What does Trump's triumph mean for the left - or what's left of it?
When the Bolsheviks were forced to introduce a “new economical policy” in 1922 allowing a larger share of the marketplace economy and private property, Lenin wrote a short text entitled About climbing a advanced mountain. It describes the situation of the climber, who must go back to zero, to the ft of the mountain from which he originally set out to gain a fresh summit. This comparison illustrates the destiny of those who gotta give way to the field, but without betraying religion in the rightness of the Cause. Communists, “who do not give in to hope, who, with unchanging strength and momentum, proceed to start from the beginning, trying to cope with a very hard task many times, are not doomed.”
This is Lenin in his possibly most Beckett edition, in which echoes of verses from Worstward Ho"Try again. Miss again. Miss better." specified a Leninist approach is needed especially now, erstwhile communism appears to be the only way to tackle current challenges, from climate to war to artificial intelligence – and the left (or what is left of it) can no longer mobilise people around a reasonable alternative. With Trump's victory, the left peaked at zero.
However, before we start to dive into the phrases about Trump's triumph, it is worth paying attention to any crucial details, and above all to the fact that Trump did not win more votes compared to 2020 erstwhile he lost to Biden. It was Kamala Harris who lost about 10 million votes compared to Biden. So it is not a "trumpling victory", it is simply a clear defeat of Harris, and all left-wing critics should first hit their chests properly.
It is besides worth realizing the unpleasant fact: immigrants, especially from Latin countries, are naturally conservative. They came to the US not to change this country, but to win in the strategy – or, as Todd McGowan put it, "They want to guarantee a better life for themselves and their household alternatively than improvement social order."
So I don't think Harris lost due to the fact that she's a female of skin colour another than white. (Remember that a fewer weeks ago black Kemi Badenoch was triumphantly elected as the fresh leader of British Conservatives.) I believe that the main reason for her failure is that Trump advocated politics; that both he and his supporters behaved like committed politicians – while Harris She advocated for the indifference.
Kamala Harris' position on many issues specified as medical care or abortion was fundamentally acceptable. However, Trump and his supporters repeatedly, loudly and distinctly repeated the thesis openly radical, while she Avoided like a fire of hard declarations, proposing truly empty clichés. Just mention how she got distant with taking a clear stance on the Gaza War, Losing support Not only extremist Zionists, but besides many young and Muslim voters.
The Democrats did not learn from Trump's camp that radicalism and even extremism work in exuberant political clashes. In her speech after the losing election, Harris assured: “These words are addressed to the young people listening to me: it is average for you to feel sad and disappointed, but remember, everything will be fine.” No, it will not be fine, we should not trust future past that they will someway reconstruct a broken balance. With Trump's victory, the trend which in many European countries brought the fresh populist right to power has reached its peak.
Trump, trying to capture Harris, called her “someone worse than Biden” and not a socialist even, but a communist. It's a sad sign of our time erstwhile Someone takes her worldview for communism. This is simply a misunderstanding, which is besides seen in another frequently repeated populist slogan: "People are tired of the governments of the utmost left". I think it's hard to get more absurd. fresh populists call (still) the hegemonic liberal order "the utmost left". No, this is not an utmost left-wing order, but only a progressive-liberal center that is much more curious in fighting the left (or what is left of it) than winning with the fresh right. If what we have in the West present is “extremely left-wing government”, this would mean that Ursula von der Leyen is simply a Marxist-communist (which she rather openly claims Viktor Orbán).
The fresh populist right throws communism and corporate capitalism into 1 bag. However, the actual nature of these opposites must be seen elsewhere. About 8 years ago I was criticized for calling Trump a liberal in the purest form – didn't I see Trump was just a bossy fascist? My critics did not realize me at the time: 1 cannot describe Trump better than calling him a liberal, or more specifically a liberal fascist.
Trump is the eventual proof that liberalism and fascism go hand in hand, that they are 2 sides of the same medal. There is more than an authoritarian: he dreams of loosening the cugli marketplace in the most destructive way, from violent speculation to removing all ethical restrictions in public media (in relation to sexism and racism) as a manifestation of "socialism".
David Goldman commented on the election consequence with the words “Economy, fool!” but, as he adds, the relation is not direct here. The main indicators propose that the economy was alternatively good behind Biden, although inflation seriously hit the poor. So the question remains, why did the vast majority of voters consider their economical situation tragic? Here an ideology enters the phase – not only ideology in terms of concepts and assumptions, but besides ideology in a more basic sense of how political discourse affects social ties.
