Trump, Trumpism, and the Polycrisis
By Jeremy Brecher, Senior Strategic Advisor, LNS Co-Founder
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“Polycrisis” is a word that has recently come into use to characterize the way crises in many different spheres – ranging from geopolitics and economics to climate and pandemic – are aggravating each other and even converging. Trump and Trumpism, like similar leaders and movements around the world, took off in the era of polycrisis and reflect many of its themes. They are also likely to severely aggravate the dynamics of the polycrisis.
Although Trump and Trumpism are deeply rooted in American history, they are also an aspect of the emerging era now widely referred to as the global polycrisis. The polycrisis shaped many of the conditions that promoted the rise of Trumpism. Trumpism, in turn, echoes many of the themes of the polycrisis. Trump’s actions will go out not into a peaceful world order, but into a world order in polycrisis, where the effects of almost any actions are difficult to predict. And his actions are likely to significantly aggravate the polycrisis, in particular making it more violent, unpredictable, and folly-ridden.
Trump and Trumpism must be understood in the context of the polycrisis. In his address to the 2024 Republican National Convention, Donald Trump said,
We have an inflation crisis that is making life unaffordable, ravaging the incomes of working and low-income families, and crushing, just simply crushing our people like never before. They’ve never seen anything like it.
We also have an illegal immigration crisis, and it’s taking place right now, as we sit here in this beautiful arena. It’s a massive invasion at our southern border that has spread misery, crime, poverty, disease, and destruction to communities all across our land. Nobody’s ever seen anything like it.
Then there is an international crisis, the likes of which the world has seldom been part of. Nobody can believe what’s happening. War is now raging in Europe and the Middle East, a growing specter of conflict hangs over Taiwan, Korea, the Philippines, and all of Asia, and our planet is teetering on the edge of World War III, and this will be a war like no other war because of weaponry. The weapons are no longer army tanks going back and forth, shooting at each other. These weapons are obliteration.[1]
Trump’s description of the world is like a distorting funhouse mirror reflection of reality – the reality of the polycrisis. However fallacious his interpretations and proposals, terrifying threats are a reality in the era of polycrisis.
In reality, inflation has ravaged the incomes of working and low-income families, and the recent inflation is only one manifestation of an out-of-control global economy that has been crushing people since the Great Recession of 2007. In reality, millions of people have been driven from their homes around the world by war, globalization, and climate change. In reality, misery, poverty, disease, and destruction to communities has in fact been occurring, not as a result of immigration, but of the dismantling of public programs that reduce poverty, disease, and destruction. War is indeed raging in Europe and the Middle East, and a growing specter of conflict does hang over Taiwan, Korea, the Philippines, and all of Asia. Our planet is indeed teetering on the edge of World War III, and that would indeed mean “obliteration.” That is the reality of the polycrisis.
Trump’s claims that he and he alone can fix the problems he describes would be laughable if they weren’t so dangerous. But the real reality is as scary as the one he portrays. It is little wonder that millions of ordinary people are suffering from anger, fear, and pain. They are reacting to reality.
The era that preceded the polycrisis, roughly from the fall of the Soviet Union to the Great Recession, was marked by unilateral global hegemony by the United States. It was marked by a neoliberal globalization which imposed unregulated corporate power on every country and institution. It saw political power determined by elections in most countries, however unequal those elections may have been. And it saw governments and corporations at least shadowboxing against the threat of climate change.
This relatively stable if unjust world order has been transformed into the polycrisis. Unipolar US hegemony has been replaced by multiplying wars, the rise of Great Power conflict, and the decline of international cooperation inside and outside the UN. It has also been marked by fragmentation of the global economy and Great Power struggle to dominate what are still global economic networks. International climate protection has become a transparent sham, and major political forces, including the soon-to-be leader of the world’s most powerful country, deny the reality of climate change. The remaining institutions of democratic rule have been shredded by a transition to transparent plutocracy on the one hand and the rise of movements, parties, and national leaders who resemble the classic fascists who rose a century ago – similarly the product of burgeoning global disorder.
The past dozen years have witnessed the rise of movements in dozens of countries that resemble the classic fascism of 1920-1945. They manifest smashing of democratic institutions, contempt for constitutions and laws, utilization of violence for political purposes, scapegoating of racial, ethnic, gender, political, and other minorities, hostility to transnational cooperation, authoritarian dictatorship, and a variety of related characteristics. To include the many manifestations of this phenomenon, rather than exclusively those who proclaim themselves fascists, I refer to it as the new “para-fascism.”
Donald Trump is a paragon of this new para-fascism. His rise to power has coincided with that of para-fascists around the world. In Europe these include Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy; the Law and Justice Party in Poland; Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz in Hungary; ruling coalitions in Sweden and Finland; Marine Le Pen’s National Rally; Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party; and Alternative Fur Deutschland, among others. In South America similar parties control or share governmental power in Uruguay, Argentina, and until recently in Brazil. In Asia, India’s government under Modi and the Philippines under Duterte and Marcos, Russia under Putin, Turkey under Erdogan, and Israel under Netanyahu have become increasingly para-fascist. China has moved to an expanded nationalism and an authoritarian recentralization of power, though it differs in many ways from other para-fascisms.
Para-fascism – and notably Trumpism — is a child of the polycrisis. The Great Recession, while not the cause of the polycrisis, can serve as a convenient marker for its emergence; as Philippine scholar and activist Waldon Bello noted, the “buildup of fascist movements and parties didn’t start till 2011, i.e. post-Great Recession.” The polycrisis helped make possible the rise of Trump and other para-fascist leaders. They in turn reflected, echoed, and even incorporated many features of the polycrisis:
The polycrisis embodies the breakdown of international cooperation and the rise of national conflict. Trumpism is characterized by hatred of globalism and celebration of ethno-nationalism.
The polycrisis is a period of declining US hegemony, Great Power conflict, and war. Trump’s overriding theme, “Make America Great Again,” is a direct response to this reality.
The polycrisis is marked by the emerging conflict between the rising power of China and the relatively declining power of the US – sometimes referred to as an example of the “Thucydides trap.” The demonization of China and the attack against Chinese development has been a central theme of Trump’s approach to international affairs – one echoed by President Joe Biden during the Trump “interregnum.”
The polycrisis represents a transition from globalization’s global economic integration to Great Power battles to control global economic networks. Trump’s pugilistic economic nationalism represents both a reflection and an intensification of this trend.
The polycrisis has seen the decline of democracy and the breakdown of limits on plutocracy. Trump puts this tendency on steroids with his outright attacks on democratic institutions and his transformation of plutocracy into kleptocracy – aka politics by theft.
The polycrisis has seen a near total failure to restrain the climate destruction that is no longer just a threat but an everyday reality. Trump not only denies the reality of climate change but aims to do everything in his power to aggravate it through expanded fossil fuel extraction and burning.
Notwithstanding his claims to fix the threats people are facing, Trump in power will only aggravate the polycrisis. The rubbishing of safeguards provided by democratic governance will amplify irrational policymaking and exacerbate popular feelings of powerlessness and alienation. Outlandish increases in military spending, designed to implement the fantasy of renewed US global domination, will lead instead to ruinous nuclear and conventional arms races. Trump’s style of provocation, deliberate unpredictability, and unrestrained folly will lead to intensified conflict, strange shifts in alliances, deliberately aggravated chaos, and wars. His energy policies will put climate catastrophe on steroids. This exacerbated polycrisis will produce a self-amplifying feedback loop that will increase the fear and anger that are prime sources – and prime resources — of Trumpism.
[1] “Read the transcript of Donald J. Trump’s Convention Speech,” New York Times, July 19, 2024. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/19/us/politics/trump-rnc-speech-transcript.html