Exit stage right: Neo-liberalism, cable news and the persistence of Trumpism

Abstract

In the wake of the 2020 election, commentators noted that while Trump himself would eventually leave office, ‘Trumpism’ would likely remain. ‘Trumpism’, however, has not been clearly defined, beyond a vague reference to some blend of populism and nativism that pre-existed his presidential bid, coming eventually to coalesce around him as a cult figure and subsequently acquiring a name of its own. But it seems insufficient to reduce Trumpism to mere populism or even to the so-called ‘alt-right’. ‘Fascism’ has offered a tempting comparison in light of both Republican policies under the Trump administration and the White nationalist base whose support he never disavowed, but most specialists have stopped short of equating the two. This article examines Trumpism in the specific context of what I have previously called a ‘neoliberal mediascape’ structured by financialization and characterized by hypercommercialism and updates Walter Benjamin’s thesis on the ‘aestheticization of politics’ to accommodate a neo-liberal convergence of capital and technology that he himself could scarcely have imagined. Ultimately it defines ‘Trumpism’ in its historical specificity as a primarily affective disposition that is both a product of the neo-liberal mediascape and a phenomenon it has been singularly unable to contain.