Comrade Trump

There's much about Trump the far-left aligns with. Revealing the permanent commonalities within authoritarianism.

Although the left-right spectrum can occasionally be a broad convenient short-hand, it doesn’t really have much to do with actual ideas. It’s more of a vibes-based approach to politics, or for people who need a team to support (regardless of what this team advocates). When trying to understand ideas, I would argue that it actually obscures more than it illuminates. Which is why one of my writing rules is to never use it. Although it is a rule I will break in this article for stylistic purposes.

The left-right spectrum is for people who think politics is about simply categorising things and then orientating oneself by these categories. It has little to do with determining merit, recognising outcomes and understanding implications. It fails to comprehend the world as a complex web countless intersecting and overlapping forces. A world where there are no neat baskets.

Looking at Donald Trump is an illustrative way of recognising why the left-right spectrum is pretty useless for understanding modern politics. Trump represents a significant ideological shift in the Republican Party, and so it is important to understand these shifts. For the sake of making a provocative argument to prove my point: Donald Trump is the most left-wing candidate to ever run for the presidency of the United States.

This seems like a ridiculous thing to say, but engage with anyone who would call themselves a Marxist, Socialist or Communist and you’ll discover many of them are in awe of Trump, and there are very good reasons for this. As there are several areas where there is a strong alignment on issues and approaches to politics. Here I will outline them:

Undermining America's Influence and Credibility

A deep suspicion of the United States is a central tenant of those who consider themselves “far-left”. The U.S is seen as world’s most nefarious actor. Something I wrote about previously in The Anti-Hegemonic Reflex. Therefore anything that weakens America’s position in the world is deemed to be a great positive.

Trump invites greater suspicion of America. He’s an avatar for those who see the country as grotesque and uniquely self-centred. The damage that Trump, and by extension the Republican Party, are currently doing to U.S soft power is significant. Much to the delight of those who hate America.

Of course, Trump loves to wrap himself in the U.S flag and the symbols and rhetoric of America, but this is all subterfuge. It’s a way of advancing his own personal interests by wearing a cheap nationalist suit. If we understand America’s founding documents – and therefore “the idea of America” – as having been born out of 18th Century Enlightenment principles (however imperfectly applied), then Trump and the MAGA movement are incredibly hostile to America.

While the flag and the nationalist chest-beating may be difficult for far-left to stomach¹, they’ll take the result of an America at war with itself and of an America whose standing in the world is deteriorating.

Hostility Towards NATO

One of the U.S’s major advantages over the last 80 years has been its network of likeminded allies. These are alliances based on a shared set of values that are built on more than just raw power and narrow interests. And can be contrasted with an alliance of states who are compelled for fall in line with a larger power, as was the Warsaw Pact. Although the far-left would see the U.S’s allies as also being compelled, because this is the nature of authoritarian thinking. It struggles to comprehend the idea of choice.

As a residual hangover from the end of the Cold War, the far-left hates NATO. The purpose of NATO was the ensure the collective defence of Europe against the Soviet Union. This created the impetus to hate NATO, and this has been maintained with Russia’s current form of authoritarianism. After the fall of Soviet Union most of the former Warsaw Pact countries rushed to join NATO – well aware that authoritarianism and belligerence are innate in Russia, and that NATO was the only guarantee of them not falling again into Moscow’s grip. The far-left resents this.

Trump is deeply suspicious of alliances. There is no such thing as a mutually beneficial relationship with Trump. Either everyone is working for his narrow interests or they are burdens or traitors. In NATO he only sees an institution that is not sufficiently working in his personal favour. So his objective it to undermine it.

Also, Trump has a very peculiar fondness for Putin, which is part of his homoerotic fascination with “tough guys”. In Trump’s world tough guys are entitled to whatever they like because they are so big and strong and macho and cool. NATO prevents Putin from getting what he wants.

This is music to the ears of the far-left, who would love to see NATO dismantled. This is driven by their hatred of the West² and desire to see Russia “take back” states like the Baltics that have offended them by become the exemplars of European values. But it is also driven by Realist dogshit that believes great powers have more substantial and legitimate rights than smaller states, as well as deeply naïve groups like Codepink³ who claim they are for “peace” but are actually for submission to brutes. Which they believe will create peace.

Fondness for Dictators and Scumbags

Alongside his love of Putin, Trump is also in awe of other dictators like Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un. He’s jealous of their power, he lusts after it. This is, of course, related to his instinctive hostility towards the restraints of liberalism.

