Fascism-lite in America (or The Social Ideal of Donald Trump)

When the great political writer, Alexis de Tocqueville, came to witness democracy in America, many in Europe were slowly persuaded that power in the hands of the many, not just the few was the best way to govern. ⁽¹⁾ De Tocqueville recorded a “strong and independent” community, where the American citizen had “an interest in it because he shares in its management”. ⁽²⁾ Near the same time, in 1831, Wolfgang von Goethe famously wrote, “America, you’ve got it made – better than us here in the old world.” ⁽³⁾ This was why so many people, including one Frederick Trump in 1885, ⁽⁴⁾ would emigrate to the States over the 19^th century. They escaped authoritarian government, the repression of democracy and social justice, and the worst excesses of the industrial revolution. They sought the spirit of liberty. America’s dream was one of a people who, as Pitt the Elder told Parliament in 1775, “prefer poverty with liberty to gilded chains and sordid affluence; and who will die in defence of their rights as men, as freemen.” ⁽⁵⁾

So it may seem natural that fascism has never yet taken hold in America. There were exceptions. ⁽⁶⁾ For example, during the 1920s and 1930s fascists had taken over Columbia University’s Casa Italiana, ⁽⁷⁾ (attended by one Salvatore Eugene Scalia) where students pledged allegiance to Mussolini. And today, many believe Donald Trump, the embattled presidential candidate in 2016, might be another exception. Words like “fascist” often churn through 24 hour media, unconnected to essential political concepts. ⁽⁸⁾ Nevertheless, Trump has been forced to defend himself. For example, during his campaign, after Trump quoted Mussolini in a tweet, a TV interviewer asked Trump, “You want to be associated with a fascist?” “No, I want to be associated”, replied Trump, “with interesting quotes.” ⁽⁹⁾ These developments are abnormal. As seen on reality TV, “the “Donald Trump” model of workplace relations” (represented by an authority figure barking “you’re fired”) has come to politics. ⁽¹⁰⁾ Of course, Trump the man, and his policies, are profoundly uninteresting in themselves: the psychological product of a damaged and insecure individual. However, the movement in politics, the claim that fascism is emerging in America, matters. We need to know the phenomenon’s causes, relative nature, and consequences to protect and strengthen democracy.

This article’s main argument is that America is not seeing a fascist movement, but a movement embedded in the neo-conservative politics of the last forty years. The political essence of fascism entails welfare protection of vulnerable individuals, who renounce all rights to a strong leader. The concern for welfare is lacking. ⁽¹¹⁾ American politics is experiencing the consequences of monopoly capitalism, which has successfully shifted its search for economic power into the political realm, but is teetering on the brink of collapse. If we had to give it a name, this is “fascism-lite.”

The long-term cause of the Trump episode begins with Buckley v. Valeo in 1976. ⁽¹²⁾ Forty years of Supreme Court decisions, and especially the decisions of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, ⁽¹³⁾ play the major role. But Buckley v. Valeo was the “Trump for President” decision because it decided, over powerful dissent, that the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protected unlimited spending of money on one’s own political campaign. As he proclaimed during his primaries, Trump financed himself with his inherited wealth, via loans from one of his companies. Buckley long pre-dates the also disastrous decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. ⁽¹⁴⁾ But it made Citizens United, neo-conservatism and Trump, possible.

This article focuses on the politics of law, rather than campaign finance law. ⁽¹⁵⁾ But it must be noted at the outset that the First Amendment prohibition on Congress passing laws “abridging the freedom of speech” has little or nothing to do with election spending. The powerful dissenting judgments in Buckley explained this, ⁽¹⁶⁾ and their reasoning has been mirrored in other democratic countries worldwide. ⁽¹⁷⁾ Unlimited election expenditures by anyone, like Trump, diminish other people’s freedom. Other people’s voices are drowned out in scarce media resources by those with the deepest pockets. This may be changing through the internet, which could allow an essentially unlimited supply of discourse so long as network monopolies on the web remain unpriced and open. But advertising opportunities on the web, radio waves and TV channels are fewer, media channels can be purchased, and politicians can be lobbied. This is why all democracies reject that money is speech per se. Buckley was not the product of reason. It was one of the first cases after Justice William O. Douglas had to leave the Court. It was the start of a decisive change in American governance. Antonin Scalia’s death, in 2016, marked a pause in a four decade phase in judicial composition, ⁽¹⁸⁾ but the Republican Party held out on a new appointment in Congress, won the Presidency, and got Neil Gorsuch on the Court. ⁽¹⁹⁾

