People are wondering how Trump could get away with nationalizing 10% of Intel, with plans to acquire more corporate assets for the Federal government, while hardly hearing a peep from other Republicans. Isn’t this socialism, which is anathema to the Republican Party? Uhh, no. It’s National Socialism. Contrary to some right-wingers, who try to blame the left for fascism because the Nazi party had “socialism” in its name, that interpretation of what fascism was about is like thinking that the fact that the official name of North Korea is “The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” somehow discredits democracy.
So let us remind ourselves of the differences between socialism and National Socialism. Of course, socialism and National Socialism were mortal enemies. The first thing Hitler did after burning down the Reichstag was to murder all the leading Social Democrats–the standard-bearers of socialism in Germany at the time. Of course he also went after the Communists. But the Communists and Social Democrats were also mortal enemies. Why? Because the Social Democrats believed in democracy, and both the Nazis and the Communists hated democracy.
Trump, too, hates democracy. He is very rapidly building an authoritarian state. Central to this project is crushing all opposition or potential opposition. And central to that is bringing the CEOs and very wealthy to heel. This is what makes his illegal seizure of Nvidia’s revenues so dangerous, even though we should shed no tears over Nvidia itself. And why democrats should oppose Trump’s partial nationalization of Intel, even though in other contexts state-run firms can be a very good idea, and exist even in deep Red states.
One thing, at least, that Trump is proving is how ridiculous is the neoliberal claim, championed by the likes of Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek, that somehow a set of laws that protect private property, especially if it is concentrated in a few hands, would be able to protect individual liberty against tyranny. In reality, the very wealthy are the first to cave when an aspiring autocrat comes knocking. They so deeply identify themselves with their wealth that very few will risk even a small portion of it to resist a wannabe dictator. And many even admire and support autocrats, foolishly imagining that their wealth protects them from autocratic meddling or worse. So it’s no surprise that the tech bros so quickly bent their knees to Trump in humiliating fashion. This is another reason to support fellow CT blogger Ingrid Robeyns’s limitarianism–a cap on wealth. Billionaires pose grave dangers to democracy, and not just through their excessive influence on the electoral system. Even more because many are attracted to autocracy, and because many more who aren’t will nevertheless flip at the slightest sign of a threat to their wealth and end up bolstering autocrats.
But back to the differences between socialism in the social democratic sense and National Socialism. First, as I’ve mentioned, is democracy. (Of course, there are plenty of autocratic socialists, such as Hugo Chávez and Daniel Ortega who take power by democratic means and then rule autocratically. I’m not claiming that socialism is inherently democratic, only that social democracy or democratic socialism is.) Second, and related, is that National Socialism turns the economy into a form of crony capitalism, whereas social democracy, to the extent that it directly runs economic enterprises or channels the operations of privately owned firms, does so for the public welfare (not necessarily successfully) and not just to consolidate the leader’s personal power by rewarding sycophantic capitalists. Third, social democracy is ideologically egalitarian, whereas National Socialism is ideologically hierarchical–patriarchal, racist, and hostile to cosmopolitanism. When National Socialists speak of “the people,” they never mean, as social democrats do, all the people, but rather the “real” people, the ethno-racial-sexual-religious group that they identify with the nation, to the exclusion of all other citizens and denizens of the state.
Trump, of course, checks all 3 National Socialist boxes. It’s no secret that his “real” people are white Christian heterosexual patriarchs. And that nobody else matters. That exclusionary message is what bonds his base to him. As Trump once said in a campaign speech, “the only important thing is the unification of the people—because the other people don’t mean anything.” And like all fascists, his promise to them is to restore them to their former supreme position in the nation.
Which brings us to National Conservatism, a polite way to refer to fascism, as J.D. Vance, the highest-ranking National Conservative ideologue in the U.S., made clear through his support for the neo-Nazi AFD. As well as his blood-and-soil definition of who the real Americans are, in which he allowed that other people (like his wife) could be Americans, sort of, but only on a lower, deferential tier.
