As a Brit it is fascinating to watch the political scene in the USA. I am very familiar with the USA having worked on the East Coast as a dishwasher and the West Coast as a teacher. Then my daughter worked in the South for a number of years and we would visit and travel.
As a Rock Music aficionado I have followed the Blues trail and visited the homes of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Country, Cajun, R&B, Soul and Jazz. Fabulous.
What is immediately obvious to me is the way that Trump has seized upon the fear and anxiety of Americans to whip them up into a frenzy of hate and division. It’s what populists do.
He has focused on the fear of losing jobs (as the old industries of coal, steel, oil and gas are replaced with modern technology) and promised people to hang on to the dying industry.
He has focused on the huge increase in immigration (caused by war, economic exploitation and global warming) and demonized the immigrants.
He has deliberately homed in on religious extremism, targeting the right-wing evangelicals to bring them on side, and whipping up hate against Muslims. He is offering the evangelicals what they want on subjugation of women, removal of reproductive rights and putting ten commandments into schools.
He’s focused on the love of weapons – promoting the NRA and opposing any changes in the insane gun laws (he was nearly a victim of his own stupidity).
This means that he is a denier of climate change, a promoter of walls, aligned with racists and white supremacists, aligned with armed right-wing militia, aligned with right-wing evangelicals, opposed to the logic and rationality of science, and opposed to liberalization (mislabeled as woke) and aligned with the poor blue collar workers fearful for their jobs and terrified of immigrants. It’s an unholy alliance of factions and beliefs.
Of course, he doesn’t agree with half of this shit. It’s all about power and wealth. He brings people on board with promises in order to get elected. When in office he sets about securing the mechanisms of state so that he cannot be ousted (like all authoritarians leaders that he so admires – Putin, Xi, Yong Un, Lukashenko) and sets about lining his pockets (tax cuts to the rich, business ventures – making a fortune out of MAGA merchandise). He makes token gestures to keep his disparate MAGA factions in line (walls, guns, disbanding science, passing reproductive laws against women, investing in oil, gas and steel, bringing in tariffs, etc).
Then, having secured his base, he promotes division – ridiculing anybody from ‘the other side’ and lying. Like the Nazis in the 1930s he encourages violence. At his rallies he encourages hecklers to be beaten up. If anybody challenges his lies he threatens court action. He downplays gun violence and promotes gun ownership and the right to kill. He actively incited an armed attack on the government – in effect a coup – to regain power and lied about the election result – ridiculously claiming it was stolen.
The irony is that when he very nearly gets assassinated he tries to turn this on the Democrats, accusing them of stirring up hatred and demonizing.
With the objective eye of an outsider I view Trump as a classic populist fascist who uses nationalism, patriotism, racism, misogyny, fear of immigrants and fear of job losses, to gain power.
The promotion of violence is all Trump!
