Trump and the Politics of Neoliberal Distraction

Posted on February 1, 2025 by greg

Research, conducted on humans and macaque monkeys, concludes that our ability to focus is designed to work in bursts of attention, rather than uninterruptedly. For instance, while it may seem that you are continuously focusing on reading this article, the reality is that you’re zooming in and out of attention up to four times per second. The researchers found that in between those bursts of attention, we are actually distracted. During those periods of distraction, the brain pauses and scans the environment to see if there is something outside the primary focus of attention that might be more important. If there is not, it re-focus back to what you were doing. “The brain can’t process everything in the environment,” explains Ian Fiebelkorn, an associate research scholar at the Princeton Neuroscience Institute “It’s developed those filtering processes that allow it to focus on some information at the expense of other information.”1

In 1952, a Readers’ Digest article decried the negative health consequences of cigarette smoking. The following year was the first year in two decades that the sale of cigarettes dropped. The tobacco industry responded by setting up the Council for Tobacco Research. This was the beginning of a survival strategy. This meant denying the health consequences of smoking. Deceiving customers about the true nature of cigarettes through marketing and PR, as well as damaging the credibility of industry opponents. This including introducing distractions by drawing attentions to other agents like radon gas, asbestos, arsenic, silica and chromium. The tobacco companies joined many associations who typically oppose taxation and promoted themselves as supporters of freedom of expression, but blocked making available any information linking smoking to death or any negative outcomes. Today the growth of next generation products includes electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes), which can also be referred to as alternative nicotine products and vapes.

Politicians may strategically time unpopular measures to coincide with newsworthy events that distract the media and the public. In an applied sense, the politics of distraction can be seen in the strategic or manipulative effort by the powerful to mislead or misdirect people in order to cover or hide more critical issues which may be harder to address. Donald Trump strategically and repeatedly employs ‘distraction techniques’ to sidetrack critical issues. He does this by choosing to highlight more trivial matters which he dresses up as ‘bright, shiny objects (BSOs)’ through linguistic devices such as empty intensifiers and puffery. Such distraction techniques have earned Trump the nickname of ‘super spreader of distraction’, whereby discourse is catapulted away from serious and more complex issues. While extreme in the case of Trump, such distraction techniques are not uncommon amongst politicians in general, and indeed amongst decision-makers and public figures in other disciplines.2

 Along with this being the post-truth era, it is also increasingly the era of distraction – when politicians dangle shiny objects to distract media and voters from deception going on elsewhere.  Politicians deliberately time controversial actions with major news events. For each channel, we look at the top three stories. And the idea is that the more time you spend on the top three stories, the less time is going to be available for everything else, including the conflict. For spin doctor rule number one is like, “Dump all the bad stuff when the world is not watching.”  For example, a really good point for a lot of these big things, like a controversial executive order by the president. The capitalist system we live in encourages our apathy and complacency by constantly presenting us with distractions, desensitizing us to the ills of the world and making us cynical about our ability to create positive change.

Neoliberalism has not succeeded in reducing either poverty or inequality. From the perspective of the international capitalist class, it has failed in terms of the system itself. It has not recreated the conditions for capital accumulation which existed during the Great Boom. Above all, it has failed consistently to increase the rate of profit. To the extent that it has intermittently done so, it has not achieved rates comparable to those between 1948 and 1974. Accumulation has increasingly come to rely on increasing productivity on the one hand (making fewer people work harder) and decreasing the share of income going to labour the other (paying workers less in real terms). The suppression of real wage levels in Canada and the US has encouraged the very dependence on borrowing that has now entered crisis. US household debt has risen by nearly 50% over the last two decades, after adjusting for inflation.3

In response to concerns raised in the 1970s the corporate elite set in motion processes to dismantle the New Deal social compact, clearly recognizing that some people will now do with less to ensure an elite (big business) have more. This response to the crisis in capitalism also included moves to union busting. A key hegemonic claim is that the market provides a natural mechanism for rational economic allocation. Thus, attempts to regulate capital via political decisions produce suboptimal outcomes. This thinking is used to undermine the mechanics of popular engagement in determining policy. The actual individuals – the economic elite – who control the decision-making undermine other associations, like unions, under the rhetoric of personal freedom. Neoliberalism’s nonsense of individual freedom and equality, and its promise of prosperity and growth, are slowly being revealed as fabrications. Economic nationalism serves to distract the working-class from the very real questions about domestic distribution of economic resources by casting dispersion on foreigners.

Neoliberalism has ushered in a new Gilded Age in which the logic of the market now governs every aspect of media, culture, and social life from schooling to health care to old age. The goal was to weaken the welfare state and any commitment to full employment, and – always – to cut taxes and deregulate. But neoliberalism is more than a standard right wing wish list. It is a way of reordering social reality, and of rethinking our status as individuals. In short, neoliberalism is not simply a name for pro-market policies, or for the compromises with finance capitalism made just to support the autocracy. It is a name for a premise that, quietly, has come to regulate all we practice and believe: that the only a way of structuring all reality is the model of economic competition. The rise of digital technology, particularly smartphones, social media and instant messaging, has created an environment ripe for distractions.4

Today, shareable and trending posts on popular social media sites are rapidly closing in on television as the breaking news source for North Americans. Voters these days are easily distracted by politicians’ desperate bids for attention. In recent years, politicians have questioned a president’s birth certificate, resorted to ridiculous tweeting, and, amongst other stunts, promoted alternative facts. Using such distractions, politicians are gaining unprecedented control over their message. Politicians often now resemble celebrities rather than thoughtful policy-makers. The adage that there is no form of bad publicity appears to be truer than ever. Donald Trump, who reportedly consumes more television news than any president before him, would appear to also be the president who understands how best to manipulate it. The more outlandish his tweets, radical his policies, and atypical his actions, the more attention he receives from the media. His detractors become more infuriated; his base of support more invigorated.

To rule by distraction is a time-tested tool of autocratic and authoritarian regimes. The idea is to create enough chaos and distraction that all eyes remain on that. The key is to make “normal” a moving target (i.e. change what it means to be normal on a regular basis). Doing so allows for drastic steps to take place behind the smoke screen and distractions. In a “rule by distraction” situation, the survival of the administration depends on people not being able to process the complete information. By creating multiple simultaneous distractions, the administration overloads the attention of its citizens. In essence, then, they are not lying to the people, they are just creating enough alternative explanations that “truth” becomes debatable. Add political polarization to this and consistent bashing of the “other” side and you have a loyalist following locked up that will disregard anything that questions the government.5

Trump’s distractions are the new normal. Leaders increase their social media activity and shift the topic from domestic to foreign policy issues during moments of social unrest, which is consistent with a conscious strategy to divert public attention when their position could be at risk. Polarization is distracting us from the real issues.  And yet, during a time of political polarization, it is more often the serious business of governing that is a distraction – from the partisan combat that has become our all-consuming pastime. Indeed, polarization, which drives many of our public and private choices, is so pervasive that we often fail to see how it structures our whole worldview, even our perceptions of events and things that at first do not appear even to have a political dimension. Rising political polarization is, in part, attributed to the fragmentation of news media and the spread of misinformation on social media.

Polarization can only be seen as a central threat to democracy if inequality is ignored. At one time it was believed that the Internet was going to be the greatest tool for expression and democracy. Notwithstanding, the economic elite use social media to create confusion and advance a neoliberal agenda. The mass media has become skilled at controlling what we see and hear and hiding what the wealthy elite don’t want us to see. Also, digital distraction risks exacerbating inequalities. The algorithms feed each of us information that supports views we already have, and creates the conditions for us to be more susceptible to falsehoods. In post-truth politics social media assists political actors who mobilize voters through a crude blend of outlandish conspiracy theories and suggestive half-truths, barely concealed hate-speech, as well as outright lies. Misinformation that seems real – but isn’t – rapidly circulates through social media. The problem is only getting worse.

1  https://www.wired.com/story/brain-distraction-procrastination-science/

2https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14664208.2024.2358692#d1e268

3  https://usafacts.org/articles/the-state-of-household-debt-in-the-us/

 4  https://questioningandskepticism.com/take-back-control-of-the-public-sphere/

 5 https://www.mpsanet.org/ruling-by-distraction/

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On the Road to Authoritarianism: The Challenges

Posted on January 15, 2025 by greg

Throughout most of U.S. history, when prosperity and opportunity have been more broadly shared, especially for women and people of colour, it’s been hand-in-hand with the expansion of democracy and individual freedoms, not their curtailment. Structural and systemic economic unfairness in the U.S., and the accompanying severe economic inequities, were brought into sharp relief during the pandemic. Multiple programs were put in place to confront them. The advance of democracy entails a decrease in political inequality but does not guarantee decreases in inequalities of other sorts. Economic (and other) inequalities have historically followed their own dynamic, independent of whether electoral democracy exists. Governments can reduce inequality through tax relief and income support or transfers (government programs like welfare, free health care, and food stamps), among other types of policies. What is the best way to reduce inequality in the society? Adopt policies, especially fiscal, wage and social protection policies, and progressively achieve greater equality.1

Common explanations of backsliding in the United States have focused on the (assumed) negative impact of globalization and waning ability of citizens to die wealthier than they were born, which along with a growing lack of political tolerance and a surge in misinformation on social media has facilitated the rise of right-wing populist leaders. One reason that there has not been greater resilience against this trend, some have argued, is that Americans have become apathetic about democracy – in part because it is so long since they experienced the downsides of tyranny.  Although governments do hold power over countries’ economies, it is the big banks and large corporations that control and essentially fund these governments. This means that the global economy is dominated by large financial institutions. Economic globalization can exacerbate income inequality, as it can lead to job losses and lower wages in developed countries, while wages in developing countries may remain low.2

Globalization, thus, has powerful economic, political, cultural and social implications for sovereignty. Globalization has led to a decline in the power of national governments to direct and influence their economies (especially with regard to macroeconomic management); and to determine their political structures. Studies also suggest that globalization may contribute to income disparity and inequality between the more educated and less educated members of a society. This means that unskilled workers may be affected by declining wages, which are under constant pressure from globalization. This can lead to growing public discontent and calls for protectionist policies. Globalization shocks, often working through culture and identity, have played an important role in driving up support for populist movements, particularly of the right-wing kind. Globalization and the international economic order have undermined economic-human security – that is economic, food and health security – which in turn has contributed to the generation of personal, community and political insecurity.

