Never let it be said that Donald Trump does things by half measures. From freeing virtually all of the January 6 rioters; to marching the US out of the World Health Organisation and Paris Climate Accord; ending DEI programmes and proclaiming that there are only two genders; declaring a national emergency at the border with Mexico; resumption of the era of “drill baby, drill and dozen Biden era executive actions (out of 78) supporting racial equity and combating discrimination against LGBT+ people in order to end policy “trying to socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life.”[1] ; he certainly livened most of the erogenous zones of his MAGA base.
Conversely, those outside the nexus of MAGA and their global far right kith and kin could only look on bemusement, horror and disgust at the sheer triumphalism of Trump’s crowning moment and the roll call of international far right celebrities who attended this love-in from Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy to President Javier Milei of Argentina to leading luminaries of the German AfD to Nigel Farage leader of Reform UK accompanied by a motley crew of defeated British politicians such as Liz Truss and Suella Braverman and culture warriors like failed actor Lawrence Fox and the “Rev” Calvin Robinson of GB News. Dark days indeed for those who believe in the durability of liberal democracy and the progressive values that it underwrites. So how do the defenders of these secular faiths deal with the crumbling liberal geo-political order and the universalist values sustained by it in the face of the transnational national populist, anti-establishment insurgency for which Trump is the global poster boy?
Before answering this question, it is worth drilling down (if that is not an unfortunate phrase!) to these opening salvoes into Trump’s war on woke to appreciate the potential full scope of his Executive orders. First of all, the executive order issued by Trump on Inauguration Day ordering “the termination of all discriminatory programs, including illegal DEI and ‘diversity, equity, and accessibility (DEIA) mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities in the federal government under what name they appear”, effectively, in the verdict of civil rights campaigners, negates a 1965 order issued by President Lyndon Johnson to enforce the landmark Civil Rights Act of the previous year which prohibited government contractors from discriminating in employment practices on the basis of race, colour, religion, sex or national origin.[2] It is fair to say that Trump’s DEI order will likely remove similar protections from people with disabilities.
Next the two genders executive order have set alarm bells ringing among abortion rights supporters who note that it quietly incorporates two key cornerstones of the foetal personhood ideology intrinsic to “pro-life” beliefs; the legal doctrine that life begins at conception and that embryos and foetuses are entitled to full legal rights and protections. For, according to the order,” “female” means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell while “male” means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.” Full legal enactment of foetal personhood would outlaw abortion and lead states and even the federal government to treat abortion as murder and those undergoing termination of pregnancy as murderers.
Before answering this question, it is worth drilling down (if that is not an unfortunate phrase!) to these opening salvoes into Trump’s war on woke to appreciate the potential full scope of his Executive orders. First of all, the executive order issued by Trump on Inauguration Day ordering “the termination of all discriminatory programs, including illegal DEI and ‘diversity, equity, and accessibility (DEIA) mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities in the federal government under what name they appear”, effectively, in the verdict of civil rights campaigners, negates a 1965 order issued by President Lyndon Johnson to enforce the landmark Civil Rights Act of the previous year which prohibited government contractors from discriminating in employment practices on the basis of race, colour, religion, sex or national origin.[2] It is fair to say that Trump’s DEI order will likely remove similar protections from people with disabilities.
Next the two genders executive order have set alarm bells ringing among abortion rights supporters who note that it quietly incorporates two key cornerstones of the foetal personhood ideology intrinsic to “pro-life” beliefs; the legal doctrine that life begins at conception and that embryos and foetuses are entitled to full legal rights and protections. For, according to the order,” “female” means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell while “male” means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.” Full legal enactment of foetal personhood would outlaw abortion and lead states and even the federal government to treat abortion as murder and those undergoing termination of pregnancy as murderers.
