Despite being situated 5,500 kilometres away from my home country and the American election being two months behind us, it has, without fail, remained the first and foremost topic of discussion offered up to me across pubs, dining halls, and tutorials. As a result, I’ve spent a lot of time attempting to explain the current American political landscape, specifically in response to everyone’s favorite question: “How did this happen?” But America’s history is too long and complex to be meaningfully summarized over the course of one conversation—or one article. Even the scope of right-wing ideology is too expansive to tackle in 1500 words, so, for the time being, in the hopes of helping to make sense of America’s current crisis, I want to turn our focus to what the past decade or so has looked like within the GOP.

 

The ideological mutation and rise in popularity of right-wing extremism in America is impossible to understand without explaining how the two-party system has long been an unsatisfying and inescapable framework. One thing that seems to be unanimously understood and agreed upon by Americans at Oxford, is that the Republican party we knew before 2016 is gone forever. And while for Brits this claim may sound somewhat menial in comparison to this “new” extremism at the center of international bewilderment, American extremism cannot be understood separately from the fact that this is no longer the Republican party at work.

 

Now, this is by no means a defence of the Republican party; they have laid the groundwork for political violence and sowed the early seeds of social division throughout the 20^th century. But it has gotten so bad that established members of the Republican party like Mitt Romney, John McCain, and even those of near-supervillain status like Dick Cheney and the Bush family, have said enough is enough. Plenty of old-school Republicans have jumped ship since Trump first came to power in protest of the direction he was taking the party, but so much has changed since 2016.

 

The modern Republican party had always maintained a distinctive reputation as the “party of small government,” posturing itself as being economically oriented and levelheaded, pro-free market and tax cuts, operating in adherence with the nebulous “American tradition” and being relatively unconcerned with populism. But when Trump ran, and won, as a Republican in 2016, the party title itself was merely a vessel. A newfound attraction to histrionic slogan-based campaigning and a shoot-from-the-hip manner of speaking gave birth to new hot button phrases like “building the wall” and “making America great again.” This created an entirely new manner of campaigning all together. Suddenly, candidates didn’t need to make their points based on policy or established talking points; sensationalized right-wing ideology alone was enough to carry Trump to the finish line.

 

Now, Trump’s government seeks to permit arbitrary governmental overreach in ways that are entirely contradictory to the claims of “small government” of the past. But why should we care about what all of this gets called?

 

Slogans and buzzwords have become a crutch for Trump and his partners. Recent additions to the American vocabulary have increasingly replaced the prior procedure of referencing party policies when arguing against Democratic proposals or in favor Republican legislature; now, even a single word is capable of “explaining” the party’s motives. Project 2025’s proposed reasoning for eliminating the Department of Education and slashing almost 30 billion dollars from public education programs such as Head Start and Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act which “provides supplemental financial assistance to school districts for children from low-income families”? Stopping the “woke” agenda from taking over. Their justification for removing all university accreditation programs, Title IX (the landmark anti gender-based discrimination federal law which expanded women’s access to education, sports programs, federal financial assistance, and anti-harassment protections), and eliminating student loan debt forgiveness? “DEI.”

 

The fact that a single word is capable of sending people into such a tailspin that they see it as a good enough reason to vote for someone who wants to eliminate unilaterally helpful programs should make it incredibly clear to us that the titles we use in this country matter.

 

And of course, political parties and their central ideologies are always evolving—that is nothing new. But when the shift is as drastic as what has occurred both politically and socially in the past eight years, it becomes impossible not to wonder “how is this even the same thing we started with?” Probably because it’s not.

 

The deterioration of any sense of self isn’t just a Republican problem. Democrats have spent close to two decades now allowing themselves to get dragged further and further to the right in the name of bipartisan sportsmanship or vying for undecided votes while the right-wing has remained steadfast in their determination to get their way. But it’s possible to be reach across the aisle in the country’s favor while still standing firm in one’s beliefs; from the late ‘80s up until 2016, Democrats and Republicans alike were passing actual bipartisan bills in support of education programs, civil rights, disability rights, Medicare, and deficit relief while maintaining a stable sense of party identity. But the current Democratic party have allowed themselves to metamorphose into “high-road-taking” doormats rather than simply tackling Trumpian pseudo-populism head-on.

 

The sense of hopelessness around the ever-dwindling possibility of having a real, fully left-leaning party is in many ways tied to the sense that the Democratic party must and will remain as is, which is a party that remains trapped at the center out of a fear of alienating undecided voters. But the glossary of terms used to explain the American government is outdated and disingenuous; the Democratic party is still described as our sole “left-leaning” representation. And, for those who are perhaps hesitant to throw out the tried-and-true labels they’ve grown up with, fear not; the Democratic party seems primed to crawl to the right until they’ve nestled into the husk of the “Republican” nametag more comfortably than its previous inhabitants could ever do now.

 

It is incredibly dangerous to keep up the façade of America being a country with a true left-leaning party option for its voters when in reality Americans are being forced to choose between a centrist party and right-wing extremists. Refusing to address the nation’s overall shift to the right does little to alleviate voting based on blind allegiance to one’s party. Especially for lifelong Republicans, if they’re voting out of sentimental loyalty, they might need a clear-cut reminder that this is not Republicanism anymore.

 

But Trump and his associates have continued to use the party as a legitimizing identifier. Having successfully created and propagated a new mainstream alt-right American ideology, they’re more like hijackers than allies of the party. But having presented it as something in line with the self-defined party of tradition, people have been slow to catch on. Trump’s posturing of himself as a breath of fresh air within an established party is the product of such a stubborn two-party system. Since there is no path to victory for a third-party candidate, candidates must always find a way to operate within the binary. Thus, in any honest democracy, a truly dramatic break from prior campaigns would be accurately labeled as a new political movement or party, but in the U.S., this is perpetually played down by simply being ascribed to a Democratic or Republican allegiance.

 

Sweepingly calling the president, the house, the senate, and the supreme court “Republicans” also does little to accurately illustrate the radical change in the GOP’s recent approach to policy, governance, and American democracy at large. Operating under the false pretenses that this is precedented political ball only creates confusion, frustration, and complacency. The nomenclative smoke and mirrors used to prop up and legitimize American conservative nationalism might then be dispelled for good if we could just call the GOP’s new ideology what it is: Trumpism.

 

It is ultimately impossible to make sense of and properly combat right wing extremist ideologies in America if they are allowed to remain in this nebulous, nameless state. Every problem must be named before it can be tackled. This is why, in a dogmatic country where words and slogans are capable of taking on a life of their own, oftentimes supplementing or even sustaining movements void of any real reason, it is crucial to label ideologies accurately. The rupture of the Republican party, while it has been addressed emotionally, has not been technically.

 

So, when people wonder why Americans aren’t as alarmed as they should be, I can’t help but think that it’s because, for Republicans, even though it feels different, it’s still called the same thing, isn’t it? But it’s not the same thing. It’s not the same for any of us anymore, and if we stand a chance of combatting the emerging potency of alt-right ideologies in America and across the globe, we need to be able accurately describe and address it. It’s a new pipeline, there are new promises being made, and Trumpism has grown too big to fit into its old labels. We can’t keep shadowboxing against outdated conceptions of an entirely new problem; it’s time to tailor our definitions to be precise so that our punches can be too.∎

 

Words by Mary Lawrence Ware. Image courtesy of Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons.