Accounting for Trump and Trumpism

There is considerable open season for commentators on explaining the rise, fall and rise of Trump, particularly in the context of the result of the 2024 US election. Among the favourites are: that there has been a global reaction to sitting governments such that the inclinations of electors is to throw the rascals out; that competitor political parties such as the Democrats were particularly inept at pitching their appeal and subsequent strategy; that it’s all the fault of ‘globalisation’ whereby manual jobs are lost in, and have wound up in China. 

It would be foolish to reject or ignore these explanations, but they do tend to magnify the similarities of the Right globally and to wash out the particular local effects. Arguably, what did for Trump’s opponents were highly specific American factors. 

American ‘exceptionalism’: this phenomenon has a long and sound pedigree in academic analysis which, surprisingly, has figured little in accounts of the Trump phenomenon. Much of the argument historically focused on the failure of ‘class politics’ to emerge in the USA, and with it, strong forms of the welfare state in the post-war period. Concomitantly, the two-party system of Republicans versus Democrats, was deemed sufficiently analogous to European party competition to make it seem as if it was simply a version of European politics of the right and the left. 

While true to a degree, it fails to note that these are catch-all parties geared to peculiar American social and political conditions. These conditions were: first, that the US was, and is, a settler society, in which the ethnic division of labour figured prominently. Thus, ethnic groups settled in the US and were allocated, formally or informally, to particular places and occupational tasks: Scandinavian farmers in the mid-west; Irish as cheap labour in American cities; and so on. Each had their own sub-culture, stories to tell, connections into the local economy and politics, usually structured around patronage. 

Second, America is big; it’s a continent, one the US shares, often in ignorance, with Canada and Mexico. Its settlement history was driven by the need for the embryonic state to expand territorially, at the brutal expense of aboriginal peoples. Without wishing to sanitise their experience north of the 42nd parallel, consider how the US and Canada have treated its aboriginal peoples. Local states grew up in the US with strong attachments to local rights (for settlers) except where they required the central state to sort things out or fund developments such as land grants. Localism, then, ruled, and came into conflict, expressed most clearly in the Civil War, allied to different economies and social systems. The rest was history.

Some peoples suffered under both: black people, formerly slaves, were mistreated both under the plantation system, and then under capitalism, red in tooth and claw. This reinforced the ethnic division of labour, as incomers consoled themselves with the thought that at least they weren’t black, and hence not right at the bottom of the ethnic pile. There was always someone to look down upon, as well as up to, including the WASPs.

To be sure, the US was capitalist but in a curious American, ethnic, way. One of the reasons that a developed welfare state did not develop was, arguably, that there were always ethnics to do the jobs others wouldn’t do, be they Irish, Poles, Italians, and latterly Latinos and West Indians. It also meant that the stock of ‘poor whites’ provided not simply a reserve army of labour, but a core of strike-breakers and rednecks to keep uppity others, especially black people, in their place. Ethnics had their own support systems, whether in the form of churches, neighbourhoods and the job market: you got a job through the grapevine as often as not.

America, Populism and Oligarchic Populism

America is the home of populism as a political ideology. After all, it made the phrase ‘we, the people’, part of its foundation myth and narrative. Popular democracy morphed into populism as and when it was needed. One could always appeal to ‘the people’ without specifying who one meant in practice. 

Two unusual features derive from this: the right to bear arms, on the dubious grounds that it was written into the Constitution, and the history of the nation. Furthermore, despite (or perhaps because of) the right to worship one’s own God, there was no national or state religion. The way to handle diverse ethnicity was to allow folks to do their religious thing, which meant it became tangled up in ethnicity, rather than in state practice whereby the instruments of the state (Presbyterian in Scotland, and Anglican in England) could be useful instruments of socialisation and orthodoxy, massaged by what the state required of it. Worshipping one’s own version of God led to all sorts of aberrations and efflorescences, which the central state interfered with at its peril. Ethnicity was reinforced by religion, and by the money nexus, assuming one could raise the capital whereby churches resembled shopping malls. Thus it is that god and guns are central to American identities, where huge numbers affiliate to a church (over 60%), and about half own up to have a gun at home. 

