Tuesday afternoon and into the early evening I was expecting a Harris win. Then, when CNN declared a victory in Iowa for Trump, I started to think that the polls showing Harris ahead or tied with Trump in most battleground states could be wrong, as, indeed, they were. As dawn broke, the scale of Trump’s victory was becoming evident … and the predictable bloviating from anti-Trump quarters had begun to make the rounds on social media.

Whether the second Trump presidency will prove to be the fascist take-down of “American democracy” his critics are warning about remains to be seen. I am not inclined towards catastrophising in politics: capitalist political institutions are system-preserving. Liberal democratic institutions have served American capitalism very well. They enjoy broad support- as we will see, Trump was not elected because his supporters want to destroy “democracy.” Most, I will argue, want it to work for them and not just wealthy urban professionals and bankers. They have, as they did in 2016, made a very bad choice, but one should remember that they did choose, by the rules of the democratic game as it is played in America. The “power” the people exercise in actually existing democracy is meagre: the economic power by which the ruling class shapes public life and policy is regulated by the state but never fundamentally compromised no matter who assumes office. That does not mean that it does not matter who gets elected; party policy can make a difference in peoples’ lives. But it remains true that the machine rolls on no matter who is at the helm. My suspicion is that just as in his first term Trump will produce more smoke than heat. More importantly, the damage that he threatens to do to targeted groups can be resisted– if people organise, rather than mourn.

Two broad explanations have been offered for Trump’s victory. Each expresses one side of a more complex truth and say at least as much about the politics of those who authored the explanation as the dynamics of the election itself. The first is the most predictable and the least supported by the available polling evidence: the Trump victory is a victory for racism, misogyny, and xenophobia. For example, Moustafa Bayoumi writing in The Guardian argued that “The very idea of another Trump presidency is devastating. His entire campaign consisted of unbridled race-baiting, woman-hating and fascist-in-waiting messaging, yet still he prevails. This is what succeeds in this country? The answer, it’s now clear, is a resounding yes.” If true, then it must be the case that everyone who voted for him is racist, misogynist, and xenophobic. Some Trump voters undoubtedly are racist, misogynist, and xenophobic, but the scale of his victory and his performance with a wide variety of voter groups suggests that overall, his voters were not motivated primarily by hatred.

Trump’s improved standing amongst women, Latino’s and (to a much lesser extent) Black men, and Harris’ corresponding underperformance suggests strongly that what fueled Trump’s victory was a repudiation of the Democratic party’s campaign as much as it was an intrinsically pro-Trump vote. While inflation has slowed, it dogged the last years of the Biden administration and its consequences for living standards pushed voters towards Trump. The the actual results as expressed in a series of exit polls reported by CNN paints a picture that is not easily explained by the argument that Trump rode a racist wave of poor and religious whites to victory: 46% of Latinos voted for Trump, 65% of Native Americans voted for him and, in the crucial Michigan battleground, only a quarter of Arab-Americans voted for Harris. Those groups were not motivated by racism. While it is true that about 8 in 10 Blacks voted for Harris, that was down from 9 in 10 that voted for Biden. But 3 in 10 young Black men under 45 chose Trump- a small but noticeable statistical increase over the general pattern. The results prove that people do not simply mechanically vote their identity but think about the available options. Many Latino’s voted for Trump despite the bad joke about Puerto Rico at the convention because they too are concerned about immigration levels and many are opposed to anything that smacks of “socialism,” given their experiences in Cuba and Venezuela. One might disagree– strongly– with their choice, but to simply dismiss Trump voters as racists and misogynists risks displaying the “contempt for the masses”‘ that Ernesto Laclau argued underwrites elite criticisms of populism (On Populist Reason).

