"Trump has always tried to weaken democracy"

Prof. Dr. Matthew G. Hannah, Chair of Cultural Geography, comes from Washington DC. He has been teaching and researching for 26 years, first in the USA (University of Vermont), then in the UK (Aberystwyth University) and since September 2013, at the University of Bayreuth. We spoke to him about division in the USA, the events in Washington when an angry mob stormed the Capitol after incendiary tweets and speeches by outgoing US President Trump, and asked him about his expectations for the handover of office on 20 January 2021.

What is the significance of the Capitol Building?
The Capitol in this case stands for the institutions of US democracy. The building, like the institutions, is far from perfect, but has been carefully and slowly renovated, expanded and adapted to changing circumstances over 200 years. Notwithstanding all of this, the Capitol was ruthlessly attacked, and none of the provisions for using and accessing it responsibly were observed. Basically, this is exactly what the Trump administration has done to the whole of US democracy.

Is the cliché true that the spatial division of the USA - rural "fly-over counties" hard hit by structural change as opposed to affluent and densely populated high-tech belts on the West and East coasts - has played a role in social and political division?
Let's start with the flyover counties. I would like to highlight two facts in this regard. First, 86% of the US population lives in counties classified as urban or suburban, only 14% in rural counties. So the time-honoured notion of "rural and small town America" as the "heart" of the country simply does not correspond to geographic reality.
Second, although "white poverty" does exist - and although poor, rural, white areas have been hit very hard by the "opioid crisis" - whites in the US as a whole are still demonstrably much better off economically, socially, and politically than African-Americans, Native Americans, and Hispanics/Latinxs.

Against this backdrop, the anger of hard core Trump supporters can only be partly related to actual hardship experienced (no matter how misconceived). If his following were exclusively rural, uneducated, and neglected whites, it would be much smaller.

Then in Germany we are simplifying the picture. Where does his large following come from?
In my opinion, fears of loss or an imagined "nostalgia" for a country that never existed, even among relatively wealthy and well-educated whites, play an important role here. In this imagined country, whites had all become free, independent, and - most importantly - successful thanks to their own hard work alone (not on the basis of dispossession, enslavement, or exploitation of others). In general, Trump and his supporters share an urgent desire to attribute their own prosperity only to themselves, and to ignore the historical and current costs that others have paid or are still paying for that prosperity. This, I believe, is behind his supporters' crude rejection of anything to do with "diversity" or the concerns of disadvantaged groups.

What does your research on this topic reveal?
This "not wanting to know" brings us to our research interests. Among the many destructive actions taken by the Trump administration was the attempt to weaken the validity and social and political impact of the census. The census is enshrined in the US Constitution and has taken place every ten years since 1790. It is the basis not only for much geographic and sociological research and for social programmes, but also for the continual reallocation of seats among states in the House of Representatives (how many seats each state has) to ensure as uniform a level of representation as possible.

What would Trump have gained by weakening the census?
From the beginning of his term in office, Trump has tried to weaken the census - which was held in 2020 despite coronavirus. On the one hand, he wanted to dry up a central source of statistical evidence for disadvantage and other social ills, and on the other hand, he wanted to influence the distribution of seats in the House of Representatives in favour of the Republicans. Trump first tried to exclude all non-US citizens from the census. The states with the most non-US citizens (especially California) are usually also the ones that vote Democratic. This plan initially failed in court.

More recently he tried to cut short the census enumeration prematurely. He has pursued two goals. On the one hand, he wanted to present the results as an achievement while he was still in office. On the other hand, he knew that the segments of the population that are hardest to count, and who accordingly tend to be counted at the very end of the census, come disproportionately from the disadvantaged groups that vote predominantly Democratic. With both strategies, Trump sought to weaken the Democrats - and the social groups whose disadvantage is a concern for many Democratic voters - through a "politics of statistical knowledge".

How are power relations reflected spatially?
Power relations are "spatial" on different levels. As we have just seen, buildings, landscapes, and entire cityscapes can symbolise power relations. In that sense, the whole historic city centre of Washington, DC is certainly one of the largest and most important symbolic cityscapes there is. Secondly, power is "spatial" in the sense of control over presence, activities, and messages in public space. In democracies, but also in authoritarian-ruled countries, exactly who determines how public spaces (squares, green spaces, but increasingly also virtual public spaces) are used, by whom and for what purpose, is extremely important. Both the symbolism of power and physical control can be attacked, reinterpreted, subverted, and appropriated for new purposes. Without these possibilities of spatial appropriation, the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s in the USA, for example, would have been unthinkable.

On 20 January, the Trump-Biden handover will take place. The aerial shots of the Mall will go around the world again and the crowds will be compared. How do you assess the importance of this space?

The Mall has been the most symbolic place of democracy in the US for more than a century, and will remain so. No matter what Trump or his supporters may do on the 20th, it will remain historically overshadowed by truly great historical events, first and foremost the 1963 March on Washington, where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave one of the most important speeches of the 20th century, but also by other great rallies.

Trump, his irresponsible handling of coronavirus necessitating drastic limits, will be justified this time in saying more people were there for his inauguration. The numbers in attendance for Biden will be even smaller due to the security precautions necessitated by the fallout from Trump's smear campaign. In this respect, Trump might well console himself with this "victory".

Can Joe Biden end the division of US society?
Joe Biden cannot end the division in society alone, it has a long and complicated history. Yet he can do two things. Firstly, he can try to embody what a conciliatory attitude and a willingness to talk with those who think differently looks like. Secondly, he can reinforce (or re-establish, as the case may be) the rules and traditions that Trump has weakened which guarantee the political neutrality of the authorities and the civil service. In this way, he can better shield the work of government from the effects of social division.