Trump’s love of foreign dictators and scumbags is matched by the far-left, who will love anyone regardless of their behaviour and brutality as long as they are perceived to be “anti-American.”

Suspicion of Free Trade

While he clearly doesn’t have the same suspicion of wealth as Marxists⁴, this has nothing to do with a fondness for market forces. Contrary to how the media uses “market-friendly” and “business-friendly” interchangeably, established businesses hate the market. What they want is for the government to protect them from competition. Trump has imported this mindset from his own businesses into his view on what should be U.S economic policy.

Trump has sold himself a Tariff Man. Tariffs are, of course, a tax on consumers. But they are also consistent with the nationalist economic thinking and idea of economic self-sufficiency that the Soviet Union pursued. Foreign trade comes with suspicious ideas, and if you are trying to maintain ideological purity trade needs to be limited. Free trade also decentralises power in societies, something centralising ideologies like Communism cannot abide.

Alongside this, the zero-sum worldview of mercantilism fits comfortably with the zero-sum political worldview of authoritarianism. By restricting competition monopolies or duopolies can be created that favour the few. The objective is rent-seeking. While the Soviet Union owned everything, creating a supra-monopoly, other authoritarian states seek to make compacts with captains of industry to control how goods are exchanged. As freedom of exchange creates both economic and social forces that they cannot control.

Jeff Bezos signalled that he is up for such a compact with his preventing of the Washington Post endorsing Kamala Harris. I’ve written more about this co-opting of economic elites – as well as the idea of economic cosmopolitanism – in Adam Smith vs the Ultra-Nationalists.

Hatred of Liberal Principles and Institutions

As a man of limitless narcissism and lust for power the idea of institutions that are designed to constrain power are a clear affront to Trump. For individuals like Trump, and ideologies that are also obsessed with power, liberalism is the one true enemy.

The restraints of constitutionalism, the division of powers, the rule of law, limited government, freedom of the press, assembly and religion, defence of human rights, all get in the way of exercising power.

Due to their belief in process and compromise, the far-left absolutely despise social-democratic and liberal parties with a rabid intensity to match anything that MAGA can ferment. This mutual hatred of liberalism means there will always be a Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact when the opportunity arises, no matter how much the far-left and fascists claim to be opposites.

Suspicion of Democracy

Central to Trump’s political project has been the undermining America democracy. Through the lie that he won the 2020 election, and his attempts to overturn it.

Key to understanding modern authoritarian movements is the subterfuge – how these movements use language to hide their true intent. When Trump and his supporters talk about “election integrity” they means the very opposite. Claiming an election is rigged is part of the attempt to rig it. This goes in concert with Trump’s constant projection – always accusing others of what he himself is guilty of.

The far-left also despise democracy, or claim that it is “not real democracy”, with the latter being their form of subterfuge.⁵ This suspicion is driven by the ultimate in authoritarian thinking, that of “false consciousness”. This concept believes that public don’t actually know what they want and they need a leadership that is more enlightened than themselves to tell them what to think and how to behave.

Because ideology is a dogma that cannot be questioned, the whole idea of democracy as the balancing of competing ideas, interests, cultures, and psychologies needs to be squashed.

A "Total Politics" Approach to Public Policy

What Trump has promised should he win the presidency again is the politicisation of everything. He has learned that in order to consolidate his power it means turning the bureaucracy into loyalists. People whose job it is to serve Trump’s interests, not the country’s. Here he shares a worldview with the far-left regimes that have bureaucracies that must be ideological pure, and reject evidence-based objectivity in decision-making.

The goal is to dispense with the idea of bureaucratic advice without fear or favour. To instead produce advice actively with both fear and favour. Where there is no speaking truth to power as power it too emotionally immature to handle it.

This approach to politics sees the state as a tool to use against one’s enemies. With every single aspect of how the state functions being filtered through an ideological lens. The purpose of capturing the state is to persecute the people you don’t like. Whether you’re upfront and honest about it like Trump, or you wrap it up in theory like the far-left.

The Love of Political Violence

The capturing of the state also comes with the fantasy of capturing the state via a glorious violent revolution. As John Ganz has explained, the MAGA movement entered into its Sorelian period with the myths of the Big Lie and the violence of the insurrection.

Georges Sorel, an unorthodox French socialist writing around the turn of the last century, believed that myths, like the idea of a general strike or the cataclysmic Marxist revolution, provided the animating spirit for political movements: “The myths are not descriptions of things but expressions of a determination to act.” Myths cannot be refuted through factual disputation, they are not subject to scientific testing, etc.: they mobilize the passions and imagination. Sorel also believed that violence had redemptive power; it could break through liberalism’s deadening and decadent regime of bargaining and negotiation, which he thought was just the reign of fraud and corruption. Sorel hated first and foremost the institutions of liberal democracy and thought their destruction was a more important revolutionary goal even than ending capitalism.

