“Resentment leads humans slowly
to poison their own souls.”
—Max Scheler—
“Ignorance allied with power is the most
ferocious enemy justice can have.”
—James Baldwin—
We were warned. Almost twenty years ago, philosopher Richard Rorty, drawing on some somber insights by Edward Luttwak, foresaw that the U.S. would be headed towards a right-wing populism with an authoritarian figure calling the shots. He predicted that the electorate, fed up with the loss of jobs going overseas, declining wages, deteriorating infrastructure, underperforming schools, and a growing sector of society that does not want to see its taxes used to provide social benefits for the poor or anyone else, would want to overturn or abandon constitutional government to correct these ills. Fed up with the elites who have ignored them, these voters will search for an imaginary strongman who will vanquish “the tricky lawyers, smug bureaucrats, overpaid bond salesman, and post-modernist professors” who have ruined our society. Rorty then adds the following, chilling in its prophetic accuracy: “One thing that is very likely to happen is that the gains made in the past forty years by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals will be wiped out. Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion. The words ‘nigger’ and ‘kike’ will once again be heard in the workplace. All the sadism that the academic left [as well as many others] tried to make unacceptable…will come flooding back. All the resentment which badly educated Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet.” Finally, he concludes that despite the populist and anti-elitist rhetoric, the imagined strongman will cozy up to the super-rich, as well as invoke the memory of a “successful” war (the Gulf War) that were successful to rally patriotic values. Rorty’s prophecy has come true in that Donald J. Trump seems to embody the dystopian vision he outlined in his book Achieving Our Century (1998).
Trump, despite losing the popular vote by more than 2.8 million votes, was elected president of the U.S., marking the second time in sixteen years that this has happened. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by a larger margin than Kennedy in 1960, Nixon in 1968, and Al Gore in 2000. Recent findings released by the CIA concerning Russian hacking of DNC emails to favor Trump’s campaign only further complicate the legitimacy of the election, making a mockery of his claim that the elections were rigged against him. Given these revelations and FBI director Comey’s statements ten days before the elections —not to mention the suppression of voter registration in several states— one could argue that if there was rigging, it all tilted Trump’s way. My aim is not to discuss the election’s legitimacy nor the absurdity of the U.S. Electoral College, which is perhaps a second close to the U.S. Senate as one of the most undemocratic institutions in the U.S., but to look closer at the phenomenon of right-wing populism as one of the possible and profoundly anti-democratic responses to the crisis of global capital. Trump is being compared to other right-wing populists currently in power: Orbán (Hungary), Erdogan (Turkey), Duda (Poland), Putin (Russia), and Duterte (Philippines). Many on the progressive side of the political spectrum see Trump’s victory as a prelude to fascism or neo-fascism, no doubt a view fueled by Trump’s racist statements on Mexican immigrants, Muslims, and his “Make America Great (White) Again” slogan, as well as his rampant sexism, misogyny, and his intention to prosecute Hillary Clinton (now not so urgent a task). Nor should we forget his blatant disregard for the Constitution and the press, and his exaggerated claim that only he can fix the problems of a country as vast and complex as the U.S. While all these examples of Trump’s behavior point towards a disturbing authoritarianism, there are several factors we must consider that must give us pause before we use the word fascism and compare Trump to Hitler or Mussolini.