What led to Buckley v. Valeo? It was the crowning success of a careful plan, started by Lewis Powell, in 1971. For the U. S. Chamber of Commerce, Powell wrote an extraordinary ‘memorandum’ entitled “Attack on American Free Enterprise System”. It explained how to roll back democratic organization in politics and the economy for the next generation. ⁽²⁰⁾ Powell, a corporate lawyer, said a concerted effort to push their ‘side’ of the argument had to begin in public education, and journalism where news-stand literature was “advocating everything from revolution to erotic free love”. Powell also urged concerted action in the courts. As he put it,

This was largely assured when Richard Nixon appointed Powell himself to the U. S. Supreme Court. Even in 1971 it was preposterous to say, as Powell did then, that “the American business executive is truly the “forgotten man.” But once Buckley was decided, fewer and fewer people would ever say it again.

Since Buckley, American society has slowly drifted into something resembling monopoly capitalism. ⁽²²⁾ Corporate boards, banks, and asset managers monopolize the votes in the economy, almost all with “other people’s money”. ⁽²³⁾ They hold immense economic influence. Economic influence is translated into politics. Policies become law. Law is used to entrench economic privilege. The modern Republican party became a wholly owned subsidiary of large corporations and financiers, and the Democratic party has struggled to resist arrest. Democracy in America needs care and attention, or there will be another conclusion. Part II of this article explains a taxonomy of social ideals by which we may try to understand politics today. Part III outlines the essence of the U.S. Supreme Court’s case law. Part IV explains the social ideal of the politics of Donald Trump. Its basic argument is that Trump, and the law that makes him possible, is not fascist, but the extension of a system of monopoly capitalism. If we had to give it a name, the social ideal of Donald Trump may be termed “fascism-lite”.

Probably the best taxonomy of politics was suggested by a remarkable Berlin Labor Court judge, who was forced to flee Germany in 1933. Otto Kahn-Freund defined four categories of political group in terms of their “social ideal”. ⁽²⁴⁾ First, there was liberalism, which “condemns all combinations and leaves the structuring of social relations to the free play of social and economic forces”. Second, social conservatism “places the existentially isolated, uncombined individuals of the working class under the social protection of the state”. Third, collectivism “leaves the structuring of social relations to the conflict between the two classes which are party to the basic contradiction in society” – namely labor and capital. Fourth, there was fascism, a hybrid of those other ideals. It shared liberalism’s dislike of state intervention, social conservatism’s embrace of welfare provision for insiders, and collectivism’s view that associations are key actors in class conflict. On top of violence as a means of politics and diplomacy, fascism meant private ownership, paternalism and exclusion, coupled with victory for the “leader” in total class war.

While neo-liberalism has only existed in academic theory, neo-conservatism is indeed workable. Its essential trick was to utilize the state to achieve the goals of its interest groups. ⁽⁷⁵⁾ It has been operating on the back of the jurisprudence of the U.S. Supreme Court. There are, however, effectively two Supreme Courts: the first represented by a Republican appointed majority, which presided from 1969 with a brief interlude in 2016. A second is represented by Democratic appointees. These judges largely reason and explain the law like other judges. But for the Republican appointees, what are the essential contours of their social ideal, of modern neo-conservatism?