You might think I am being unfair to Yoram Hazony, the most influential political theorist of National Conservatism, in claiming that this ideology is essentially fascist. But check out Ezra Klein’s conversation with Hazony. Klein does a good job pushing back on Hazony’s claim that nations fall apart when there isn’t a dominant group, however defined (by race, ethnicity, religion, etc.), that constitutes who the “real” people of the nation are, on account of that group’s having been dominant at the nation’s founding. Letting other “tribes” in is ok, Hazony grudgingly concedes, as long as they keep to their inferior place and don’t get too numerous.
But Klein concedes far too quickly that Hazony’s view isn’t racist–or, as they too-politely call it, “racialist.” For who does Hazony think the “real” Americans are, the ones who are entitled to reclaim their lost ascendancy over all other American “tribes”? It’s “Anglo-Protestants,” who were, he claims, “95%” of the U.S. population at this nation’s founding. I guess Hazony didn’t consider blacks as part of the U.S. population at the time, since they were 38% of the South’s population in 1780, and 21.5% of the U.S. population at that time. But even more absurd is the idea that the U.S. would fall apart if it didn’t restore “Anglo-Protestants” to the supreme position they had in 1780–or maybe, to be more charitable, 1965. People reporting dominant English ancestry were 12.5% of whites in the 2000 census; mixed ancestry including English 20% of whites. Throwing in Scots and Welsh will hardly make the numbers more impressive, especially after deducting the Catholics and other non-Protestants from that number, and counting these as a proportion of all U.S. citizens, not just whites. In reality, there is no political movement of whites who identify principally as of English ancestry, claiming supremacy over American whites of Irish, German, Scandinavian, etc. ancestry. What there is is a political movement of whites, predominantly white Christians (including many Catholics), who, identifying as white Christians, form Trump’s base. National Conservatism is an ideology tailor made for them in the U.S. “Anglo-Protestant” is just a smokescreen for them, designed to disguise the racism at the heart of American National Conservatism.
{ 26 comments }
MisterMr 08.27.25 at 10:23 am
IMHO Trump is more similar to Mussolini than to Hitler (not a great advancement).
Leaving out the economic aspects of Trumpism, if we look at the cultural aspects of it it’s a case of Right Wing Authoritarianism.
RWAs fundamentally are “authoritarian followers” so this explains Trump followers, but according to Atlemeyer’s studies, RWAs are not generally leaders so the big boss himself will either be A) some machiavellian “social dominator” dude or B) a “double high”, someone who is both a social dominator but also has traits of an RWA.
Hitler, who was clearly a social dominator but also was clearly bonkers and believed his own bullshit, was an example of Double high; Mussolini, who was much more cynical and for example was largely pro-jew until he U-turned in 1936 and wrote anti-jewish laws, was just an asshole who pretended to believe in this or that principle in order to stick to power, so a “social dominator”.
Trump looks more like he believes only in what gives him power and therefore he will believe in nazism if this is expedient, but he would swear for social democracy or libertarianism if it was expedient; this is the sort of behaviour that I would expect from a social dominator.
In this sense, Trump himself is not ideological, it is his base that is ideological, but since T has zero moral limits he’s going to do the worst and use the ideology of his base just to justify his own powe grabs.
This is IMHO the reason that, while Trumpism is an obviopus case of “fascism” (or strong right wing authoritarianism if you want, it’s the same), sometimes Trump will act in ways that seem to go against supposed fascist tenets: because he himself couldn’t care less.
But this doesn’t make him less dangerous.
Muridin 08.27.25 at 11:48 am
Klein addresses Harzony’s claim to reject “racialism” in a subsequent statement but O have to agree that in neither case does he do so convincingly. Klein explains that he believes National Conservatism isn’t racist because he think of Harzony as ultimately representing an Israeli idea of nationalism and that the Israeli idea of nationalist is not racist so much as ethno-religious. His own producer audibly side eyes that argument.
