Advance access to the first draft of a new essay. Comments welcome. Suggestions for a better title, also welcome.
Front-runners don’t necessarily get nominations. Many people now considered political jokes have, at one time or another, been front-runners. Donald Trump isn’t even always the front-runner in the polls these days. Even so, the likelihood is that, all else being equal, he will get the Republican nomination again.
The movers-and-shakers within the GOP want rid of him. So do most of the mid-level people. They talk openly about how he was great but it’s not 2016 anymore, we need someone new, etc. They are hoping to nudge the feeling in the party. But the feeling in the party stays with Trump. The insiders are reduced, as some of them have recently confessed, to waiting for Trump to die.
This is the trap the present-day Republican Party is in. A trap entirely of its own creation and long in the making.
I’ll have to go back a bit.
The neoliberal revolution was economic, political, and cultural. It consisted of mainstreaming profoundly reactionary economic politics and a vast extension of the power not only of corporate capital but also of the capitalist state, which - in rank contradiction of neoliberal rhetoric - became bigger and more powerful. It simply expanded its reach away from regulation of capital and towards regulation of the working class. It became even more carceral and authoritarian than ever before. Even as it privatised and deregulated, even as it demolished the social safety net, it expanded its ability to punish and imprison.
In the late twentieth century, the post-war ‘long boom’ crumbled as a result of the secular tendency towards decline in the profit rate. Even the vast, ongoing government stimulus of Cold War arms spending was failing to pump up the burst tyre. The neoliberal strategy was an attempt by capitalism - unsuccessful in overall, real terms - to restore the profit rate, and the GOP was at the forefront of it with Reaganism, as were the British Tories with Thatcherism.
One of the contradictions of neoliberalism is that, despite being a reactionary counter-revolution, it coincided with - and to an extent caused - the rise of liberal sentiment, and the formation of a new liberal mainstream social ideology.
Part of this was deliberate and conscious. It needed this social liberalisation as a cloak, and later as a foil. As it mainstreamed reaction, neoliberalism also permitted criticism and progress within narrow limits. It utilised a defanged and domesticated, bourgeois-friendly version of the defeated rump radicalism of the 1960s - one of the phenomena it was created to bury.
A classic cultural example of the constitutive contradictions of neoliberalism may be seen in, and stay with me here, The Cosby Show. The show, widely syndicated and a mainstream hit in the 80s (including with white audiences), featured a Black family, on TV, portrayed positively. The family are intelligent, educated, trustworthy, kind, etc. Unimaginable in the US before World War Two. The show has a broadly liberal attitude on social questions. The show thus represents, from some angles, genuine progress. The show was also based on a deep ideology of middle-class respectability, the work ethic, and personal responsibility. It valorised wealth, family, marriage, patriarchy, and a host of other such ‘conservative’ values. The show presented, as both aspirational and already real, a utopian world in which systemic racism and the oppression of Black people barely existed in capitalist America anymore. Where it did exist, it was a shameful aberration. And the central character was played by a serial rapist who, while undoubtedly benefiting from advances in civil rights since the 60s, also owed his long-run of consequence-free misogynistic assault to his wealth, fame, social status, reactionary politics, and friends in high places.
The neoliberal capitalist utopia is one in which the middle class may assimilate people of colour, gay people, etc, in the guise of liberalisation. In this bourgeois paradise of toleration and opportunity, the middle and political classes may assimilate and espouse all manner of egalitarian sentiments. Yet the system is still based on the same structural inequalities and oppressions as ever: capitalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy, etc. The neoliberal capitalist utopia is one in which, for instance, we ignore and extend the horrors of the US justice system while making sure that an exaggerated number of fictional cops and judges on TV are POC, and often tackle storylines about how bad racism is. The largely white beneficiaries of that justice system may choose one of several reactions to this cultural camouflage. They may feel justified in their position by virtue of its basis in supposed liberal progress. The market will sell them any amount of fodder for this feeling. The market will just as readily cater to an alternative reaction born of insecurity: that of feeling threatened by the supposed rise of a dangerous left/liberal propaganda assault. One of the corporate giants ready to sell to this demographic was, and is, the GOP.