A recent report published by the Commonwealth Fund reviewed data from 70 healthcare systems in 10 high-income nations: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States. Among the countries studied, the U.S. ranks last in life expectancy, with the average American living to 77.5 years, and has the highest rate of preventable and treatable deaths. The report reveals roughly 30% of U.S. adults live with two or more chronic conditions, such as diabetes or heart disease, nearly double the rate of other wealthy nations. The lack of affordability was cited as a pervasive problem due to a “fragmented insurance system” that saw 26 million Americans without insurance. Despite spending nearly 17% of its gross domestic product (GDP) on health care – far more than any other nation – the U.S. ranks last overall in health system performance.3

Finally, the role of crucial events on the global and national level cannot be underestimated. The 2008 financial crisis and its consequences across the world exposed the limitations of contemporary advanced economies, highlighted growing social inequalities, and reduced the resources available for responding to old and new social problems. The COVID-19 pandemic that disproportionately affected Western countries introduced an additional set of challenges and further exposed the weaknesses of their health and welfare systems.  All these factors contributed to the rise of populist and radical left- and right-wing parties and movements in many countries, allowing their leaders to deliberately challenge liberal values and democratic norms. Populist politicians mobilized on resentments, grievances, and growing anger toward political institutions. Authoritarian populists have disrupted politics in many societies, as exemplified by Donald Trump in the U.S. and Brexit in the UK.4

Resentment as a cultural response to economic struggle has political consequences. More than half of US workers are unhappy with their jobs. The frustration you experience by not living the life you imagined is created by the resentment that the outcome of an event is less than you imagined it would be. Donald Trump himself is a cauldron of resentment, who has deeply internalized a life-time of deep resentments, and thus is able to tap into, articulate, and mobilize the resentments of his followers. Donald Trump – figured out how to harness their disillusionment and growing anger – is superior to the others in exploiting the narcissism of small differences to recruit the Republican base. His support for lower taxes and smaller government has surrounded himself with enablers. Enablers support Trump’s behavior out of fear, love, or a misguided sense of loyalty. Autocrats, like Trump, surround themselves with their political cronies and lackies rather than competent people – have no way of eliciting, recognizing or assessing useful criticism.

Dictatorial drift emerges from above by authoritarian leaders who, after legitimately winning elections, strive to concentrate executive power, marginalize political opposition and representative institutions, instrumentalize the judicial system, and manipulate electoral institutions to escape constitutional and political constraints and controls. They seek to gradually destroy independent media, civil society organizations, and formal and informal checks and balances, and they actively mobilize anti-liberal forces and incite social and political conflicts. Both the erosion of democracy and dictatorial drift are underpinned by the emergence of conservative and reactionary civil society, which mobilize and channel the demand-side anti-liberal and authoritarian preferences. Economic insecurity refers to a person’s exposure, and vulnerability, to an economic loss. Economic stress obviously activates latent authoritarian tendencies and can render even liberals less tolerant. Economic disruptions can fuel nationalist populism, because belonging to an identity group can restore one’s sense of control and coherence by means of attachment.

According to Foucault ‘knowledge’ and ‘truth’ are created by those in power. What we take to be true is the dominant worldview that we have been provided with: it is received wisdom, not truth. Foucault rejected the idea that society was progressing. The world is not getting better or getting closer to truth, it is just moving through different worldviews. Foucault’s theory of power: to maintain power, those in positions of authority rely on the production of knowledge. They do this by creating information systems (unrestrained digital markets have given us monopoly, pervasive surveillance, and powerful vectors of disinformation) which allow them to exercise surveillance and control over the population. It has been argued that inequality is not an unintended result but itself an important feature of neoliberal politics because it is supposed to serve as a mechanism to increase competition and productivity (Foucault, 2008; Mirowski, 2014).5

Disinformation can be dangerous on social media because, the sheer amount of information there and the length of readers’ attention spans can allow it to go unchecked. Social media platform algorithms are designed for optimized user retention and engagement, and are not looking for misinformation or disinformation. A combination of lies and religion are used to control the people. There is no difference between the fake news, misinformation, disinformation of today – such lies have been churned out for years, but today it is designed to support the plutocracy. Trump’s victim politics is a complete fraud, an old trick used by economic elite to keep working-class Americans fighting each other rather than focusing on processes to counter the plutocrats who are ripping them off. The truth is that present capitalism creates enormous wealth, but it concentrates into oligopolies and monopolies, to the extent the economic elite creates and normalizes a culture of lying to itself leading to its inherent instability.

The true value of Nineteen Eighty-four is it teaches us that power and tyranny are made possible through the use of words and how they are mediated. The theme of lies in 1984 is: lying, deception and false appearance is usually connected with the want for power and control, the belief that no one will find out, and avoiding punishment, which are evident in 1984. George Orwell observes: “The further a society drifts from the truth the more it will hate those who speak it.” Orwell demonstrates how a government’s manipulation of technology, language, media, and history can oppress and degrade its citizens. The book was written as a warning of what could happen if people allowed their governments to obtain too much power after Orwell saw what happened to the people in Nazi Germany. Orwell concludes: “If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

Speaking truth to power is a non-violent political tactic, is required against the received wisdom or propaganda of the Trump clique regarded as oppressive, authoritarian or a cult. The concept of “speaking truth to power” often requires those who pursue it to confront personal and social risks. Michel Foucault highlights the courage needed to speak out against dominant systems, as doing so can lead to consequences like social isolation, loss of freedom, or even death. For Foucault, to challenge power is not a matter of seeking some absolute truth, but of detaching the power of truth from the forms of hegemony, social, economic and cultural, within which it operates at the present time. There is truly no universal truth at all, only systems of power creating a regime of truth. As US slips into authoritarian democracy, it is key to call out any combination of censoring of the media and restrictions on civil liberties.

1  https://theloop.ecpr.eu/how-income-inequality-threatens-democracy/

2   https://www.exploros.com/summary/How-does-the-global-economy-work-2

3   https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/the-us-is-failing-shocking-study-of-10-wealthy-nations-reveals-americans-die-the-youngest-live-the-sickest-lives-despite-the-us-spending-the-most-on-health-care-here-s-the-problem/ar-AA1wzr4Q?ocid=winp2fptaskbar&cvid=b07a7a2a481542b8b9c5c052dcbcbf51&ei=52

4https://ash.harvard.edu/wpcontent/uploads/2023/12/democracy_and_authoritarianism_in_the_21st_century-_a_sketch.pdf

 5  https://questioningandskepticism.com/how-disinformation-supports-post-truth-and-authoritarianism/

6  https://questioningandskepticism.com/responding-to-a-society-controlled-and-manipulated-by-lies/

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Trump As the Conduit for the Alt Right: The Consequences

Posted on January 1, 2025 by greg

Digital media has played a significant role in the rise of right-wing populism, facilitating the circulation of extremist propaganda. Around the world populist movements are wreaking economic destruction and social turmoil in the name of moral principles. The biggest takeaway from this research is that social emotions like anger, envy, and spite are very powerful motives. They often outweigh economic self-interest, and they tap into the brain’s reward centres – the same brain areas that play a role in addiction. These emotions can fuel a behavior called ‘costly punishment’: where people take on a personal cost to punish another person for being unfair. It appears people just wanted to hurt the person who had hurt them, and that’s an anti-social motive. Most likely people might be punishing for antisocial reasons but telling themselves and others they are punishing for moralistic reasons. Populist messaging has been very effective in channelling retributive impulses into votes.1

 For Guénon (1886 – 1951) and other Traditionalists, a caste system that placed a spiritual elite at the top and manual workers at the bottom was the natural order of human society. The increase in an individualist ethos, especially one that treats all humans as equal because of their status as consumers, erodes the caste system in the “west.” In tandem with the falling away of caste and the rise of individualism is the ascendance of the value of equality and its attendant institutionalized political form in democracy. Over and against such a vision of society Guénon promoted a hierarchical social order rooted in a primordial tradition, where people know their place, and because they know their place (whether as a cook, blacksmith, mother, or father) had a clear meaning and purpose in their lives. This political theology sought to preserve hierarchy, suppress the individual, and enforce conformity to an ideal only known by a select few.2

Curtis Guy Yarvin (born 1973), also known by the pen name Mencius Moldbug, is an American blogger. He is known, along with philosopher Nick Land, for founding the anti-egalitarian and anti-democratic philosophical movement known as the Dark Enlightenment or neo-reactionary movement. In his blog Unqualified Reservations, which he wrote from 2007 to 2014, and on his later Substack page called Gray Mirror, which he started in 2020, he argues that American democracy is a failed experiment that should be replaced by an accountable monarchy, similar to the governance structure of corporations. In the 1980–1990s, Yarvin was influenced by the libertarian tech culture of Silicon Valley. Yarvin read right-wing and American conservative works. He has been described as a “neo-reactionary” and “neo-monarchist” who “sees liberalism as creating a Matrix-like totalitarian system, and who wants to replace American democracy with a sort of techno-monarchy”.3

 The libertarian University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds introduced Yarvin to writers like Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard. The rejection of empiricism by Mises and the Austrian School, who favored instead deduction from first principles, influenced Yarvin’s mindset. Yarvin’s reading of Thomas Carlyle convinced him that libertarianism was a doomed project without the inclusion of authoritarianism, and Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s 2001 book Democracy: The God That Failed marked Yarvin’s first break with democracy. Another influence was James Burnham, who asserted that real politics occurred through the actions of elites, beneath what he called apparent democratic or socialist rhetoric. In the 2000s, the failures of US-led nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan strengthened Yarvin’s anti-democratic views, the federal response to the 2008 financial crisis strengthened his libertarian convictions, and Barack Obama’s election as US president later that year reinforced his belief that history inevitably progresses toward left-leaning societies.

