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Salvage Perspectives 4 – February 2017 Order Prevails in Washington salvage perspectives 4 – february 2017 order prevails in washington 1 Not since 1943 has there been a better strategy, taking 1917 as our playbook, time to be a fascist. The ‘liberal order’, or 1968, or 2003. the demise of which has been the Not that this is, though they are subject of ruling-class hot takes for preparing to instrumentalise it, quite some years now, does indeed appear the world the ruling classes had in to be in a shabby state. Trump’s mind, as the narratives extruded by election – on which more within this their various clercs show. According issue – follows on from the vote for to them what we witness is something Brexit as a body blow to the politics of called ‘populism’, which, as Nick Cohen the ‘extreme centre’ in the very lands and the Economist and the Washington in which it was born. Victory for the Post and endless such others would far-right Freedom party in Austria’s have it, ‘explains’ both Jeremy Corbyn presidential election was very narrowly and Donald Trump, the Brexit and Oxi averted: should Marine Le Pen win votes, Podemos and Golden Dawn. the forthcoming French presidential Thus the racist and the committed anti- contest, against which no sensible racist, the billionaire and the socialist, punter would now bet, the resulting are lumped together. scrap of hard-won relief will evaporate. In part this narrative reflects how, Then the UN security council will be from the perspective of the Washington led by the fascist- through hard-right of Consensus, Corbyn and Trump US, French and British politics, plus the merely look like different types of distinct market-Stalinisms of Vladimir doom – though Trump, once dubbed Putin and Xi Jinping. In the second rank ‘Voldemort’ by the IMF, is of course will be the hard-right Narendra Modi now making his peace with the reign of of India, and the Brazilian inheritors the finance capital to which he referred of a soft coup for austerity. This is not with barely veiled antisemitism during a world in which it is growing easier his campaign. But the ideological for workers to organise economic move around ‘populism’ is also a self-defence, or develop political displacement, a refusal to acknowledge organisations to achieve class demands. how the ascent of Trump was greased Salvage has always enjoyed its by the very political centre now eager schadenfreude at the expense of the to perform its willingness to ‘give him a liberal commentariat, but the historical chance’ (and how pleasantly surprised crisis now unfolding is too grave for the centre’s representatives have been cacchination. Since our foundation, by their cordial and productive recent we’ve argued that the right is currently meetings with the President-elect). better poised to build in the world Without the ‘war on terror’ and its ushered in by the economic crisis of Islamophobic soundtrack, no Trump. a decade past: that most hopes that it Without the crescendo of neoliberal would prove fertile territory for the Left financialisation, its denouement in the were nourished by nostalgia passing for credit crunch, and the redoubling of 2 its social sadism and jubilant dancing the machine his own, incompetence, on the graves of the system’s losers, incoherence and paralysis may offer a no Trump. A key task for the Left is to respite from some of Trump’s policies relentlessly lay bare this genealogy. – but they’re just as likely to exacerbate others. Nor is he without ideological- organisational support from the hard right of the Republicans, already more akin to a European far-right formation The Trumpocene than the increasingly befuddled In the disavowal of the lineage is no technocrats of the neoliberal centre. small measure of paternalism: witness At its edge, of course, this base David Runciman writing in the London shades into the mercantilists and white Review of Books that voters have thrown supremacists of the so-called ‘alt-right’. a ‘tantrum’ to which ‘the likeliest A glance at Trump’s cabinet should response is for the grown-ups in the freeze the blood: much has been written room to hunker down, waiting for about Steve Bannon, the pound-shop the storm to pass’. And some storms Streicher elevated to chief of staff. Less do pass: perhaps the most tempting boisterous but even more dangerous response to the crisis is to believe are Trump’s appointments to offices that not that much has changed, that that cascade influence down through nothing fundamental is really going on, the state: Klan-curious Jeff Sessions as that it won’t be that bad. As a strategy attorney general; John Bolton – a man for getting to sleep at night, this is who never met a Middle Eastern state understandable: as a political diagnosis, he didn’t want to bomb – as (at the