Despite Trump’s denial that he wants to implement a national abortion ban; the 2024 Republican platform stressed its commitment to “the issue of life” and suggesting that foetuses are included in the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee that “no person can be denied life or liberty without due process”. It is an ambition of anti-abortion activists to bring a case to the Supreme Court leading to its declaration that the Fourteenth Amendment does indeed apply from the moment of conception. For reproductive rights advocates such as Dana Sussman, senior vice-president of Pregnancy Justice which follows efforts to legally guarantee foetal personhood, the wording of the ‘Two Genders’ order demonstrates an intention to normalise the principle that embryos are people. However, some reassurance is offered by Professor Mary Ziegler of University of California law school who studies the legal history of reproduction and who says that the new order does not institute new legal protections or status for foetuses and that Trump is not progressing “towards bolder steps on abortion of IVF.”[3]
Nevertheless, to reduce matters of philosophical complexity such as abortion, assisted reproduction and transgender physiognomy and developmental paths to a two-sentence declaration of executive fiat is a preposterous way of deliberating over the ethical minefields involved in these issues.
On another signature Trump policy, immigration and promise to launch “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history,” state and local officials who resist this programme could be targeted by federal prosecutors under a directive issued by the acting deputy attorney general, Emil Bove. He has instructed prosecutors nationwide to investigate and potentially bring criminal charges against officials in “sanctuary” justifications for “harbouring” undocumented immigrants or withholding immigration information from federal authorities. In a document obtained by the Washington Post and the Associated Press, Bove wrote:
Nevertheless, to reduce matters of philosophical complexity such as abortion, assisted reproduction and transgender physiognomy and developmental paths to a two-sentence declaration of executive fiat is a preposterous way of deliberating over the ethical minefields involved in these issues.
On another signature Trump policy, immigration and promise to launch “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history,” state and local officials who resist this programme could be targeted by federal prosecutors under a directive issued by the acting deputy attorney general, Emil Bove. He has instructed prosecutors nationwide to investigate and potentially bring criminal charges against officials in “sanctuary” justifications for “harbouring” undocumented immigrants or withholding immigration information from federal authorities. In a document obtained by the Washington Post and the Associated Press, Bove wrote:
Federal law prohibits state and local actors from resisting, obstructing and otherwise failing to comply with lawful immigration-related commands.[4]
The directive goes on to announce that the justice department had created a “sanctuary cities enforcement working group” to identify local laws blocking Trump’s immigration agenda, while ordering its civil division to challenge these policies in court. Any refusal to prosecute cases involving “resistance, obstruction or other noncompliance” must now be reported as “urgent” to department heads.[5]
If implemented on such a scale, then this would represent a declaration of war on alternative power centres and civil society institutions by the Trump administration. This directive immediately sets up a clash with Democrat led cities like Chicago, which recently reaffirmed its limits on cooperating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and to where Trump has pledged to send more than one hundred law enforcements. On top of the constitutionally outrageous plan to deny citizenship to those born in the US of non-native parentage, has been the suspension of a refugee programme for people fleeing war and persecution, meaning that thousands of refugees including more than 1,600 Afghans who had assisted the US war effort there who had gone through a sometimes years-long vetting process to start new lives in the US are now stranded at various locations around the world.[6]
Mixed in with this kulturkampf by decree have been the personally vindictive and arguably contra-legal measures taken by Trump just as the mass pardoning of those participants in the January 6th 2021 riots at the Capitol and the removal of security protection for former Secretary of State, Mike Pompeii, and National Security Adviser, John Bolton and the bete noire/ folk devil for the anti-vax conspiracists, former Public Health Chief Anthony Fauci. If blood does not drip metaphorically from Trump’s hands for his actions on 6th January, then should anything happen to these enemies of the Trump court, especially Dr Fauci because of the deranged demonology surrounding him, then he will surely be culpable.
