The claim that Trump voters are reacting against neoliberalism doesn't really work this time. Trump is an uber-neoliberal: the past four years have been characterised by tax cuts for the rich, declining real wages, and an assault on public goods, with massive gains for capital.

Yes, working class people have been brutalised by neoliberalism, royally, under both parties. Trump's unique appeal is that, despite inflicting this pain himself, he offers white people the solace of being on top in a racial (and gender/religious/geopolitical) hierarchy.

There is nothing new about this. Randolph Hohle's work demonstrates that neoliberalism in the US rose as an alliance of an elite business class and local segregationists that sought to preserve white privilege in the civil rights era. https://www.routledge.com/Race-and-the-Origins-of-American-Neoliberalism/Hohle/p/book/9781138484986

He shows that many white people who had previously supported public goods and market regulations turned against them and sought to undermine them after desegregation, as they were unwilling to share with people of colour.

Hohle argues that, in a society of extreme racial inequality, you can recruit working class people to neoliberalism with narratives of individual responsibility and meritocracy. White people are better off not because of white privilege but b/c they are smarter, harder working...

....and because they are harder working they *should be* better off. If they are for some reason *not* better off, it's because the system is rigged against them by communist forces that give people of colour an artificial leg up, with things like public goods and protections...

...so, those things need to be destroyed. This is the magic formula by which neoliberal demagogues can simultaneously harm their base while maintaining their support. Trump knows this, which is why he uses white supremacist dog whistles.

Obviously this doesn't explain everything about Trumpism, and doesn't account for all Trump voters. But if race isn't part of our analysis, then we're missing something. In other words, our analysis needs to focus on neoliberalism *and* whiteness, rather than one or the other.