Far-right intellectuals like Steve Bannon claim to speak for a working class put upon by out-of-touch liberal elites. But their anti-modernist, hierarchical vision of the world doesn’t offer workers what they really need: more money in their pockets, and more power at the workplace. He turns to Yarvin and Guénon to support his ideas. In Yarvin’s view, democratic governments are inefficient and wasteful and should be replaced with sovereign joint-stock corporations whose “shareholders” (large owners) elect an executive with total power, but who must serve at their pleasure. The executive, unencumbered by liberal-democratic procedures, could rule efficiently much like a CEO-monarch. Yarvin gave a talk about “rebooting” the American government at the 2012 BIL Conference. He used it to advocate the acronym “RAGE”, which he defined as “Retire All Government Employees”. Vice president-elect JD Vance has cited Yarvin as an influence.

Yarvin advocates an American ‘monarch’ dissolving elite academic institutions and media outlets within the first few months of their reign. Drawing on computer metaphors, Yarvin contends that society needs a “hard reset” or a “rebooting”, not a series of gradual political reforms.  Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts sees the think tank’s role as “institutionalizing Trumpism” and is a friend of Vance, whom he’s referred to as “one of the leaders of our movement.” Under Roberts, Heritage has shed its former identity as a home for free trade fanatics and Reagan Republicans and has fully leaned into an ultranationalist MAGA ethos. Vance wrote the foreword to Roberts’ book Dawn’s Early Light, whose publication date was pushed back from September until November – after the election. With Project 2025, the foundation has positioned itself as a policy and personnel force in the next Trump term, similar to how the thinktank proved critical to Ronald Reagan in 1981.

Yarvin supports authoritarianism on right-libertarian grounds, claiming that the division of political sovereignty expands the scope of the state, whereas strong governments with clear hierarchies remain minimal and narrowly focused. According to scholar Joshua Tait, “Moldbug imagines a radical libertarian utopia with maximum freedom in all things except politics.” He has favored same-sex marriage, freedom of religion, and private use of drugs, and has written against race- or gender-based discriminatory laws, although, according to Tait, “he self-consciously proposed private welfare and prison reforms that resembled slavery”. Tait describes Yarvin’s writing as contradictory, saying: “He advocates hierarchy, yet deeply resents cultural elites. His political vision is futuristic and libertarian, yet expressed in the language of monarchy and reaction.  Yarvin wants American democracy toppled, and he has prominent Republican fans who have read and admire his work.

According to Tait, “Moldbug’s relationship with the investor-entrepreneur Thiel is his most important connection.” Thiel was an investor in Yarvin’s startup Tlon and gave $100,000 to Tlon’s co-founder John Burnham in 2011. In 2016, Yarvin privately asserted to Milo Yiannopoulos that he had been “coaching Thiel” and that he had watched the 2016 US election at Thiel’s house. In his writings, Yarvin has pointed to a 2009 essay written by Thiel, in which the latter declared: “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible… Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women – two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians – have rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron. Investor Balaji Srinivasan has also echoed Yarvin’s ideas of techno-corporate cameralism. He advocated in a 2013 speech a “society run by Silicon Valley […] an opt-in society, ultimately outside the US, run by technology.

Curtis Yarvin and the rising right are crafting a different strain of conservative politics. No one online has shaped Vance’s thinking more than this neoreactionary blogger, Vance said on a right-wing podcast in 2021. Vance didn’t stop at a simple name-drop. He went on to explain how former President Donald Trump should remake the federal bureaucracy. “I think what Trump should do, if I was giving him one piece of advice: Fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, and replace them with our people. And when the courts stop you, stand before the country and say, ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.’” Vance is smart enough not to cite Yarvin in public now that he’s the vice president, and he hasn’t publicly supported some of the blogger’s more repugnant views. But that doesn’t mean he’s not plugged in.4

On the campaign trail, Trump vowed to re-sign an executive order known as Schedule F, which could reclassify tens of thousands of civil servants into at-will political appointments, who Trump could fire and replace with loyalists. He’s also assigned billionaire Elon Musk and former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy to run the “Department of Government Efficiency,” an advisory board that will explore ways to slash the federal budget. Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will lead a new Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE for short. The theory: Putting up a target of at least $2 trillion in annual government spending cuts – one-third of federal outlays, excluding interest on the debt. The goal: A weaker regulatory apparatus or infrastructure allows business to do a lot more and have a lot more freedoms than it did previously, so business executives or those in the private sector may call this efficiency.

Trump is the conduit for the alt right. This is how US extremism is going mainstream. In parallel and closely associated with the expansion of populist politics there has been a surge in alt-right politics that usually articulate populism’s anti-establishment appeals to far-right ideologies based on race, ethnic and nationalist forms of identification. Trump used populist rhetoric to get elected. Now elected, he is supported by enablers, profit mongers and blind believers. Trump is governing as an elitist, promoting an authoritarian democracy. Authoritarian democracy is a type of democracy in which democratic institutions and processes are used to legitimize an authoritarian regime. Political opposition will be suppressed, civil liberties will be restricted, and the media can expect to be censored or controlled by the government. The general public will have limited opportunities for political participation, and decisions will be made by a small group of individuals.

 1  https://www.weforum.org/stories/2017/01/how-populism-taps-into-the-human-desire-for-punishment/

2  https://contendingmodernities.nd.edu/theorizing-modernities/political-theology-traditionalism/

 3  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Yarvin

4  https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/16/24266512/jd-vance-curtis-yarvin-influence-rage-project-2025

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How Disinformation Supports Post-truth and Authoritarianism

Posted on December 15, 2024 by greg

Postmodernism is defined as the reaction to assumed certainty of scientific, or objective, efforts to explain reality. Postmodernism says that there is no real truth. It says that knowledge is always made or invented and not discovered. Postmodernism is based on the principle that concepts, ideas and language itself are subjective and arbitrary “constructs”. As postmodern people search for truth, they base their conclusions on their own research, individual experiences, and personal relationships instead of on the truth accepted by their parents, government or church. Thus all conceptual thought, including science, is also oppressive. There can be no objective truth.  Because knowledge is made by people, a person cannot know something for sure – all ideas and facts are ‘believed’ instead of ‘known’. Remember the greatest fault of postmodernism is that it lacks an agenda for social change. Kierkegaard observes, “Everyone one wants progress, no one wants change.”

Decision-makers on Wall Street with extreme individualism and a sense of entitlement chose not to apply critical thinking, but to intentionally take advantage of people, which led to the meltdown of the economy in 2008. Many in the middle class saw their comfortable retirement, their home equity, and their dreams destroyed. With rising financial integration, world economic growth has lessened in recent years. The threat to individual freedom and opportunities to pursue one’s goals today comes not from political oppression, but from economic failure. Because of growing disillusionment and anger students and workers voted for leaders outside the mainstream party candidates during the 2024 presidential election – the consequence of being left behind by soaring inequality and the economic burden on workers. Donald Trump – figured out how to harness their disillusionment and growing anger – was superior to the others in exploiting the narcissism of small differences to recruit the Republican base.

People’s judgements about inflation and immigration were harsh during this election season, and these views harmed their assessments of Kamala Harris and strengthened the case for Trump. Donald Trump convinced many Americans that the economy is terrible, but a new analysis shows that’s just as false as his election fraud claims that fueled the Jan. 6 insurrection. Many Americans are struggling economically, and inflation was indeed high two years ago, but the unemployment rate is low, inflation has dropped significantly, economic growth is strong and median household income is higher than in Trump’s last year in office, wrote journalist and author Steven Greenhouse for The Guardian. “The truth is that the economy was in far worse shape during Trump’s last year in office, when the unemployment rate soared to 14.8 percent during the pandemic, compared with 4.1 percent in 2024.

Despite having access to more information than ever before, Americans’ trust in the news media has been declining in recent years, and nearly three-quarters of Americans say the news media is making political polarization worse. In a situation where public confidence in news reporters is very low and new generative AI tools make it easy to create and disseminate fake pictures, videos, and narratives, the 2024 campaign was rife with organized efforts to sway voters, twist perceptions, and make people believe negative material about various candidates. The internet platforms that control online distribution can limit the reach of various stories if they want to, but the baseline case is that they don’t want to. A story that appears in any outlet can go viral. This has two critical implications. One is that you can’t actually stop a given piece of information from reaching people just by having “mainstream” outlets ignore it.

The disinformation risks have grown stronger in recent months due to new tech tools such as generative AI. There are easy-to-use tools that can create false pictures, videos, audio, and narratives. People no longer need a technical background to use AI tools but can make requests through prompts and templates and become master propagandists. We need digital literacy programs that train people on how to evaluate online information and spot fakes and deceptions. In a situation where public confidence in news reporters is very low and new generative AI tools make it easy to create and disseminate fake pictures, videos, and narratives, the 2024 campaign was rife with organized efforts to sway voters, twist perceptions, and make people believe negative material about various candidates. Polling data suggest that false claims affected how people saw the candidates, their views about leading issues such as the economy, immigration, and crime, and the way the news media covered the campaign.