The simplest way to disprove that idea is to quote National Conservatism speaker Amy Wax on the need for “fewer Asians” as immigrants to the US.
bruce.desertrat 08.27.25 at 1:39 pm
I would contend that trump’s model is less like Mussolini. or even Kim Jong Il than his bestest buddy Putin’s gangster state; he certainly brought the pesky billionaires to heel, by demanding a ‘piece of the action’, then their undying loyalty (or face the perils of open 10th story windows, which seem to be weirdly prevalent in Russia.)
I will be highly surprised if a considerable portion of that 10% stake in Intel and the even more mob-like skim from nVidia doesn’t find its way into Trump’s or his family’s pockets.
PeteW 08.27.25 at 2:57 pm
” …sometimes Trump will act in ways that seem to go against supposed fascist tenets: because he himself couldn’t care less.
But this doesn’t make him less dangerous.”
This. In fact in some ways it makes him more dangerous.
Firstly, the actions and attiudes of an ideological fascist can, to an extent, be predicted and therefore resisted, thwarted or circumvented. With Trump, you don’t know what he’s going to say or do, or how far he is going to go. So how do you head him off at the pass?
Secondly, his apparent lack of such ideology makes it harder to criticise him in any concerted way. This is one reason (not the only one) why the media struggles to call him what he really is: what actually IS he? He is not so easily labelled as, e.g., a Hitler, but slips and slides around. He says things so many ridicuous things that it’s impossible to take him seriously – and then he does something incredibly serious.
Mitchell Porter 08.27.25 at 7:09 pm
Sorry, but I’m aware that Bernie Sanders, a democratic socialist, supports the policy which initiates this essay (US government ownership of shares in Intel), and I’m confused about the factual and moral interpretation we should make of that support, if we adopt the premise of the essay. Are we to believe that this is a case of a democratic socialist supporting a policy of a “national socialist” government? And if we agree with that analysis, is he acting rightly or wrongly in doing so?
Austin Loomis 08.27.25 at 8:42 pm
“…no one knows what the horse is going to do next, least of all the horse.”
Liz Anderson 08.28.25 at 1:54 am
Mitchell Porter @5: Sanders’s government shares policy is different in both ideology and process from Trump’s. National socialism is based on an ideology of erecting a dictator to punish his (and, purportedly, the “real” people’s) enemies and reward his friends. Hence, the purpose of government shares is to empower the dictator to establish a system of crony capitalism based on the dictator’s personal enmities and ambition to concentrate power in his person. Democratic socialism is based on an ideology of making business serve all the people, not just some of the people. In Sanders’s picture, government shares in big tech corporations would be used to make these firms promote public interests that would otherwise be poorly served–e.g., to ensure that workers are treated decently, that the corporations respect privacy and operate in environmentally sustainable ways. The process of governing firms would therefore not be based on the malice and whims of a dictator, but according to typical bureaucratic processes in which civil servants study, say, the environmental impacts of different modes of manufacturing chips and pressure the firms to adopt environmentally sustainable processes. That’s the theory, at least. I’m skeptical of Bernie’s conviction that partial public ownership of for-profit firms would be better than state regulation. Full nationalization of major firms was tried by the UK and France in the postwar era. It did not do well, because the immediate political interest of democratically elected leaders is to protect incumbent workers in their present positions, due to the fact that loss aversion more strongly motivates people to vote than the prospect of gains to people who didn’t expect it. Over time, the result is stagnant industries protected by the state, which lack any incentive to innovate. There are some exceptions to this general pattern, particularly with respect to electric, water, and similar utilities. Experience shows it is a bad idea to erect a private for-profit monopoly and then expect to be able to regulate it effectively. Monopoly profits go into lobbying and electioneering, resulting in state capture. Publicly-owned natural monopolies tend to be more responsive to public interests. But the lessons of misguided nationalization lead me to prefer social democracy, which mostly avoids public ownership, over democratic socialism, which is more enamored of state ownership beyond the utilities cases than the record deserves. Maybe minority government stakes would be better than full nationalization, Bernie might say. Well, maybe. But what is the argument for that, if the state could always be overruled?
otto 08.28.25 at 6:59 am
On the specific issue of the state acquiring e.g. 10% of a leading firm, and expecting the government’s interests to be taken into account, is this not somewhat like a dominant strand in France’s industrial policy for much of the postwar period, and indeed perhaps elements even now? No-one thought it was “fascist”, at least in any “political economy of Europe” textbooks that I read (a long time ago).
