Power to the Plutocrats
MAGA as Anti-Establishment?
It is happening already. Ever since Donald Trump rose to the top of American politics a decade or so ago there’s always been a certain strain of left-wing (or at least quasi-left-wing) political commentators who eventually gravitate to Trump’s ‘anti-establishment’ vibe. For instance, in 2017 Matt Taibbi published a book about Trump titled Insane Clown President: Dispatches from the 2016 Circus. A few weeks ago, he apparently pulled the lever for him. Glenn Greenwald was an earlier convert. Then there’s completely cartoonish figures like Jimmy Dore.
The thing about this is it often appears to have nothing to do with the actions, or even the ultra-scattered words, of Trump himself. It’s just meant to be a blow to the ‘establishment.’ Take the so-called COVID contrarians. Generally, this is the anti-vaccine (or perhaps to be fairer maybe: anti-vaccine mandate), anti-lockdown, prosecute Fauci crowd. It safe to say, in part to the endorsement and appointment of RFK, this crowd in large measure voted for Trump. This despite the obvious fact that everything they despise happened when Trump himself was president. Prosecute Fauci? Trump didn’t even fire him when he had the chance.
I bring up Jimmy Dore since he got his start in politics on the Young Turks (TYT), one of the most viewed online Left channels. TYT’s co-founder is Cenk Uyger. It was only a few weeks ago Uyger was declaring that Trump was indeed a fascist (this in contrast to his co-host Ana Kasparian, herself undergoing some kind of political maturity, recently writing that opposition to Trump has become ‘boring’). What song is Uyger now singing? Writing on X on November 29th, he declared:
I’ve been trying to figure out why I’m more optimistic now then I was before the election, even though I was so against the guy who won. I know now. MAGA is not my mortal enemy (and neither is the extreme Left). My mortal enemy is the establishment. And they have been defeated!
Shortly thereafter for good measure:
Collapse of the French Government is perfect example of the Horseshoe Era. Populist left and right united to take down the establishment. Left-right paradigm isn’t deciding elections anymore, populist-establishment is. Populists are winning everywhere. Establishment is universally hated.
The key to this kind of thing is its fluidity. It is obvious that ‘establishment’ here has no real meaning. It can just stand in, much like the word ‘elite’, for ‘whatever we don’t like.’ For instance, are the establishments in France and the U.S. the same? Liberals and Leftists in the U.S. have always envied French health care. Anyone who has been to Paris has experienced the presence of French unions. Should anyone be confident in the likes of Marine le Pen getting her hands on these things? Others who have in recent years plausibly grabbed the populist flag include the likes of Viktor Orban, Rodrigo Duterte, Javier Milei, and the Alternative for Germany (Afd) party.
Who is the establishment and what does it want? I suppose most would say it is some sort of nexus between the government and large corporations. What does this nexus desire? Money? The only substantial policy achievement that came out of the first Trump administration was a nice-sized corporate tax cut that was facilitated by then GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell (himself later a target of MAGA hated). Deregulation? Another staple of Trump’s first term. Trump’s bragging about it is proof enough but, for example, there was the speed-up for meatpacking plants as they were ravaged by COVID. Free trade? Maybe. The pandemic definitely, along with the rise of Trump, has led to something of a reevaluation in trade. Industrial policy has been somewhat awakened (see the Inflation Reduction Act, the Chips Act), but Trump is hardly needed to make it happen. The trade deficit itself actually increased during Trump’s first term.
It puts one in mind of the old Turkish folk warning that goes “When the ax came into the woods, the trees all said ‘Well, at least the handle is one of us.’” Trump consistently threatens mass deportations, goes on about more tax cuts, announces his fealty to the corporate state in the likes of Elon Musk, who apparently pumped about $277 million into electing Trump, and venture capitalists like Peter Thiel (venture capitalists are another flock of apparent ‘anti-establishment’ types), but look at the handle of the guy!
What about figures like RFK Jr and Doctor Oz? Surely at least the anti-establishment credentials of the Kennedys are intact? It’s worth noting for starters that neither man is exactly hard up. Many years of hocking ‘Dr. Oz Homeopathic Starter Kits’ appear to have paid off. In fact, the cabinet Trump is assembling is worth a combined $340 billion. It is some kind of symptom of late capitalism that ‘elitist’ is a state of being rather than a material reality?
Dr. Oz should really need no debunking. Kennedy, something of a lawyer by trade, spent years pushing the ‘vaccines cause autism’ line years after it was debunked. Actually, it looks like he made millions doing it (just this week Trump said Kennedy would investigate this as Health Secretary). Then there was his promotion of ‘alternative COVID treatments like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. In 2019, he visited Samoa to proselytize on vaccine danger. One result was a decline in people getting vaccinated for measles and 83 preventable deaths, mostly children.
What about Kennedy’s criticism of certain corporations? Simply voicing criticisms of corporations, ‘Big Food’ or otherwise, doesn’t make one competent or less of a crackpot. Certainly, corporations have often sought to portray their critics in such a way but even if one can find sympathy for some of Kennedy’s utterings it can’t be denied even these are put forward with an air of incoherence and conspiracy theory. And it would be quite easy to appoint an actual intelligent critic.
Then there is perhaps the darkest layer of all this. In the days after the election much was made of Trump appearing on the Joe Rogan podcast. Rogan, with his $250 million contract, exponentially more than any journalist or editor pulls down at the establishment New York Times, is held up as the epitome of alternative media. When it recently came to discussing Ukraine being given permission to finally strike back on Russian territory after 3 years of attacks, Rogan quipped about Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky ‘"Zelensky says Putin is terrified. F*** you, man. F*** you people. You people are about to start World War III." If Rogan is to be believed he rejected a request from Zelensky to appear on the show.
Meanwhile, another long-form podcaster who thinks his show can save the world, Lex Friedman, recently announced an intention to interview both Putin and Zelensky in January, as if their points of view are equivalent. Adding, ‘I understand all the risks.’ Of course, it wasn’t long ago that Tucker Carlson, another alleged anti-establishment type, sat down with Putin. While Carlson begged Putin to rant against NATO in Eastern Europe, Putin droned on about Price Ordan and Polish imperialism. After the interview, Carlson gave his bizarre spiel about being ‘radicalized’ by a Russian grocery store.
The relevant figure here is, of course, Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s nominee to be Director of National Intelligence. Gabbard, who has yet to issue a peep about the overdue fall of Assad, is considered the perspective anti-war pillar of the administration. Yet it was Gabbard who, putting aside the spirit of aloha, was all for Putin’s bombing campaigns against the revolution in Syria. One might hope that recent, and quite unsurprising revelations, that she pushed stories from Russia Today (RT) on her staff might sink her candidacy; but this seems unlikely.
Even going back to its origins, populism always had its dark side. The Omaha Platform, which launched the Populist Party in 1892, properly railed against war and trusts but also featured this resolution:
That we condemn the fallacy of protecting American labor under
The present system, which opens our ports to the pauper and criminal
Classes of the world and crowds out our wage-earners; and we
Denounce the present ineffective laws against contract labor, and
Demand the further restriction of undesirable emigration.
As for its alleged current version, leave me out of it. For anyone claiming the mantle of the Left, even in its current powerless form, to be enticed is a silly and needless betrayal.