For those who have not seen it, I recommend Samuel Farber’s piece in the March/April issue of Against the Current: https://againstthecurrent.org/atc241/on-donald-trump-the-u-s-ruling-class-bonapartism-in-america/
Farber refers to other contributions to the debate on the left which are worth consulting dating back to Trump’s first term. They include “Is Donald Trump the New Louis Bonaparte?” (Medium, November 6, 2025), Peter Gordon's “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Donald J. Trump,” (Boston Review, Nov. 8, 2024), Wolfgang Streeck’s “Trump and the Trumpists” (Inference, April 2017), and Dylan Riley’s “American Brumaire?” (New Left Review, Jan-Feb 2017). Though I agree with Farber’s rejection of the Trump administration as a Bonapartist regime, he shares the more widespread misconception that other autocrats like Modi, Bolsonaro, Erdogan, and Orban represent the authentic model. I’ve previously argued on the list (have unfortunately lost the link) that this notion is equally false, that Bonapartism, like its extreme variant Fascism, presupposes the elimination of all opposition parties and protest movements, and that so long as these endure even in a very weakened state, the potential for their revival and the electoral removal of authoritarian governments is everpresent. I noted this prior to the defeat of Bolsinaro in Brazil in 2022 and it was confirmed again two months ago with the unexpected defeat of Orban in Hungary. Remarkably, an evidently unsuspecting Farber concluded his article - which was published on the eve of the Hungarian election! - by stating that "a fully authoritarian system would be unlikely to take the form of Bonapartism for the reasons discussed above, but rather that of a Hungarian type of regime under Viktor Orban, where the content of political democracy has been entirely emptied out and only the outer shell or appearance remains.” Those who argue that the Trump regime in the US is somehow Bonapartist, ostensibly because the "content of political democracy has been entirely emptied out and only the outer shell or appearance remains”, might want to revisit their assumptions in light of the experience in Brazil and Hungary which may find similar expression in the upcoming election cycle in the US. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#42063): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/42063 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/119773879/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
