Core Aspects of Trumpism Have Been Institutionalised

“Over the last eight years, but especially during the Biden administration, core aspects of Trumpism have been institutionalised.

Let’s take a look at the record. First, the ‘China problem’ identified by Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro, became a bipartisan obsession. It is now hegemonic to the extent that Harris attacked Trump from the right on this issue during their debate, condemning him for having ‘sold us out’ by selling chips to China. (He, in fact, limited sales of chips to China.) Second, economic nationalism – including protectionism, stimulus and a domestic industrial policy – was embraced far more vigorously by Biden than Trump. Ironically, he was enabled in this by pressure from the Sanders left, just as Trump was inhibited by pressure from the Republican right. Third, the far right’s borders agenda has been adopted uncontested, and now forms a major plank in Harris’s platform.

Fourth, in all essential ways, Biden adopted Trump’s foreign policy. The withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Abraham Accords and nationalist contestation with China, were all continuous with the previous administration. I suppose it could be argued that Trump would not have supported Zelensky as fulsomely as Biden. We can’t know what Trump would have done because in practice he is mercurial, but in office he deferred to the higher wisdom of the Pentagon. Fifth, Biden has – for different reasons than Trump – made unconditional support for the Likudnik-fascist coalition in Israel a bipartisan affair. That has rebounded into a growing domestic authoritarianism. The countersubversive thrust against the noisome ‘watermelon people’ also corroborates vigilante and racist ‘lone wolf’ attacks.

In the coming election, my hunch is that a Trump victory is nailed on barring some last-minute meltdown on his part. He’ll lose the popular vote and win the college vote on a low turnout.

I’m trying to think about the present historically – always historicise, as [Frederic] Jameson insisted – and find that I have to think against the surfeit of senseless data, the endless flow of emotionally devastating events, and the eternal present of capitalism where all that ever happens is new rounds of accumulation in altered conditions. I think we can understand the institutionalisation of Trumpism as a response to three or four basic trends, including relative imperial decline, problems of ‘secular stagnation’ (dixit Larry Summers) in the capitalist core, the rise of Chinese state-capitalism, and the energy crisis.“

—Richard Seymour, 25 October 2025

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The Qarmatians (Al-Qaramita)

By Nadeem Mahjoub Documentary film-makers G. Troeller and M. C. Defarge once asked a cabinet minister in South Yemen, why socialistic ideas were so readily acceptable in that part of the Arab world. He replied: “Because we have been communists for a thousand years! My mother was Qarmatian.” Official Muslim scholars and clerics, and many so-called moderates (whether individuals or groups) oppose sedition ( fitna ). Tensions and contradictions in society should be solved peacefully and even if the ruler was unjust and impious, it is generally accepted he should still be obeyed, for any kind of order is better than anarchy and sedition. “The tyranny of a sultan for a hundred years causes less damage than one year’s tyranny exercised by the subjects against one another.” Revolt was justified only against a ruler who clearly went against the command of God and His prophet.” 1 Here we look at not what happened in the minds of people who call for calm, oppose dissent and preach the re...

"A second position argues against transition, which is transitology itself. It is well known—especially among economists—as the sudden mobilization of a considerable mass of experts who are generally foreigners,generally Western, who come to preach the good word and to propose ready-made models of democracy. The science of the transition has become a financial windfall, a market. And the word transition has of course become a reflex of language, a term of reference, a call for tenders ( appel d’offres ) to which the whole society was supposed to respond. Consequently, the reticence that one can express is the following: our history is framed, transition is a heteronomy. Every democratic revolution is henceforth supposed to take a unique, imposed path, which is, at the same time, indistinctly democratic and liberal (or neoliberal). A more or less non-“negotiable” package. It is necessary to highlight the imposed character (and imposed from the outside) of this coming to t...

UK

"We are all in it together" A letter from a doctor to Boris Johnson published a few months ago: ' Johnson has contributed to thousands of deaths ' Related 'The greatest global science failure for a generation' 'Herd immunity' or lockdown

Ursula Le Guin on Capitalism

I think hard times are coming, when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies, to other ways of being. And even imagine some real grounds for hope. We will need writers who can remember freedom: poets, visionaries— the realists of a larger reality . Right now, I think we need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. The profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable; so did the divine right of kings. … Power can be resisted and changed by human beings; resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art—the art of words. I’ve had a long career and a good one, in good company, and here, at the end of it, I really don’t want to watch American literature get sold down the river. ... The name of our beautiful reward is ...

Putting a Racist in Their Place

Street art

Women and Sex Work in Syria, Tunisia, Morocco and the West

A long exchange How much is the condition of syrian women changing under the new regime? The condition of Syrian women under the new transitional government following the fall of the Assad regime is changing in a highly contradictory manner, marked by symbolic high-level appointments juxtaposed against a sharp decline in overall political representation, deteriorating legal protections, and a severe humanitarian crisis. While the interim administration promotes an image of inclusivity, women’s rights groups and activists express deep concern over an increasingly patriarchal and conservative political environment. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] The transition has impacted Syrian women across several distinct areas: 📉 Declining Political Representation Marginal Parliamentary Presence : In the transitional elections, women won just 6 out of 119 seats (roughly 4%) in the new parliament. This is a severe drop from the 10% to 13% representation they held under the Assad ...

Big Tech Takeover: Authoritarian Capture

An article subject to subscription . Read here then continue with some excerpts below. ******** Palantir is the data backbone of the authoritarian state, and Anduril is its autonomous warfare command system, turning information dominance into automated military power. Its Lattice platform connects satellite feeds, radar data and battlefield imagery into a single operational network, allowing military missions to be planned and executed at lightning speed. The company claims its systems can function at ‘level 5 autonomy’: launching, identifying targets, striking and returning without human intervention. [Starshield, SpaceX’s of Elon Musk] When NATO’s battlefield communications depend on infrastructure controlled by one man who openly endorses European far-right parties, defence autonomy becomes theatrical fiction. Other solutions such as GovCloud, from Amazon Web Services, or Azure Government, provided by Microsoft – in partnership with OpenAI, Meta and Anthropic – are now e...

Charlie Hebdo criticised for calling Brussels attacks tip of Islam 'iceberg' “Such categorization of an entire community as an insidious poison is a move we have seen before.” See also Charlie Hebdo is Sadism, not Satire Shlomo Sand: 'I am not Charlie' The Red Flag and the Tricolore Le Rouge et le Tricolore

"It is a peculiarity of capitalists and the bourgeoisie to think that we workers have no culture," adds the novelist, whose many tattoos include one of Karl Marx on his left arm. Argentine cleaner's double life as prize-winning novelist

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