First, the U.S. is not in the situation that the Weimar Republic was faced with in 1932. It is not a country that had been defeated in a war (WWI), with humiliating conditions exacted on the country by the victorious countries. The U.S. has never suffered hyper-inflation like Germany did in the 1920s, nor is it in the economic situation that Germany was faced with during the Great Depression. None of this is to minimize the uneven aspects of the U.S. economic recovery since 2008 —mostly skewed to the top 5%— but to compare it to Germany (or Italy) of the 1920s or 1930s does not hold water. Economically, fascism believed in a strong link between the economy and the state, and there is nothing in either Trump’s worldview or Republican ideology that suggests a similar link, unless you want to describe their philosophy as free market fascism, a term more appropriate for Pinochet’s Chile than the U.S. in 2016. Finally, I would argue, that Donald Trump doesn’t have the discipline to be a fascist, which is not meant as an endorsement of fascism, but as more as an observation about the lack of rigor and consistency in his thought. In the words of Ana Marie Cox: “He’s too lazy to have an ideology, so he just lets other people think it up for him.” Remember, some in the Republican Party criticized him as a closet Democrat, accusations similar to those made against Eisenhower by fellow conservatives back in the 1950s. George Wallace was a right-wing populist who supported the New Deal at the same time that he fomented racial divisions and Trump might do likewise. This does not mean that Trump isn’t dangerous, but that his presidency and decision-making strategy is circumscribed by certain political constraints, some at the level of government, others by the courts, the media (if they do their jobs), and popular resistance, and not only by those currently demonstrating in the streets but a host of groups and organizations like the ACLU, NAACP, NOW, Black Lives Matter, Planned Parenthood, National Council of La Raza, etc. Even more significant might be the policies of certain states, like California, which has promised to resist Trump’s agenda of mass deportation of undocumented workers and wall-building.
Trump’s base has been described as “ethno-nationalist” or as “ethno-nationalist populism”, and both have been linked to other right-wing populist movements in Europe such as Marie Le Pen’s National Front in France, Austria’s Freedom Party, England’s UKIP, Greece’s Golden Dawn and Vlams Belang in Belgium, to name only a few. What unites these different groups or parties? A deep-rooted nationalism that borders on xenophobia, a racially-based definition of what constitutes a citizen, a visceral rejection of immigrants, a suspicion of government (in Europe these right-wing groups are called Euroskeptics, and they are opposed to the EU and the euro) and a rejection of neo-liberal globalization that has led to the loss of manufacturing jobs, with an adverse effect on working-class lives. E.J. Dionne, Jr., a Washington Post columnist, recently wrote an op-ed “Trumpism: Made in Europe” which claims that typically the American right has been anti-government, literalist and reverent about the Constitution, suspicious of strongmen (even if they dote on alpha males), and make a fuss about American exceptionalism. Now they are adopting the ideas of the European far right: anti-immigration, fears of terrorism and crime, economic nationalism and wanting a muscular government to deal with what is perceived as forces of disorder. I would disagree with anti-immigration and fears of terrorism and crime; they have long been staples of the right, but perhaps the latter two reflect a European influence. I would also disagree on strongmen, as many social scientists have tracked the recent upsurge in the U.S. electorate of those who favor authoritarian solutions over democratic ones. Anne Applebaum, another Post columnist calls for reviving the term national socialism to describe Austria’s far right Freedom Party’s ideology. She argues that their ultra-nationalism, aside from its toxic ethnic element also embraces an economic nationalism to protect the nation from the ravages of globalization. This implies a strong role for the state in the economy, and in other areas as well (defense, borders).
But does the description of populism truly fit? Populism is a notoriously slippery word, and as sociologist-journalist Marco D’Eramo says, very few people self-identify as populist, since it has become a word to tar your opponents with. Even if you admit that there are right-wing populisms as well as left-wing ones, the term is almost always used in a pejorative sense. Still, I would like to argue that populism as a word still has some descriptive value and that it need not be used as a political slur or condemnation. Peter Wiles has said that populism is a syndrome, not a doctrine. An interesting observation but one that needs to be unpacked. The word syndrome also conjures up the word symptom. If populism is a symptom, what is the underlying cause? Lack of democracy, an increasingly oligarchical political system, loss of jobs locally to foreign economies, the indifference and influence of big corporations, a weakening of national culture and identity? All these causes have been offered by the Euro-right and Trump and various right-wing groups in the U.S. Echoing Wiles, John Judis says populism “is not an ideology, but a political logic, a way of thinking about politics.” That logic is flexible in defining who are the people, as well as the enemies that threaten the people’s purity and integrity. This flexibility is what gives right-wing populism its ability to be both emotionally and politically resonant and intellectually fraudulent.
