I think some intellectuals in academe remain in argument with the neoliberalism that paved way to and arguably enabled Trumpism, rather than contending with Trumpism as related but a new and even more dangerous formation.
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This has been in the works for 30+ years. And all the shit we are dealing a today can be traced to Leonard Leo and his Catholic Integralism. He had help, but none of the shit happened without Leo extreme Catholic judges.
This has been fought on several fronts. I was in a proto-NAR group which mainstreamed a synthesis of Dominionism and Christian Reconstructionism via C Peter Wagner (b4 then they were the shocktroops of the Christian Right in the 80s). Jeff is right in that Trumpism is a new variant.
Speaking of which, did you happen to attend Seth Moulton’s discussion about the Democratic Party at Dartmouth’s Rockefeller Center for Public Policy this week?
So, we're about to see the extreme poverty, widespread homelessness, militarized & politicized police, despoiled resources, & exploitation of desperate people taken for granted in countries that are victims of the neoliberal world order.
What makes US so special -- did we think ourselves immune?
More of an instance of genetic shift than simple drift, but related. The path is always easier to see looking backward. The pace of abdication and institutional collapse is frightening.
The fundamental trouble is neoliberalism and fascism are very different things, and lots of people who are investing in the "neoliberalism is bad" fundamentally cannot see how Trump and fascism is an extraordinary break from neoliberalism.
To my mind, all bets are off, and circumstances have overtaken theory. But many popular academics don’t seem to have gotten the memo. I so wish you would name names, but I guess that wouldn’t be civil?
Not worried about civility, but that wouldn’t be relevant. It’d create a narrative of bad apples, which always serves to obscure problems with the orchard.
Decades of theory dedicated to decoding the euphemisms & deceptions of neoliberalism suddenly made moot or less relevant by a regime that proclaims its fascism openly.
Such theory remains valuable, no doubt, as a historical method & as an analysis of one of the means by which some liberals will evade or acquiesce to the moment.
I’ve encountered others, far fewer, who seem to see in the moment an opportunity to crush liberalism once & for all, to achieve a binary conflict between the “left”—varieties subsumed—& fascism.
I recently started reading Sinclair Lewis's novel "Babbitt". Christo-fascism, profound racism, terror of socialism and immigrants, and of course both sexism AND fear of emasculation all figure so prominently that it could read as a primer for Project 2025. It was written in 1920.
This thread is necessarily reductive and comes with the caveat that I’m not a theorist. I’m trying here only to think in very broad terms about what I see as a *minor* strain within left academic intellectualism that’s seemingly resistant to anti-fascist coalitionism
Ah, yes. The part of academic life I miss least - those who see everything as a chance to forward their own particular grand unified theory rather than respond in the moment, because it is far more important to be ‘right’ than to be effective.
I mean, huge parts of the world are still governed by neoliberal systems, probably “almost all”, even.
I love me some leftism and think that we’re at an inflection point vis-a-vis capitalism and nationalism, but I think “crushing” global neoliberalism in the near term is a tall order.
Domestically I see more of Their (your?) point tho — I certainly don’t think we should demand any sort of purity from the coalition against fascism, but the ongoing failure of the dems is an undeniable opportunity to build a socialist political party with some real muscle in the US.
I think calling what Musk/Trump are doing Fascism isn't accurate either. It's more like Techno-Feudalism, Trump sees himself as a king rather than a dictator. The news about the tech bros and network cities smacks more of feudalism. Yanis Varoufakis has been talking on this for a few years now.
The tactics developed by what the Powell memo wrought all the way through the Gingrich speakership definitely helped seed a lot of a particular kind of disinformation that softened a lot of ground.
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https://medium.com/@thcarter123/the-christofascist-coup-jan-20-2025-977f61616f39
https://bsky.app/profile/isaleshko.bsky.social/post/3lirrcc3dwc2f
Trumpism is when neoliberalism is foisted on US, as it was always ultimately intended to be.
Is it really more dangerous or is it only now more dangerous to US?
What makes US so special -- did we think ourselves immune?
For over a century, we've stirred up that wind in "client" nations. And now we shall reap the whirlwind.
History rhymes yet again - I constantly think about the below passage describing the socdem Iron Front vs. the communist (“KPD”) AntiFa:
I love me some leftism and think that we’re at an inflection point vis-a-vis capitalism and nationalism, but I think “crushing” global neoliberalism in the near term is a tall order.