Planet Trump And How To Deal With And Defeat It
It is hard for liberals and progressives to ignore and stomach the triumphalism of Trump and his global acolytes. For Victor Orban, Hungarian Prime Minister and poster boy for Europe’s nationalist right, the return of Trump has given him the green light to “launch the second phase of the offensive that aims to occupy Brussels.” Orban triumphantly bellows out that Hungary’s six-month presidency of the Council of the EU’s rotating presidency “was the start of the new era” with Trump and the far-right Patriots for Europe Group in the European Parliament that he is the co-founder of “driving the transformation of the western world.” While Orban did not attend Trump’s inauguration, Georgia Meloni, described by Trump as a “fantastic woman” who is “really taking Europe by storm” was the most senior European leader to attend as Italian PM. Also in attendance was Argentina’s far-right leader, Javier Milei, whose “chainsaw” campaign of fiscal balance and deregulation has provided the inspiration for Elon Musk’s led “department of government efficiency, championing the slashing of government wages and equality focused departments. [7]Milei also salivates about a global battle on feminism and “woke.”
In response, democratic leaders in Europe have sounded high decibel levels of alarm about the return of Trump. Francis Bayrou, the French Prime Minister, has warned that France and Europe would be “crushed” and “marginalised” if they fail to stand up for their interests against a United States:
that has decided to embark upon an extremely domineering form of politics, via the dollar, via its industrial policy, via the fact that it can capture the world’s investment and the world’s research.
Hours before Trump formally assumed power, Pedro Sanchez called for Europe to stand up to and defend democracy against a big tech “class” trying to influence western governments and public debate through its “absolute power over social media.”[8]
So how does the democratic left respond to the triumph of a radical right-wing revolution in the USA and the far-right nationalist insurgency in the rest of the Euro-American world? Whether in government or in opposition, the left/centre are on the horns of a very problematic dilemma. Traditional social democratic parties are perceived to be by default the defenders of the established order under siege from populist forces; globalised economies to which free movement of capital, trade and labour are axiomatic and in which power is held and wielded by major financial institutions; a homogenising global culture dominated by largely American titans of light entertainment and filmic production; insecure or vanishing employment and social and public spheres dominated by identity or woke issues around race, gender and sexuality. For labour or social democratic movements which by reputation are meant to be transformative agents of change; these are awkward if not crippling places to be in.
The direction of travel in which progressive movements should go has been the subject of much scholarly debate and agonised, soul-searching debate. To prevent further haemorrhaging of electoral support among its traditional working-class base to forces like MAGA or UK Reform, do centre left parties offer a more sustained critique of contemporary capitalism and advocate more interventionist and redistributive fiscal and economic policies? How do they deal with their electorate’s concerns over immigration and hot button issues around diversity and gender without alienating its more liberal and middle-class voters? Can, for example, the current UK Labour government tell the truth about the baleful effects of Brexit without alienating its constituents in the so-called Red Wall seats? It appears that Keir Starmer and his Chancellor Rachel Reever are unwilling to take such a departure because of precisely such risks (real or imagined). Such is the crippling effect of electoral short-termism on long term societal good.
At a recent event convened by the think tank British Futures to discuss the lessons to be learnt for progressives for Trump’s resounding win, the problem of how to deal with right wing culture warriordom was put into sharp relief by former Kamala Harris adviser Frank Sharry. His stark warning to his transatlantic friends in the Labour Party was that ignoring far-right wedge issues simply does not work. As an example, Sharry said the Biden administration simply ducked the argument that record numbers of immigrants crossing into the US had created a border crisis. When it did develop an effective response – a combination of border enforcement, opening of more legal visa routes and deals with neighbouring countries – it didn’t even defend its own record for fear of alienating the liberal elements of the Democrat electoral coalition. Sharry, with a decades long career with refuge charities, had tried to craft “tough but fair” messages on immigration in line with the US mainstream for Harris but prolonged silence on her part enabled her opponents to portray her as an open borders fanatic even as the right wing media ecosystem began to air conspiracy theories about Democrats encouraging immigrants to come so that they could vote for them. The brutal reality is thus that if governments cannot seize the narrative on hot-button issues like immigration and dramatize what they are doing, then the truth will be submerged in the consequent ocean of falsehoods, fake news, and disinformation.[9]
Language Matters
In nearly every discussion about the rise of Donald Trump and homologous movements globally, certain words have attained dominant explanatory currency for participants depending on their standpoint. For the contemporary right, it is “woke” or “wokeness” and “patriots” are reclaiming or taking back control their country in the name of common sense from liberal “elites.” For left-liberal commentators, the menace is “populism” usually with the descriptor “nationalist” or “authoritarian.” Some of that number regret or mourn the demise of “ILO” or “International (Rules Based) Liberal Order.” More radical leftist critique the prevailing definition of “populism” and the power of “elites. They decry the effects of “globalisation” and “neoliberalism” and call for a new progressive politics based on “equality.”
