It’s pretty ugly stuff, but this speech is getting a lot of writeup all over. Some on the Alt Right are saying that Trump has gone full populist here.
I would agree that he’s gone full rightwing populist, but I don’t think too much of rightwing populism because it’s always so incoherent. Plus rightwing populism seems like an oxymoron. The rightwing would seem to be opposed to populism by its very nature and vice versa. Hence, rightwing populism is always a bit phony and tends to scapegoat minorities, Jews, bankers, Gypsies, Communists or whoever is vulnerable and needs to be beaten up. In this way, they redirect working class rage at being screwed over by capitalism away from the capitalists and towards these handy targets. Needless to say, not dealing with the root of the problem or even identifying it for that matter doesn’t exactly help fix things.
That said, I do support Trump’s efforts to attack the “globalists,” although he means something different from that than I do. He’s against free trade and open borders, which is frankly the whole globalizing project right there. Let’s not forget the immiseration of states, nations and cultures and creating a Corporate-Elite Dictatorship to rule the whole world. Obviously this globalization project is failing badly, but so much is riding on it for corporations and elites that they keep pushing it anyway.
I also appreciate an America First policy as a general rule, which is what Trump proposes. I am an economic nationalist. He’s a bit of an isolationist, and that’s good. He wants to patch up relations with our designated enemies like North Korea and Russia and generally wants to stay out of foreign entanglements, military alliances and trade pacts. Of course I support him on all of these views. So you see we can make some sort of an alliance with these Trump folks however deplorable they are, and yes, most are pretty deplorable.
Others note that he seems to be naming the Jew in this ominous landmark speech. On the Left, he’s being accused of blaming Jews for the difficulties his campaign is experiencing.
He talks about how Hillary sits down in secret meetings with international bankers to plot the destruction of the country. Actually that is not far off. This is the part that seems to be naming the Jew.
Trump goes on and on about the Establishment, but what the Hell is this Establishment anyway. The Cathedral? Isn’t he a part of this very Establishment he is ranting against? He claims that this Establishment, whoch the Clintons are a part of, is also made up of the entire US press.
Does he mean the “invade the world – invite the world”, neoliberal economics + neoconservative foreign policy bipartisan Washington Beltway Consensus crowd? If so, why doesn’t he say so? Instead, the Establishment is apparently liberals, who run the government (Really?) and the media (What?). This is standard Republican nuttiness about how liberal Democrats are in charge of the levers of power in Washington in addition to owning all of the so-called “liberal media.” We on the Left don’t see any progressive people in charge of the state, and we don’t see any running the media either, so the whole “liberal media” thing has always been a sick joke to us.
In days past, this Establishment was also accused of being secret Communists who worked for a one world government via the UN which would wipe out all sovereignty and install One World Communism all over the globe. The people pushing this World Communism were a lot of the richest people on Earth, including the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations.
Sure these people have lots of power and in fact constitute the Deep State (along with the Big Media), but they sure aren’t liberal or progressive. They’re hard rightwing on everything that matters, pushing neoliberalism at home and neoconservatism abroad. Economics for the rich and corporations at home and US imperialism abroad. How this is somehow liberal or progressive needs to be explained to me.
As you can see, the rightwing populist project is incoherent when it’s not flat out wrong. It’s associated with plenty of paranoia and conspiracy theory, which Trump is now mining well. Check out Richard Hofstader’s The Paranoid Style in American Politics, written back in the 1950’s, to learn more about this quintessentially paranoid American politics. The paranoia is particularly relevant on the populist Right, but it has taken over the mainstream Fox News Republican Party in the last two decades, and there are even some insane leftwing populist elements on the Left that are about as insane as those on the Right if not more so. “No One Died at Sandy Hook” – “The Moon Landing was Faked” – “911 Inside Job” and other conspiracy theories has long been popular with an insane leftwing populist element.
Trump denies all of the undoubtedly true charges of sexual abuse and general creepiness being leveled at him by what is now nearly a brigade of female accusers. They just keep flooding in. Trump says these are all lies made up by his evil liberal enemies. He goes on and on about the corrupt Clintons and the Clinton Crime Family, etc. and how this mysterious liberal elite is not only corrupt but also evil and vile. The language he uses to attack the media, the Clintons and the Establishment (whoever they are) is frightening.
Trump’s people are already saying that the corrupt Establishment press is faking almost all the polls and that Trump is actually ahead by a couple of points, using a fake Rasmussen (Republican whore) poll to make that point. Well they can go on believing that.
But I am worried. Surely he’s going to lose, and then what? The language he uses against his enemies is incendiary stuff. Their whole line – the press is smearing us, the polls are rigged, the vote will be stolen by mass voter fraud, the Establishment which is doing all of these things is corrupt and evil – seems intended to push his supporters to their limits and then some. I’m worried that we will see more violence and unrest before this Ugly Campaign is over with.