Scholars and journalists have tried to offer a list of traits that characterize populist movements or parties: the will of the people is supreme, anti-intellectualism, authoritarian and/or charismatic leadership, the denial of the importance of class, anti-elitism, and viewing the current political system as broken and needing to be fixed for the benefit of the people. These traits are useful but insufficient if we are considering such diverse phenomena such as Peronismo, Golden Dawn, the Occupy movement, MAS (Bolivia), the Five Star Movement (Italy), Brexiters, Podemos (Spain), and the Tea Party. Judis says that left-wing populism is dyadic (the people vs. an elite or the establishment) and that right-wing populism is triadic in that in that it accuses the elites of favoring a third group (blacks, Muslims, immigrants) to the detriment of the people. The best examples would be the Occupy movement (“We are the 99%”), versus Trumpian ethno-nationalists (“Let’s Make America Great Again”; blacks, women, Muslims, Latin@s, immigrants need not apply). Despite some similarities there are great differences between left-wing populism and right-wing populism; for reasons of space I will limit my comments to the right-wing variety.
What most thinkers agree on is that populism gives a central role to the people. But how do we define the people? As sociologist Carlos de la Torre argues “to invoke the name of ‘the people’ is to raise the possibility of a theological conception of politics”. This theology is based on notions of purity, even homogeneity, and that means “othering” those who do not fit the definition: Chinese (globalization), Mexicans (“illegal aliens”), the elite (exploiters), non-Christians (Muslims), welfare cheats (blacks), freeloaders (our allies in Europe and Asia), abortionists (purveyors of anti-family values), and multiculturalists (anti-white “racists”). The list can go on because this type of logic is based on exclusion, of the perceived threat against “the people”. For example, the idea of family values can be racially coded (non-whites don’t believe in two-parent marriage), on lines of sexual preference (queer people, same-sex marriage), reproductive concerns (contraception, those who are pro-choice), language (English versus the “encroachments” of Spanish), religion (non-Christians), patriotism (terrorists, multiculturalists, left-wing radicals) or identity (immigration, language, the United Nations). There is little doubt that the forces unleashed by Donald Trump during the elections are part of this racialized conception of the people and its implications for politics. De la Torre reminds us that because of this Manichean and moral view of society, for the right-wing populist, if you are not part of the people you are not merely a political adversary, but a “sinful enemy”. The demonizing rhetoric used by Trump supporters when referring to Hillary Clinton is a sickening reminder of this Manichean logic. This logic of always finding enemies of the people leads the right-wing populist to the creation (fabrication) of conspiracy theories: hence birtherism, election-rigging, global warming as a Chinese hoax, the liberal (or Muslim) assault on Christmas and Christian values, sex rings being run out of pizza parlors, the homosexual agenda of ruining the family. All of them point back to an attack on the people, or “real Americans” (the silent majority, etc.) and this will continue since Trump’s cabinet is filled with conspiracy theorists (Flynn, Carson, Bannon, among others).
Trump’s ethno-nationalist populism is also a neo-liberal one, economically speaking. One of the key messages of his campaign was economic nationalism and an apparent rejection of the neo-liberal, pro free trade policies of the last thirty-five years. Trump raged on about NAFTA (wanting to re-negotiate it and possibly levy tariffs of 35% on Mexican imports), China (from currency manipulation to imposing tariffs of 45%), and, of course, shelving any plans of signing the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement. Trump’s economic nationalism would seem to contradict the free trade aspect of neo-liberalism, but we still don’t know what actions his administration will take, and it is highly unlikely he will start a trade war with both China and Mexico. The Peterson Institute for International Economics estimates that taking on both Mexico and China simultaneously would push unemployment in the U.S. to 9% in 2020, not to mention the higher price for goods for domestic consumers. However, other aspects of the neo-liberal agenda like the gutting of the welfare state, the de-regulation of labor markets (union-busting; opposition to increasing the minimum wage; wage theft), the loosening of environmental regulations, the attempt to remove financial and banking regulations, anti-democratic political measures (suppression of the vote, the flow of even more money into the political process), the lowering of tax rates for the wealthy leading to greater inequality: all point to an even greater adherence to the neo-liberal agenda. Indeed, this will be one of Trump’s major challenges because of his promise to bring back all those jobs that have been lost or shipped overseas. As most economists point out, these jobs are not coming back, but we do not know if Trump will become a Teflon president similar to Reagan; perhaps a more appropriate analogy is Berlusconi. And if his policies fail, he will, of course, blame it on Obama, a strategy that might work for a couple of years, if that. But Trump’s economic policies are inserted in a world where investors are more important than citizens, in a capitalism rife with systemic disorders that Wolfgang Streeck defines as “stagnation, oligarchic inequality, corruption, the plundering of the public domain, corruption, and global anarchy”. The billionaires and multi-millionaires in Trump’s cabinet are a vivid reminder of a populism that is serving the elites and aggravating these systemic disorders.