All the same, in current context, the frightening elements are indeed adding up …
Trader Joe 08.28.25 at 12:17 pm
Your jumping off point was the Intel and Nvidia deals, for profit firms, minority stakes (not even that in the case of Nvidia) but from there you quickly devolved to nationalizing industries, Fascism, Nazism etc.
I guess I can’t quite square the acceleration you suggest. This is far from the first time the US has taken interests in US businesses. AIG during the financial crisis, pieces of the auto industry on multiple occasions and that’s setting aside the actual nationalization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. These are all recent, many, many more if you troll back in time. All of these deals, without exception, were position for the economy and America overall. Why would you presume, only on the basis of your dislike of Trump (not unreasonable), that the deals at hand which are far smaller in scope would be any different.
Additionally, numerous countries have interests in major businesses. Japan and Korea are benchmarks. You note failed outcomes in France and UK, but there are successes as well (telecom and media most notably). Germany likewise has multiple deals which are quite similar in substance to the Nvidia deal and that ignores entirely energy sector related deals (north sea anyone?). I could easily go on through other less developed democracies (Mexico, Brazil, most of SE Asia).
I appreciate your points and the nuances between National Socialism and Socialism – but the leaps you are making from the Intel deal to 1930s Germany seem worthy of Carl Lewis.
Liz Anderson 08.28.25 at 2:04 pm
Trader Joe @9: There is a superficial resemblance between Trump’s moves on Intel, Nvidia, etc., and peer countries’ partial stakes in private corporations. However, Trump is extracting Nvidia’s revenues and acquiring a stake in Intel without legal authorization. Nor, in the case of his acquisition of government shares in Intel, is there any kind of government agency charged with implementing public policies with respect to corporations in which the Federal Government owns shares, since Congress has authorized no such thing. By contrast, the U.S. government’s acquisitions of bankrupt companies in the 2008 financial crisis was legal, because Congress passed a bill authorizing the Treasury Department to establish the Troubled Asset Relief Program to manage these firms, and gave instructions on how it should manage them in the public interest. Trump doesn’t do policy in this sense. He rules by decree, at his whim, and entirely to advance his personal interests in power, bullying, glory, self-enrichment, and vengeance, which he passes off to his supporters as their vengeance and restoration to a superior position over their domestic enemies–groups of fellow citizens who they resent and despise. That’s what makes it National Socialist.
somebody who remembers what happened yesterday AND the day before that 08.28.25 at 3:58 pm
trump is going to scream at nvidia that they need to put an anti woke “chip in their computers” (this is what he thinks nvidia does) so that “the ai” will print nothing but 200 million racial slurs per second, or he’ll have everyone in the building arrested. then people will tut tut say “well, lincoln had some copperheads arrested so technically this is normal and if your iq is high enough, perhaps you will conclude it’s good, even!”
PeteW 08.29.25 at 7:35 am
Trader Joe @9: As you eventually, inevitably, get hauled off to the gulag to join millions of others, are you still going to be shouting over your shoulder, “FDR did this too you know, back in ’42”?
Trader Joe 08.29.25 at 1:17 pm
@10 Liz
If I may push back just a bit – In the case of Intel, they took billions of dollars of chip act money, are no where close to delivering the plants that they pledged to build with that money and many on Wall Street had been of the opinion that Intel would either have to sell a portion of itself or conduct a massively dilutive capital raise in order to complete their projects -which are very necessary to secure the future of the company.
In other words, borderline functionally bankrupt and accordingly not that dissimilar from AIG, Lehman, Fannie, Freddie et al who likewise were not de-facto insolvent when taken over by the US Treasury (though Lehman was dang close).
