Neo-Liberal Populism and Democracy Under Siege: Some Thoughts on Trump(ism)

Abstract

This chapter is an update of a piece written in 2017 days before Trump’s inauguration, trying to predict what lay ahead in the next four years. In addition, I provided an analytical and comparative framework for the right-wing populism that Trump exemplified, using scholars such as Marco D’Eramo, John B. Judis, and Corey Robin (The Reactionary Mind). I argued (with Robin) that “the task of right-wing populism [is] to appeal to the mass without disrupting the power of the elites or, more precisely, to harness the energy of the mass in order to reinforce or restore the power of elites,” hence my title neo-liberal populism, since it is responding to a crisis of capitalism. But there is a tension in right-wing populism in that much of their rage is directed against elites (economic and knowledge-based) and their policies. In my update, I will examine these tensions from two perspectives: the increasing use of violence by the ultraright (which has become mainstream), also propelled by a nihilism that implies a dismantling of societal structures that lead to an authoritarian illiberal system or postfascism, as Enzo Traverso defines it. New research by journalists and scholars (Baker and Glasser, Haberman, Naím, Milbank, Wendy Brown, among others) will be incorporated to discuss key moments during the Trump years such as Charlottesville, the COVID pandemic, immigrant children being put in cages, and the January 6th coup attempt.