Triumph of Trump
The Triumph of Trump
Geoffrey M. Hodgson
A major democracy with a developed economy has elevated to high office a man with a criminal record, who fomented an insurrection against an elected government, supported violence on the streets, who aimed to remove democratic checks and balances and to concentrate political power in his hands. This man also wanted to target and prosecute political opponents. He planned to deport millions of longstanding residents, whom he depicted as foul and unwelcome aliens. This has happened twice. In 1933 it was Adolf Hitler. In 2024 it was Donald Trump. Benito Mussolini did something similar in 1922, but without the immediate threat of alien deportations.
Since his inauguration in January 2025, President Donald Trump has been sledgehammering the foundations of US liberal democracy. He threatens the Enlightenment principles of the rule of law, human rights and freedom of speech. He sacks public servants who do not bend to his will. He cowers much of the US media into submission. He buys the support of powerful people. Investigations into corporate corruption are shut down. His response to the ongoing illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine is to side with the invader.
Trump has ripped apart the world order that, despite its faults and limitations, has since 1945 prevented another world war. Trump imposes tariffs on his economic neighbours and faraway China. He seeks to takeover Greenland, the Gaza Strip and the Panama Canal, and to incorporate Canada as a US state. As he breaks up the Western political and economic alliances, markets jitter, and the US economy slides into recession.
How do we explain all this? There have been several attempts, some making more sense than others.
Neoliberalism?
It is unconvincing to regard Trump as a climax of the “neoliberalism” that became influential in the era of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. A problem is that critics of neoliberalism cannot agree on what neoliberalism means. It has been applied to politicians as diverse as Josip Tito, Deng Xiaoping, Tony Blair
and Joseph Biden. If it has any enduring meaning, neoliberal has become a slur against anyone who accepts a place for markets in modern economies.
But Trump does not believe in free trade. He imposes huge tariffs. He does not encourage market competition. He courts the favours of massive corporate monopolies and safeguards their concentrated economic power in return. This is far from the free market ideology of Thatcher and Reagan. For all their flaws and failures, at least Thatcher and Reagan pursued an economic analysis and ideology that had some substance and coherence. Their analyses and policies were mistaken, but at least there were some recognizable economic principles. It was more about ideas and less about ego.
Oligarchic Power
Robert Reich has focused on the increased economic and political power of the new economic oligarchy. He rightly points out that large corporations have grown in political power and economic inequality has massively increased since 1980. Trump’s administration includes a dozen or more billionaires. As Reich observes:
“The richest 1 percent of Americans now has more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined. The only other country with similarly high levels of wealth concentration is Russia, another oligarchy.”
Growing economic inequality and plutocratic power, including oligarchs who control social media, certainly help to explain the means and conditions of Trump’s election in 2016 and 2024.
Reich is also right to see extreme inequality as a major threat to democracy. The plutocrats will gain more, as Trump reduces taxes for the rich. Democracy is threatened by a vicious circle of plutocratic appeasement.
But Trump does not serve the long-term interests of business corporations, large or small. Plutocratic orgies of tax cutting will be insufficient to assuage their greed. Some will be disturbed by the trade wars and recessions. Others will be bought off by corruption. But a problem with corruption is that it means favours for some but not for others. Corruption further tilts the unlevel playing field of economic competition.
Despite the oligarchs, Biden got elected in 2020. Trump got elected in 2016 but was unable to do much of what he wanted. That has all suddenly changed. The power of the oligarchs is massive, but it is insufficient to explain what is happening.
One of the problems with Marxism is that it tries to make economic forces and relations do too much of the explanatory work. As Marxists sometimes recognise themselves, other factors are important. Trumpism is not explained by economics alone.
Fascism and Nazism
The TV series Mussolini: Son of the Century
raises similar questions. Originally a revolutionary socialist, Mussolini turned to strident nationalism. His symbol, the fasces, symbolised unity and force. For Mussolini, class and other social divisions were to be ended by Fascist rule. No individual or organization could exist outside the state. The state created national unity and impelled imperial ambitions. The powers of the dictator would supersede Italian law. He alone interpreted the will of the people.
Liberals were among his greatest enemies, because they upheld democracy, legal restraints, and moral principles. Liberalism offered a framework to peacefully deal with disagreement and fallibility of judgement. It promoted pluralism and tolerance, rather than unity forced by violence. Mussolini, by contrast to liberalism, wanted to end disagreement and create national unity, under his personal rule.
Similarly for Hitler. Nazism concentrated political power in the hands of a state dominated by a powerful dictator. Hitler’s definition of the German nation was stridently racist and anti-Semitic. Having defined his people, Hitler became sole interpreter of their will. He revived imperial ambitions to provide “living space” for the German people. As with Italian Fascism, the whim of the dictator prevailed over the rule of law.
Ending the rule of law
As Stephen Skinner has pointed out, “the principal components of Fascist legal discourse were claims of state primacy and national rebirth, the vilification of rights and the expression of discriminatory, rhetorical, and misogynistic violence in political debate.”
Alongside his support for Vladimir Putin and his Mafia state, Trump now ticks these fascist boxes. Trump and his allies have constructed an American nationalism with doses of evangelical Christianity, Wild West mythology, wheeling and dealing, white supremacism, and the rejection of scientific knowledge
and expertise. That is enough to create a "national" identity, an “enemy within” and to garner support from racist voters.
The rise of past fascism has no monocausal explanation. The same is true for Trump. Oligarchic power played a role, but on its own it was insufficient. Decades of wage stagnation for the American working class created a huge constituency of populist discontent. But important too is the failure of the US system of public education to broaden mindsets beyond crackpot science, conspiracy theories and national insularities.
The psyche of a leader matters. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
of the American Psychiatric Association defines antisocial personality disorder
(ASPD) as having three or more of the following seven symptoms: (1) regularly breaking or flouting rules or laws, (2) lying and deceiving others, (3) impulsiveness, (4) aggressiveness, (5) disregard for the safety of others, (6) irresponsibility, and (7) lack of remorse or guilt. Another word for a sufferer from ASPD is a psychopath.
Some estimates put psychopaths at roughly three per cent of the human population, with a higher proportion among men than among women. They can appeal to the instincts of others and rise to power in corporate and political hierarchies. Male psychopaths are often sexually promiscuous or coercive. They lack empathy. They act as if rules and laws do not apply to them.
Added together, we have the individual, economic, political and social conditions that place human rights and the rule of law under severe threat. Oligarchy or plutocracy are part of the story. The failure of US political and legal institutions to deal with Trump and his felonies is another relevant issue. The triumph of Trumpism, like that of fascism before it, will be the termination of meaningful democracy, human rights, and the rule of law.
Do you care? You should
Some US plutocrats may not care about that. At least for the time being they are making lots of money. But there is plentiful evidence that the economic prosperity of a nation is inversely related to its level of corruption. The evidence of a positive correlation between the rule of law and economic development
is also strong. The triumph of Trumpism will destroy tried and tested institutions and alliances. And eventually hit everyone, at least in their wallets.
11 March 2025