Trumpism

It has been a little more than 30 days, or just slightly more than one third of the way into US President Donald John Trump’s first 100 days in office after he was elected in a dramatic election that could be seen as a fight between the Beauty and the Beast.

The first days of a presidency inevitably run into unexpected things for which new presidents have no experience, no matter how successful they have been before as billionaire businesspersons. Apparently, corporate and presidential authority is very different. The use of executive orders or decrees seems to be constitutional. However, in its first days, the US executive order on the immigration policy for “seven sources of terrorism” was questioned and then rejected by state federal agencies.

This was just one of the various problematic policies and political appointments, not to mention the resignation of appointed officials and many other issues. The US suddenly became an object of global ridicule; Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant insultingly said: “lack of experience, delusions of grandeur, lack of competent experts willing to serve as secretaries. A big picture then emerged: chaos at the White House.” The president of a global superpower became an international laughingstock.

“Mein Manifest” and “Mein Kampf”

Trump, however, did not elect himself. America did. This fact is crucial in coming up with a balanced assessment of Trump and all of his ideas – or Trumpism. To trace the emergence of Trumpism, a short review of German history is essential here. The book often cited as a primer for Trump’s political economic worldviews, Crippled America (later republished under the title Great Again: How to Fix Our Crippled America), will soon be translated into German.

Translators and publishers are apparently puzzling what title would be best for the book’s German edition. The early choice was Mein Manifest. However, it alluded too closely to Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf. The title will probably be rejected, rendering it useless for further analysis.

The main question is, rather, what stimulated the allusion in the first place? Let’s observe closely what Hitler said in Mein Kampf and what Trump said in Crippled America to find clues as to what his presidential policies look like.

First, a sense of chauvinism closely linked to the feeling of being pushed down and trampled upon. Germany suffered due to international collusion, based on the Treaty of Versailles, that squeezed Germany financially dry after World War I. Germany then decided that it could never develop as long as it was still in the clutches of the treaty. For Trump, America is seen as suffering from the collusion of international capital owners that forcibly pull American money abroad and thereby take job opportunities to foreigners while neglecting Americans.

Second, lebensraum. For Hitler, the Nazi party had to be brave and gather the people and its forces to march through the streets and free themselves from their constrictive living space and find new territories to prevent their race from becoming extinct and to free themselves from being a nation of slaves for the interests of other nations (Mein Kampf). Trump has an

“inverted” interpretation on this. Trump wants to intensify Americans’ living space. One way to achieve this is by surrounding America with a concrete wall and implementing new immigration policies. America must be first and foremost. Americans should not go abroad and find new land.

“I believe in putting Americans’ interests first – always. There is no second or third place. Such a level of commitment has long been missing in our foreign policy, trade policy and immigration policy. Sometimes we whine too much about what other nations will think of us. They used to be so proud of being with America. Now? They laugh at us. There is a phrase that we rarely, sadly hear nowadays, that is ‘Made in America’. We will say that again—and be proud of it.” (Great Again, How to Fix Our Crippled America, 2016).

Expanding living space was harshly criticized. All the international political, military and economic cooperation is deemed to have weakened America and therefore shrunk American’s lebensraum, as too much lebensraum will pressure America, especially with disappearing job markets and a trade balance that harms America. International cooperation is seen more as a burden as there is no consideration of putting “America first.”

These two worldviews in Mein Manifest and Mein Kampf are not the same. However, even with the differing contexts and other contrasts, seeing the two books as being “related” if Trump’s book was to be named Mein Manifest would not be too far off the mark.

Populism, globalization and their harmful side effects

This brings us to another theme, namely that the Trump phenomenon should not be a mere laughingstock and the cause for national and international protests. Instead, it should be examined for whether or not it will bring forth a bigger impact that will shock the world. This is inseparable from the development of capitalism itself. If this is the case, then it is increasingly absurd that a bigwig American capitalist like Donald Trump, either consciously or otherwise, uses Marx to support his argument, especially in his speeches on globalization, the movement of capital and other issues.

In this context, indeed he is a populist. However, one cannot just claim to be a populist merely to support populism. Much like one cannot claim oneself a scholar just to speak about certain issues. Rather, it is other people who give the labels. The same applies to Trump. He does not call himself a populist, but in his thoughts and actions, the American people are always his main reference.

However, in his mind, it is the Americans who suffer the most. When he sees America, he sees it as an entity that is “losing” or “damaged”, if we use his own words. “I see what is happening to our country; it is going down straight to hell;” no one else thinks about this and he alone can fix it. This is the singular major theme in his books on damaged and crippled America: that he alone can fix it.