The Republican Party is not actually a political party but rather a corporation which sells - via a cultural-media strategy to garner votes and seats - direct influence in government - federal and state - to sectors of US big capital. (The Democratic Party does essentially the same thing but with different strategies and different sectors of capital; thus modern bourgeois ‘democracy’ evolved, winning a darwinian battle of systems to see which could be the most durable for global imperialist capitalism.) The GOP’s most fundamental job is thus to protect US grand bourgeoisie. It does this via pandering to the fears of the US petty bourgeoisie.
The neoliberal counter-revolution resulted in both an extension and a hollowing out of the middle class and the petty bourgeoisie. As the middle layer was bought off, it was also destabilised. Without for a moment giving credence to any liberal idea that we can only understand and combat Trumpism by sympathising with the “economic anxiety” of the fascist petty-bourgeoisie, we can say that the relative insecurity of the middle-class is undoubtedly the distal economic cause of the susceptibility of people in that layer towards reactionary politics. It is an expression of their relative privilege and relative investment. They are below some and above others. They aspire to rise to the ranks of the capitalists and fear to fall into the same pit as the proletariat - especially, in racially-imbricated US capitalism, the Black proletariat. They aspire upwards yet resent those above. They fear their reassimilation back into the working class, be it in absolute or relative terms, be it by their own tumble or the rising of those below them. There is no doubt that this is the basis of fascism everywhere it appears, and this is no less true in America. The archetypal Trump supporter is white and middle class and/or petty bourgeois. The one ideology shared by almost all attendees at the January 6th coup-attempt was belief in the ‘Great Replacement’. They are worried that the immigrants and marxists, enabled by Democrats, are coming to take away their tanning salons and pool-cleaning companies. Or they’re cops whose social position is based on protection of private property and intertwined white supremacy. Or whatever. Imagine your own variations and elaborations.
The result of this is a voting base ripe for the GOP to exploit: relatively privileged within the system of white-supremacist settler-colonial imperialist capitalism, yet also constantly aware of the precarity of its own position, and constantly alarmed by the rise of ideas which seemingly threaten it.
And so the Republicans spent decades stoking and coddling reactionary ideas so extreme they may legitimately be called fascist or fascistic or proto-fascist or whatever you like. We all know about the Southern Strategy. You can’t say n-word anymore; so you say forced bussing and inner-city crime. Then you say affirmative action and welfare queens and political correctness. Generations of American politicians, on both sides of the aisle that divides the two wings of America’s pro-capitalist single party system, have done this. The trouble waiting for the GOP was that for the Democrats it was one aspect of their PR strategy. The Republicans never really had any other game.
And every time the Republicans stoked and coddled such white supremacist politics in their base, they extended and deepened that politics. Even as it shrank in terms of real numbers, it radicalised to compensate. They had started an inflationary spiral. The same spiral made it necessary for them to radicalise to compensate, to keep pace. And yet, in order to keep the US political system running coherently, they also had to stick - at least formally - to the agreed-upon rules of decorum, and to obey - at least formally - the rise of liberal sentiment which paradoxically accompanied the neoliberal economic, political, and cultural counter-revolution.
The Republicans did more than anyone in the world to further this counter-revolution. They weaponized the insecurity it caused in their base. They did so via code that kept themselves within the agreed-upon lines. But the very act of performing this maneuvre caused it to destabilise. The very act of utilising the anxieties and prejudices of their base caused their base to become more anxious, prejudiced, and radical. Their own failure to ever fully deliver on any of the promises they made to their base about the fears and hates they stoked in their base caused their base to become frustrated with them. They said forced bussing and inner-city crime. They said affirmative action and welfare queens and political correctness. They say wokism and CRT and cancel culture and gender ideology. And their audience know they are actually saying the n-word and its cognates. But that is not enough for the audience. The audience - partly rightly and partly wrongly - take this shell game at face value, see their representatives coded language as evidence of cowardice, of insufficient radicalism. They want the real stuff. They want the representatives who will not use the code, who will say the n-word.