The Berlusconi analogy was made convincingly by Roger Cohen a few months ago when he said: “Nobody who knows Berlusconi and has watched the rise and rise of Donald Trump can fail to be struck by the parallels. It’s not just the real-estate-to-television-path. It’s not just their shared admiration for Vladimir Putin. It’s not just the playboy thing, and obsession with their virility, and smattering of bigotry, and contempt for policy wonks, and reliance on a tell-it-like-it-is tone. It’s not their wealth, nor the media savvy that taught them that nobody ever lost by betting on human stupidity.” To Cohen the U.S. was ready for Trump, and his promise to clean up a rotten political system, restore jobs, and reverse America’s decline after two unwinnable wars in the Middle East, and an endless “war against terrorism” resonated with voters. In hindsight, we see that there was both Bush and Clinton fatigue keenly felt by the electorate. And beyond this Bush-Clinton fatigue a profound disgust with the two-party system, which Gore Vidal once called the “one party two party system”. Where the analogy breaks down is that Trump did not found a new party as did Berlusconi. Despite all his anti-establishment rhetoric, Trump’s only way to be elected was through the Republican Party, recently called by Noam Chomsky without any trace of hyperbole the “most dangerous organization on the planet”, more so when you consider their science-denying claims about the environment. Trump also has at his disposal a wide range of supporters from the alt-right movement and Tea Party types that amplify his fact-free universe. He is also Commander-in-Chief of the most powerful armed forces in the world, a thought to make any one pause (if not blanch). The U.S. political system is not as fragmented as Italy’s under Berlusconi, which is perhaps some comfort; it will make it easier to form coalitions and movements to counter some of the toxic policy measures that await us. In Europe, because of the plurality of parties and parliamentary systems, right-populist parties can thrive; in the U.S. populist upsurges are usually faced with two options: disappearing or linking their fortunes to the Republicans or Democrats.
In his excellent overview of conservative thought titled The Reactionary Mind Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin, Corey Robin speaks to the double-edged nature of Trump’s followers: “That is the task of right-wing populism: to appeal to the mass without disrupting the power of elites or, more precisely to harness the energy of the mass in order to reinforce or restore the power of elites.” How does this seem possible if Trump at points during his campaign seemed more critical of the Republicans than he did of the Democrats? Let’s not be fooled either by the rhetoric or the real politics behind his anti-elitist message. For Trump, the elites were the “corrupt Washington politicians”, pointy-headed intellectuals, policy wonks and the mainstream media, not the corporations who were outsourcing work and avoiding paying taxes (even if he sometimes criticized them), not the CEOs making off with millions in stock options, not firms and local governments resisting any effort to raise the minimum wage, not companies who were polluting rivers and creating public health problems, not businesses exploiting immigrant workers, not the cozy and profitable relationships between the Pentagon and corporations that Eisenhower warned us about over fifty years ago that are part of the military-industrial complex. If anyone belongs to the elite it is Trump himself, and yet he presented himself as a champion of the forgotten common man. It is a truism to say that Trump is the quintessential con man, but the claim of being for the little guy may be his greatest con ever. Trump has promised to drain the swamp, and he will make some noise about terms limits and a five-year period before politicians can become lobbyists, but that is a charade. Some of his choices for the cabinet reveal a plutocratic bias that is alarming. The neo-liberal economy is not going to be fundamentally changed or altered in any significant way under a Trump administration; it will simply become more kleptocratic.