time it’s worse than useless. of writing) potential secretary of state. It’s true that Trump will be hedged One terrifying appointment is at around by the stability-valuing the Environmental Protection Agency: institutions of the US state. Part of the Scott Pruitt is a climate-change denier, horror with which the new President reflecting Trump’s insistence – sincere is regarded inside the Beltway is that, or not – that climate science is a Chinese unpredictable, inappropriate and hoax to hobble US growth. Trump untrained, he demeans the office of proposes to make America great again commander-in-chief amongst those by making America sink again. As for whom no number of dead Arabs or Arctic ice reaches its lowest-ever level, Guatemalans could do the same. As one its waters warm enough to bathe in, and liberal internationalist put it to a Salvage atmospheric CO2 levels not seen in our editor: ‘I’ve lost my moral authority!’ species’ lifespan, climate-change denial The bruised-but-dignified US state returns to power in the world’s largest apparatus and establishment will economy. restrain Trump barely, if at all. Without Standing Rock protesters succeeded a loyal party organisation to make in temporarily blocking the Dakota 3 Access oil pipeline from passing ‘populism’ and the ‘nutter’ Corbyn, through Native American tribal lands, and reinvent the centre. Joining the but the pipeline will be built, and conga-line of vapid ‘populism’-bashers, Trump – who has personal investments he says: ‘The right attacks immigrants in the corporations building it, political while the left rails at bankers, but … contributions from the same, and a the addiction to simple, demagogic close class alliance with the energy answers to complex problems are the sector redolent of the Bush era – same for both extremes.’ Blair is betting plans to ‘cut the red tape’ which is on the idea that there is a vacuum at the obstructing further oil exploitation. centre of politics today: how right he is. The Paris Agreement, coming into And of that vacuum he is the epitome. force days before Trump’s election, is pitiful, non-binding, inadequate and almost certainly too late: its function was ideological, self-congratulation and evasion for the ruling classes. Even After Truth this minimal decorous veil, though, The nostrum Blair expresses so clearly was too much for Trump’s death drive, – that the centre and those used to and he has promised US withdrawal. governing in its name have a privileged Increasingly agitated scientists debate relationship to truth and complexity – whether the window of possibility to is encapsulated in the smug meme of prevent runaway, socially cataclysmic ‘post-truth politics’. warming has closed: Trump promises For this supposedly new state of to seal it shut. affairs the traditional media is clear that On this, as on almost all issues – of course – their newer competitors where he has a clear policy, Trump is are to blame. That social media has very much the greater evil. This is not created bubbles of the like-minded, in contention. The claim is not that the feeding each other fake news stories, new authoritarian right are equivalent neither knowing about nor caring to the neoliberal centre. They’re worse. for the opinions of others, nor for And/but it is those who have been in the veracity of their own. That such charge who brought us to this pass – for an electorate will reward a man who which they display neither reflection brags about sexual assault, making nor responsibility. Instead, they drone, him pussy-grabber-in-chief. And that a ‘new centre’ must be founded – the solution to this problem is mutual presumably so it can repeat the failures understanding, a search for common of the old one. ground. Let the Millennial lie down Tony Blair, who earlier declared with the Daily Mail reader, and the tears himself baffled by the new political shall be wiped from their eyes. conjuncture, has declared his Twitter and Facebook are, certainly, ‘comeback’, the better to fight unconscionable. They are, however, no 4 more responsible for Trump, Brexit and newspaper, becoming hegemonic, Le Pen than they were for the Egyptian a default common sense. It was also revolution. Implied in the formulation utterly false. In the wake of that ‘post-truth politics’ is that what went on falsehood has ensued the wrecking of before it was the truth, and nothing but what remains of the welfare state, a the truth. deterioration in living standards the Let’s humour this idea, and ask, Institute for Fiscal Studies describes then, when did such politics begin? as ‘the worst since the last war’, and At what point did xenophobia and a geographically mediated decline misdirected rage become the common responsible in no small part for the currency of politics? Brexit vote.
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