The competing explanation, better evidenced than the first, argues that the reasons that Trump won were primarily economic. Thus Bernie Sanders argued that “it should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them … While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they’re right.” Sanders echoes concerns that have been expressed in a number of quarters, none more carefully argued than Thomas Piketty’s critique in Capital and Ideology, that social democratic parties in Europe and the Democratic party in the United States (which functions symbolically as a centre-left party even though it is not) have indeed abandoned the working class: in terms of policy, in terms of culture and ideology, and in terms of their mass base. Social democrats and the Democrats are becoming the party of urban professionals and highly educated youth. This group is not a class, as critics of the “professional managerial” class argue, but are better understood as class fraction– the educated and cultured upper tier of the petite bourgeoisie. While many (professors, for example) have material interests in government spending, they are united less by objective economic concerns and more by a general cultural outlook- the “diversity and inclusion agenda” pilloried by critics of ‘woke” politics and the target of Trump’s and the right’s generally satirical rhetorical attacks. Whereas “inclusion” used to be thought of in material terms: furnishing historically oppressed groups and exploited classes with the resources that they required to satisfy the full range of their needs and freely develop their life-capacities– the basic political economic goal of socialism, broadly construed– today it has become– or, what amounts to the same thing, successfully portrayed as becoming– an out of control ideology adrift from both material rationality and the culture of large sections of the population. The economic explanation of Trump’s victory argues that people flocked to Trump because they are tired of having their material interests ignored, that they believe in fairness but reject the interpretation of fairness that involves downplaying the interest of one section of the working class (whites) against other sections of the working class (minority groups), and they believe Trump when he says that he will work for all Americans. Polls and interviews support this interpretation, but also abstract from some important splits noticeable in the working class vote.

The most important split is between unionized and non-unionized workers. Exit polls showed that 55 % of unionized workers voted for Harris and only 43% for Trump. Now, 43 % is not nothing, but what we should pay attention to is the per centage gap: 9 per cent is a huge difference in politics, and it suggests that unions remain spaces for political argument. That is, where leaders can engage members and members can engage each other, a majority of workers can be brought round to seeing what might seem obvious but, politically, is not: a billionaire blow hard property developed is not going to work in the interests of the working class. What this fact further suggests is that Sanders and other left critics of the existing Democratic agenda might indeed have a point: if Democrats concentrate on those economic concerns that link and unite the experience of different members of the working class they will be able to undercut the apparently unifying but actually divisive arguments of Trump. (The same argument holds in Europe, where the far right has gained at the expense of social democratic parties who, like the Democrats, have been abandoned by working class voters).

But I think that not only do the policies need to change, so too does the rhetoric. What I called in my book The Troubles With Democracy “the politics of commas” (a political claim is asserted and is then followed by an endless list of every particular group and sub group to ensure that no one’s “story” is left unacknowledged) needs to give way to a politics of concrete universality. The term is technical but the meaning is simple: humanity is a self-determining species; unlike rocks, we are capable of shaping our social and individual reality. Those self-determining capacities are expressed in distinct ways: different languages, different philosophies, different cultural traditions, different cuisines, different modes of making art, different family patterns. Patterns are good or bad not according to their content (secular versus atheist, English versus Spanish, heterosexual versus gay marriage, etc), but according to whether their organization and practice depends upon the domination and oppression of other groups. So long as some citizens’ worship of the god they believe in does not impede others from living as atheists, so long as one person loving the person they love does not impede another from loving the person they love, then both are good. Everything good in human life is a living expression of our human capacities to make sense of our place in the universe and forge mutualistic bonds across differences. The principle that the best society ensures the satisfaction of everyone’s natural and social needs so that they can live the lives they find meaningful and valuable, so that everyone can make contributions to the common (social, cultural, and economic) wealth– has to become again the organizing centre of left politics. That was the principle that early animated the socialist movement and it has to become the animating centre again.