According to candidate Trump, there were hordes of migrants overrunning the country’s southern border, unfairly monopolizing scarce public resources and endangering public security through dangerous crime waves. Actual border statistics consistently showed weak support for those claims, but that wasn’t enough to quell unfavorable views about Harris on border security. The idea that 10 million migrants had crossed the border and that many were released after capture was not true, according to independent fact-checkers. Actually, apprehension and release numbers dropped during the Biden administration and were comparable to figures during the Trump administration. Harris had bet on a blue landslide on abortion rights, but forgot that voters care most about guarantees over basic needs. When voters don’t feel economically stable or secure, they will vote against whichever party is in power when given the chance. Democrats need to back off diagnosing, and focus on listening to voters.

Finally, many individuals and organizations have financial incentives to spread blatant lies. Through websites, newsletters, and digital platforms, they make money from subscriptions, advertising, and merchandise sales. As long as spreading lies is lucrative, it will be hard to get a serious handle on the flood of disinformation that plagues our current system. Post-truth is a term that refers to the widespread documentation of, and concern about, disputes over public truth claims in the 21st century.  In an era when technological innovations support increasingly inexpensive and easy ways to produce media that looks official, the ability to separate real from artificial has become increasingly complicated and difficult. Conspiracy propagandists are part of the anti-government movement. These groups and individuals intentionally spread disinformation and advance misinformation about government institutions and officials. With the rise of social media and partisan news outlets, everyone now has their own opinions and their own facts.

It is often said that for ‘post-truth’ politicians like Donald Trump, ‘truth itself has become irrelevant’. The post-truth camp rejects the consensus of established expert authorities as untrue, implying that the ‘so-called experts’ are not really experts. Moreover, Trump presents ‘facts’ of his own and even makes them central elements of his rhetoric. The purported facts are often expressed in mathematical formats signaling hard, scientific expertise, that are easy for most to fact check. By setting himself as a crusader against Washington and the media, Trump has played on Americans’ declining trust in both. The practice of post-truth – untrue assertion piled on untrue assertion – helped get Donald Trump, who lied or misled at an unprecedented level, to the White House. The truth camp, in contrast, closely follows the established experts – Democrats tried to convince voters that Donald Trump is an existential threat to the country’s future – lost the election.

There is no difference between the fake news, misinformation, disinformation of today – such lies have been churned out for years, but today it is designed to support the plutocracy. There is an orchestrated counter-revolution based on polarization. Trump’s victim politics is a complete fraud, an old trick used by economic elite to keep working-class Americans fighting each other rather than focusing on processes to counter the plutocrats who are ripping them off. Trump and his allies stoke racial tensions even as they seek to cut taxes on the rich by shedding affordable health care for everyone else, dismantle protection for workers and consumers, and tear down environmental protections that stop wealthy corporations from poisoning communities. In post-truth politics social media assists political actors who mobilize voters through a crude blend of outlandish conspiracy theories and suggestive half-truths, barely concealed hate-speech, as well as outright lies.

When elites turn neoliberalism into crony capitalism instead of well-functioning free markets, they doom democracies and stabilize authoritarian politics. We are in debt to Donald Trump for exposing the ugly network of lies that Rousseau predicted that creates the society in which we live. He pulled back the curtain on the metaphor of the invisible hand exposing the oligarchy that is responsible for the increasing economic inequality between the wealthy and the rest of society. Trump also illustrated how emotion drives decisions – facts are now secondary – how politicians promise change to get elected, then once elected do an about turn and cater to corporate money. Trump ushered in the post-truth era in which people are more likely to accept an argument based on their emotions and beliefs, rather than one based on facts. The truth is important because it brings clarity which invites better choices resulting in better outcomes or experiences.

According to Foucault ‘knowledge’ and ‘truth’ are created by those in power. What we take to be true is the dominant worldview that we have been provided with: it is received wisdom, not truth. Foucault rejected the idea that society was progressing. The world is not getting better or getting closer to truth, it is just moving through different worldviews. Foucault adds that the essential political problem for us, today, is trying to change our “political, economic, institutional regime of the production of truth” (where truth is modeled on the form of scientific discourse), in order to constitute a new ‘politics of truth’: “The real political task in a society is to criticize the workings of institutions that ‘appear’ to be both neutral and independent, to criticize and attack them in such a manner that the political violence that has always exercised itself obscurely through them will be unmasked, so that one can fight against them.”1

1 https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/1260.Michel_Foucault

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The Plutocracy and Big Money: the Cost of Money in Politics

Posted on December 1, 2024 by greg

Billionaires do not hesitate to present their ideology as interpretation of truth. Hedge fund billionaire Bob Mercer and his family spent millions in GAI (Government Accountability Institute), Breitbart and Cambridge Analytica during the 2016 campaign to get Trump elected. Hillary Clinton did propose a tax on high-frequency trading of securities, which is reportedly a favorite of Mercer’s Renaissance Technologies. The Mercer Family Foundation gave nearly $3.6 million to Citizens United between 2012 and 2014, which sued for access to Clinton Foundation-related emails and whose president David Bossie also got a senior job on the Trump campaign. Cambridge Analytica was a data mining and data analysis company that obtained the data of 50 million Facebook users, constructed 30 million personality profiles, and sold the data to US politicians seeking election to influence voters, without the users’ consent. Mercer’s investments helped Trump win the 2016 election.

Americans for Prosperity, founded in 2004, is a libertarian conservative political advocacy group in the US funded by David and Charles Koch. The AFP Foundation describes its mission as “educating and training citizens to be courageous advocates for the ideas, principles, and policies of a free society – knowing that leads to the greatest prosperity and wellbeing for all – especially the least fortunate.” In reality, it is part of a network that uses dark money to fund an interlocking array of organizations that can work in tandem to influence and ultimately control academic institutions, think tanks, the courts, statehouses and Congress. This system eliminates the need to debate libertarian ideas in elections; but ensures that libertarian views on regulation and taxes are ascendant in majority of state governments, the Supreme Court and Congress. These activities account for the fact protections for employees have been decimated, and hedge fund billionaires pay a far lower tax rate than middle class workers.1

What links climate change and inequities? “A few billionaires (corporations) together have ‘investment emissions’ that equal the carbon footprints of entire countries like France, Egypt or Argentina,” claims Dabi “The major and growing responsibility of wealthy people for overall emissions is rarely discussed or considered in climate policy making.” These billionaire investors at the top of the corporate pyramid have huge responsibility for driving climate breakdown. The evidence is mounting: a World Bank report estimated that an additional 68 to 135 million people could be pushed into poverty by 2030 because of climate change. As the poorest tend to be excluded from the decision-making process, there is always a risk of underinvestment in actions that would be particularly beneficial to them. Policies need to be tailored to ensure the economic elite do not impose undue financial constraints on those who have the fewest resources.2

It seems strange, but it shouldn’t. Governments and central banks around the world took exceptional measures to support the financial system during the pandemic, and it worked to excess. Fantastic amounts of money were made in stocks, housing, cryptocurrency and more during a pandemic that killed 6.2 million people and rocked the global economy. Billionaires’ wealth has risen more since COVID-19 began than it has in the last 14 years. At $5 trillion dollars, this is the biggest surge in billionaire wealth since records began. A one-off 99 percent tax on the ten richest men’s pandemic windfalls, for example, could pay: to make enough vaccines for the world; to provide universal healthcare and social protection, fund climate adaptation and reduce gender-based violence in over 80 countries. All this could be done, while still leaving these men $8 billion better off than they were before the pandemic.3

While a plutocracy is a government ruled by the wealthy, an aristocracy is a form of government ruled by an elite few or a privileged, minority ruling class.  The 1% aren’t just the biggest climate wreckers, they also greatly influence how the world responds to the crisis. Some critics think that the supergiant tech corporations that have spawned so many modern billionaires operate in ways that resemble feudalism more than capitalism, and, certainly, plenty of billionaires operate like the lords of the Earth while campaigning to protect the economic inequality that made them so rich and makes so many others so poor. They use their power in arbitrary, reckless and often environmentally destructive ways. Donald Trump received a “small” loan from his Dad; Elon Musk used his smarts not his father’s money from emerald dealing and property development, and even the beloved Buffett had help from his politician/businessman father. We are told it’s a meritocracy, when in fact we exist in a plutocracy.

Neoliberal globalization is a system of smoke and mirrors where the basic instability and unsustainability of the whole system leaves a financial elite who hold governments to ransom. Exploitation here isn’t just about direct wrongdoing. It a spectrum that moves from being blissfully ignorant to actively manipulating systems to safeguard or increase their fortunes, often at our expense. The reality is that the staggering levels of wealth that billionaires amass necessitate practices like maintaining low wages, evading taxes through intricate global schemes, and prioritizing corporate profits over the well-being of communities and the environment. It’s tough to see how you can rack up that kind of wealth without being tangled in systems that inherently make the rich richer and the poor, well poorer. The dysfunctional US economic system doesn’t work for ordinary people – making it ripe for exploitation by a populist such as Trump.4

Social media manipulation of public opinion by political actors is a growing threat to democracies around the world. Citizen influencers are used to spread manipulated messages. Our brains use shortcuts to navigate the complex world around us and keep us safe and healthy: We pay more attention to fearful, dangerous stimuli to stay safe. We remember things that hurt us more than things that help us so we can predict future consequences. We tend to follow the popular opinion of those around us to build stronger communities around shared ideas. But these shortcuts don’t work perfectly in every situation. They can become cognitive biases, or ways in which our brains’ patterns make us vulnerable to errors in judgment, manipulation, and exploitation. Confirmation-bias draws us in to the one-sided outlets, and the cognitive dissonance pushes us away from conflicting ideas. Cognitive dissonance stops us from hearing other opinions that conflict.5

Individuals and corporations can become rich by relying on market power, price discrimination, and other forms of exploitation. But that does not mean they have made any contribution to the wealth of society. On the contrary, such behavior often leaves everyone else worse off overall. Economists refer to these wealth snatchers, who seek to grab a larger share of the economic pie than they create, as rent-seekers. The term originated from land rents: those who received them did so not as a result of their own efforts, but simply as a consequence of ownership, often inherited. With the help of new technologies, they can – and do – engage in mass discrimination, such that prices are set not by the market (finding the single price that equates demand and supply), but by algorithmic determinations of the maximum each customer is willing to pay. Bloomberg notes it’s the “biggest daily increase” of wealth it’s seen since the index began in 2012.

