Ruthless Criticism: What can be learned from Trump about democracy and the discontent with it (January 2025)
Von webmaster • Jan. 24th, 2025 • Kategorie: InternationalRuthless Criticism: What can be learned from Trump about democracy and the discontent with it (January 2025)
The political and journalistic guardians of democracy are astonished at the openness with which Trump touts his authoritarianism as not just the style, but as the very substance of his presidency. And above all – especially after his election victory – by the success with which Trump advertised his campaign. Are American voters not taking him seriously? Or don’t they care? Or is that what they want? The election doesn’t provide a clear answer to these questions. But the media has come to the conclusion, supported by the opinion polls, that the voters see things the way Trump wants them to: a critical mass of voters not only don’t see Trump as a threat to democracy, but as its savior. Namely, from the very politicians who upheld the defense of democracy – as the only issue on which they thought, until the end, they could be sure of a majority. And now this: a proto-fascist as the savior of democracy – how can that be?
The free press is saying this around the clock: Trump has understood the American people’s widespread resentment of the country’s political elites and institutions, which the Democrats have woefully underestimated. According to pollsters, this is especially true for members of the proud working class who the Democrats still take for granted as their secure voting bloc while having neglected them for decades in their increasing impoverishment. Trump has offered an interpretation of their impoverishment, which they have complained about for decades, that simply appeals to disappointed citizens: the political establishment has betrayed them, so they need a strong man who will thoroughly clean house – both of the constitutionally embedded obstacles to autocratic governance and of the special interests that are more important to a corrupt political elite than the craving of a patriotic population for their prerogatives against all foreigners and all deviants. A politician who presents himself as the avenger of the disenfranchised with his hostility toward the elite is well received – this is where political expertise knows its stuff.
Yet it would be better, for once, to wonder about this: at how easily and – despite all their contemptuous distancing – how sympathetically professional democrats imitate this extremely affirmative, arch-nationalist reinterpretation of capitalist cases of damage; at how familiar they are with fascism as a radicalization of a discontent with democracy that is always present in democracy and apparently child’s play to mobilize; and at how unwilling they are to accept the relationship between the system of freedom and that of the anti-freedom they spell out to their audience.
Because in fact Trump’s standpoint, just like his voters’ approval of him, is the perfection of an impressive democratic politicization. Trump offers the most fundamental answer imaginable to the basic question with which voters are summoned to a higher, national responsibility: “What would you do as president?” His answer is simple: ensure that the power that must serve the true people really is a power that is unquestionably capable of asserting itself. A people that really rules therefore needs the unrestricted right of a president who declares himself completely united with them. Nothing more convincingly proves that Trump himself is this true man of the people, i.e. the power broker suited for this program of rule, than his desire not just to make enemies, but to take them on offensively: against internal and external enemies, including and especially against the established institutions which, in his view, dilute or even prevent the unified will of the people. Trump thus embodies the people’s right to a political upheaval that finally puts the power of the good people entirely in the hands of their governing personification. Or more succinctly: “Trump will fix it” – there’s no problem for which resolute rule would not be the solution. Not in such a way that the president is unrestrainedly at the service of the citizens, but vice versa, in such a way that he gets serious about the sovereign perspective into which he politicizes all private interests. The will of the people is the assertion of state power against all enemies and deviations, and is the disempowerment of the institutions that are preventing precisely this. So the lesson that Trump has learned from his first term in office calls for an echo from below: He had too little power to deal with his enemies.
Whether this is already fascist or just barely democratic is the wrong question – that’s a matter for the domestic security services of the democratic nations to concern themselves with. It would be better to take note of the achievements that the most powerful democracy in the world is apparently capable of – especially since the warning can be heard everywhere that America is more a harbinger than an exception when it comes to political mores. One achievement concerns the assertion of rule: here, democracy brings to power a leader who adamantly insists that his power alone can save the nation from the “enemy from within” who he will do away with – if necessary, by using the military. The other achievement concerns the formation of citizens into members of the national community who, in their proud self-consciousness that they are the freest people on earth, insist on their right to unrestricted power for the leader of their choice.
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