However, it is also important to register concern with the degree to which a culture of conservatism has taken hold amongst those sections of the working class that voted for Trump. The problem with this culture is not necessarily its content– there is nothing inherently wrong with the nuclear family, or heterosexuality, or being white. Clinging to any or all as the bedrock of civilization and attacking other forms of social relationship and ways of life is the problem: every bit as much the problem as the identity politics and the woke agenda that conservatives attack. The political problem with both form of identity politics is that every group silos itself in defensive reaction to the mere existence of other groups, no one can talk to one another, and arch-opportunists like Trump– who, if you ask me, believes in nothing except his own power– are able to exploit the divisions.

In one of the more perceptive analyses of the election that I have read, Ben Davis drew an analogous conclusion. He argued that “while the new right has made great hay of returning to a communitarian model of politics, economically populist, socially conservative, and focused on family and society, the truth is that the Trumpist movement is the opposite. It is hostile to the very concept of society and community. To combat this, we need an unabashedly pro-society left. The way to win back power for a solidaristic and humanist politics is to rebuild working-class democratic institutions. In 2020, Sanders asked the question: “Are you willing to fight for someone you don’t know?” This is the question we must ask over and over again and the work we must do is making sure the answer becomes yes.” A pro-society left, I would argue, goes deeper than just working class institutions to the foundations of social life in need-satisfaction. The problem with identity politics is that it starts from difference and has no way other than (often cloying) pleas for solidarity based on the unique vulnerabilities of the group doing the pleading. I am reminded of Nietzsche’s attack on the “wretched and pinched style” of his socialist contemporaries (The Will to Power, 77). Today’s style– platitudinous, preachy, and above all self-righteous– annoys, but the bigger problem is that moralistic pleading does not work (and when poorly articulated because too easy a target for sarcastic critiques from the right).

Solidarity must be built up from common interests and those interests are grounded in shared natural and social needs. Properly nourished, everyone’s body can dance in its own way. Coherent valorization of differences must start from their roots in shared human needs and capacities for self-making and self-expression. Only once differences are understood as the expression of underlying, universal human needs and capacities can people learn that they enrich themselves by appreciating other people’s dances, even if they would not dance that way themselves. Once a common basis of understanding has been established, hard cases of conflict can be resolved through good will, honest but sharp debate, and compromise.

On Tuesday, November 5th, 2024, between 45 and 50 per cent of eligible Americans who choose to vote will cast their ballot for Donald Trump. The 2024 election will be the third time running that up to half of American voters decide that a man who has a civil conviction for sexual assault on his record, is facing a panoply of criminal charges stemming from his first term, has made open threats to use the power of the Office of President to revenge himself on his enemies, who has vowed to use the military to forcibly expel immigrants who entered the country illegally, and gives free play to his boorish and bullying personality (but now expressed more erratically than in his first two campaigns) is the better choice to lead their nation. His cross class alliance of the ultra-wealthy, the least educated segment of the white working class, evangelical Christians, and rural voters retains its political integrity despite objective differences of material interest (tax cuts for the rich, for example, deprive working class communities of the resources they need to invest in the public services they require). The solidity of this coalition induces exasperation amongst Trump’s opponents: recall Hilary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” quip and Biden’s exasperated reference to Trump voters as “garbage.“

There are, no doubt, some deplorable figures surrounding Trump and much that comes out of his mouth is garbage. And yet, his attraction, to those for whom he is politically attractive, has not been diminished by the tireless efforts of journalists to expose his lies, lawyers to expose his crimes, and his opponents to warn that at best a second Trump term would result in the most partisan authoritarian Presidency in American history and at worst, the fascist destruction of American democratic institutions.

They have reason to worry. I have already noted his threats to his opponents, but these might be dismissed as bluster. More troublesome is the historical similarity between the cross class alliance he has constructed and the social basis of European fascism in the 1920s and 30s. European fascism was spawned by deep socio-economic crises and was designed to save capitalism by destroying working class opposition. However, it succeeded by advancing an organicist view of the state which deflected attention away from the political economic causes of the crisis. The ruling class mobilized workers for a fascist solution by constructing demonized “internal enemies” (paradigmatically, in Germany, Jews and Communists). The projection of the causes of crisis onto ethnically and politically stigmatized scapegoats proved effective in bringing working class supporters on board for a project that soon liquidated their traditional economic and political defence mechanisms: social democratic and communist parties and trade unions. Having destroyed the organized opposition, the fascist parties were free to remake the nations they now ruled- Spain, Italy, Germany– into totalitarian states ruled by overt violence.