Wokeness
Few words are uttered with more contempt in conservative (and some left wing) spaces than “woke.” The election of Doanld Trump has seen gleeful proclamations of the death of “wokeness.” In the Times, Lionel Shriver declared that “Donald Trump’s emphatic victory is a woke watershed” and that “progressive lunacy” faced extinction. In the Mail, Leo McKinstry wrote that “wokery is in retreat. The creed has lost its ugly potency.” In the elegant words of the President himself: “Woke is bullshit.”[10]
In reporting that the gross exaggeration of the death of woke, Matthew D’Ancona begs to differ with these triumphalist obituaries. “Woke isn’t dead. It’s just pining for the fjords.[11] Woke, for him, is shorthand for the social justice movements that emerged in the 2010s such as Black Lives Matter, Extinction Rebellion and #MeToo and the particular types of identity politics they represent. For its detractors, woke became a battle cry to attack anyone involved in antiracist activity much as the meanings of “identity politics” and “political correctness” were turned inside out to stigmatise earlier generations of activists. To understand the toxic associations of “woke” it is necessary to briefly divert into some etymological history.
The first recorded use of the phrase stay woke was in the bluesman Lead Belly’s 1938 song “Scottsboro Boys”, dedicated to the nine Black teenagers whose execution for rapes was only prevented by years of international protest. But from in its initial meaning, rooted in the experiences of African Americans in the segregated southern US states, of being alert to the signs of discrimination, woke became a byword for divisiveness which the right fully exploited.[12]
In her attempt to define woke, Susan Neiman states that it begins with concern for marginalised persons and ends by reducing each to the prism of their marginalisation. The woke left’s idea of intersectionality or connection between marginalised or oppressed people could have emphasised the ways in which human beings have plural identities. Instead, it led to focus on the most marginalised parts of identities and transforms them into waves of trauma. Woke stresses the ways in which particular groups have been denied justice and seeks to redress and fix the damage. While these may be admirable and noble pursuits, in the focus on power inequalities, the concept of justice is often disregarded. Woke demands that nations and peoples face up to their criminal histories. In the process it often concludes that all history is criminal.[13]
The greatest defect of woke is that it has been become a politics of symbols rather than social change.[14]. The obsession with symbolism and ideological performativity explains how social justice movements became so damagingly obsessed by procedural rows about who could speak about what; by “de-platforming,” “speech codes,” “cancel culture” and purity tests. [15] There was too much performance - rallies, social media frenzy and collective indignation – and not enough action. It was almost as if they were trapped in student union mode in terms of their political developmental paths.
The strategic impotence of this type of student politics was laid out by Barack Obama in 2019:
So how does the democratic left respond to the triumph of a radical right-wing revolution in the USA and the far-right nationalist insurgency in the rest of the Euro-American world? Whether in government or in opposition, the left/centre are on the horns of a very problematic dilemma. Traditional social democratic parties are perceived to be by default the defenders of the established order under siege from populist forces; globalised economies to which free movement of capital, trade and labour are axiomatic and in which power is held and wielded by major financial institutions; a homogenising global culture dominated by largely American titans of light entertainment and filmic production; insecure or vanishing employment and social and public spheres dominated by identity or woke issues around race, gender and sexuality. For labour or social democratic movements which by reputation are meant to be transformative agents of change; these are awkward if not crippling places to be in.
