Donald Trump: A Critical Theory-Perspective on Authoritarian Capitalism

Abstract

This paper analyses economic power, state power and ideological power in the age of Donald Trump with the help of critical theory. It applies the critical theory approaches of thinkers such as Franz Neumann, Theodor W. Adorno and Erich Fromm. It analyses changes of US capitalism that have together with political anxiety and demagoguery brought about the rise of Donald Trump. This article draws attention to the importance of state theory for understanding Trump and the changes of politics that his rule may bring about. It is in this context important to see the complexity of the state, including the dynamic relationship between the state and the economy, the state and citizens, intra-state relations, inter-state relations, semiotic representations of and by the state, and ideology. Trumpism and its potential impacts are theorised along these dimensions. The ideology of Trump (Trumpology) has played an important role not just in his business and brand strategies, but also in his political rise. The (pseudo-)critical mainstream media have helped making Trump and Trumpology by providing platforms for populist spectacles that sell as news and attract audiences. By Trump making news in the media, the media make Trump. An empirical analysis of Trump's rhetoric and the elimination discourses in his NBC show The Apprentice underpins the analysis of Trumpology. The combination of Trump's actual power and Trump as spectacle, showman and brand makes his government's concrete policies fairly unpredictable. An important question that arises is what social scientists' role should be in the conjuncture that the world is experiencing.

Raymond Williams’ communicative materialism

“…This becomes evident when one, for example, thinks of monopoly capitalist firms such as Google (search engines), Facebook (social networks), Microsoft (operating systems) and Amazon (online shopping). Also, authoritarian communications is present on the Internet, which becomes evident when we think of Edward Snowden's revelations about online surveillance, the Chinese Internet and the way right-wing authoritarians such as Donald Trump use social media (Fuchs, 2017b(Fuchs, , 2017a. The alternative type of communications that Williams described as having democratic potential exists on the Internet but is relatively marginal.…”

“…Trump cannot simply be explained as an economic, political or ideological phenomenon. His economy, politics and ideology are staged and communicated as a public spectacle that gives his supporters psychological opportunities for identification, which is an expression of anger and anxiety (Fuchs, 2017a). Trump shows that communication is indeed, as Raymond Williams argued, a basic foundational and material aspect of contemporary society.…”

Bibliographie

“…In this research, we drew on two different methods: ( Although big data are helpful to visualize polarization, thematic analysis of the most retweeted and favorite troll tweets intersecting with JDP's populism better equipped us to explore trolls' populist performance and ideological function (Braun & Clarke, 2006;Fuchs, 2017;Marwick, 2014;Papacharissi, 2012). Kimola provided us with 10,000 most retweeted and favorited tweets of trolls.…”

“…8 Then, Twitter Search was used to scan entire sets of 5 JDP has zero tolerance for the slightest criticism even from its own supporters, thereby leading to the gradual demise of "partisan polyvalence" (McCargo, 2012) and the consolidation of a press-party parallelism (Carkoglu, Baruh, & Yıldırım, 2014). Although big data are helpful to visualize polarization, thematic analysis of the most retweeted and favorite troll tweets intersecting with JDP's populism better equipped us to explore trolls' populist performance and ideological function (Braun & Clarke, 2006;Fuchs, 2017;Marwick, 2014;Papacharissi, 2012). Kimola provided us with 10,000 most retweeted and favorited tweets of trolls.…”

“…The question of how populist leaders use the media, on the other hand, appeal more to those operating within the "populism as strategy" approach. And media barely register in the work Ernesto Canovan's (1999, p. 6) proposition that "heightened emotions" are essential to authoritarianism and populism (Fuchs, 2017), we cannot disregard Twitter's 140-character media logic.…”