While the class basis of Trump’s electoral alliance bears some similarities to the social foundations of fascism, and his rhetoric is certainly authoritarian and fascistic (most notably, his constant references to illegal immigrants as a racialized enemy within), and some of his supporters manifest the fanaticism of the SA– armed gangs that the Nazis employed in their early days to intimidate their enemies– there are important differences. While his most extreme supporters are fanatical, they lack a coherent institutional structure. More importantly, Trump does not command an ultradisciplined paramilitary force akin to the SS. Whereas European fascist parties could count on the complicity of the armed forces, all the available evidence suggests that the senior commanders of the US Armed forces and its officer corps are deeply opposed to Trump and would almost certainly refuse to obey orders to deploy against fellow citizens. There is also no evidence that rank and file soldiers are itching to mutiny and become an armed phalanx of the MAGA movement. Moreover, the American ruling class, like American society generally, is deeply split, unlike the ruling classes in Europe in the 20s and 30s, which were more solidly behind a fascist solution. As Micheal Roberto reminds us, it would be wrong to conflate fascism as an extreme solution to the structural crisis of capitalism with the form that it took in the 1920s and 30s, but I think it would also be wrong to ignore the dissimilarities and much deeper wells of opposition that Trump would face were he to actually try to abolish the formal rule of law, criminalize political opponents, and destroy the institutions of the democratic state (weak as they might already be). (see Michael Joseph Roberto, The Coming of the American Behemoth)

But what interests me here is less precise social and political analysis of the class base of Trump’s movement and more the reasons why it is so impervious to the astounding pile of evidence that can be marshaled against his record and program. Least effective of all has been the attempt- which those who make the charge think of as their ace in the hole– of branding him a fascist. True, there is a sizeable internal Republican opposition to Trump, but the tens of millions of people who are going to vote for him are not in the least dissuaded because of media and academic criticism of Trump’s authoritarian, and perhaps fascist tendencies.

That none of his committed supporters are moved to rethink their support by credible arguments that he is a fascist is cause for serious concern. But does it mean that MAGA is an incipient fascist movement just waiting, like the Nazi’s, for a Bundestag fire to seize power and install one-party, totalitarian rule? There might be elements within that movement and amongst Trump’s more virulent advisors who would implement something like this strategy (Project 2025 ), but I am not convinced that America is on a 1933-knife edge. As I noted above, I think that there is simply too much organized opposition to Trump and too much of a mass basis of resistance to any overt moves to systematically dismantle the constitutional order for him to succeed, even if he were to try.

But I suspect– and of course, I could be wrong– that, just like Trump’s first term, his bark would be worse than his bite, and that his supporters, save the most rabid, also think that way. Like people laughing at a politically incorrect joke they take some of his more extreme bluster with a grain of salt, making his most vociferous critics sound like prigs with no sense of humour. People might be naive when they dismiss Trump’s threats, but I think that it is true that critics of Trump still often misunderstand his tactics: he makes outrageous claims (for example, that Haitian migrants were eating dogs and cats in Springfield, Ohio), not because he thinks that they are true, but because he knows it will make his opponents apoplectic, and he can then use their reaction to make the real move that he wants to make. The real — and politically effective– move that Trump wants to make is to paint his opponents as people who do not care about, are actively opposed to, the material interests of the “ordinary American.” So, he will say something for which there is no evidence and, when the absence of evidence is pointed out (as it was, in real time, about the cats and dogs, during the debate) he pivots. He does not admit the falsity of what he says but sows uncertainty- during the debate he shrugged and said “we’ll find out.” But this act is all prelude- what he really wants is for his opponents to rise in defence of the community that he attacks. He wants them to do this so that he can say to his constituency: “see, they care more about “them” than they do you.” He thereby creates a wedge between those who Trump identifies as ‘real” Americans (not exclusively white, it is important to add– “real” Americans for Trump are people who were born in America and vote for Trump) and migrants, whom he portrays as invaders.