I’d note also, that while TARP eventually did get approved by congress – the takeovers happened first and congress circled back and approved after the fact. There’s no indication that this will occur this time, but a final Intel deal isn’t yet inked either and an approval could be simply done as an amendment to the Chip act (al la Sanders).
The question is ultimately are these “arms length” deals between willing corporations and their government or is it bald faced robbery at gunpoint. You seem convinced of the latter, I’d assert that these NVidia and Intel (and their shareholders) gain quite a bit by accepting the deals offered. The proof of my view is that both stocks rose after the deals were announced, which would not be the case if the companies were being stolen as you assert.
Alex SL 08.30.25 at 1:59 pm
I have no strong feelings about Intel and Nvidia. Democratic governments take part-ownership in companies, and so do dictatorships; it seems obvious that the OP is right that the ‘why’ is therefore the difference worth discussing.
What puzzles me more is what is touched on in the fourth paragraph. It also seems obvious to me that in a kleptocracy, the super-rich have the most riches to be klept. Sure, they are better insulated by their wealth; if we all collectively lose 10% of our economic prosperity to self-enrichment of the dictator and his cronies, little changes for a billionaire while other people may lose their homes. But an even 10% isn’t the main issue. When faced with corruption, a small-fry office worker or waiter will hand over a hundred bucks to the police to make a problem go away or hold an envelope under the table to secure a school admission, and then they are left alone for a bit. A billionaire, on the other hand, may suddenly find themselves arrested on trumped-up charges or, if they are really unlucky, rapidly accelerating between fifth floor and the ground so that the dictator’s nephew or whatever can become the new owner of the billionaire’s company.
I know that one doesn’t have to be bright to become a billionaire, but are they really that stupid that they cannot see this coming?
Liz Anderson 08.30.25 at 2:45 pm
Trader Joe @13: I don’t doubt that Nvidia and Intel are better off with the deal they cut with Trump than what otherwise would have happened. But what is the counterfactual baseline? If the markets had already priced in a baseline of a ban on Nvidia’s chip exports, then of course allowing the exports in return for a cut of revenues would raise Nvidia’s stock price. And who knows what Trump would have done to Intel had it not handed over shares.
My first point is not really about whether Trump’s move is on net bad for these businesses. It’s that Trump is exercising unconstitutional powers, and that we can’t count on big corporations to hold him to account on this because they are judging their interests against a background risk of Trump taking vengeance against them using some other power–quite possibly legal power–if they push back. This exposes the falsehood of the neoliberal argument that concentrated wealth will be able to effectively constrain abuses of power by the government. To underscore this point, it’s notable that V.O.S. v. U.S., the blockbuster case just reached that overturns Trump’s “emergency” tariffs, was brought by small businesses who don’t have a lot of other contact with the Federal Government.
My second point is that, while we know of scenarios, as in the 2008 financial crisis, in which the U.S. government has taken over firms in emergencies and temporarily run them with an eye to the public interest, that is not at all what Trump is doing. There is no emergency with Intel that requires state acquisition without prior Congressional authorization, much less with Nvidia, a booming company, where Trump is illegally imposing a tax that is entirely up to Congress. Trump is aggressively trampling on Congress’s powers here, building a system of crony capitalism in which firms must offer fealty to him personally, and meddling in businesses he knows nothing about. He will certainly not hand over decisions about their operation to competent civil servants charged with promoting the public interest. He will put on a show of acting for “the people” by imposing impulsive decisions on these firms with the shallowest of rationales. He is a bad businessman even in real estate, where he has gone bankrupt many times and depended on breaking innumerable laws to make money. Now he wants to concentrate power over corporate America in his own hands personally, just for the sake of consolidating his personal rule by decree. And the Supreme Court is egging him on, because they think the Executive Power is 100% in the President’s hands, to do whatever he wants with that power, without any Congressional constraint at all, at least when the President is a Republican, or doing things they like, such as destroying state capacity by dismantling the civil service.
