Trump, February 2016. Wikicommons\/Marc Nozell from Merrimack, New Hampshire, USA. Some rights reserved.Trump's victory marks a geopolitical turning
\npoint that has led many to start talking about \u2018the populist era\u2019, in shock at
\nthe crushing arrival of this New York tycoon in the capital of Empire. <\/i><\/p>\n
Faced with events of this magnitude, it\u2019s
\nappropriate to pause to think about the causes and consequences. Some of us
\nhave spent years theorising and predicting that the blurring of political faultlines
\nby the centrist progressive consensus would result in a "return of the
\npolitical", understood as a friction between radically different political
\nprojects. <\/p>\n
To the extent that the "Third Way\u201d \u2013
\napplied in traditional socio-democratic parties \u2013 accepted neoliberal hegemony,
\nit paved the way for a populist logic that would re-establish "the
\npeople" as a collective subject. The type of content or meaning acquired
\nby this subject thus becomes fundamental, as the irruption of \u201cthe people\u201d into
\npolitical discourse is not in itself enough to unify us into a common category.
\nExamples range from Trump and Le Pen to Podemos. "Concrete policies" will continue to be necessary in
\norder to win, but they are no longer enough.<\/p>\n
Right-wing populism is sometimes reminiscent
\nof the fascism of the thirties, with which it shares some elements. However,
\ncategorising it as such hides more than it explains, as right-wing populism
\nproposes new solutions to the problems of a globalised world. <\/p>\n
Furthermore, it doesn\u2019t seem to be an
\noligarchic attack upon the checks and balances of liberal democracy, seeking to
\nreplace them with a totalitarian regime. Trump is a right-wing populist in the
\nsense that he represents and channels demands and subjectivities that had been
\nleft behind or made invisible by the Washington establishment. These include
\nthe impoverishment of ordinary people, the crisis of expectations amongst the
\nwhite middle class, the loss of global hegemony to China, as well as the erosion
\nof traditional aspects of identity such as masculinity, race, family or
\nreligion. Each of Trump's outrageous remarks has been interpreted by wide
\nsections of the population as a blow to "political correctness",
\nwhich has gone from representing a language of emancipation to being identified
\nwith the cultural consensus of traditional elites. <\/p>\n
This is symptomatic of the loss of cultural
\nhegemony by the ruling classes in the United States. It explains how demands
\narising from subaltern groups have coalesced around Trump, a figure who
\nsuccessfully represents the American dream, with all its contradictions, but
\nwith an obvious aspirational component.<\/p>\n
The US election results are not so much a
\nvictory for Trump, as they are a defeat of the establishment personified by
\nHilary Clinton. The US election results are not so
\nmuch a victory for Trump, as they are a defeat of the establishment personified
\nby Hilary Clinton.<\/p>\n
Politically, the key is to recognise that
\nthe demands and the identities excluded by the establishment could have been
\nre-signified and re-articulated in a radically opposite and progressive
\ndirection, as Bernie Sanders began to do. Only Sanders could have posed a real
\nchallenge to Trump's campaign: "A future you can believe in" is the
\nreverse of "Make America great again", because it doesn\u2019t retreat
\ninto moral rejection or resistance politics. <\/p>\n
Instead, it embraces the challenge of
\nfighting the political battle on the same terrain, attacking right-wing
\npopulism where it hurts the most: in the re-articulation of collective subjects
\nand passions. A wish can only be displaced by another wish, one which is both
\nopposite and more powerful. A wish can only be
\ndisplaced by another wish, one which is both opposite and more powerful.<\/p>\n
It therefore shouldn\u2019t surprise us that a
\nhigh percentage of blacks, hispanics and women voted for Trump; just as it
\nshould not surprise us that large sections of the French working classes,
\nformerly members of the Communist Party, today vote for Le Pen. Any rigorous analysis
\nmust start from this deeply volatile and fluid notion: if we don't define what
\n\u2018the people\u2019 means, they will do so for us. <\/p>\n
In Spain, thanks to the democratic vaccine
\nthat was the Indignados movement, and to the fact that Podemos continues to be
\na transversal and popular force, the victory of a Trump-like figure is
\nunthinkable. "Concrete policies" will continue to be necessary in
\norder to win, but they are no longer enough.\u00a0<\/p>\n
To the extent that the traditional elites
\nremain entrenched in technocracy, hegemony will remain in the hands of
\nneoliberal powers. The counter-hegemonic space, however, will be fought over by
\npopulist forces of the right and the left.<\/p>\n
This article is translated from the original in the <\/p>\n Spanish magazine called El Siglo (with thanks to translators Carmen Williams and Adri\u00e1n Bua).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Trump, February 2016. Wikicommons\/Marc Nozell from Merrimack, New Hampshire, USA. Some rights reserved.Trump's victory marks a geopolitical turning point that has led many to start talking about \u2018the populist era\u2019, in shock at the crushing arrival of this New York tycoon in the capital of Empire. Faced with events of this magnitude, it\u2019s appropriate to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1241\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}