But why does his tactic work? Because, like all effective political tactics, it connects with a real element of people’s experience, but it abstracts that element from its historical background causes and proposes a solution which, when analyzed, appears laughably (or damnably) simplistic and unworkable, but is read by supporters as a genuine response to their concerns. During the 2016 election Trump mobilized his base by threatening to ban Muslims from visiting the US and promising to build The Wall all along the US-Mexico border. The Muslim ban did not survive court challenges and The Wall stalled due to its extreme costs and logistical challenges (bark, bite), but they both served Trump’s political aims. His aims were to exploit fears about the link between Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism (a link which is real) and people’s belief that illegal immigrants unfairly jump the queue and deprive needy American of resources for which they pay taxes. The Muslim issue is less front and centre in 2024, but the immigration issue remains Trump’s most important mobilizing tactic. It would not work unless it addressed real concerns felt by ordinary people– and not only whites’ concerns, as Trump’s critics are too soon to charge. Black communities are also affected and have expressed frustration that while their needs have been ignored for decades, resources are found almost overnight for migrants.

By careful abstraction, isolation from historical causes, and sloganeered simplicity of solution political realities are constructed out of material reality. Critics have to understand the process of construction and why it is effective: life is short, people suffer when their needs are unmet, and they want them satisfied now. The further down the socio-economic ladder one goes, the more unmet needs there are, making a large subset of those groups fertile ground for recruiting to politicians like Trump. The fact is, Democrats (and social democratic parties in Europe, many of whom have lost badly to far right movements in recent elections) have failed to deliver meaningful socio-economic benefits to their working class constituencies. They are portrayed, and not without reason, as run by effete elites who are afraid to get their hands dirty “doing an Honest day’s work” and despise those who do. They are not interested in criticisms of Trump as a fascist because they are not interested in political theory but the integrity of their communities. They feel that their ways of life are derided and, like people who feel disrespected, lash out defensively. They end up at odds with communities (immigrant workers) with whom they have more in common than the ruling class false saviors for whom they vote. That underlying commonality needs to be the starting point of effective response to the Trump’s of the world.

Instead of demonizing Trump supporters as garbage, Democrats have to start by taking their concerns seriously. It is true, sadly, that some Trump supporters do seem to be beyond the pale: fed a steady diet of on-line right-wing conspiracy theory and closed to any confrontation with counter-evidence, they perhaps cannot be convinced by anything other than a smashing political defeat, and even then, they might still not change their minds. I do not know what per centage of Trump supporters fall into this category, but I believe it is a small minority. The rest (of his working class voters) are motivated by real concerns: there are legitimate questions about fairness when it comes to the distribution of housing and other resources to migrant communities when millions of Americans are unhoused or poorly housed. Climate change is a reality, of that there can be no rational doubt, but, if you are a worker in an industry that is threatened by the necessary energy transition, you might well feel personally threatened and search for a simplistic solution: it is a hoax, and Trump will dispel it.

Effective political argument must begin from the opponent’s premises. As Socrates understood, what matters initially in a political and ethical argument is not whether what the interlocutor believes is true, but that they believe it. Of course, Socrates not only failed to convince his interlocutors, he was sent to the grave for his troubles. It may prove to be the case that too many Trump supporters put themselves beyond the reach of critical political reason, but opponents must try to get underneath the fear, bluster, and anger and encourage Trump’s working class base start to consider problems in a more comprehensive light; to ask themselves if they really believe that a selfish, narcissistic, failed property developer and self-promoter understands their problems and has any concrete plan to solve them?