Why ‘soft fascist’ Donald trumped the liberal elites
Conservatives, socialists and centrists are all collectively to blame for the emergence of Trumpism,
THE election as US president of a man who presents himself to the public as a soft fascist is what happens when the establishment fails to even acknowledge its own failures, let alone correct them.
By the establishment, what is meant is the liberal elites across the political divide — on the right, the left and in the centre — who are now blaming each other for the rise to power of Donald Trump.
The truth is that classical liberals on the right, socialists on the left and social democrats in the centre are all to blame for the emergence of Trumpism. Classical liberals for their continued failure to address the raging issue of our time — economic and social inequality rampant since the Great Recession; socialists (or progressives) for aggressively arrogating to themselves the moral and intellectual high ground, insisting that anybody who disagrees with them must be backwards, medieval, and uneducated; and social democrats — the Third Way — for their failure to question their unregulated co-dependence on Wall Street and, worse, political cowardice since the Great Recession in the face of populism to introduce radical policies required to meet the new age, to be truly progressive.
The election of somebody like Trump happens when the liberal elites in the US and the UK carry on as though the Great Recession has changed nothing.
In the UK, the result was Brexit, the ugly face of Little England, in your face; and now in the US the election of Trump, which was an epic response to the hollowing out of white working class values and culture.
They still do not get it. In reaction, the US and UK liberal media are pouring out emotive scorn.
An elegant magazine editorial in the New Yorker has been hand-wringing on behalf of the cosmopolitan elite for “the African-American Other, the Hispanic Other, the female Other, the Jewish and Muslim Other”, but did not refer in the same vein to what must be called “the male, working-class white Other”. The Guardian in the UK did, in a column under the headline: “I’ve heard enough of the white male rage narrative”. The liberal elites will continue to espouse self-serving nonsense and stroll home through Manhattan and Notting Hill, while the rest of us must turn to meet the challenge that has been thrown down by the election of Trump.
To do that, we must properly divine and correct the reasons for the election of such a man to the most powerful office, probably, in the world.
Let us start with the classical liberals, as represented by the Republicans in the US, who are now trying to coattail an outward soft fascist like Trump — as represented by the Conservatives in the UK on Brexit, as represented by the right wing of Fine Gael — with their regressive budgets and deep-seated contempt for the inner-city male.
While these parties clung to their divisive, comfortable, middle-class credo, their ideology became old-fashioned overnight, obsolete, in that it has failed to meet the challenges presented by the Great Recession. To this day classical liberals remain unconvinced that inequality really matters.
They espouse individual freedoms, self-government, and civil liberties, but, as admitted by the Republican speaker Paul Ryan, failed to even listen for, let alone hear, the voices that Trump so ruthlessly turned to his advantage.
The twin forces of globalisation and technical innovation may have narrowed inequality around the world — poorer countries began to catch up with richer ones — but income gaps have widened within many of those countries.
More than two-thirds of the world’s people now live in countries where income disparities have risen since 1980 to an unprecedented level. In the US, the share of national income of the top 0.01pc (16,000 families) has risen from just over 1pc to almost 5pc. That is simply unsustainable.
Socialists, or those who call themselves progressives, have also failed to make this the issue of the age, to put a political narrative on the work of the French economist Thomas Piketty. Instead, they have chosen to go in another direction — to be, it has been said, completely freed from their circumstances, to be literally whatever they want and express whatever they feel, with no barriers or consequences.
In the US, progressives became so devoted to this ideal that they twisted and turned when a white woman, a civil rights leader, pretended she was black. Elsewhere, they are unanimous in affirming that you can literally choose whether you are a man or a woman.
These are the people who surround Hillary Clinton. That is all minority groupings, but not the blue-collar white male who was so long the bedrock of the Democrats.
Clinton did not bother to visit Wisconsin, until now a staunchly Democrat state, but when the results came in it was that State that pushed Trump over the line.
As a supporter of same-sex marriage, I pose another question. Eamon Gilmore said: “The right of gay couples to marry is, quite simply, the civil rights issue of this generation.” It is a right, certainly, indeed a civil right — but the civil rights issue of the age? Some would argue that runaway inequality after the Great Recession was the greater issue for this generation.
But are you allowed to suggest that? Or to raise a question about immigration controls — the other issue that Trump so successfully campaigned on? Classical liberals say yes, you can discuss immigration, but they mean no. Progressives say no, but mean you are a racist. Centrists keep their head down and say nothing at all.
So the Third Way, as originally devised by Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and, to an extent, Fianna Fail, is also to blame This social democrat outlook failed to challenge the global financial system that took hold in the 1980s, which saw national politics recede, which led to a deregulated banking system and allowed privatisation to sweep the world. For two decades, this may have allowed centrist governments to keep the money flowing and the financial markets happy, to rebuild schools and roads and to open new hospitals, but it also led to a sea change in culture which allowed Wall Street to move in, followed by a sub-prime housing market crisis that caused international capitalism to be rescued by massive government bailouts.
There is a deep awareness of this failure within the centrist politics, but reluctance — fear — also exists to devise radical centrist big ideas, or true progressivism: an attack on monopolies and vested interests, transparency in government, and tax reforms — not to punish the rich but to raise money more efficiently and progressively.
As I have said before, for true progressivism to take root, new ideas related to inventiveness and productivity are needed — a future that focuses on science and engineering, that values higher education, but that also requires enterprise to offer apprenticeships to young men, to pay the living wage, and to pay taxes.
The failure to do this, and much more besides — the limitations of all orthodoxies and credos as we have known them until now — is what has led to the election of a man who presents himself as a soft fascist to the highest of high offices in the land. There is no upside to this, no bow with which to wrap it all up in, no reach to rainbow’s end. This is the reach of an epoch’s end.
‘Inequality after the recession was the greater issue for this generation...’