The direction of travel in which progressive movements should go has been the subject of much scholarly debate and agonised, soul-searching debate. To prevent further haemorrhaging of electoral support among its traditional working-class base to forces like MAGA or UK Reform, do centre left parties offer a more sustained critique of contemporary capitalism and advocate more interventionist and redistributive fiscal and economic policies? How do they deal with their electorate’s concerns over immigration and hot button issues around diversity and gender without alienating its more liberal and middle-class voters? Can, for example, the current UK Labour government tell the truth about the baleful effects of Brexit without alienating its constituents in the so-called Red Wall seats? It appears that Keir Starmer and his Chancellor Rachel Reever are unwilling to take such a departure because of precisely such risks (real or imagined). Such is the crippling effect of electoral short-termism on long term societal good.
At a recent event convened by the think tank British Futures to discuss the lessons to be learnt for progressives for Trump’s resounding win, the problem of how to deal with right wing culture warriordom was put into sharp relief by former Kamala Harris adviser Frank Sharry. His stark warning to his transatlantic friends in the Labour Party was that ignoring far-right wedge issues simply does not work. As an example, Sharry said the Biden administration simply ducked the argument that record numbers of immigrants crossing into the US had created a border crisis. When it did develop an effective response – a combination of border enforcement, opening of more legal visa routes and deals with neighbouring countries – it didn’t even defend its own record for fear of alienating the liberal elements of the Democrat electoral coalition. Sharry, with a decades long career with refuge charities, had tried to craft “tough but fair” messages on immigration in line with the US mainstream for Harris but prolonged silence on her part enabled her opponents to portray her as an open borders fanatic even as the right wing media ecosystem began to air conspiracy theories about Democrats encouraging immigrants to come so that they could vote for them. The brutal reality is thus that if governments cannot seize the narrative on hot-button issues like immigration and dramatize what they are doing, then the truth will be submerged in the consequent ocean of falsehoods, fake news, and disinformation.[9]
Language Matters
In nearly every discussion about the rise of Donald Trump and homologous movements globally, certain words have attained dominant explanatory currency for participants depending on their standpoint. For the contemporary right, it is “woke” or “wokeness” and “patriots” are reclaiming or taking back control their country in the name of common sense from liberal “elites.” For left-liberal commentators, the menace is “populism” usually with the descriptor “nationalist” or “authoritarian.” Some of that number regret or mourn the demise of “ILO” or “International (Rules Based) Liberal Order.” More radical leftist critique the prevailing definition of “populism” and the power of “elites. They decry the effects of “globalisation” and “neoliberalism” and call for a new progressive politics based on “equality.”
Wokeness
Few words are uttered with more contempt in conservative (and some left wing) spaces than “woke.” The election of Doanld Trump has seen gleeful proclamations of the death of “wokeness.” In the Times, Lionel Shriver declared that “Donald Trump’s emphatic victory is a woke watershed” and that “progressive lunacy” faced extinction. In the Mail, Leo McKinstry wrote that “wokery is in retreat. The creed has lost its ugly potency.” In the elegant words of the President himself: “Woke is bullshit.”[10]
In reporting that the gross exaggeration of the death of woke, Matthew D’Ancona begs to differ with these triumphalist obituaries. “Woke isn’t dead. It’s just pining for the fjords.[11] Woke, for him, is shorthand for the social justice movements that emerged in the 2010s such as Black Lives Matter, Extinction Rebellion and #MeToo and the particular types of identity politics they represent. For its detractors, woke became a battle cry to attack anyone involved in antiracist activity much as the meanings of “identity politics” and “political correctness” were turned inside out to stigmatise earlier generations of activists. To understand the toxic associations of “woke” it is necessary to briefly divert into some etymological history.
