An interesting discussion of Trump from November 2016, immediately after Trump’s election, that nails the essence of Trumpism fairly well, i.e. a symbolic triumph of populism against elitism where the principal division is social class. The speakers in this video are “conservative intellectuals” of the old-bourgeois variety, and you have to read between the lines to get the substance of what they are saying. But their analysis is consistent with something I have been thinking for a while, that the US has what are essentially three political parties, viewed from an ideological and constituency-based perspective:
1. The Neoliberal Party, which has two factions, “moderate” Republicans (e.g. Mitt Romney) and “moderate” Democrats (e.g. Chuck Schumer)
2. The Faux Populist Party, which has two factions, the old-bourgeoisie (like these speakers in the video) and the post-bourgeois proletariat (the sinking working to middle-class WASPs who actually take Trump seriously)
3. The Faux Social Democratic Party, which has two factions, the New Class (the left-wing of the middle class or lower strata of the managerial elite) and the labor aristocracy and left-wing of the petite bourgeoisie (business unions, the civil rights industries, and conventional welfare statists).
If I had to attach ATS to any particular social class, and if I believed in electoral politics, I’d say ATS would be the Lumpenproletarian Anarchist Party. with the mainstream anarchist movement being the “furthest left-wing of the Faux Social Democratic Party” or “most co-opted wing of the Anarchist Party.”