The idea of “the people” presents a dual challenge: on the one hand, it can threaten the political order (the unruly mob); on the other, it can ground it (the people are sovereign). Trump has so far skillfully handle the disruptive side, of using the people to overturn politics as usual in the Republican Party (not to mention breaking quite a few rules about the political game without facing major consequences). Of course, he has also obliterated any notion of civility in public discourse and lowered the bar in terms of truth-telling. The political realm is not the most ideal place for the revelation of truth, but at least the idea of truth in politics has always carried the potential for making public discourse more vibrant, and sometimes game-changing. This election cycle seems to have tarnished the idea of truth, perhaps beyond recovery. Trump goes beyond a normal politician’s indifference to truth when it is inconvenient; he is a figure hostile to truth, and will remain so because so far it has worked in his favor.
Robin also speaks to the issue of how conservatism has argued for a type of victimhood. In this it has learned and borrowed from the left and perhaps been more successful at making its case. He says: “The conservative, to be sure, speaks for a special type of victim: one who has lost something of value, as opposed to the wretched of the earth, whose chief complaint is that they never had anything to lose.” This sense of loss appeals to many and there is no doubt that the loss of good manufacturing jobs —due to both Republican and Democratic administration policies over the last few decades that have decimated unions, depressed wages, and have made few efforts to retool the economy to get the working class back on its feet. And when I say working class I mean the 40% of it that is non-white as well; however, ethno-nationalists have taken this narrative and given it a racial dimension that is disturbing. Aside from sheer white privilege, other arguments put forth in the ethno-nationalist narrative include a loss of identity (immigrants, the Spanish language), the indifference of big government, the dangers of terrorism and the fear of imposition of Sha’ria law. That most of these arguments are specious, if not totally ludicrous, is beside the point. This a rhetoric of fear, and as Raymond Aron said: “Fear needs no definition. It is a primal, and so to speak, sub-political emotion.” Here again, the right exploits the unconscious political thought of voters over conscious thinking and logic.
The combative nature of conservative thought often draws on military imagery and discourse. In our climate of Marketspeak (Herman), the conservative hero is part businessman, part warrior; a mix of Hayek, Ayn Rand, Patton, and Navy Seal. “War is to men as maternity is to women”, said Mussolini, and white nationalist ideology is entirely consistent with pugnaciously conservative views on race, supremacy, and power. Someone as bellicose as Trump is likely to get us into a war. Don’t be fooled by his criticism of the invasions of Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003): the critique is offered only because we have not “won” these wars, not the fact that we went to war. If Trump is smart (I’m dreaming here, bear with me) he will pick a limited war that can be won quickly and decisively, allowing him to gloat, parade his outsized ego as commander in chief (yes, comandante en jefe), and claim that “America is becoming great again”. But given his thin-skinned impulsiveness, he might be more likely to embroil us in a conflict which will have catastrophic consequences militarily, politically, and economically, not to mention the needless loss of human lives. Where is this likely to happen: Iran, Syria, Yemen, North Korea, the Congo, Somalia, the Ukraine? Perhaps a ramping up of the war in Afghanistan? Mattis (Secretary of Defense), Kelly (Homeland Security), Pompeo (CIA) and Flynn (NSA Advisor) have all expressed a desire to go after Iran. For the moment, this is difficult to foretell, but the president-elect has promised a muscular show of U.S. military strength and requested large budget increases for the Pentagon. His choice for Secretary of State, an Exxon CEO, is both astonishing and consistent with Trump’s fondness for billionaire deal-makers; Rex Tillerson has been described as someone “with no government experience, disturbingly close ties to Vladimir Putin and has enriched himself by selling an environmentally destructive product while lying about how destructive it really is”. Rachel Maddow reminds us that Exxon’s wealth and influence allows it to carry out its own foreign policy, one that often contradicts that of the U.S., as witnessed by how it has behaved in places like Iraq, Chad, Russia, and Nigeria.