The power elite control what you think through proxies who control information and communication, and through their lobbyists who influence what most of your politicians believe. A little more than a year after America rebelled against political elites by electing a self-proclaimed champion of the people, Donald Trump, its government is more deeply in the pockets of lobbyists and billionaires than ever before. Interrogating a culture of cruelty offers critics a political and moral lens for thinking through the convergence of power, politics and everyday life. It also offers the promise of unveiling the way in which a nation demoralizes itself by adopting the position that it has no duty to provide safety nets for its citizens or care for their well-being, especially in a time of misfortune. There is more to introducing change than getting rid of Trump, we need to deal with plutocrats – the wealthy donors who sabotaged Kamala Harris’s presidential bid.

Big money has always spoken loudly in American politics. During the election cycle, Donald Trump’s attacks on democracy were being promoted by rich and powerful conservative groups determined to win at all cost. Partisan gerrymandering renders the House of Representatives so polarized that most lawmakers now fear a primary challenge from the right or left more than they fear losing to the other party in a general election. They have no incentive to compromise. This cries out for non-partisan redistricting commissions to redraw the lines and make House members more accountable to people other than the extremes of each party. The influence of wealthy donors has only gotten more pronounced over the years: the Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling in the Citizens United case overturned certain long-standing restrictions on political fundraising and spending. It is necessary to overturn Citizens United and fully adopt public financing of elections.

1 Mayer, Jane. (2016) Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right

2  https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/billionaire-emits-million-times-more-greenhouse-gases-average-person

3  https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/ten-richest-men-double-their-fortunes-pandemic-while-incomes-99-percent-humanity

4  https://www.whatshesaidtalk.com/are-billionaires-good-for-society/

5  https://www.humanetech.com/youth/social-media-and-the-brain#question-1

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Shapeshifting Supports Republicans Getting Back into Power

Posted on October 31, 2024 by greg

For the past forty years meritocracy has been used as a smokescreen to justify policies that increase inequality. Donald Trump won the 2016 election with this proposed solution to inequality: meritocracy, capitalism and nationalism. Meritocracy has become a rationalization that allows the rich to abrogate any sense of duty to those less fortunate. In fact, meritocracy serves to justify the status quo – perpetuate the existing upper class – merit can always be defined as what results in success, thus whoever is successful can be portrayed as deserving success, rather than success being predicted by criteria for merit. Meritocracy supports a growing oligarchy as demonstrated by the growth in income inequality and a reduction in economic mobility. Shapeshifting has been an essential characteristic of capitalism that may continue. Uneven economic growth and the widening gap in wealth and income may accelerate capitalism’s shapeshifting.1

Perhaps one of the most intriguing characteristics of shapeshifters is that it is sometimes difficult to sense their intent. Many can be good, evil or both. The Japanese kitsune, a fox, takes the form of a young girl, a beautiful woman or an old man in order to seduce or advise confused humans. We are all psychological shapeshifters, constantly shifting between archetypes based on our current circumstances and setting. By recognizing our archetypes and consciously choosing to shift between them, we can develop new patterns of behavior that are more aligned with our goals and values. What does shapeshifting symbolize today? This ability allows characters to assume various identities, animals, or even objects, which can symbolize deeper themes such as transformation, deception, and the fluidity of identity.

“If Trump wins, we’re entering uncharted territory where private actors with vast wealth and power join with a corrupt president to pursue their own ends and not those of the people of the United States.” Charen added that the conservative Supreme Court greased the wheels for all involved by essentially making the former president above the law. As she put it: “Put those things together, and you have a perfect recipe for massive official corruption.” In Leo Strauss’s view perpetual deception of the citizens by those in power is critical because they need to be led, and they need strong rulers to tell them what’s good for them. At the core of the thinking of Straussian neocons is the idea of lying to achieve their goals.  Project 2025 is a right-wing wish list for another Trump presidency developed by the Heritage Foundation, one of Washington’s most prominent right-wing think tanks.2

Trump has a dramatic range no other candidate can begin to match. This was important for Trump’s initial success in the 2016 primary. With Trump, you never have the sense that it’s a one-or-the-other binary choice. Instead, he is working a dial, which he can turn to whatever setting he wants. Cash notes that all political systems must endure some such exposure to the lure of narcissism, fantasy, illogicality and distortion. Cash thinks that psychoanalytic theorist Joel Whitebook is correct that “Trumpism as a social experience can be understood as a psychotic like phenomenon, that “[Trumpism is] an intentional […] attack on our relation to reality.” Whitebook thinks Trump’s playbook is like that of Putin’s strategist Vladislav Surkov who employs “ceaseless shapeshifting, appealing to nationalist skinheads one moment and human rights groups the next.”  Trump changed our understanding of both public opinion and the media.3

In 2021, when J.D. Vance was asked at a conference why he had converted to Catholicism just two years earlier, he had a fairly simple answer. “I really liked that the Catholic Church was just really old,” he said.  Vance tells the story of how his beliefs have changed by reference to other people. After serving for four years in the US Marine Corps, in 2007, with the world not yet ended, he went to Ohio State University. He read the New Atheist thinkers Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris and declared himself one of their number. He rejected his faith, he explained in a 2020 essay in Catholic journal the Lamp, to fit in with the “social elite” he was now surrounded by. “I began to think and then eventually to say things like: ‘The Christian cosmos is more like North Korea than America, and I know where I’d like to live.’”

Peter Thiel changed Vance’s mind. At Yale Law School in 2011, Vance went to talk by the right-wing venture capitalist billionaire, who was “possibly the smartest person I’d ever met”—and yet, a Christian. Inspired by Thiel, Vance read St Augustine and the French Christian philosopher René Girard, questioned his beliefs once again and, in 2019, was baptised as a Catholic. In the Lamp essay, Vance explains his journey back to faith in that period, during which he wrote his bestselling 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy. He liked the idea, as advocated by Girard, that Jesus was a “scapegoat” for society’s sins. It made him think about the way people pick on society’s “chosen victims” – the targets of online mobs, say. He took to heart the Biblical dictum, “For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged”, meaning that people should examine their own faults before finding them in others.4

The former president also says he wants to deport up to 11 million migrants. If he’s elected, you can bet he’ll try because Trump is Trump. For all his faults, this man lays his cards on the table. Vance, though, discards over and over again, always creating a new hand, like life is one big rummy game. Vance is a shape-shifting opportunist. He will bend his viewpoint to whatever is advantageous. He’ll morph to climb: When a person first confronts the realities of elite power, they have a decision to make. Play along or burn it down. Vance has always played along with whoever can offer him the most power. He was never a voice for the voiceless, as Charen once called him; with his book, he sold out the working poor for prestige. And Vance is only 40 years old. If he survives these headlines and continues to morph, he may prove to be the perfect kind of politician for this click-driven century.5

Most shapeshifters can only take on the appearance of others, meaning skills and memories are not copied and as such they can’t answer questions about the person they impersonate. This requires some knowledge about the person in question but is usually a good way to identify a shapeshifter. This constant shape-shifting gives Mr. Vance one more very interesting function in American politics, beyond the present moment. At some point between 2016 and 2022, when he won his Senate race in Ohio thanks to Mr. Trump’s backing, he sensed that being with Donald Trump was more profitable than being against him. The Ohio senator once condemned abortion ban exceptions, but has shifted his view to better match Trump’s. But Vance’s record reveals a politician who seems more than willing to go where the winds blow when it comes to one of the most divisive and strongly-felt issues in American politics.

Sometimes Shape Shifters get caught in flux, as Trump did in 2021, when he bragged about Project Warp Speed and got booed by Alabamians who didn’t believe in vaccines. Three years later, Trump now considers his rival, independent candidate and anti-vaxer Robert Kennedy Jr. for a significant health portfolio. It should be no surprise. Shape Shifters don’t like it when anyone questions their inconsistencies. Donald Trump’s antipathy toward the press isn’t because it’s the “enemy of the people.” Journalists are in natural opposition to Shape Shifters because they write things down and record things. The trouble with Shape Shifters is that, while they’re good at rising to power, they often don’t know what to do when they get it.  For Trump’s next try, that has been taken care of. He has surrounded himself with admirers who will be in his administration to implement new ideas, along the lines of Project 2025.

In political shapeshifting there is no law only power.  In 2024, a political world overrun with politicians making similar shifts, voters are left to wonder which manifestations are real. People say what they have to say to get ahead. These individuals will change their beliefs, their clothes, their haircuts – whatever it takes – to suit the situation, to please whoever’s approval they crave. These are the characteristics of the shapeshifters, Donald Trump and JD Vance. Basically, there is no real Donald Trump or JD Vance, they change as their circumstances do. Trump and Vance shifted abortion position during the vice-presidential debate. The goal here is to get back into power which is incredibly dangerous and problematic. Today with social media they can shapeshift in real time. Vance is adept at appealing and adapting to power. Vance’s addition to the ticket inspires little confidence and further deepens concerns about the future of American democracy.