Hence, Trump.
Oceans of ink have been spilled over the appeal Trump had for a sector of the American public. The ultimate, banal truth is that he said the quiet part loud. And, to an audience raised in, and frustrated by what we could call the ‘quiet part strategy’, this seemed like - at last! - sincerity, and validation.
Trump’s had other attributes, of course: his stumbling charisma, his media profile, his supposed mega-wealth, his ostensible outsider status, etc. He had these markers of superiority which some could find aspirational. And he has another trait which his audience can simultaneously find relatable and validatory: he is essentially one of his own audience. He is every bit as much a confused bourgeois boomer, a Fox News and Facebook grampa, as his archetypal fan.
But the ultimate appeal is that he will actually say it.
It might be objected that he has not actually said the n-word, at least not in public. But he has come close on countless occasions. Shithole countries. Grab em by the pussy. Etc. And, of course, his audience don’t actually want to hear the n-word. True products of the neoliberal cultural counter-revolution, they want - in their own way - to think of themselves as virtuously non-racist. But they want to know for certain that he, Trump, is thinking what they’re thinking. They are sick and tired of the ambiguity left even by such entities as Cruz. That’s why Trump’s incredibly simple platform - Mexican immigrants are rapists, the Muslim ban, build the wall, lock her up - worked so well for them. He gave them an explicit version of the hints the GOP has been feeding them for years. To them, the GOP looked like cowards who wouldn’t and couldn’t go all the way towards fulfilling the desires they were encouraging. Trump, meanwhile, came in and gave voice to their frustration with the eternal hinters.
Trump led the base in a hijack of the Republican Party. He didn’t impose alien values. This is still your grandfather’s Republican Party. What he did was to impose the values the Republican Party has long used to activate their pool of voters. His innovation was to communicate to those voters the idea that, instead of simply voting on those values every year, they should and could actually expect those values to be imposed on America as a whole in their entirety. Trump’s promise was the promise of ending the seemingly eternal cycle of encouraging and then postponing the dreams of the base, of providing an escape from the trap of right-wing utopia endlessly deferred so the GOP can always count on your vote next time.
The archetype is Roe vs. Wade. For decades, Republicans were happy to use actual or implied opposition to legal abortion as a flagship cause. For decades, despite chipping away at abortion rights, Republicans in federal power never actually tried to take the big step. This worked to keep reactionary Christians in the US voting Republican. In order to keep this trick working, Republicans had to deepen and radicalise anti-abortion rhetoric. Even their piecemeal nibbling away at legal abortion fuelled the escalation. And yet their ‘failure’ to go all the way created a slow-building frustration. Eventually, the impatient base started showing signs of being unable to wait any longer. They would not indefinitely be able to dangle the promise without ever fulfilling it. Now, the far-right present Supreme Court - created by fanatical far-right believers with lots of Federalist Society dark money, via Trump - has pulled the trigger. The result is that the GOP has partly lost a signature issue in the culture war. The base are, of course, still not satisfied. But they are likely inclined to see real progress stemming from Trump, shaming the eternal empty rhetoric of mainstream Republicans. At the same time, the US public are largely against curtailment of abortion rights, which almost certainly played a role in denying the GOP their expected ‘red wave’ in the mid-terms. The Republicans have, through years of tantalising their base to make them loyal, pitched themselves into an incipiently existential paradox. They need their base more than ever in a world where the US public at large is pissed at them over Roe vs. Wade. At the same time, their base is inclined to credit the GOP’s poisoned chalice - Trump and Trumpism - rather than the GOP itself. This is just one element among many similar ones of the backlash against RINOs, of which Trump has taken full advantage.
If Trump gets the Republican nomination, and runs against Biden, the indications are that he will lose again. This will be fine for him. His narcissism will make it impossible for him to not run, yet his narcissism can be cushioned by repeating the election fraud myth, which is now integral to Trumpism anyway. In the absence of legal consequences for his many crimes, Trump will be able to monetise and politicise another loss. (I take no stance on whether the various criminal investigations supposedly closing in on him will ever actually reach him, or whether he will always outrun them like the tortoise in a kind of legal Zeno’s Paradox.)
