In a recent article, Professor Inderjeet Parmar argued that not only was 2016 a great year for US politics, but that 2017 will be “even better”. Professor Randolph B. Persaud takes issue with these claims, arguing that with Trump’s election liberal identity politics is being replaced by a new patriotism based on a resurgent sense of Whiteness set against countries such as China and Mexico, and ‘other’ groups like Muslims. In addition, far from hurting the billionaire class and capitalist elites, Trump’s victory has instead put them in the driver’s seat

Persaud, Randolph B.

LSE Research Online

1/5/2017The rise of Donald Trump’s “White Wall” means that 2017 willnot be a good year for politicsblogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2017/01/05/the-rise-of-donald-trumps-white-wall-means-that-2017-will-not-be-a-good-year-for-politics/In a recent article, Professor Inderjeet Parmar argued that not only was 2016 a great year for USpolitics, but that 2017 will be “even better”. Professor Randolph B. Persaud takes issue with theseclaims, arguing that with Trump’s election liberal identity politics is being replaced by a newpatriotism based on a resurgent sense of Whiteness set against countries such as China andMexico, and ‘other’ groups like Muslims. In addition, far from hurting the billionaire class andcapitalist elites, Trump’s victory has instead put them in the driver’s seat.I have followed Professor Inderjeet Parmar’s frequent commentaries on the US 2016 elections withgreat interest, not least because his analysis is always balanced and insightful. Last week, Professor Parmarpublished the article “2016 Was a Great Year For US Politics, 2017 Will Be Even Better” in The Wire. In general, I do not agree with the claims of the article, not least because it omits many astute arguments he madeduring the course of the US election campaign. For instance, in a tremendously insightful article immediately afterSuper-Tuesday, Professor Parmar observed, and in my view correctly so, that Many worry about the damage Trump’s populist-paranoid style is doing to America’s standing, as hisilliberal, Islamophobic and racist ‘anti-politics’ galvanises crowds and provokes violent protestsacross the countryAs early as March 2016, therefore, Parmar had arrived at the conclusion that Donald J. Trump posed a seriousthreat to the established order of things in the United States, if not beyond.On July 25, 2016, Professor Parmar published a perceptive analysis of the historical legacies of the likes of JoeMcCarthy, Barry Goldwater, and George Wallace, in which he went further on the racialization thesis than hisprevious position.  He argued that: “Trump employs a mixture of McCarthyite smears, Goldwater’s straight-talk, andpro-segregationist George Wallace-style xenophobia”. In that same article, and amidst declining prospects forTrump, Professor Parmar asked if “Despite likely defeat in November, could Trump’s xenophobic rhetoric, malechauvinism and appeal to sections of a disenfranchised white working class provide a model for a future Republicanascendancy?” Professor Parmar’s latest article appears to be a dramatic turn from the previous analyses, one thatbegs for clariﬁcation.His previous analyses, most of which addressed concerns about Trump’s nativism, xenophobia, and outright racismdisappeared from the New Year’s article. These have been replaced by a ‘feel-good global cosmopolitanism’, caughtas it were in the peculiar American tradition of presenting ‘both sides’. Is that the case here? The racism whichunderwrote Trump’s campaign and which Professor Parmar had documented quite well virtually disappeared in hislatest analysis.Incidentally, this is exactly what the mostly white liberal media in the US has done, starting on the very night of theelection.  Removed from the explanation of the Trump victory are the blatant racism, nativism, virulent ‘anti-immigrancy’, and sustained misogyny. The talk of the town now is that the loss is primarily due the over-commitmentto the urban coalition and identity-based constituencies which were the mainstay of the Democrats. Trump votersare now being portrayed as the victims, the ‘hard-working Americans’ who were left behind by the Democrats and by1/4neo-liberal globalization.  We need to know ‘who’ took away America’s greatness, and who will Make America GreatAgain? The stress here on the whiteness of the media is important because of the extent to which Donald Trump’scampaign relied on racism and anti-immigrant hysteria. The cable news outlets gave no space to visible minority-immigrants.In my own view, the so-called liberal ‘identity based political correctness’ is now being replaced by a new racio-civilizational patriotism at the internal level, combined with a geo-civilizational national security doctrine. Could it bewe are seeing a ‘White Wall’ against China, Mexico, and ‘all of those who don’t love America’? Does this explain thepuzzle that Russia has become? Is Donald J. Trump the new Theodore Roosevelt? Professor Parmar may considerthese possibilities before concluding with any ﬁnality that Trump is likely to pull back from unnecessary foreignentanglements.There are a number of speciﬁc arguments in Professor Parmar’s optimistic article that I think deserve furtherconsideration. Here are those arguments and my own elementary responses.Firstly, Professor Parmar argues that: Wall Street lost the presidential election. Conservative ideology lost out to massive demands forbigger government for the people and heavier taxation of the corporate class and the very rich. TheAmerican establishment, its billionaire class, was, and is, on the ropes…In my view, it is rather doubtful that the US ‘billionaire class’ is in any trouble. In fact, it may be quite the opposite.Wall Street does not need a surrogate as in Hillary Clinton because they now have the economic ruling classdirectly in command of state power.  