1  https://questioningandskepticism.com/meritocracy-disguises-inequality-supports-growing-oligarchy/

2  https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/politics/fat-cats-getting-theirs-conservative-raises-alarm-at-billionaires-cashing-in-on-trump/ar-AA1tdtYv?ocid=winp2fptaskbar&cvid=fb39da803a8846a1fab67b87c429d811&ei=13

 3  https://democracyjournal.org/alcove/donald-trump-shapeshifter/

 4  https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/world/united-states/67486/the-shape-shifting-hypocrisy-of-jd-vance

5   https://www.chicagotribune.com/2024/08/04/opinion-jd-vance-changed-views/

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Politics of Fear: Identifying the Need for Change

Posted on October 23, 2024 by greg

Fear is what you feel when you face something that is unknown or a perceived threat to you. But fear goes beyond that. Fear is also related to the need to understand, in that if you don’t understand why something is going on, it is instinctive to fear it. Today we are vulnerable to the politics of fear. The politics of fear is when leaders use fear as a driving or motivating factor for the people, to get them to vote a particular way, allow excesses in spending, or accept policies they might otherwise abhor. It’s banking on the fact that presenting people with an alleged threat to their well-being will elicit a powerful emotional response that can override reason and prevent a critical assessment of these policies. Populist politicians use such language to develop a cult-like following, divide nations, create culture wars and instill hatred. It is all about disguising the actual project.

As Edmund Burke (1729-1797) who fiercely opposed the French Revolution wrote, “No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.”  “People react to fear, not love,” explained Richard Nixon, a scaremongering maestro whose cries for “law-and-order” were a coded message to white citizens worried about black crime. “They don’t teach that in Sunday school. But it’s true.”  And no President has weaponized fear quite like Trump. He is an expert at playing to the public’s phobias. The America rendered in his speeches and tweets is a dystopian hellscape. He shapes public opinion by emphasizing dangers – both real and imaginary – that his policies purport to fix. As author Mark Vernon has noted “… the politics of fear plays on an assumption that people cannot bear the uncertainties associated with [risk]. Politics then becomes a question of who can better deliver an illusion of control.1,2

The problem is that the lens of fear distorts what you see. It focuses primarily on the negative, exaggerates the potentially threatening, filters out alternative views, and causes you to compromise your core values out of the urgent need to survive. Another notable difference today is that many people feel that they may have to confront threats on their own. As a citizen you may become more compliant, more willing to surrender your rights for vague promises of safety. As an employee you are less demanding, less willing to take risks. These days, the measurable loss of faith in government combined with the difficulty of fighting terrorism has given the public less confidence that they will be kept safe. The narrative of fear presents a vision of a shrinking future, not a better one. This fear of losing what they already have is a source of stress.

There is a significant challenge in securing actual facts today. We have a strong propensity to seek out and remember information that confirms things that we believe to be true, and we quickly dismiss and forget information that challenges our beliefs. Consequently, we are vulnerable to misinformation that reinforces our worldview and confirms our suspicion that people we do not like are just as sinister and untrustworthy as we think they are. The echo chambers of our favorite social media and cable TV news convince us that our views are in fact shared by most people, and this can make us feel pretty smart and confident. In such echo chambers, even the wackiest conspiracy theories acquire a veneer of truth and rationality that seem incomprehensible to people outside of the bubble.

Conspiracy theories can be especially seductive in an atmosphere of fear.  In order to hack into the minds of the public, people need to feel fear or uncertainty. That could be caused by economic instability or pre-existing cultural prejudices, but the emotional basis is fear.  “There is some research to suggest people turn to conspiracy theories more when they’re confronted with crisis situations,” says Douglas. Some psychologists have compared conspiracy theories to religious beliefs, in the way that they help us to feel more in control, by taking unpredictable or random events and making them seem somehow predestined or shaped by human hands. Eventually, conspiracy theories can become so popular that they enter a positive feedback loop, in which the more they’re discussed, the more legitimate they seem. By taking fringe ideas mainstream, the former US president taught new and dangerous lessons about manipulating social and mass media.2

Populist economic policy claims to design policies for people who fear losing status in society, and those who believe they have been abandoned by the political establishment. The populist economic agenda focuses on single and salient political issues, over emphasizes negative aspects of international economic exchange and immigration, and/or blames foreigners or international institutions for economic difficulties. Populists exploit racist myths and stereotypes to instill fear in working-class who have genuine economic problems. In 2016 Donald Trump was elected on a wave of anti-establishment fervor in the wake of increasing inequality, the anger he could exploit and deflect toward the easiest and most vulnerable target: immigrants. Is there significant push back? No, Republicans clearly feel empowered by Trump. He frees them to reveal their darkest desire – which is to end democracy as we know it, and to cut any corners or break any laws necessary to get the job done.

Fear is created not by the world around us, but in the mind, by what we think is going to happen, observes Elizabeth Gawain. The Trump administration’s failed public health response to COVID was mirrored by its failure post-COVID to respond to the largest global economic crisis in a century. This created the worst economic shock since the Great Depression – societies were in turmoil and economies in a nose-dive. We fear new because of the uncertainty it brings – we might lose what is associated with change. Our aversion to loss can even cause logic to fly out the window. The Republicans need a distraction, and turn to their old playbook: an emphasis on urban disorder and racist fears of illegal immigrants moving into largely white neighborhoods is a familiar play. It has boosted the party’s candidates at least since President Nixon’s “law and order” campaign in 1968.

[S]ince love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved, notes Niccolò Machiavelli.  Americans are more afraid today than they have been in a long time. One of the many unhappy byproducts of the election  since Donald Trump announced his campaign for 2024 is the return of fear to the political table. Are Republicans afraid of Trump? Actually, no – he’s destroying democracy and they love it. But these actions of the president are possible only with the craven acquiescence of congressional Republicans. As a group, they are pushing towards replacing democracy with a system where a powerful minority holds power. Like their leaders, Republican voters are feeling done with democracy and eager to follow Trump into a new world, where the majority of Americans who vote for Democrats are kept out of power, by any means necessary.  

Ben Johnson observes, “Fear is implanted in us as a preservation from evil; but its duty, like that of other passions, is not to overbear reason, but to assist it. It should not be suffered to tyrannize in the imagination, to raise phantoms of horror, or to beset life in supernumerary distresses.” We fear new because of the uncertainty it brings – we might lose what is associated with change. Our aversion to loss can even cause logic to fly out the window. Fear cannot be characterized solely as a socially constructed phenomenon, nor as the instinctual response to personally felt traumas. The growth and nature of fear must be studied as a process that develops under its own inertia, feeding off its antecedent past, and as a phenomenon that is shaped by and in turn shapes its institutional setting. Fear should be understood as both structurally determined and socially transformative.

It is necessary to harness the politics of fear to create transformation. Transformation is an internal fundamental change in your beliefs of why you perform certain actions. It modifies values and desires. We need to replace individualism of neoliberalism with a new common sense based in a sense of we, with its understanding of our interdependence and collective agenda. Transformation is an assertion that our actions today create our future tomorrow. The future is about closing the common goods gap that will be realized by freeing ourselves from constraints of special interest projects. The new system is about not being afraid to implement an agenda that spells the end of Project 2025. This means enacting policies that support access to health care for everyone, subsidizing the college system, to make the criminal legal system more just and humane for all. A butterfly is a transformation, not a better caterpillar.3

1   https://m.aliran.com/web-specials/2016-web-specials/we-are-a-nation-at-war-with-itself

2  https://time.com/4665755/donald-trump-fear/

3  https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/pops.12568

4   https://onetusk.org/2012/09/19/change-vs-transformation/

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Defining Freedom in 21st Century in Light of Determinism

Posted on October 15, 2024 by greg

Since the time of the French Revolution, freedom has been regarded as the greatest value of culture. Today in modern society, we are trying to restore the value of individual freedom, which we formally perceive as one of the rights of man and citizen. The concept of “freedom of the individual” is increasingly used in the media, in the speeches of political leaders, as well, is declared by the US Constitution. However, the meaning invested in this concept by different people is different – often the most opposite ways of solving the problem of freedom of the human person are offered. Today the economic elite claim, there is a threat to other freedoms with any reduction to economic freedom (i.e. regulations). For some freedom has nothing to do with democracy or speech or individual rights: for the neoliberal it is about the freedom of the market and the elites who control those markets.

Life is an unstable equilibrium between agency and determinism. Human agency is a collective of systemic thinkers and doers creating conditions where individuals can transform the status quo. Causal determinism is the idea that every event is necessitated by antecedent events and conditions together with the laws of nature.  Agency assumes intellectual creativity that enables individuals to conceive original ideas and then have the freedom to act on these inspirations – often in opposition to limitations that are imposed within a particular environment. Personal agency is the humanistic term for the exercise of free will. Hegel developed a philosophy of action in which the spirit is always active in the search of some aim, in realizing one’s potential or self-actualization. Hegel’s concept of freedom can best be regarded as the answer to a problem – the problem of how a man can be free in a universe which is governed by necessary laws.

Newtonian determinism explained the equilibrium of the free-market system described by Adam Smith. Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) developed and applied evolutionary theory to the study of society. Spencer applied Newtonian determinism to his analysis, making him one of the first people since the Enlightenment to exclude free will from his analysis. He believed that human society reflects the same evolutionary principles as biological organisms do in their development. Following a universal law, Spencer believed, social institutions such as economics can function without control. His claim social laws are as deterministic as those governing nature supported his concept survival of the fittest and allowed Spencer to believe that the rich and the powerful become so because they are better suited to the social and economic culture of the time. Spencer preferred the Lamarckian evolution of adapted characteristics in which he believed that societies like living organisms evolve from simple states into highly complex forms – equating evolution with progress.

Spencer’s survival of the fittest concept was believed to be natural, hence morally correct. During the 19th century, cracks appeared in the wall of the belief of determinism. The random possibilities followed by choice introduced by Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection soon destroyed the efforts to apply Newtonian determinism to social issues. It introduced the concept of freedom based on chance and choice. When Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929) applied the Darwinian evolutionary theory to societal changes he found that laissez-faire capitalism created two groups, with the rich getting richer and the income gap between the rich and the poor widening. Veblen coined the concepts of conspicuous consumption and conspicuous leisure. He pointed out that that Darwinian evolution did not guarantee progress; the leisure class reacted differently than the middle class from the environmental stimuli in a system in which each individual looks after his own interests.