Therefore, all of Trump’s weirdness is sourced from here: antagonizing the press for spreading “fake news.” In his mind, the news is not “nonsense”, as there is still sense to be found even in nonsensical things. Instead, there is absolutely no information to be found in news. What the news does is merely negate the truth. By negating the truth, the news is the “enemy of the people.” It needs to be noted here that no one has ever said this about the news other than leftist, Marxist revolutionaries in their attacks on the bourgeois press.

Therefore, the populism of Trump, a bigwig capitalist, has always exuded a “pathologic” sense of a person who prides himself and his success in facing his own “damaged and flawed” nation that must be fixed (for more on the pathology of populists, see Vedi Hadiz, Islamic Populism, 2016). Trump could not have quoted Marx, but what Marx said either

explicitly or implicitly 150 years ago has become Trump’s worldview of capitalism with internal contradictions: injustice for Americans, harsh pressure on wages in the global market as its own skills are less than those of foreign resources; concentration of wealth in the hands of American elites.

Trump is harsh on globalization, because if globalization is a grand idea, why are the laborers receiving only 15 percent of growth while the remaining 85 percent falls into the pockets of big companies? All of this, he said, explained why pressures to apply free trade had come from boards of directors and not from laborers. Therefore, there is a collision of capitalist and Marxist rhetoric in Trump; a person from a superpower whining about the sufferings caused by other nations.

Trump and post-truth politics

The most interesting question is where he wants to take the world and what the world will look like in the next four years. With various speculations, he has managed to penetrate the very heart of democracy within the following definitions. First, democracy stands upon and recognizes the reverence of facts. However, Trump has apparently ignored this: he has yet to recognize the victory of over three million popular votes for Hillary Clinton based on the argument that the three million people are “illegal voters” that entered America illegally – despite producing no evidence of this.

Second, such fiction reaffirms his resolution to create a wall separating the US and Mexico to support the US’s lebensraum, as explained above. Third, with Donald Trump, the world bids farewell to Aufklarung, or the Age of Enlightenment, and greets the age of post-truth.

However, as I have explained above, Trump does not stand alone. He is a phenomenon that can be explained by history. He is a continuation of president George W. Bush. Almost all of the disaster in Iraq was caused by a singular phenomenon that Hannah Arendt called “lying in politics.” The disastrous foreign military intervention in Iraq was caused by the claims of weapons of mass destruction propagandized by Bush.

He chose to prove that it was not a lie is by assaulting Iraq. When all of Iraq was completely destroyed, the weapons of mass destruction had still not been found; the only mass destruction that existed in Iraq was caused by America.

Harvard Gazette explained how lying dominated last year’s US election, citing that 126 of 169 claims (75 percent) made by Trump were lies – in contrast to 59 out of 212 claims (28 percent) made by Hillary Clinton. With the election of Trump and his rule of the White House, he has brought post-truth politics with him.

As a comparison, let us now take a look at domestic affairs. The atmosphere surrounding the Jakarta gubernatorial election is similarly full of lies. Lying in politics is seen as one way – and in some sense, the only way. A rhyming poem that has become viral on social media may be able to explain this:

Terang bulan terang di kali (Over the river, the moon’s brightly shining)

Buaya lapar disangka nyanyi (The crocodile’s hunger you think is singing)

Jangan percaya mulut politisi (Never trust what politicians say)

Mingkar-mingkur masih berani janji (All the promises they keep on making)

Lies in political campaigns exist because politicians know that they lack the resources to fulfill their promises. Therefore, lying has become an ethical issue.

Post-truth politics provides an ontological basis on top of which politics is established. Trump’s wall to separate the US and Mexico is the best example of post-truth politics. Illegal immigrants, Trump said, were the source of America’s destruction and therefore must be

resolved by Trump’s policy of separation. Here, it is not about the resources and the ability to obtain them – there is an abundance of both. The main criterion of post-truth politics is on display here, namely: “What I say is factual! It becomes fact because I say it!”

Politicians in local elections make absurd promises, wherein lies political morals. Meanwhile, post-truth politics erases and monopolizes facts through the creation of “alternative facts” that set aside the truth. Donald Trump, with his skill in political rhetoric, has brought this new phenomenon to the White House.

DANIEL DHAKIDAE

Director and editor-in-chief of ‘Prisma’, Jakarta