The story must begin in 1976. Buckley v Valeo was one of the first decisions after Justice William O. Douglas, the last remaining judge nominated by Franklin D. Roosevelt, had become so elderly that he could no longer come to court and vote. It decided that a candidate for political office should be entitled to spend unlimited amounts of his or her money on campaigning. ⁽⁷⁶⁾ Over the powerful dissents of Justices White and Marshall, ⁽⁷⁷⁾ the Republican appointees struck down large parts of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, especially the §608 limits on political expenditures, which served as a model for the limits in all other democratic countries. ⁽⁷⁸⁾ Spending money was, apparently, an exercise of free ‘speech’ under the First Amendment.

We have good international evidence that the least democratic developing countries spend the most money on elections. ⁽⁷⁹⁾ At its most stark, Buckley v. Valeo put American politics on the road to serfdom: politicians indentured to business, completely at odds with the will of the people. ⁽⁸⁰⁾ Two years later in First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, Justice Powell held for a majority, over four dissenting votes, that state legislation could not restrict expenditure by corporations during a ballot. ⁽⁸¹⁾ Without these changes that Buckley began, the adminstrations of Reagan, the Bush family, and numerous state governors would just not have been possible. As money tried to buy both sides, it shifted all politics to the short-term interests of the rich.

After Buckley and Bellotti the Court’s Republican majority entrenched a hardline ‘free-enterprise’ philosophy, just as Powell and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce had envisaged. ⁽⁸²⁾ They took away federal rights to organize from teachers at religious schools. ⁽⁸³⁾ They allowed states to ban union representatives who were not of ‘good moral character’. ⁽⁸⁴⁾ They allowed employees to be searched at work, like criminal suspects, by employing entities. ⁽⁸⁵⁾ They hollowed out access to justice against securities fraud, allowing cases to go to arbitrators chosen by the contracting party with greater bargaining power. ⁽⁸⁶⁾ They denied employees the right to claim for medical malpractice, when employers were the direct purchaser of a health care plan. ⁽⁸⁷⁾ They removed protection for undocumented workers to the fundamental right to organize a union. ⁽⁸⁸⁾ They tried to ensure that discrimination claims could not be brought where markets were themselves discriminatory. ⁽⁸⁹⁾ They also tried to cancel discrimination claims brought after 180 days of an act, even if an employee had no way of knowing they had suffered, ⁽⁹⁰⁾ though both decisions were reversed by a briefly functioning Congress. They held that votes cast in Florida could not be looked at in a recount, with the result that George W. Bush became President. ⁽⁹¹⁾ Then, the Supreme Court struck down a ban on handguns that had been established in Washington DC for 31 years, ⁽⁹²⁾ and struck down a system for preventing southern states disenfranchising voters that had been in place for 48 years. ⁽⁹³⁾ No modern judiciary has engaged in a more sustained assault on democracy and human rights. In particular, its attack on labor and democratic society made inequality soar.

But the most astonishing modern phase of jurisprudence began in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. ⁽⁹⁴⁾ The Court ruled on whether the Federal Election Campaign Act 1971 §441b, which prohibited corporations and unions from using treasury money to fund ‘electioneering communications’, was ‘constitutional’. At issue was an extended ‘negative ad’ called Hillary: The Movie. The D.C. Circuit Court held the advertisement had violated §441b, because it was paid for by a political action committee and aired within a prohibited campaign period. The five Republican appointees on the U.S. Supreme Court reversed this and held that any expenditure by a corporation or a union for the purpose of election was a necessary part of the First Amendment, and so §441b, which had come from the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act 2002 §203, was unconstitutional.

The insight that Citizens United gives into the Court’s social ideal is not merely its disregard for arguments that corporate money would corrupt politics, nor its view that a corporation is a ‘person’ like any other. Instead, the key is how it rationalized internal corporate power. When a corporation spends money, it necessarily uses resources that are generated by every stakeholder who contributes capital and labor to the enterprise: particularly the directors, shareholders, and employees. Out of all those people – potentially millions of ultimate beneficiaries behind institutional shareholders, especially those contributing through retirement savings, and maybe thousands of employees – who should determine the corporation’s political preferences? A poll of those stakeholders would usually reveal widely varying and conflicting views. In other countries, that problem is usually taken to indicate that nobody can really be said to represent a corporation and spend its money politically, or there must be a vote of some kind. ⁽⁹⁵⁾

Yet the U. S. Supreme Court’s Republican appointees thought political spending should be determined in the same way that it thought all issues should be decided: by managerial prerogative. ⁽⁹⁶⁾ In particular, Justice Scalia said that corporate speech was like that of a political party:

On this view, (which Scalia believed was how a political party should operate) people in an association are necessarily ‘giving the leadership’ their rights to be exercised on their behalf. ⁽⁹⁸⁾ Supposedly, this occurs through the exercise of free will, both an implicit and chosen aspect of joining any association.