Julius Evola (1898-1974) claims freedom and equality are tools of manipulation, and after the movement leaders get what they want, they’ll toss you aside. Evola explains, “Practically speaking, it is only a revolutionary weapon: freedom and equality are the catchwords certain social strata or groups employed in order to undermine other classes and to gain pre-eminence; having achieved this task, they were quickly set aside.” When the fascists came to power in Italy in 1922, Evola jumped on board and became a regular contributor to the regime’s mouthpiece magazine, Difesa della Razza (Defense of the Race). But Evola’s message, soaked in conspiracy theories, has quietly endured in the underground and has reemerged on the surface recently, thanks to the popularity of conspiracy theories. Christians in the far right rationalize their fascination with the philosopher, arguing Evola’s main teaching was to go back to tradition.1

The Heritage Foundation is a think tank that develops policies for the Republican Party. The Heritage Foundation policies supported determinism in the 20th century.  Ronald Reagan liked the Heritage Foundation so much that he implemented about sixty percent of their recommended policies during his first year as president. Ronald Reagan’s policies called for widespread tax cuts, decreased social spending, increased military spending, and the deregulation of domestic markets.  Reagan facilitated neoliberalism becoming a mainstream ideology. Following Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election, the Heritage Foundation obtained influence in his presidential transition and administration. Project 2025 is the Heritage Foundation’s plan for how Trump, should he win the November election, can vastly remake the federal government. Project 2025 would undercut economic security by lowering corporate taxes while increasing taxes on the middle class, lower the threshold for overtime eligibility, weaken child labour protections. Project 2025 supports determinism in 21st century.

In an age where information flows like an endless river, a new theory emerges to explain our relationship with the digital world: info-determinism. This concept posits that the ways information moves through our world create an intricate web in which we are all ensnared, shaping our thoughts, actions, and very perception of reality. The Internet has evolved into two bipartisan camps in US politics. The spread of conspiracy theories ahead of the impending US presidential election make discussions of “echo chambers” or “filter bubbles” seem ubiquitous. These terms capture the social media phenomenon of users increasingly surrounding themselves with likeminded compatriots. They are often blamed for the arguably highest levels of political polarisation in a generation. Today, many communication platforms in social media are persuasive and often work to change or influence opinions regarding political views because of the abundance of ideas, thoughts, and opinions circulating.2

Before the Enlightenment human beings were generally considered in terms of how they fit into social hierarchies and communal institutions, but following enlightenment the view was that the individual rather than society as a whole, is the most important entity. Self-criticism and self-denial were no longer in vogue, replaced by self-expression, self-realization and self-approval. Hegel explains the modern state is the institution that will correct this imbalance in modern culture. Although economic and legal individualism play a positive role in society, Hegel foresees the need for institutions that will affirm common bonds and ethical life while preserving individual freedom. Thus, freedom is compatible with determinism because freedom is essentially just a matter of not being constrained or hindered in certain ways when one acts or chooses. The hidden lesson of the subprime crisis – regulations make markets and property possible; allow all of us to exercise equal freedoms. 3

In 1762, Rousseau published the Social Contract in which he defined the ideal social contract, describing how man could be free and live together in a community. By ‘equality’ Rousseau did not mean that everyone should be exactly the same, but differences in wealth should not imbalance the state. Equality it seemed to him, is a necessary condition for the preservation of liberty, while property and material inequality are the root of human misery and evil. Rousseau observes, evil, greed, and selfishness emerged as human society began to develop. As people formed social institutions, they developed vices. One such institution was private property that encouraged avarice and self-interest. Thus, Rousseau asserts, that some level of material equality is necessary to ensure that liberty comes before profit. He also defended private property; if everything we did was for the state, we would no longer be free.

The lack of freedom to make choices creates a group working below their capabilities precisely because they have no other option, thus they become susceptible to rhetoric from populist politicians with simplistic solutions. An essential attribute of the good life is that people enjoy not just a range of personal freedoms, but an access to knowledge and a voice in public affairs. When asking searching questions of yourself, realize that freedom resides not in the brain, but in the traditions of critical thought and skeptical reason. Freedom is best exercised as a means to an end, but the end must be one that gives people the choice to make the best possible decisions to reach their full potential. It is necessary to stop Project 2025, by electing Kamala Harris and Democratic down ballot candidates to counter the far-right plan for controlling your life – which lies at the core of defining freedom in the 21st century.

1  https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/02/julius-evola-alt-right/517326/

2  https://braincuddle.medium.com/info-determinism-when-information-blurs-fact-and-fiction-bc0e93846c5

3  https://hls.harvard.edu/today/freedom-is-just-another-word-for-regulation/

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Countering An Existential Threat: Trump & Project 2025

Posted on October 1, 2024 by greg

Existential risks are defined as “risks that threaten the destruction of humanity’s long-term potential.” Over the long term, climate change is an existential threat, and it is younger generations and those still to come who will more fully bear the brunt of a warming planet. The precise method in which you deal with an existential threat depends entirely on its proximity and probability. Many “existential threats” are conspiracy theories, propaganda, or pseudoscience. Your first step should always be to make sure you’re not buying into one of those things. Once you have identified an existential threat, you must deal with it; such is their nature. Today, a truly existential threat to the United States would entail any combination of events orchestrated by individuals being able to permanently take away its freedoms and change its democratic form of government, regardless of the preference of the citizenry.

Donald Trump stunned the political world in 2016 when he became the first person without government or military experience ever to be elected president of the United States. Trump’s policy record included major changes at home and abroad. He achieved a string of long-sought conservative victories domestically, including the biggest corporate tax cuts on record, the elimination of scores of environmental regulations and a reshaping of the federal judiciary. Trump’s status as a political outsider, his outspoken nature and his willingness to upend past customs and expectations of presidential behavior made him a constant focus of public attention, as well as a source of deep partisan divisions. In addition to the intense divisions that emerged over Trump personally, his tenure saw a further widening of the gulf between Republicans and Democrats over core political values and issues, including in areas that weren’t especially partisan before his arrival.1

Donald Trump represents an existential threat to the current system. Trump won the nomination as the candidate who lied the most, won the presidency as someone known to lie; has an unshakable base despite ongoing lies. Underlying social issues made this possible. Enablers support the Trump’s behavior out of fear, love, or a misguided sense of loyalty. Autocrats, like Trump, surround themselves with their political cronies and lackies rather than competent people – have no way of eliciting, recognizing or assessing useful criticism. They are unwilling to hear anything negative – that leads to very bad decisions. There’s no doubt that Donald Trump was the instigator of the 2020 insurrection. But the former president’s schemes never would have gotten far (or even off the ground) without the participation of right-wing media executives, lawyers and pliant state officials. Without holding these enablers accountable, democracy and the rule of law will remain at risk.

New research suggests populism and conspiracy mentality are both rooted in a fundamental disposition of distrust. Populism is a political ideology that claims to represent the interests of the common people against those of the elite. Conspiracy theories, on the other hand, are beliefs that attribute secret or hidden forces, such as government agencies or powerful individuals, as the cause of significant events or outcomes. Both populists and conspiracy theorists tend to view the world in terms of a struggle between a malevolent elite and an oppressed common people. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, called for the president to clean out “leftists” from the State and Justice departments. Bannon has called not only for ridding the government of holdovers from past administrations, but for deconstructing the “administrative state.” It is no small wonder, with such advice, Trump doesn’t hesitate to sow distrust of the justice system.2

Trump draws fervent support from conservatives who believe the president is willing to restore the country to its moral and constitutional foundations. Conservatives accepted Trump because he appointed their judges, and rolled back regulations they hate. These conservatives claim liberals pose “an existential threat” to the country, and the response includes need to turn to Natural law which is the foundation upon which the spirit of the US Constitution is built. Today followers are reverse-engineering an intellectual doctrine to match Trump’s basic instincts. The movement has two disciples from California: Tucker Carlson advances a form of victim-politics populism and has learned to translate the New Right’s most interesting ideas into Fox-worthy bombast. Stephen Miller is credited with shaping the racist and draconian immigration policies of President Trump, which include the zero-tolerance policy, that includes family separation, the Muslim ban and ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Both support Trump’s politics of white fear.

The Heritage Foundation, founded in 1973, advocated for pro-business policies and anti-communism in its early years, but distinguished itself from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) by also advocating for cultural issues that were important to Christian conservatives. Among the 2,000 Heritage proposals, approximately 60% of them were implemented or initiated by the end of Reagan’s first year in office. Reagan later called the Heritage Foundation a “vital force” during his presidency. In 1986, in recognition of the Heritage Foundation’s fast-growing influence, Time magazine labeled the Heritage Foundation “the foremost of the new breed of advocacy tanks.” Following Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election, the Heritage Foundation obtained influence in his presidential transition and administration. One reason for the Heritage Foundation’s disproportionate influence relative to other conservative think tanks, was that other conservative think tanks had “Never Trump” staff during the 2016 presidential election, while the Heritage Foundation ultimately signaled that it would be supportive of him.

Project 2025, The Heritage Foundation’s plan for how Trump, should he win the November election, can vastly remake the federal government. An existential threat, put simply, is a threat to society – a veritable threat to existence does not have to be present for someone to experience a sense of existential threat. Right-wing misinformation is a direct and immediate threat to the American public. Today established Republican proxies are using social media to spread disinformation, suppress political participation, and undermine oppositional parties. Conspiracy theories are captivating because they provide explanations for confusing, emotional and ambiguous events especially when official explanations seem inadequate. Although conspiracies are frequently outlandish and implausible assertions, their power lies in the fact that they confirm what people want to believe. Conspiracy theories may be construed as opportunistic attributions of power that allow (relatively powerful groups) to advance their interests.