somebody who remembers tim apple giving the president a bribe on camera 08.30.25 at 9:21 pm
when a d d d d d d DUMBOCRAP owns .03 percent of a bank to keep it from collapsing the global economy to make its ceo enough to buy a ninth superyacht, that’s a threat to the neoliberal order. when a powerful, manly, intelligent, vigorous, white republican conservative man drools onto a conference table and mumbles about whether your company will help wipe out the untermensch, that’s what ya call Business As Usual. why do you think palantir has now essentially complete staffing authority over every upper eschelon of every federal agency? it’s finished. the business world has weighed in. it’s white supremacy now and forever
KT2 08.31.25 at 1:32 am
LA @15 “There is no emergency with Intel that requires state acquisition without prior Congressional authorization, much less with Nvidia, a booming company, where Trump is illegally imposing a tax that is”… used by Newson as a cudgel to…
Own the authoritarians…
… “when, in fact, this guy is the leading nationalist and socialist of our time, Donald Trump,” Newsom added later.”
“Gavin Newsom Calls Trump A ‘Leading Nationalist And Socialist’ Over Deal That Riled Up MAGA
“The California governor also slammed President Donald Trump’s policies as “completely perverted capitalism.”
By Pocharapon Neammanee
Aug 30, 2025
…
‘”Newsom’s attack on Trump stemmed from a conversation about New York City mayoral candidate and self-proclaimed democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani, and his plans to create a network of city-owned grocery stores to keep prices down.
“The California governor said Mamdani’s plan could be a national policy, drawing a comparison to Trump’s Intel deal.
“It sounds like Trump’s been paying a lot of attention to him with his desire to socialize great American companies and continue to invest like he did with Intel and others,” Newsom said.
“It’s just perverse that they could be shaping the Democratic Party in the context of the socialist brand, when, in fact, this guy is the leading nationalist and socialist of our time, Donald Trump,” Newsom added later.
…
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/gavin-newsom-trump-intel-nationalist-socialist_n_68b328f0e4b072bf6d64c229
Laban 08.31.25 at 2:50 pm
I don’t know. What kind of fascism is it when a media company (Twitter) can remove the President’s account and nothing happens to them?
When Jack Ma (the Jeff Bezos of China) aired some criticisms of Chinese government economic policy, he disappeared for six months and is still in the process of rehabilitating himself several years later.
Laban 08.31.25 at 3:08 pm
Liz Anderson 10
He rules by decree, at his whim, and entirely to advance his personal interests in power, bullying, glory, self-enrichment, and vengeance, which he passes off to his supporters as their vengeance and restoration to a superior position over their domestic enemies–groups of fellow citizens who they resent and despise. That’s what makes it National Socialist.
That describes many, many monarchies, empires and revolutionary dictatorships well before Mussolini ever left the Italian Scocialists.
Ask the Vendeeans, the Cathars of Languedoc or any survivors of a visit by Bashi-Bazouks.
JPL 08.31.25 at 10:14 pm
Let’s not get hung up on the historical terminology. Describe as precisely as possible the problematic actions and policies, indicate and express as accurately as possible an analysis of why they are wrong ethically, legally or practically, and remind us clearly what the right way of doing things is on the issue. Also identify exactly where the idea for the problematic action or policy comes from within the Trump regime (e.g., Russell Vought, Stephen Miller, JD Vance, etc., or by which faction). The differences in historical conditions are relevant to understanding the present predicament. Trump’s “authoritarian” impulses are simply his primitive, very primitive, way of understanding himself vis-a-vis the world, i.e., his fantasy world. He can’t do anything other than what you see him doing. Trump is a singularity. The others are crackpots.