Aaron Schuster noted that Trump is “a super-present leader whose authority is based on his own will, who openly expresses contempt for knowledge, and his rebellious anti-system theatre serves as a point of identification”. That is why Trump's serial insults and insolent lies, not to mention the fact that he is simply a convicted criminal, work in his favor—the ideological triumph of Trump stems from the fact that his supporters view obedience to him as a show of subversive resistance, or, as quoted behind Todd McGowan: “It is possible with absolute devotion to support a freshly baked fascist leader, at the same time feeling 100% radical. And this is an attitude that serves to maximize the origin of satisfaction.”
At this point we should callback the Freudian concept of "the theft of pleasure": the pleasance felt by another, out of our scope (the pleasance of a female unavailable to men, the pleasance of 1 cultural group not available to our group...), as well as our legitimate pleasure, which is being stolen from us by another or which the another threatens.
Russell Sbriglia notes that this aspect of “pleasure theft” played a key function in the storm conducted by Trump's supporters at Capitol on January 6, 2021: “It is hard to exemplify the logic of pleasance theft better than Trump's mantra, which they chanted during the attack on Capitol: “Stop the steal!”. halt the robbery! Hedonist carnival assault on CapitolTo halt this robbery, he accompanied this effort to insure himself by accident. Since it was primarily about regaining the pleasance that the another in the nation (black, Mexicans, Muslims, LGBTQ+ people, etc.) stole from them, the carnival component was absolutely essential."
On January 6, 2021, a coup effort took place on the Capitol, but a carnival that could be seen as a model of progressive protest movements. Protests are carnival, not only due to form and atmosphere – theatrical appearances, humorous singing, but besides due to decentralised organization.
So a profoundly problematic thought arises: is the late capitalist social reality itself not carnival? Is it disgraceful? Kristallnacht In 1938, half-organized, half-spontaneous outbreak of violent attacks on judaic houses, synagogues, service facilities and Jews themselves, was not carnival in its purest form? Moving on, is "carnaise" besides not the hideous side of power, manifested during collective rapes and mass lynchings? callback that in his book on Rabelais by Mikhail Bachtin in the 1930s, he created a carnival concept that was a direct reaction to the Stalinist carnival.
The contrast between Trump's authoritative ideological message ("conservative values") and the kind of his public speeches (saying more or little what spit on his tongue will bring, insulting others, breaking all the principles of the decorum) speaks a lot about our troublesome situation: here we live in a planet where bombing public opinion with simple and indecent statements is presented in itself as the last barrier protecting us from the triumph of a society in which everything is allowed, and old values go distant into oblivion.
As Alenka Zupančič claims, Trump is not a relic of the old moral conservatism of the majority; rather, it is simply a caricatural, inverted image of the postmodern “permissive society”, the effect of the antagonisms and interior restrictions in this society. Adrian Johnston repeats after Jak Lacan: "The return of the oppressed sometimes constitutes the most effective kind of repression". It's most likely the most concise definition of Trump's character.
When Freud spoke of perversion, everything in it was suppressed. This suppressed content only after time came out with full filth. However, the return of the oppressed only strengthens the oppression – and that is why there is nothing liberating in Trump's filth, they only service to intensify social oppression and mystification. Trump's simple performances are so a manifestation of the falsity of his populism: brutally simplifying, pretending to care about average people at the same time, working for large capital.
And how do you realize the unusual fact that Donald Trump, person vulgar and without inhibition, or the exact other of Christian decency, can function as The Selection of Christian Conservatives?
The most common explanation is that Christian conservatives are well aware of Trump's problematic personality, but they chose to ignore this aspect, due to the fact that what truly matters to them is his program, especially his anti-abortion views. If he manages to complete the ultimate Court with conservative judges, the ban on abortion (or more specifically: the deficiency of a statutory right to abortion at national level) will be concreted for years – and Trump will destruct all his sins.
But is it truly that simple? And if this dualism in Trump's personality, or on the 1 hand his declared morality, and on the another hand the simplicity and vulgarity in the individual dimension, are just what the Christian conservatives like about it? possibly they're secretly identifying with his dualism, his hypocrisy.
This would mean, however, that we should not take our media flooded images presenting a typical Trump supporter as a simple fanatic. On the contrary, most of his electorate are average people who seem decent, express themselves simply, calmly and rationally. It's like in Trump's person, they yet see their own madness and their own modesty, which they don't dare show.
A fewer years ago, Trump was compared not very flatteringly to a man who defecates himself loudly in the corner of the hall during an alcohol-filled banquet of higher spheres. However, the same can be said of many leading politicians in the world. Did Erdoğan not give in to public defecation erstwhile in his paranoid explosions he called out critics of their policy towards the Kurds From traitors and abroad agents? Didn't Putin publically excrement erstwhile he threatened the critic with his Chechen medical policy castration (in a calculated manifestation of public modesty intended to conquer his popularity in the country)? That... Boris Johnson. I won't mention it.
