The Origins of Trumpism and the Birth of the Present
Reflections on the pre-history of Trump’s rise, the peculiar nature of Trumpism, and the radical politics of white despair – based on John Ganz’s masterful “When the Clock Broke”
My new piece:
🧵1/
thomaszimmer.substack.com/p/the-origin...
Based on this brilliant book, I reflect on the nature of Trumpism and how to situate it in the American Right’s recent history; the role of the rightwing intellectual sphere; the challenge of how to approach, research, interpret, and tell the pre-history of the present. 2/
The book’s perspective on the early 1990s is undoubtedly shaped by the experience of Trumpism, and if you read it, it is inevitable you’ll read it through the lens of Trump. There is evidently a proto-MAGA dimension to a lot of what is happening here. 3/
What makes Trumpism so potent, what distinguishes Trump from the rightwing populists that came before him who, at the end of the Cold War, were ultimately kept in check? In Ganz’s interpretation, the insurgency figures of the early 90s embodied different promises. 4/
David Duke and Pat Buchanan represented the ethno-nationalist vision of “real America” as a white Christian homeland; Ross Perot offered “billionaire populism,” combining celebrity, wealth, and anti-establishment furor. 5/
Mafioso John Gotti became a folk hero because he stood for a weirdly comforting form of “gangster patriarchy” and personal mob rule. All three, as Ganz puts it, offered a version of “national coherence that was based on exclusive, strong leadership.” 6/
It broadly appealed to people – to white men, specifically – as an antidote to the feeling of decline and despair, an alternative to the lonely individualism of the post-Reagan capitalist society and the confusing, threatening pluralism of modern democracy. 7/