Tm 09.01.25 at 8:42 am
One thing that the left must absolutely learn from this fascist moment (in the perhaps delusional assumption that it will somehow pass before destroying humankind) is that everything is again possible in politics. For decades, the left has allowed itself to be tamed by respect for norms and constitutional legalism – above all the dogma of the inviolability of private property and free trade – only to see the fascist right, with the enthusiastic support of most of the bourgeois elites, to throw these norms out of the window without even a peep of protest. The same bourgeois propaganda machine that howled in protest whenever a left-of-center government dared suggest slightly raising taxes on the rich now applauds the likes of Trump and Milei when they rule like dictators, radically reshape the constitutional order and treat the national economy like their personal property.
The left must learn from this – if ever they get back into power, they must use it to likewise radically remake politics and reshape the economic bargain, without any qualms about legalistic niceties. The liberal democratic compromise of the post war order is over, has been revoked and renounced by the capitalist class, and won’t come back.
Laban 09.01.25 at 9:11 am
A thread a week or so ago was titled “things that can’t go on forever won’t”, and for the last 50 years (i.e. well before Microsoft or China) the United States has in many respects been on a downward slope – for example, the nation that could produce a Liberty Ship in less than a day now has basically zero commercial shipbuilding capacity.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-typical-male-u-s-worker-earned-less-in-2014-than-in-1973/
When I trundled through the rust belt on Amtrak in the late 80s, I was irresistibly reminded of going from Leeds to Manchester via Rochdale and Todmorden – industrial dereliction everywhere.
Trump, like Brexit, is a reaction to what others have called the increasing “enshittification” of life for working people.
Anna M 09.02.25 at 8:35 am
@ Laban 22
The decline of countries like the USA, UK, etc. correlates very strongly with the increasing capture of the mechanisms of power by the very wealthy (either directly or through the promulgation of views which are beneficial to the wealthy).
The issue is that, largely speaking, the solutions to decline (e.g. progressive taxation, infrastructure investment, etc.) are underrepresented (to say the least) within “the corridors of power”, and the “solutions” that are represented will (at best) have marginal short-term impact and instead generally exacerbate the decline (e.g. selling of national assets so they may be rented back, tax cuts for the wealthy and austerity for everyone else, ever escalating authoritarian crackdowns mixed with brutalisation of whatever convenient scapegoat may come to hand, etc.). Having a strong industrial base matters very little without equally strong infrastructure, regulations, unionisation, taxation, etc. – however, the second anyone who would argue for (let alone implement) such notions looks as though they will come close to power, they are squashed by the wagon-circling of the politico-media class who will mostly act in lock-step to prevent this.
The success of Trump (and quite plausibly in the next UK election, Farage) is not because they are “outsiders offering fresh approaches”, but indeed quite the opposite – their class interests and approaches are largely aligned with, and entirely acceptable to, the establishment (tax cuts for the wealthy, deregulation, and defunding welfare are not exactly bold new ideas in conservative circles).
Austin Loomis 09.02.25 at 6:46 pm
A 1941 biography of Mr. Justice Brandeis quoted him as having said that “We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.”
The ownership class of this country made their choice long ago, and the generations that came after that choice have acceded to that choice and what it entails. But I do not approve, and I am not resigned.
PeteW 09.03.25 at 6:49 am
@Tm 21
So true.
One of the very few progressive politicians who seems to get this is Zack Polanski, who has just been elected leader of the Green Party in the UK. He seems to lack, if not caution, certainly fear. And this is the time for bravery.
Tm 09.03.25 at 8:24 am
Thanks Pete 25.
Anna 23, the narrative of national decline and victimhood is a typically fascist trope. Trump, the ultimate oligarch, supported by most of the capitalist class, has employed this narrative since 2016 (https://www.jta.org/2016/10/14/politics/donald-trumps-conspiracy-theories-stir-uneasy-echoes) and some historically illiterate leftists have fallen for it.
That the leader of the leading superpower of the 21st century employs the identical rhetoric of national victimhood that the German Nazis employed after the catastrophe of the World War is one of these plot elements where it shows that the script writers have run out of ideas. Or as somebody put it in the 19th century: “the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce”. I’m afraid though that farce will turn into tragedy soon enough.
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