The purpose of violence that that it overwrites both truth and process. It disdains the idea of both reality and compromise. It believes that the fist and the gun can bring their fantasies into fruition. While the far-left saw the attack on the Capitol Building as a thrilling display of political violence, they were also a bit aggrieved that while they’re were still in their bedrooms playing with their Heroes of Socialism action figures, MAGA were the ones actually acting on these violent fantasies.

Conspiratorial Worldview

Those with a large degree of cynicism and obsession with power project their own lusts for power onto everyone else. How they would act if they had power is how they believe the world currently works. They’re unable to comprehend the world in any other way.

Ideological fervour leads to people being unable to understand how people couldn’t think exactly like them. Therefore there must always be some dark conspiracy at play that is manipulating people from seeing the light. And that these dark manipulative forces are those that guides History.

Conspiracism is also driven by, and preys upon, deep insecurities. It’s no coincidence that as we’ve come to encourage and even celebrate insecurity in modern Western culture that conspiracism has risen with it. Donald Trump is an incredibly insecure man. Although he couples this with a brash shamelessness that seeks to disguise this, but which only exacerbates it. People who are similarly insecure and narcissistic are attracted to this, and also attracted to the conspiracism around him. As Luke Hallam has written in Elon Musk Goes Full Conspiracist:

It’s the kind of neurotic systems-thinking—a quintessential victim mentality, seeing oppressive dark forces everywhere you turn, casting yourself as the plucky resistance in the face of overwhelming tyranny—familiar from the most outrageous elements of, weirdly enough, left-wing counterculture. Except these days it is the most potent and certainly the most visible form of right-wing activism.

Personality Cults

One of the ironies (or subterfuges) of communism is that it claims to be a collective philosophy, but always concentrates power in the hands of a single figure. Someone who is believed to be the holder of the singular truth, whom everyone else must fall in behind. Whether it be Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol-Pot, Castro etc.

When you strip away the rhetoric and arcane theorising, this makes sense. Collectivist ideologies need conformity. And those with the emotional need for conformity need someone to fall in behind, and a group label to give themselves. These people are easy prey for people who wish to proclaim themselves as having the vision and will to create a glorious new world.

This is why personality cults form around the most grotesque figures. People of character and principle are by nature inquisitive and collaborative. They would never claim to know all, or have the power to cure every ill. They respect norms and conventions and, most importantly, experience shame. The more repulsive and outrageous Trump is the more he appeals to those who need a larger-than-life figure to submit themselves to.

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So what is actually going on here with these alignments? It’s fairly obvious that Trump has fascist impulses, so why is he so aligned with people who would claim they are opposed to fascism?

First is the nature of authoritarianism. It is first and foremost a psychology. This psychology may attach itself to different political movements, but is driven by the same impulses. I would argue that ideologies serve the purpose of trying to give a lust for control some semblance of legitimacy. It’s also why when authoritarians gain power, whether they are communist, fascist, or theological, they all tend to behave in similar ways.

Trump is quite unique in that although he uses nationalist rhetoric, his political project is so nakedly about his own personal power. His use of ideology as a cover is pretty weak.

The thrill of Trump for all authoritarians is what Eric Hoffer identified in his book The True Believer as a hatred of the present. People who are permanently frustrated and who believe that the world is owing them something they don’t have. To them power, control, and burning to the ground those who they believe have it over them is the ultimate objective. It doesn’t matter where this chaos comes from.

If you hate the present and wish to see it destroyed, then Trump is clearly the figure currently most capable of doing the most destruction. Regardless of what you claim to believe, Trump is the thrilling avatar for your frustration.

Unfortunately, we have failed to learn the lessons of the 20th Century in regards to authoritarianism. Or what we learned was only temporary. My fear is that people have to see the destruction authoritarianism brings before they reject it. But I’m hoping that enough Americans understand its threat clearly enough on Tuesday.

1. Except when these groups take power, then they really love nationalism as it is the easiest tool of control. See the Chinese Communist Party as the current prime example.

2. While enjoying its comforts and never moving to the countries that they claim are superior

3. I’m being polite by stating they are naïve, as they’re more likely actively nefarious

4. Or other people’s wealth. They’re fine with their own.

5. There are always improvements to be made to democratic processes and participation. But this is different to replacing entire systems.