# Grievance Politics **Grievance Politics** is the strategic mobilization of perceived victimhood — economic displacement, cultural marginalization, status threat — as the primary engine of political identity and action. Rather than organizing around affirmative policy goals, grievance politics channels resentment toward out-groups, elites, or institutions framed as responsible for supporters' losses, real or imagined. The modern American right has made grievance politics a core operating principle, from [[Donald Trump]]'s rhetoric of a "forgotten" working class to the [[Culture War]] framing that casts white Christians as an embattled minority. The strategy draws on a long lineage including the [[Southern Strategy]]'s racial resentment appeals and the Tea Party's anti-government anger. [[White Grievance]] is a particularly potent variant, fusing racial anxiety with economic insecurity. Grievance politics is effective precisely because it requires no policy deliverables — the emotional catharsis of naming enemies substitutes for governance, and [[Scapegoating]] provides a perpetual supply of mobilizing energy.