Abstract:
Among the many surprises of the 2016 presidential election was the large number of former Obama supporters who voted for Trump. This undermines one thesis (namely that the rise of Trumpism is nothing more than the triumph of racial resentment), but it also raises other questions, not the least of which concerns ideological consistency. It would seem that a large slice of the American electorate is brutally pragmatic in looking for an outside candidate, someone willing to ‘take on Washington’, some – one who can shake things up, a person who can ‘disrupt the system’. Clearly this motivation isn’t apolitical. Like other ideologies from right to left, its current form contains a vision of the past and the present, articulates an aim for the future (Make America Great Again) and plots a rough set of points that show us the path there. At the same time, there is something disturbingly different about Trumpism, some thing that sets it apart from most familiar ideologies. I say most here because, as will become clear shortly, there are some ominous points of contact between what I will call the ideology of disruption on the one hand, and fascism on the other. I believe it is not alarmist to call attention to these points of contact. We have not arrived at a point where this ideology has morphed into a nihilistic cult of death. The warning flags are up, however. The danger is clear.
Details / PDF:
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