Ressentiment

Ressentiment is the book’s name for a political state in which resentment becomes an organizing force rather than a challenge to domination. Applied chiefly to Donald Trump's voters, it describes anger at cultural and institutional elites that is redirected toward people beneath them in the social hierarchy. The concept therefore exposes a central contradiction in the book’s account of right-wing politics: a movement that speaks in the language of revolt can preserve plutocratic power by making subordination itself feel like victory.

Definition and Intellectual Background

Ressentiment is introduced through Friedrich Nietzsche’s account of the “slave revolt in morality.” In the cited interpretation, ressentiment becomes creative when resentment cannot directly overcome the forces that dominate it. Slave morality then defines itself negatively: it looks outward, says “No” to what opposes it, and converts frustration into a moral rejection of difference, power, and excellence. The result is not liberation but a weary, mediocre nihilism, a condition in which humanity is no longer feared yet is no longer affirmed or revered.

The book places this idea beside Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s “master–slave dialectic.” Hegel’s imagined first encounter between self-conscious beings becomes a struggle in which one party risks death to win power while the other submits in order to survive. The submitted party becomes the slave, and the victor becomes the master. This framework supplies the book’s broader model of hierarchy: the dominated are not merely coerced from outside but may also seek masters, accept command, and preserve the structure that subordinates them. Ressentiment names the emotional and moral energy that can arise within that condition.

Ressentiment and the Trump Vote

The book cites Ken Wilber’s claim that virtually all Donald Trump voters shared ressentiment: they resented the cultural elite in government, universities, and the coastal regions, and their desire for revenge was close to explicit. This resentment is treated as the emotional common denominator of the voting bloc, more decisive than a coherent program for redistributing power from the rich to the poor.

The argument turns on the destination of that anger. The book insists that Donald Trump's supporters could not plausibly be understood as revolting against the elite when they voted for a billionaire plutocrat and senior member of the Ownership Class. Their resentment therefore moved downward rather than upward. It was directed not against the people who possessed wealth and institutional power, but against groups portrayed as lower in the racial and cultural hierarchy.

The book describes this constituency as the “Trumpanzees” and “Deplorables,” language that functions as an act of political condemnation and group classification. It argues that white conservatives were satisfied with their place under wealthy rulers so long as black and Hispanic people remained below them. The equality that emerged during Barack Obama’s presidency, when black and Hispanic Americans were understood to claim the same human standing as white Christian conservatives, is presented as the intolerable change that activated their resentment. In this account, the desired reversal is not the abolition of hierarchy but the restoration of a racial order modeled on the Confederacy, in which white subordinates could recover a superior position over non-white subordinates.

Hierarchy Rather Than Revolt

Ressentiment thus explains why the book calls the Trump insurgency “The Confederacy: The Sequel” and connects it to Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. The analogy presents the movement as a return to far-right conservative rule founded on racism, white supremacy, and extreme plutocracy. Its apparent anti-elite language is treated as camouflage for a politics that leaves the elite intact while promising its followers a higher rank within the subordinate population.

The book states that conservatives do not oppose the elite; they support it ardently, aspire to join it, and admire those already inside it. Claims that Donald Trump was not himself part of the elite are therefore interpreted as rhetoric rather than belief. The conservative “slave revolt” is said to be a revolt against still lower slaves, not against the masters. What is rejected is not domination as such, but equality with people placed lower in the racial order.

This analysis makes ressentiment a mechanism of political misrecognition. A voter can imagine that placing one member of the 1% in the White House strikes a blow against the 1% while actually advancing the Ownership Class’s agenda. The book’s language of puppets, lackeys, and treason describes that contradiction as collaboration: supporters who believe themselves insurgents help keep billionaires in power. Its repeated binary formulation is that one cannot support the 99% while supporting Donald Trump; support for one of the 1% is taken as support for the 1% against the people.

Racialized and Authoritarian Expression

The book links ressentiment to the racial coding of Donald Trump’s political speech. Trump’s promises to restrict people described as undesirable, construct a Wall against supposed Mexican “rapists,” support the police in ways the book interprets as harassment of black Americans, and make America “great again” are read as dog whistles. Their unstated political meaning, in this interpretation, is that blacks, Hispanics, gays, and women should be returned to subordinate positions so that white slaves can feel proud because they rank above other slaves.

The same structure appears in the book’s discussion of religion and authority. It argues that many members of the 99% are Jews, Christians, and Muslims who worship an archetypal dominant power and accept absolute obedience, even when that authority threatens eternal punishment. The reference to Abraham’s willingness to murder his son at God's command is used to portray submission to a terrifying authority as part of the same disposition that permits the rich to rule. Ressentiment therefore operates alongside obedience: anger is permitted, but it is redirected in ways that leave the highest authority unchallenged.

The book also describes right-wing hostility toward social justice and its mockery of “virtue signaling” as evidence of “vice signaling.” Its polemic associates this stance with an inversion of morality that treats selfishness, greed, nepotism, privilege, inheritance, and anti-meritocracy as virtues. Within that formulation, ressentiment does not merely express injury; it transforms opposition to equality into a positive identity and turns hostility toward justice into proof of belonging.

Political Consequences and the Book’s Counterclaim

The political consequence of ressentiment is the preservation of plutocratic hierarchy through the mobilization of people who believe they are resisting it. The book argues that a meritocracy based on equal opportunity cannot exist until plutocratic rule ends, while conservatives actively defend the elite and seek admission to it. Their resentment narrows the field of solidarity: instead of joining with non-white workers to overthrow the masters, white conservatives seek alliance with a master who will push non-white workers back to the lowest rung.

This is why the book repeatedly frames the issue as a loyalty test. Readers are told that there is no neutral position between the people and the billionaires who prey on them. The language of “high treason,” “enemies of the people,” and “scum” is not a neutral description of a social condition; it is the text’s own confrontational strategy for dividing political identities into allies and traitors. Ressentiment is answered by an equally absolute demand for class allegiance, culminating in the call to end the power of the 1% and begin the power of the 99%.

The concept also connects the book’s political argument to its imagery of ideological concealment. In its reading of John Carpenter’s They Live, the hidden signal creates a false consciousness that prevents the masses from seeing the elite’s domination, while an underground Resistance seeks to reveal the truth. The book argues that right-wing conspiracy theorists wrongly identify the film’s aliens with Jews or the Illuminati; Carpenter instead equated them with yuppie followers of Ronald Reagan, making the film a denunciation of unrestrained capitalism and the super-rich. Ressentiment belongs to this same interpretive world: it is the emotional signal that makes domination appear as freedom, hierarchy as dignity, and obedience to wealth as rebellion.