On top of that, beliefs like the American Dream reinforced the practice and culture of being American. The fact that the post-war years were the epitome of the way of life underpinning this peculiar belief – it was never difficult to disprove the rags-to-riches story – meant that when the social and economic conditions which gave it credence ended (globalisation of jobs to China and elsewhere where labour was cheaper and unfree), there was a crisis waiting to happen. One couldn’t expect to have a better standard of living than one’s parents. The social mobility music stopped, unless, of course, one developed educational skills and took to well-paid non-manual work. For those left behind (coal miners in Virginia, manual workers in Pittsburgh (and the rust belt) the writing was on the wall. 

To be sure, the demise of manual work especially in manufacturing was not unique to the US – much of Europe suffered a similar fate. However, the period of American ‘greatness’ notably the period after World War Two for at least 30 to 50 years sustained the belief in practice. Suggesting, as one Trumpist claimed, that you’d have to go back to 1900 shows how vague and vacuous the ‘greatness’ notion is. Making America great again refers back to social, economic and cultural conditions of the post-war years which were unique, born out of US hegemony, and ironically, for a time when forms of a welfare state were more recognisable. 

It mattered little which party was in power: Eisenhower continued the policies of Roosevelt and Truman, at least at home, Kennedy, Johnson, even Nixon before he was disgraced, and only Reagan really broke the mould doing so in a genial way. The Bushes, père et fils, were WASPs with origins in the east-coast Ivy League (Yale). Clinton and Obama possibly saw the writing on the wall, but nothing quite prepared America for Trump. 

There is, however, another American peculiarity which plays its part: what passes for American hyper-reality, and its ‘dream factory’ quality. American ‘popular’ culture is global and hegemonic; everyone ‘knows’ it, and feel it is accessible to them. Its mediums are movies and television, as well as technocratic – computers and mobile phones are ‘American’, even where they are not. Twitter/X, Facebook etc are ubiquitous. 

All these are American creations, they up the ante. ‘National’ media are hollowed out; no wonder Trump avoided them, preferring those tailor-made to suit. They are highly susceptible to make and remake; producing ‘news’ which fits the bill. The rest is ‘fake’. Trump himself is a past-master at the performative arts; that’s how he got to be there, as the boss of The Apprentice, not as a successful businessman – at which he manifestly failed. His arts are performative, witness his handling of ‘speeches’ and rallies, being as rude as he liked, but always with that performative edge: ‘is he for real?’; entertaining, if you like that sort of thing.

Without suggesting cause and effect, his appeal to the marginal, the uneducated, and aspiring ethnics is understandable. They’ve seen him on TV – that’s real enough. Black people, arguably, were less taken in, given their history of historic oppression and narratives of their own, but those without such narratives, ‘being American’ was the appeal, especially as it carried promises of feeling ‘at home’, to belong aspirationally, being one of those ‘we people’. On the other hand, the educated and relatively affluent had no such hang-ups, and were not susceptible to the Trump appeal to anything like the same extent. Their stated dislike of Trumpery helped to reinforce his appeal to those not so endowed. And given the jobs available to the uneducated and ‘ethnics’ – transient, poorly paid and conditioned – the performative aspect of Trump had its attractions. 

The oligarchs of course were happy to play along because there was money and deregulation available for them in promissory notes. Old ‘Republican’ values of buck-making and low taxes had their part to play for them. What was not to like? The attraction of Trump to the great unwashed was easily borne; the medium to carry them along without buying into the promises on stilts. So for them making American ‘great’ again was not turning the clock back to the 1950s and the legacy of Rooseveltian democracy, but imagining greatness in a new way, because Trump had mobilised the romantic retrospect of a period in history which had never been. And if it took the theatricals of his over-the-top performances, so be it. If that’s what it takes. Everyone’s a winner. Oligarchic populism is only a contradiction on paper; indeed, history shows us that it is not an oxymoron. 

Finally: social scientists like me are always prone to explain events after they’ve happened. We’re not good at prediction. This may well be a one-off; after all, Trump cannot (can he?) stand again, unless the rules are changed (or he dies) [or unless he changes the rules – Ed]. But there could well be another one along in a minute, should the conditions allow. And much hangs on changes that will happen in the meantime, and make it easier for a Trump 2.0 to emerge. We should watch this space.