The first recorded use of the phrase stay woke was in the bluesman Lead Belly’s 1938 song “Scottsboro Boys”, dedicated to the nine Black teenagers whose execution for rapes was only prevented by years of international protest. But from in its initial meaning, rooted in the experiences of African Americans in the segregated southern US states, of being alert to the signs of discrimination, woke became a byword for divisiveness which the right fully exploited.[12]
In her attempt to define woke, Susan Neiman states that it begins with concern for marginalised persons and ends by reducing each to the prism of their marginalisation. The woke left’s idea of intersectionality or connection between marginalised or oppressed people could have emphasised the ways in which human beings have plural identities. Instead, it led to focus on the most marginalised parts of identities and transforms them into waves of trauma. Woke stresses the ways in which particular groups have been denied justice and seeks to redress and fix the damage. While these may be admirable and noble pursuits, in the focus on power inequalities, the concept of justice is often disregarded. Woke demands that nations and peoples face up to their criminal histories. In the process it often concludes that all history is criminal.[13]
The greatest defect of woke is that it has been become a politics of symbols rather than social change.[14]. The obsession with symbolism and ideological performativity explains how social justice movements became so damagingly obsessed by procedural rows about who could speak about what; by “de-platforming,” “speech codes,” “cancel culture” and purity tests. [15] There was too much performance - rallies, social media frenzy and collective indignation – and not enough action. It was almost as if they were trapped in student union mode in terms of their political developmental paths.
The strategic impotence of this type of student politics was laid out by Barack Obama in 2019:
If I tweet or hashtag about how you didn’t do something right or used the wrong verb, then I can sit back and feel pretty good about myself because ‘Man did you see how woke I was? I called you out!’… If all you’re doing is casting stones, you are probably not going to get that far.[16]
Unfortunately, the performative gesturing associated with wokery has had damaging real-world effects. Trans activists persecuted feminists for saying that biological sex was real and, in some cases, drove them from employment. The author J.K. Rowling and the former Labour MP Rosie Duffield (sexual assault and domestic violence survivors respectively) became high profile casualties trans cancel culture. In April 2024, the Cass Report revealed the shocking extent to which medical science was disregarded in the cause of radical trans ideology at the Tavistock Centre to the detriment of the safety of young people and the health needs of young trans people.[17]
On campuses, in publishing houses, in NGOs and in the human resource departments of corporations, a cult like illiberalism took hold which stifled originality and challenging creativity in book publishing; lead to cancellations and personal threats to speakers at campuses who opposed woke orthodoxies and a ‘tick box’ approach to diversity in organisations , which paid consultants millions to “woke-wash” their public image while not making any systemic alterations to their employment practices.[18]
Such righteous intolerance and tone-deaf ignorance of the effect on the general populace of woke word wars presented a series of open goals to the Right. According to research since 5th November, one of Trump’s most effective but cruel slogans was: “Kamala Harris is for they/them. President Trump is for you.” Worse still, it has fuelled a victim culture narrative on the Right in which white Christian men suffer systematic discrimination and marginalisation (at any given time) at the hands of the Deep State, Big Pharma, feminism, the CIA, and secularism.[19]
But yet, there is a place for the initial energy of the social justice movements for a renewal of the left in the era of Trump 2.0 particularly when at present, centre left governments are stuck in a rut of technocracy and what Martin Luther King called “the tranquilising drug of gradualism”. In his rallying cry for a new progressivism in Britain, Matthew D’Ancona calls on Labour to eschew the narrative of steady incrementalism – “milestones, “fix the foundations, “smash the gangs” – and replace it with a confident pluralist patriotism which takes a compassionate and evidence based approach to immigration; argues the case or rejoining the EU single market; takes an approach to racial justice and enduing violence against women which does not ignore disadvantages experienced by white working class people or the fact that suicide is the biggest killer of men under 45. A progressive patriotism will resolutely protect the freedom to worship and crack down on incitement to hatred and violence while extending rather than restricting freedom of speech (including the abolition of blasphemy) and will not tolerate a situation where a teacher from Batley Grammar School in West Yorkshire is still in hiding after his lessons infuriated a group of Muslim parents.[20]
