Trump, ONE Nation, and Reform Voters Are Perpetrators Not Victims

The way people use their vote is a moral choice and people should not be pitied when they use their vote to deliberately harm others, writes Dr Victoria Fielding.

IT IS TIME we killed the toxic idea that people who voted for Trump, or in Australia, vote for One Nation, or in the UK, vote for Reform, are the victims of society. This notion legitimises and normalises their hatred.

This story also ignores the true victims of the devastation leaders like Trump have inflicted on the entire world; everyone who did not vote for these people is the victim, not those who selfishly and recklessly chose to put monsters in charge. We should be calling these people out for their morally bad behaviour as the perpetrators of harm rather than endorsing their choices as if they were justified.

The “hard-right voters are victims” narrative characterises these voters as down-and-out people who are suffering from wealth inequality, globalisation and technological disruption. The story goes that these people are quite legitimately and justifiably lashing out because they’ve been “left behind” by establishment politics.

The truth is, these people are suffering from wealth inequality, globalisation and technological disruption. But, so are all the people who didn’t vote for hate-filled liars like Trump, One Nation, and Reform.

The “hard-right voters are the forgotten people” narrative is totally dependent on the false idea that it is the left-wing parties' fault that these people are “forgotten”. This is, of course, blatantly false. These ills that we all suffer from, however we vote, including wealth inequality, globalisation destroying industries and jobs, technological disruption moving wealth into fewer and fewer hands, are not the fault of left-wing parties.

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These ills are the fault of rampant capitalism, of neoliberal hegemony that exploded over the last fifty years, and the right-wing parties that promoted this global orthodoxy. Indeed, those who promote neoliberal capitalism have, of course, been the ones who have benefited most from it. Billionaires.

And guess who the hard-right movements serve? Billionaires. What a coincidence.

Perhaps Trump, One Nation and Reform voters might consider this a little silly and counterproductive on their behalf if they stopped for a moment to actually consider it. But instead of doing this, they vote for these people – weaponising their perceived victimhood – to make themselves feel better about their inequality.

Thus, they recognise they feel unequal (because they are), but rather than supporting left-wing movements that fight inequality, they instead vote to assert their own inequality — their social inequality. Their whiteness. The only privilege they have left that makes them feel worthwhile.

This is quite the opposite choice that is made by left-wing voters. Left-wing voters also recognise their own inequality and the injustice of that. They vote accordingly to try to actually address this inequality, whether that be policies like better access to education, supporting unions and wage rises, building better health systems, regulating capitalism, redistributing wealth through taxation, and addressing climate change.

Indeed, even those left-wing voters who are in a privileged position of not suffering from wealth inequality, or career disruption, or have even been the lucky few to benefit from the globalised knowledge economy. They vote the way they do because they know that when everyone in their community is better off – no matter the colour of their skin, their gender, their identity — the whole society is better off.

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It is also worth noting that left-wing policies are beneficial to hard-right voters. They might not appreciate left-wing governments winning them wage rises, or investing in education, or working to make housing more affordable, or tackling climate change (which they’ve been told by their hard-right billionaire-fossil-fuel-loving-leaders is not necessary). But this doesn’t change the fact that they actually do benefit from the policies they actively vote against and celebrate being destroyed.

In sum, hard-right people vote selfishly and, in doing so, self-sabotage themselves and their communities to soothe their own insecurities. They don’t give any thought to how their vote will make other people’s lives worse. In fact, this seems to be the very point of their votes most of the time — to victimise others. From any perspective, this is bad behaviour. No child was brought up to set out to hurt others, yet we take for granted that whole movements of voters set out to do just that.

When the American empire finally collapses, historians won't be stunned by the greed of the elite; they'll be stunned by the loyalty of the poor. The working class didn't just vote against their own interests. They worshipped the billionaires robbing them. They slashed their own…
— Shawn Ryan (@ShawnRyan762) July 11, 2025

Ridiculously, they do so to their own detriment and to benefit the wealth of billionaires. Their hatred is incredibly profitable for those who are already rich, and just ends up making them worse off. Massive slow clap.

The truth of this story needs to be told to understand just how toxic it is to treat these voters like they are the victims. Because of course, Trump/One Nation/Reform voters have weaponised their own perceived victimhood to justify their attacks on those they oppose, who are the marginalised people who, low and behold, are in reality the most victimised people in the story. Whether they be non-white people, immigrants, women, LGBTIQ+ people, these are the people who should be the focus of our sympathy.

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We should also sympathise with everyone suffering from the hard-right’s attacks on the environment, through dangerous-war-mongering, creating death, chaos, global instability, higher fuel prices and inflation. Through their division and undermining of democracy and social cohesion, their attacks on the social safety net, on public health, education and so on.

We’ve experienced a decade of this nonsense story framing hard-right voters as victims and I’m sick of it. This story has helped create a man-made global crisis that leaves us all worse off, all more insecure, all more victims of wealth inequality. The hard-right is a blight on humanity and their voters should be treated as the perpetrators of this mess, not as the victims of it.

The way people use their vote is a moral choice and people should not be pitied when they use their vote to deliberately harm others. When, as a society, did we forget that the perpetrators of hatred are the bad guys, and not the victims? When are we going to assert – morally - that it’s not OK to use lies and hatred as political strategies, and that people should care about their community when they vote?

If we are going to adequately fight back against the hard-right, our sympathy should not be with the deplorables who caused the mess. Our sympathies and support should go to those who are doing the right thing by everyone — fighting against the hard-right and telling the true story of who the real victims are here.