Coming out of our ideological space obscenity background (most simplistic: that from now on we can talk openly in a racist, sexist, anti-Semitic or Islamophobic way), this is in a way that until late was reserved for the private sphere), does not mean that the times of pretending have ended and ideology has begun playing open cards. On the contrary: where the public sphere is overflowing with obscenity, ideological mystification flourishes: as you can see from your hand, what is actually played for on a political, economical and ideological level. Public obsceneness always develops on the basis of hidden morality, and those who hotel to it are secretly convinced that they are fighting for a cause. And that's the level they request to be attacked.
Let us callback how many times liberal media announced that Trump had compromised himself and committed public harakiri (for example, he mocked the parents of a dead war hero, boasted that he was groping women in intimate places, etc.). Arrogant liberal commentators were shocked that their continuous bite attacks on Trump's vulgar racist and sexist performances, his deception of facts and his babbling of economical nonsense, etc., not only did they not harm him, but they even seem to make him attractive to the public. They did not realize how the mechanics of identifying works: in rule we identify with the weaknesses of others, not only or not in the first place with their qualities, so the more they mocked Trump's limitations, the more average people identified with him, the more they perceived the attacks on him as mocking attacks on themselves.
The subliminal message of Trump's vulgar behavior, addressed to average people, was, “I am 1 of you!” – with average Trump supporters constantly feeling humiliated by the patronized liberal elite, which Alenka Zupančič summed up with a neat message that “the highly mediocre are fighting for the highly rich, which is clearly seen in Trump's victory. And the left only scolds and insults them."
Although, in fact, the left does something far worse: patronisingly, it “understands” the failure and blindness of the poor. This left-wing liberal arrogance erupted in its purest form in the fresh talk-show genre of a political-comedio-publicist character (Jon Stewart, John Oliver...), programs emanating from the liberal intellectual elite, as Stephen March mentioned in the "LA Times":
"Trump parody is at best a temporary distraction from its real policy and at worst a turn of the full policy into gag. This process has nothing to do with artists, authors or their artistic decisions. Trump based his candidacy on the performances of a comical nature – for decades this has been his pop culture image. It is simply impossible to pararode effectively individual who consciously performs autopararody and who has become president of the United States thanks to specified performances."
The problem is not that Trump is simply a clown, but that behind his provocations is simply a program, and in this madness is simply a method. Trump's sleazy and vulgar behaviour (and others) is part of their populist strategy to sale to average people a program that (at least in the long term) is detrimental to these people: reducing taxes for the richest, reducing medical care, eliminating statutory workers' rights, withdrawing environmental government and so on. Unfortunately, people are willing to swallow a lot if it is presented with crude laughter and under the appearance of solidarity.
The irony of Trump's MAGA task is that it is actually going the exact other way, pushing the US towards countries specified as Brazil, Russia, India and China. 1 EU diplomat rightly pointed out that after Trump's victory, it is hard to talk of Europe as a "little younger sister" of the United States. Will Europe find the strength to argue the MAGA ideology of what could be called the MEGA project: restoring Europe's greatness by resuscitation of its extremist liberation legacy?
From Trump's triumph comes a lesson rather different from what many liberal leftists say: the left (or what's left of it) should halt being afraid of losing the votes of the centre electorate, if this 1 sees it as besides utmost a group, and must express itself distinguishing itself from the "progressive" liberal center with its corporateism in the woke style. This, of course, involves a risk: a three-party division may prevail in the state, where no large coalition will be possible. However, if we want to decision forward, we cannot do without taking risks.
Hegel claimed that a recurring historical event thus manifests its necessity. erstwhile Napoleon lost and was exiled to Elba in 1813, his defeat may have seemed random: he would have won if he had a better conflict strategy. However, erstwhile he returned to power and lost at Waterloo, it became clear that his era had come to an end that his failure was due to a deeper historical necessity. The same applies to Trump: his first triumph could have been dropped on the carbs of tactical errors, but since he won again, it became clear that Trump with his populism was an expression of historical necessity.
A sad conclusion is so imposed. Many commentators anticipate Trump's governments to be accompanied by new, shocking, catastrophic events, but the worst script is that no major shocks will occur: Trump will effort to end ongoing wars (for example, effort to bring peace to Ukraine on his own), the economy will stay as stable, the tensions will be relaxed, life will continue. However, very many solutions at national and state level will constantly undermine the Liberal-Democratic Pact, thereby changing the basic structure of the US, a set of unwritten customs and principles of kindness, truthfulness, social solidarity, respect for women's rights, etc.
This fresh planet will put on a feather of fresh normality. And in this sense, Trump's regulation can lead to the end of the planet – the end of what is most precious in our civilization.
From English she translated Dorota Blabolil-Obrębska.