Populism
In his discussion with the American philosopher Michael Sandel, the French economist Thomas Piketty takes issue with the negative connotations associated with populism. He actually refuses to use the term at all, whether in relation to nativist, anti-immigrant nationalist responses to the excesses of globalisation a la Trump and Le Pen or the ‘democratic socialist’ response of Bernie Sanders. He states that the term “populism” and its derogatory associations, belongs to the rhetoric of people who claim to be in the centre but who were largely winners of the market process and who like to delegitimise their opponents, whether from the right or left, as populist. For him socialism, nationalism and liberalism are legitimate ideologies which all have something to bring to the deliberative process.[21]
Sandel notes that the origin of the term “populist” to the coming together in the 19th century in America of industrial workers and agrarian workers in the Southern and Western states to win power from economic elites, typically north-eastern elites who controlled north-eastern railroads and later the oil companies. He describes it as a progressive movement although, even then, with nativist, racist and antisemitic features[22] which was not untypical of labour and radical movement. The Populists formed a political party also known as the People’s Party in the 1890s which was later subsumed in the Democratic Party after 1896. He argues correctly that “populism is not mainly about redistribution … but mainly about reclaiming power for the people from the elites”.[23] Populists on the left polemicise a lot about a “rigged system” at the top but tend to be relatively lacking in analysis about income and wealth inequality and practical redistributive proposals.
But where both Sandel and Piketty agree is that the right-wing authoritarian nativist version of populism (notwithstanding the latter’s refusal to name it) has arisen as a symptom of the failure of progressive or social democratic politics. The taxpayer bailout of Wall Street during the first Barack Obama administration without any attempt to seek accountability for the behaviour of the banks during the 2008 Crash destroyed the hopes for a revival of progressive and social democratic politics that his candidacy had inspired. This disappointment compounded the acquiescence of the centre-left politicians – Blair, Clinton and Schroeder who ruled in the wake of Reagan and Thatcher - in the economic orthodoxy of the time, namely that market mechanisms are the primary instruments for defining and achieving the public good and were content merely to tinker with the hard edges of laissez-faire capitalism. Over time, the foundations were laid for the right wing of populism.[24].
The centre-left’s acceptance of the value neutrality of market mechanisms lie, in Piketty’s opinion, in a fear of democratic deliberation, a fear of what he refers to in his book, Capital and Ideology, as opening the Pandora’s Box of redistribution as well as the revaluation of what we do; of our working lives; of our public lives. Piketty trumpets the aspiration for self-government; for the extension of democracy to the lowest level of decision making especially strong representation of workers on the boards of companies. He also calls for the “decommodification” of public goods such as universities and public health systems.[25]
To conclude, Sandel prescribes the following political vision for the left: one “that combines populism as patriotism (to paraphrase Samuel Johnson, it is nationalism, not patriotism ‘that is the last refuge of the scoundrel’) – a radical critique of inequality and unaccountable, concentrated economic power (the populism) and a greater emphasis on community, solidarity and the mutual obligations of human beings as citizens (the patriotism; something that the left should never cede to the right. Sandel hopes that Trump’s “plutocratic populism;” his love in with Musk, Bezos and Zuckerberg, will finally disappoint the working people who supported him. But will have progressives have a more inspiring offer to make?[26] After all, it’s the economy, stupid.
References
[1] Guardian, 22nd January 2025, p. 15
[2] Robert Tait Shock as Trump halts new civil rights cases. Guardian 24th January 2024 p. 1, 13
[3] Carter Sherman Abortion. Gender decree raises fears over ‘foetal personhood’. Guardian 24th January 2025.
[4] Joseph Gedeon Immigration. State officials who resist deportation drive may face federal prosecution.
