Trump/ism and Conjunctural Analysis
The lasting effects of the unresolved financial and economic crisis that began with the bursting of the US housing bubble in 2007 and the ongoing global crisis of accumulation have led to the re-emergence in public discourse of the idea that capitalism could end. For those who believe that “there is no alternative,” it gave way to a latent sense of a crisis of civilization. For many, it was proof of the notion that capitalist modernity has an intrinsic tendency towards crisis. While this regenerated socialist and communist hopes of capitalism’s ultimate demise, the virtually unchallenged hegemony of neoliberal governance gave way to a massive wave of right wing populist and neofascist reaction.
Since the 2016 American elections the focus has predictably turned away from Bernie Sanders and Occupy to the spectacle of Donald J. Trump. The rise of Trumpism in many ways mirrors the rise of Bonapartism that Karl Marx analyzed in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, showing how class struggle itself “create´d circumstances and relationships that made it possible for a grotesque mediocrity to play a hero’s part” (Marx1985: 57).
read here
Foto: Bernhard Weber