There is a lot of speculation that, should he fail to achieve the Republican nomination, Trump will run as a third party candidate. It is possible that he will. If he does, he will set up his own party. Let’s say he does. Let’s call the new party America First.
America First will not win a general election. America First will split the anti-Democrat vote. America First will ensure Biden’s reelection. This is why many people are hoping for just this scenario. I think people should be careful what they wish for.
If America First comes into being, it might instantly have several well-known politicians as representatives in government. I find it all too easy to imagine Lindsay Graham defecting. It would instantly have a presence in local and state government right across America. It would instantly have a high profile. It would instantly have a former President as its presidential candidate. It would instantly have a network of grassroots activists. It would, all optimistic ideas of the media having learned their lesson aside, have extensive coverage. This scenario might even be attractive to some in the GOP. It might hold out the prospect of the MAGA elements within - now a millstone in many ways - auto-purging themselves.
The classic pattern of a fascist takeover is that the fascist party grows to the point where it is big enough to be a kind of kingmaker in a deadlocked representative democratic system, and the conservative elites of that system, threatened by chaos and/or growing left political feeling, adopt the fascists, help them into power, hoping to control them and use them as a bulwark, only to find that the fascist party out-maneuvres them and ejects them. This has not yet happened in the United States, but it seems to have happened - on a micro level, as it were - within the Republican Party. The MAGA conquest of the Republican Party may not be absolutely complete, however. MAGA might still split away. The role of a pre-established third party might look like an advantageous evolutionary move.
In other words, those with a longer view on both ‘sides’ of the GOP might see an upside for them in such a chaotic split.
The end result would not be a Trump presidency and America First in government. It is possible, however, that it might leave the US as a three party system. America would now have three parties - a centrist liberal party (right-wing in real terms), a far-right party, and a more-or-less outright fascist party. The fascist party would be considerably smaller than the other two. But it would be there. It would be a fact of life.
This may be how the slow quantitative build-up of the process within late stage capitalism of a ‘fascist creep’ tips over into a qualitative break.
Liberals rejoice over the idea that Trump and Trumpism, and their hold on the Republican Party, are drawing towards their terminus. And they may be right.
However.
In recent interviews, Trump has given indications that he still has a firm grasp of populism.
“We’re not cutting Social Security,” Trump told Breitbart after the mid-terms. “It’s very simple. It’s a simple answer. We’re not cutting Social Security.”
“I think a lot of Republicans didn’t handle the abortion question properly,” said Trump in the same interview. “I think if you don’t have the three exceptions, it’s almost impossible in most parts of the country to win.”
Trump still has his innate grasp of how to fuse far-right politics, expressed with just the right amount of openness versus just the right amount of obscurity, with populist rhetoric which steals the thunder of what passes for the left in America.
This is a firm basis for an American fascist party which wants to garner actual electoral success. And whatever you say about the two party system, it has acted on a block on third parties for a long time. That was, of course, part of the point of it. That was part of why the system evolved that way. So that it could block any form of left reformism in America. But through its own structural traps and constitutive contradictions as an expression of American capitalism and class, it has laid itself open to the rise of a populist far-right. And America First, the new Trumpist fascist party, would be positioned to grow until it could make exactly the kinds of deals of convenience that we historically see at the start of every pre-existing fascist regime. Nor would the Republican Party be in any way averse to such deals on an inherent level, its quarrel with MAGA being solely derived from strategic issues. We’ve already seen how the GOP adopts and adapts itself to a fascistic movement when it feels it can use it to gain power. We saw that in 2016.
Those weary and wary Republican mid-levellers are right: it’s not 2016 any more. No, it’s worse. We are further down the trajectory 2016 put us on. We are nearer the dialectical tipping point.
Some of the overly blithe commentators on the left are also right: Trump is symptom rather than cause. That doesn’t mean that Trump can’t still be a catalyst. The future is not set. But it’s coming.