Trump has promised to cut taxes for the wealthy and ease the repatriation oftrillions of dollars that are currently held in overseas accounts. Trump’s rants against free trade were not merely anti-trade. What he wants is a more primitive form of hegemony, one that relies on the application of coercion innegotiations. As I have argued, primitive hegemony is diﬀerent from enlightened hegemony, which is based on acombination of traditional balance of power politics combined with an American led liberal-multilateral worldeconomic order. For Trump, better ‘deals’ in international trade can be had ‘for the American people’ throughcoercive diplomacy. Incidentally, as far back as 1969 the noted state theorist Ralph Miliband had determined that: “the notion of businessmen as remote from political aﬀairs, in a direct and personal way, greatlyexaggerates their reluctance to seek political power; and equally underestimates how often thesearch has been successful” (p. 56; emphasis added).A second reason for Americans to be optimistic according to Professor Parmar is:Millions voted for candidates who demanded the US step back from its global policeman role andreduce its military footprint. Its post-1945 global military and other alliances were challenged andquestioned and its Middle Eastern wars denounced especially the illegal invasion and occupation ofIraq The optimism is only partially tenable here. We need to recall that there was in fact determined opposition to theIraq war before it started. There were protests across the country and major ﬁgures even from within the RepublicanParty, such as Brent Scowcroft and George H.W. Bush insisted that the war would be a mistake.  The Pottery BarnRule (“You break it, you own it”) was coined in this context. If the 2016 election outcome is a partial measure of the2/4views of Americans on foreign policy and national security, then millions of Americans also voted to take the attackto the Muslim world both at home and abroad, registry and all. Trump’s attacks on Mexico and China were central tohis victory. The rhetorical form of the attacks against these two countries were constructed as civilizational, if notracial enemies of Americans. He shifted his foreign aggression from traditional ‘balance of power’ jargon to ‘balanceof civilization’ discourse.Thirdly, Professor Parmar argues that:Protests over the election of Trump criss-crossed the nation and funds began ﬂowing in their millionsto campaigns against intolerance, hate crimes and xenophobia. The politics of progressivism hastaken a huge leap forwardProtests against Trump did indeed produce a liberal rally, but how is that a victory? Protests are part of the‘standard-operating-procedure’ of left liberalism, even if for good reasons. Yet, it is less than two months since theelections, and the protests have disappeared. In distinct contrast to robust leadership from the left, no other than AlGore took the elevator up the Trump Tower only to be insulted soon thereafter by the appointment of a climatechange denier. Trump’s victory seems to have been transformed into a propellant for an amalgam of indiscretions,harassment, and even outright violence. The Southern Poverty Law Center has reported that race-based and anti-immigrant related harassment has increased dramatically (Figure 1).  We should not forget that hundreds of neo-Nazis met a few hundred yards from the White House (at the Reagan Building) to celebrate Trump’s victory.Figure 1 – Types of harassment and intimidation since Election DaySource: Southern Poverty Law CentreFourth and ﬁnally, Professor Parmar writes that the “… American people showed they would not stand for more elite3/4politics and narrow economic agendas of the hard right. A great foundation upon which the politics of the nextdecade is to be built.” Professor Parmar no doubt bases this argument on the indisputable fact that Trump does notlive in the rhetorical ﬂourish of free trade, slashing welfare, and de-funding core liberal programs such as Head Startor Planned Parenthood. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders also kicked up quite a bit of anti-establishment dust, muchto the delight of liberal academics, young (mostly) bi-coastal and Great Lakes’ students, and whatever if left ofunionized workers.  Even Hillary Clinton had to make an awkward U-turn on the TPP trade agreement. So yes,there is a basis to make the claim above. Yet I very much doubt, that “2016 showed that the majority of Americanshave had enough of capitalist elites…”. On the contrary, Americans took the capitalist elites who were in thebackground and put them directly in charge. Moreover, the American people (itself an ideological construct whichwas redeployed to mean the supposedly ‘left behinds’), actually replaced surrogates of the ruling class with a racist,nativist, misogynist and capitalist, who though not yet in oﬃce, has already embarked on building a new race-classconﬁguration.Featured image credit: 20161105-143608 by Paul Weaver (Flickr, CC-BY-NC-SA-2.0) Please read our comments policy before commenting.              Note:  This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of USAPP– American Politics and Policy, nor ofthe London School of Economics. Shortened URL for this post: http://bit.ly/2jeEOs6 _________________________________  About the author Randolph B. Persaud – American UniversityRandolph B. Persaud is Associate Professor of International Relations at American University inWashington D.C., He specializes in the areas of human security, foreign policy, postcolonialism,and the politics of identity.CC BY-NC 3.0 2015 LSE USAPP4/4

The rise of Donald Trump’s “White Wall” means that 2017 will not be a good year for politics

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

LSE Research Online