The right has also learned from the left on how to view economic or political policy as to who wins (or loses) under policies that are implemented. Globalization has increased trade dramatically, made the world economy interdependent, increased the traffic of ideas, goods, and capital. With people, well, the matter is more complex. But globalization (and capitalism) has its winners and losers. The populist right, both in the U.S. and Europe, has argued more effectively than the left —at least in the electoral arena— about the negative aspects of globalization. It has been more forceful in identifying “the enemy”, be it big corporations or big government, establishment politicians, Chinese wages, Mexican immigrants, or wealthy bankers. The radical left has a long tradition of class analysis and identifying who the villains are in a capitalist economy; however, the reformist or “electoral left” in the U.S. has been unfailingly timid in doing so. When I say “electoral left” I am referring to many different types of ideologies from the Greens to the Democrats. I put electoral left in quotes, cognizant of the fact that the rightward shift in U.S. politics has been so severe over the past few decades that President Obama can be compared to an Eisenhower Republican.
One of the issues that Trump’s ascendance has highlighted is identity. Some have argued that even here the right has taken another lesson from the left and turned it to its advantage. I disagree in that it conflates left politics with identity politics, whatever the latter is supposed to mean. No longer is being white considered as the default color (racial norm), but an identity like all other racially-inflected identities. While this may be true in that the U.S. is becoming more diverse it seems to sidestep the issue of white supremacy. And make no mistake about it, Donald Trump is going to rule as a white male as if this were the epitome of Americanness. And because white supremacy is being challenged more often than in the past, does this means that America has lost its “greatness”? That we are supposed to empathize with whites because they feel aggrieved that an African-American has been president for eight years? That we should get teary-eyed because some voters want to take us to the 1950s when women were second-class citizens, black people lived under Jim Crow, queer people were in the closet, and those on the left were persecuted by McCarthyism and Cold War hysteria? As Kali Holloway argues, where was all the concern about poverty, loss of manufacturing jobs, drug addiction and suicide when it affected non-whites? This said, we cannot ignore the pain of the working-class, who have seen communities unravel due to neo-liberalism that has led to a tremendous loss of jobs in large areas of the country. But recognizing that pain is no excuse for a zero-sum game of victimhood where “my suffering” is more important than another’s, particularly if they don’t look like me.
Bill Maher summed it up aptly in his first post-election show when he said “We have gone from a nation of e pluribus unum to f**k you!” Implicit in the epithet is the idea of “I want what’s mine and everyone else can, well”… plug in the message: be put in their place (women), go back to where they came from (immigrants), stop mooching off the government and stealing my taxes (blacks, Latinos), respect family values (queers). Donald Trump is the quintessence of the “f**k you” mentality: his lies, narcissism, misogyny, greed, xenophobia, love of celebrity, racism, lack of intellectual curiosity, and shameless exploitation of others are simply as grandiose as his ego. He is a caricature of the devious plutocrat; if you were to design a Marxist version of Monopoly (an updating of Ollman’s Class Struggle board game?) he would certainly be a central villain. To his credit, I’m sure he loves his family, pats little children on the head and is kind to dogs, but you know what they said about you-know-who: he also loved dogs and was a vegetarian. It is going to take a whole lot of caring, struggle, cunning, patience, and outright grit to get us closer to e pluribus unum. But what’s the alternative, let the country turn into a pack of wolves? Charles Blow recently reminded us of what challenges we will be faced with: a politics of cruelty, mendacity, selfishness, and destructiveness, Ayn Rand on steroids.
A Times letter to the editor warns us what lays ahead by surveying Trump’s potential cabinet, where his “choice for energy secretary wanted to abolish the department. His education secretary is a threat to public education. His Attorney General opposes the Voting Rights Act. His housing secretary opposes the Fair Housing Act. His health and human services secretary wants to restructure [privatize] Medicare. His Treasury secretary helped caused the financial crisis and the profited from it. His E.P.A. chief is a climate change denier who has spent much of his career fighting [and suing] the agency he was appointed to lead.” Given this scenario, Blow exhorts us to keep in mind the urgent task before us as citizens: “No, Mr. Trump, we will not all just get along. For as long as the threat to the state is the head of state all citizens of good faith and national fidelity…have an absolute obligation to meet you and your agenda with resistance at every turn.” Ignorance allied with power needs to be confronted openly, daily, and with unyielding integrity.
Cover Art by Otari Oliva Buadze