Basically, Project 2025 is a roadmap to create a society where personal freedoms are subordinate to the interests of a select few. It would take a wreaking ball to US institutions that are in place and undermine democratic processes that ensure democracy for all. While Trump tries to distance himself from Project 2025, we must focus on Trump’s connections to Project 2025. It would give Trump limitless power over daily lives and let him use the presidency to enact ‘revenge’ on his enemies, ban abortion nationwide and punish women who have an abortion, and gut the checks and balances. Ronald Reagan noted: “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.” This existential threat to democracy makes 2024 election the most important one in decades.

Friedrich Nietzsche observed, “Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed.” Even what we believe we see with our own eyes is made up from memory. When referring to blind spots in our vision that we do not notice, much of what you see ‘out there’ is actually manufactured ‘in here’ by your brain. Malleable memory, the brain filling in gaps in vision, and the biggest culprit, defense mechanisms, as well as the desire to seek pleasure and avoid pain leading to an implicit preference toward a lie, should at least contribute to one realizing thinking cannot be trusted. People want to hear what they want to hear. When two candidates are running and one of them tells the truth and the other says what the public wants to hear (lies), regrettably, the one who says what the public wants to hear often wins the election.

When faced with an existential threat, what do you do? By working out what things we can control, let’s us make decisions about what everyone needs to know and how to act to meet those needs. Then by taking step-by-step action on those things identified, we can increase our sense of agency. We must become involved in the messages on social media. This requires balancing news on worst-case scenarios with other information and activities. Remember the damage already caused from involvement of the Heritage Foundation – the consequences of decisions around birth control and presidential immunity triggered by a conservative supreme court! It is necessary to identify the worst-case scenario, and get discussion of it in the general public, specifically, that Trump and Project 2025 are connected at the hip. These proposals threaten freedom from government interference should the Republican nominee win the 2024 presidential election. To counter this threat to democracy, everyone must show up at the ballot box to reject Trump and Project 2025.

1  https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/01/29/how-america-changed-during-donald-trumps-presidency/

2 https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/03/history-trump-attacks-civil-service-federal-workers-mccarthy-214951/

3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025

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 How the Cult of Victimhood Dominates Politics

Posted on September 15, 2024 by greg

Privilege is the sin that must be checked so that the marginalized can continue their long march to freedom. In an empathetic society, victimhood and powerlessness becomes its own kind of power. A large part of understanding these processes lies in the power of victimhood. These identities are placeholders for suffering and signs of the justice of one’s cause. We need to distinguish between victimhood itself and the politics of victimhood – the process whereby suffering is fabricated or conferred, and then ‘weaponized’ for political purposes. That all makes it difficult territory for progressives, who believe real injustice happens every day and should be highlighted and resolved. Progressives must remain cognizant about the allure of victimhood politics. Today we have identity politics of aggressively competing victimhood, in which groups of people, based on religious, national, ethnic, sexual, or whatever else identity they chose, demand to have their victimhood status recognized and something done about it.

Populists like Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen, or some Brexit campaigners, construct fantasies of past national greatness and belonging to instil audiences with a sense of pride and nostalgia. At the same time, these political entrepreneurs use rhetoric that targets feelings of resentment and anger, representing themselves and their audiences as victims of the establishment. Populists promote an emotive politics of outrage which manipulates public sentiments for political gain and underwrites a radical departure from established political norms. Populist appeals to victimhood are used to assign blame with elites in politics, businesses, and media for a sense of loss and marginalization, for national decline from past imagined glories, and to foster political conflict. “Stories shape our feelings toward others and ourselves, toward what is right and wrong, and populist security narratives grip voters through their deep-seated emotional appeal” explains Dr Homolar.1

Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign was widely viewed as a kind of populist revolt against the Washington establishment. As a candidate, the billionaire promised voters that he would take on the elite and fight for the “forgotten men and women” of America, and promoted himself as a man of the people. Yet after becoming president Trump did virtually nothing to improve the lot of ordinary Americans who work for a living. In fact, his administration’s policies had, for the most part, benefited people like President Trump – the super-rich – while hurting working class Americans. According to John Judis the exact designation of the terms: ‘the people’ and ‘the elite’ don’t define populism; what defines it is the disagreement or argument between the two – or in the case of right-wing populism the three, as right-wing populists “champion the people against an elite that they accuse of favoring a third group,” which is typically an outsider group such as immigrants, foreigners or minorities.

Why is being a victim such a potent identity today? Lilie Chouliaraki identifies a theory of victimhood based on, what she calls, a “politics of pain” and argues that even though victimhood has historically been used in struggles for equality and freedom for the systemically vulnerable, social media platforms and far-right populism have turned victimhood into a weapon of the privileged. This absolves elites from the neoliberal burden of responsibility. Basically, victimization rhetoric heightens leader support because it specifically relieves followers of the pressure of having to take responsibility for negative life outcomes, especially when they subscribe to neoliberal competition ideology. Being granted victim status can remove some pressure to “win the game.” If the competition is unfair, one cannot be blamed for losing it. Thus, a leader who acknowledges the victimhood of individuals who subscribe to neoliberal competition ideology relieves these individuals from the burden of having to take responsibility for negative outcomes in their lives.2

White Americans who perceive significant discrimination against their racial group are more likely to harbor doubts about the integrity of election outcomes, according to new research published in the Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics. The findings provide evidence that feelings of victimization are an important predictor of increased skepticism towards the democratic process: “Political elites, especially those associated with the MAGA movement, have implicitly and explicitly cultivated such grievances. This is a very dangerous game to play: democracy depends on citizens believing that institutions are generally fair and that even if their side loses today, they will get a fair chance to compete tomorrow.” Perceived victimhood, authoritarianism, populism, and white identity are the most powerful predictors of support for political violence in the US. Subjective feelings about being unjustly victimized (whether true or not) is at the heart of support for violence.

Trump’s victim politics is a complete fraud, an old trick used by economic elite for years to keep working-class Americans fighting each other rather than focusing on processes to counter the plutocrats who are ripping them off. Trump and his allies stoke racial tensions even as they seek to cut taxes on the rich by shedding affordable health care for everyone else, dismantle protection for workers and consumers, and tear down environmental protections that stop wealthy corporations from poisoning communities. Victim politics is cultivated for a reason – to keep workers distracted from the real causes of economic inequality. Populism is the new victimhood – now propelled by the digital revolution and the threatened insecurity. We need to distinguish between victimhood itself and the politics of victimhood – the process whereby suffering is confected or conferred, and then ‘weaponized’ for political purposes.

Over the decade prior to Trump’s victory, Steve Bannon developed an intricate multi-media machine into a sophisticated propaganda operation. Bannon identified Trump as being capable of delivering the ‘populist-nationalist idea’, and build a system to support the traditionalist movement to protect American culture. The alt-right coalesced around the Breitbart message: eight years of an African-American president had left whites disenfranchised. Breitbart and the Drudge Report moved views from the fringe into mainstream media via Fox news and Facebook. Breitbart helped focus election coverage on Trump’s immigration and grandiose job-creation rhetoric, and direct attention away from Clinton’s economic message and towards her email scandal. Bannon’s efforts, along with the Russian troll factories, recruited the necessary voting block needed to eke out an Electoral College victory – turned on little more than 100,000 votes in three crucial states that he won: Wisconsin, Michigan and Wisconsin.

In an individualistic consumer society, there is a strong focus on rights. Along with these rights are expectations of entitlement to goods and services.  In complaining, the individual establishes an image of himself that he knows what’s going on (even if it is wrong) and therefore establishes an image of himself as alert and knowledgeable. Complaining amidst a group of like-minded whiners forges a sense of togetherness and community. Donald Trump complained about unfair treatment since, well, pretty much since the beginning of his 2016 campaign. Trump is completely committed to complaining about being a victim. According to him, he’s misunderstood, mistreated, persecuted, falsely accused and unfairly punished. Trump is the complainer in chief, but tells Democrats who complain to leave the country. Cynical populism has created a cult of victimhood that dominates today’s politics. Trump played the victim card – basically the only card he has in his deck – during the presidential debate with Kamala Harris.

Donald Trump harnessed the resentment and sense of victimhood of the Republican Party. Trump comes across unceasingly pained, injured and aggrieved: the primaries were unfair, the debates were unfair, the general election was unfair. He gave a voice to that part of America that also feels aggrieved. Trump claims there is a conspiracy against him supported by ‘fake’ news. Today Trump’s paranoid third White House run continues to see ‘deep state’ enemies on all sides. He became the representative of the idea of the new whiny right: waning power of whiteness, privilege, patriarchy, access, and the cultured surety that accrues to those in possession of such. Trump who wants to restrict the overall number of immigrants argues allowing lower-skilled immigrants into the country hurts job prospects and suppresses wages for American-born workers. Trump has staked his future on stoking racial division so that he can emerge as the hero of the ‘victimized’ whites.

Marcuse argued that “capitalism and mass culture shape personal desires” so there is no essential or unchanging aspect to human nature. Mass culture results in domination of “the inner world of the human subject”. A man under capitalism is “one dimensional” since he bears no trace of the conflicts which make him multi-dimensional and capable of change. This is why Marcuse believes that people under Liberal Western capitalism are no freer than people under totalitarian role, their oppression is just transparent. For Marcuse the one-dimensional man is closely related to both consumerism and mass media that together serve as an ideological apparatus which reproduces itself through its subjects. This apparatus promotes conformity and is aimed at preventing resistance. The person who thinks critically demands social change. One-dimensional thinking does not demand change nor does it recognize the degree to which the individual is a victim of forces of domination in society.3

1  https://warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/pressreleases/researchers_point_to/

2  https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/pops.12932

3  https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marcuse/#OneDimThiDemRejDem

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