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Donald Trump defeated Democrat candidate Kamala Harris in one of American history’s most acerbically contested presidential elections. This was a bitterly fought election in a divided and fractured nation. The election result has a bearing on both the domestic and international fronts. Internationally, the world is going through a major transition and is in the throes of two major wars. Russia is locked in a fierce battle with Ukraine, and the world has witnessed the pulverisation of Gaza by Israel and its multi-front war with Iran and its proxies.
The US president, as the most powerful person on the earth, a change in guard might have far-reaching consequences in these wars. All eyes will be on Trump as the new president as he promised to end the Ukraine war within 24 hours of assuming the presidency. However, it is easier said than done. On the domestic front, this victory is far more consequential, and this is the subject matter of this article. What domestic factors and social and political crises have helped in the rise of Trumpism as a phenomenon? How Trump exploited those frailties of US body politics.
The 2016 Trump victory was termed a mere aberration in the long tradition of US democratic history; however, this decisive victory demands fresh introspection about the current state of US body politics. Trump’s unconventional style and the issues he raked up during his election campaign were scoffed at by the dominant and mainstream media in the US.
However, the issues he raised resonated with the working middle class, who felt left behind economically in neoliberalism and the hyper-globalisation policy of the US mainstream. Culturally, this working-class group is at odds with the globalist liberal elite of cultural-leftism. This cultural left is seen as a threat to core American values.
Ills of Hyper-Liberalism
At the core of the current social and political division of US domestic politics is the overstretching of the liberal idea of ‘individualism’ and its extreme appropriation by both left and right political groups. The idea of liberalism and its core value of ‘individual autonomy’ are stretched to their extremity by both the left and right parties in America.
On the right, ‘individual autonomy’ is primarily conceived as the right to do business activities without the state’s interference. In the last decade of the 20th century, this notion of unbridled economic liberalism manifested in neoliberalism and market fundamentalism. The market was projected as a solution to all the social and economic problems, and the state as a roadblock in the full utilisation of the economic potential of society. In a way, the market was deemed to be a panacea for all social and economic problems.
The US gradually shifted from being a “state with an economy” to being an “economy with a state” where all areas of society are assessed by their economic utility. Erstwhile ideas of mixing free trade with welfare programs and social responsibilities of the state jettisoned in the name of rolling back the state.
This resulted in ‘grotesque equality’ in the country. According to Professor Danny Quah of the National University of Singapore, America is the only major developed society where the average income of the bottom 50 per cent has declined since 1980. No developed country has seen this trend of where the poor systematically become poorer.
In a bid to keep maintaining profitability, low-skilled manufacturing jobs were outsourced to East Asian countries, rendering mass industrial unemployment. This resulted in the deindustrialisation of the US and has adverse economic and social effects on middle classes.
Even the pressing societal issue of demographic decline is primarily seen as an economic problem that can be remedied through mass immigration. Such immigration over the years led to a backlash against immigrants in the wake of rising inequality among citizens. This was seen as a double whammy: deindustrialisation and immigration. Trump cashed in on this resentment among the working class to garner support in his favour. Taming illegal immigration and constructing a wall on the southern border was his poll plank, as in his previous campaign to exploit resentment of the working class.
The political left, which has the historical role of checking unwieldy capitalism in liberal democracy, employed the liberal value of ‘individual autonomy’ to raise the issue of lifestyle choices and values. They are now seen as representative of minorities based on ethnicity, gender, race, etc, rather than class, which they ideologically represent.
Economic marginalisation and inequality, traditionally the core concern of the left, took a back seat, and they zoomed in on the cultural aspects of minorities. This excessive focus on cultural aspects of identity has evolved into modern-day identity politics. But as an individual carries multiple identities, for an African American, economic distress might be a far more pressing issue in an election.
One cannot be sure that a particular identity will always drive him/her. This leads to the ‘miniaturisation’ of political society and makes conflict more likely, as people identify only with their monoculture and fail to act as responsible citizens. An excessive focus on exclusive cultural identity leads to a divided society deprived of a common minimum agenda, such as demand for economic well-being.
Ideally, in the state of rising inequality, the focus of the political left should have been on the middle working class in American society. This shift from economic left to cultural left in American politics gave rise to right-wing populism. Right-wing populist hectoring of core American values and lifestyle is essentially directed against the cultural left. Trump’s position against LGBTQ and on the issue of abortion is to exploit fear of the conservative white middle class.
In the prevailing political environment, there was fertile ground for the rise of populist leaders. Trump is a product of this extremist application of the core of liberalism. There is frustration among the population against the political elite and the workings of the American establishment, where voters do not determine the decisions of the US Congress. They are largely determined by interest groups and political campaign funders. Social responsibility of the state in the US began to wither as the political left eschewed the politics of economic distribution, and the political right sought a solution to social problems only in economics.
Like any other populist leader, Trump embraced the rhetoric of a growing disconnect between the interests of the elites and those of the common man. Societies appear to be split between the cosmopolitan elites and traditionalist masses. Trump blamed elites’ narrow self-interest-driven politics for the misery of the American working-class populace. He created a narrative of globalist vs nationalist.
In international affairs, Trump’s policy stance is more protectionist economically, non-interventionist militarily, and isolationist diplomatically than the United States has been since World War II. It is now widely believed that Biden and his policy choices were an aberration for the four years of Biden as president. Trumpism is here to stay and will remain a mainstay of American politics in the foreseeable future. Even the Democrats will have to adopt the policy of the European left-of-the-centre on the issue of immigration and the economy, which have been appropriated from the rightist camp in Europe. In sum, Trumpism will survive even if Trump is not there.
Amitabh Singh teaches at the Centre for Russian and Central Asian Studies, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. Ankur is a doctoral candidate at the JNU. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.