[5] Ibid
[6] Oliver Holmes Key Executive order. A lot has happened this week; what will it mean? Guardian 25th January pp 16-17
[7] Trump’s return will help the right ‘occupy Brussels,’ says Hungarian PM. Guardian 20th January 2025.
[8] Ibid
[9] Gaby Hinsliff The nightmare begins – but this is no time to abandon hope. Guardian Journal p.2
[10]Matthew D’Ancona How to Wake up Woke. The New European Issue 419 January 9-15, 2025, pp.12-13.
[11] Ibid, p.12
[12] Susan Neiman (2023) Left Is Not Woke. Cambridge: Polity Press p.4
[13] Ibid, p.5
[14] Ibid, p.5
[15] D’Ancona, p.12
[16] Ibid
[17] Ibid
[18] Ibid
[19] Ibid
[20] Ibid
[21] Thomas Piketty and Michael Sandel, The Left after Trump. New Statesman 24-30 January 2025 pp.26-31.
[22] Ibid, p.29.
[23] Ibid, p.31.
⏩Barry Gilheany is a freelance writer, qualified counsellor and aspirant artist resident in Colchester where he took his PhD at the University of Essex. He is also a lifelong Leeds United supporter.
Barry both you and Christy have a bad case of TDS----I don't think there is a known cure...
ReplyDeleteAnd you, Frankie, have a bad case of TDS. In your case, Trump Denial Syndrome or could it even be Trump Delight Syndrome. So which of his Executive Orders tickled you?
DeleteBarry, banning the surgical mutilation of children seems a good policy, no? Just passed today by executive order.
DeleteThe left was concerned with the questions of globalisation around the turn of the millennium. They abandoned all of that in favour of identity politics and lost terribly. It is now the "right" which talks about the negative consequences of globalisation. The left has basically collapsed. Identity politics has proven more damaging for the left than the collapse of the Soviet Union.
ReplyDeleteBarry - think it valuable that you called out wokery. The damage it has done to progressive politics at a time when the right are on the rise needs put out there.
ReplyDeleteI have often read of the provenance of woke cancel culture lying with Lead Belly but I am not sure this is right. Was listening to a podcast recently which traced both the idea of coming awake and cancel culture to 16th Century Calvinist Geneva.
Calvinism is the most pernicious of religious schools and for the dictatorship of the woketariat to have its lineage traced back to there and then is quite revealing. Woketards are like a religious cult although not all woke are woketards.
Anthony, Barry doesn't call out 'wokery'---He endorses it at every opportunity....
Deletehe had an opportunity here to endorse it but didn't. To me it looks like he draws the same distinction between Woke and Wokeism which was the subject of an article from Psychology Today reproduced on TPQ yesterday.
DeleteThere is nothing wrong to wakening up to what is going on around us. The problem is when woketard bores put us back to sleep with their insufferable self righteousness.
I recently read the Susan Neiman book you referred to Left Is Not Woke on the recommendation of Gearoid O'Loinsigh. I found it quite good.
ReplyDelete"The left was concerned with the questions of globalisation around the turn of the millennium. They abandoned all of that in favour of identity politics" I would have thought that is there is anything that folks on this forum think about and act on, its their identity, no? The global seems pretty distant and abstract to most.
ReplyDeleteThere is a distinction between nationalism as identity politics (in the Irish case uniting people on the broadest possible basis) and the Balkanisation game played by progressives and the left which serves to divide people into the most minute "communities," perpetuating a constant heightened state of alert and combat.
DeleteOn the question of globalisation - it is Trump who has taken up the line that free trade agreements such as NAFTA are a bad deal for Americans as it means shipping industry abroad. I haven't heard the left say that since 2000. This also applies to other negative consequences of globalisation which the left ignore.
In the words of President Thieu of (South) Vietnam, being America's enemy is easy, but being a friend is more dangerous: I think that Europe is learning this now.
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