnic Austrian consciousness. "Imagining an Austrian Nation" explores the meaning of nationalism and identity in a pluralistic society, issues that confound humanity as much in the twenty-first century as they did in the nineteenth.