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Thorughts on Trump Take 2. [image: https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/768841520233517056/9WEJwdd-_bigger.jpg]*Richard Seymour* @*leninology* <https://twitter.com/leninology> 1] I am always wary of underestimating Trump: lest we miss the danger. But his reaction to the protests/inauguration coverage is *insane 2] He spends his first full day in power taking on powerful media outlets over an injury to his narcissism, bullshitting on checkable facts. 3] And *then* he gets his fucking *press secretary* to take it up for him, with *further* bullshitting. He will not survive like this The very brilliant Irish Marxist (spot the redundancy) has tweeted the above.on Donald Trump. The thought that he will not last long is very cheering indeed. But Trump is a very strange fish indeed. That of course is at least part of his appeal. I want to suggest in this brief post that Trump can only be understood *within* the paradigm of identity politics. Received wisdom has it that Trump won because of the identity politics that his opponent played on. See Soave (2016); Lilla (2016); Goldberg (2016); (Michaels et al. 2016); and (Illing 2016) for a discussion of the issue. I argue that Trump is not outside identity politics. He offers an identity along side a critique of the impact of neoliberalism. Long ago I wrote a piece on Political Correctness for the Monthly Review Press (MacLennan 1997). There I argued that in every age there were restrictions around the use of language, that is, there was always a regime of political correctness in place. I also used Raymond Williams’ notion of residual, dominant and emergent to discuss how one form of political correctness makes way for another. The dominant form is not named. It considers itself to be commons sense, like the water the fish swim in and know nothing about. The residual and especially the emergent are named. Transferring this observation to the field of identity, the dominant, but under threat and heading for residual, form of identity that Trump peddles is that of the white working class male who owns lots of guns, used to have a job but the Mexicans got it etc. In other words Trump peddled the myth of autochthony (look it up!). Trump placed this identity at the heart of his propaganda and every other identity was deviant and a threat. Some commentators have used the term ‘nativist’ to describe the identity that Trump has merchandised and they contrast it with ‘cosmopolitan’. Clinton pushed neo-liberal progressivism and the neo-liberal part brought her undone. For what is clear in both the Brexit and the Trump victory we are seeing the crisis of the neo-liberal paradigm being played out. So what happens now? So far Trump is offering the politics of recognition and identity. He promises to break with neo-liberalism. Whether he can or will, is very unclear at the moment. Some of his advisors want him to spend trillions. If he did, that would probably create a lot of jobs. If he fails to deliver on his promises to bring the jobs back, then Identity politics will not save him, though he will continue to play them, probably with increasing desperation. Goldberg, M. 2016. "Democratic Politics Have to Be “Identity Politics”." *Slate*. Illing, S. 2016. This professor set off a war of words over “identity politics.” We debated him. *Vox*. Lilla, M. 2016. "The End of Identity Liberalism." *New York Times*, 18th November, Sunday Review. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/opinion/sunday/the-end-of-identity-liberalism.html?_r=0 . MacLennan, G. 1997. "Political Correctness (and Courtesy) in Australia " *The Monthly Review* 48 (11):33-43. Michaels, W. B., C. W. Mills, L. Hirshman, and C. Murphy. 2016. "What is the Left without Identity Politics?" *The Nation*, 16th December. Soave, R. 2016. "Title." *Hit & Run*, 9th November. http://reason.com/blog/2016/11/09/trump-won-because-leftist-political-corr. _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
![https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/768841520233517056/9WEJwdd-_bigger.jpg]*Richard](https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/768841520233517056/9WEJwdd-_bigger.jpg]*Richard){kind=link}