From the San Francisco Chronicle:

In January, (political sociologist David N.) Smith and his University of Kansas colleague, associate sociology professor Eric A. Hanley, published a 47-page paper deconstructing the Republican president’s appeal. Building on decades of scholarship about the lure of authoritarianism and their own analysis of American voting psychology in 2012 and 2016, the social scientists make an argument that some may find offensive and others unsurprising.

It goes something like this: Trump’s biggest supporters are motivated by bigotry and want him to hurt the people they dislike.

“A lot of people find it really hard to believe that people would really want what Trump represents,” said Smith, who began researching authoritarianism as a sociology graduate student more than 40 years ago. “My experience is the hard core of people who support Trump election after election is they really mean it. They support him because of what he says and does, not in spite of it.”

While this wouldn’t be the first time the academic community identified dictatorial red flags in Trump, ascribing them to a significant portion of the U.S. electorate reflects a rarer scholarship. Yet Smith and Hanley don’t shy from the implications in “Authoritarianism From Below: Why and How Donald Trump Follows His Followers,” in which they write that “75% of Trump’s voters supported him enthusiastically, mainly because they shared his prejudices, not because they were hurting economically.”

It’s about the racism, the sexism, the homophobia, the xenophobia. It always has been.

They love him because he was going to hurt “those people.” Now some of them are whining because in the world of the illegal alien, South African Space Nazi and his Orange Chia Pet, they are learning that as far as autocrats and billionaires are concerned, MAGA faithful are the same as “those people.” And because of their beliefs, that makes those bigoted supporters worse than “those people.”