Second, in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores Inc, the Supreme Court held that an employee’s right to contraception under health care plans regulated by the Affordable Care Act of 2010 was subject to an employer’s ‘religious freedom’. ⁽⁹⁹⁾ The Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 prevented government from placing a substantial ‘burden’ on a ‘person’s exercise of religion’. The shareholders and managers of Hobby Lobby Stores Inc, which employed around 22,000 staff, claimed that the requirement to provide health care plans, which included payments for four kinds of contraception that would prevent an egg developing in the uterus, burdened their exercise of religion. The majority of the Court, while declining to finally decide that this aspect of ‘Obamacare’ infringed the First Amendment, held the mandate violated the corporate owners’ religious rights.

During argument, Justice Scalia spoke forcefully in favor of the ‘leadership’ principle he had mentioned in Citizens United. He said “whoever controls the corporation determines what the corporation” does. ⁽¹⁰⁰⁾ In the opinion for the Court, Justice Alito addressed the issue of who the legal fiction of ‘personhood’ of the corporation really protected:

Thus, the corporate form is designed for ‘protection for human beings’. But it protects some more than others. In essence, it protects ‘whoever controls the corporation’. It allows the people in control to impose their values on others, absolutely.

Third, in AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, the Supreme Court held that a corporation may include a binding clause in standard form contracts with consumers, under the Federal Arbitration Act of 1925, excluding the right to bring a civil or class action claim. According to the majority, those arbitration agreements must simply be enforced “according to their terms.” ⁽¹⁰²⁾ This suggested that a business will select the people who decide a legal dispute, apparently even including one on compulsory consumer rights. This perfected the cases on securities arbitration in the 1980s, and a similar decision that employment rights could be taken away by contracts. ⁽¹⁰³⁾ In the Lochner era, ⁽¹⁰⁴⁾ the Supreme Court had struck down social and economic legislation as unconstitutional. In the Concepcion era, there was no longer any such need; the Republican appointees have said that any business can simply opt out of social duties. Some form of arbitration agreement is now estimated to cover a quarter of the American civilian workforce. ⁽¹⁰⁵⁾ This privatization of justice means that consumers and employees have no inherent guarantee of a fair and impartial hearing, i.e. no rights for anyone, except for the ‘leader’ of the enterprise.

The result is, the U.S. Supreme Court’s ‘neo-conservative’ ideal has three main features. First, it emphasizes the absolute autonomy of ‘the leadership’ whenever there is a conflict. Second, it negates all rights for other members of an association: everyone is equal in their subordination to the leader. Third, it excludes the ability of law to protect the vulnerable in supposedly market or private affairs. It differs from neo-liberalism because state power is actively used to police social relations in favor of managerial dominance. It pursues a social ideal that almost conforms with the fascist theories of the 1930s, with one major exception. Neo-conservatism has abandoned fascism’s concern for the social welfare of insiders. Welfare has merely become optional, at the discretion of the leader of the organization.

This does not mean that the Republican judicial appointees were consciously pursuing any one ideology or another, that there is any documentary evidence Justice Scalia had fascist connections, or indeed that the remaining appointees do.

Justice Scalia, himself, made clear on various occasions that he simply thought the purpose of the U.S. Constitution was, not to empower the fullest participation of people in democratic life, ⁽¹⁰⁶⁾ but to be a limit on government. ⁽¹⁰⁷⁾ People have accused the judiciary of anti-democratic ideology before, but as Otto Kahn-Freund had said, that could overestimate “the political self-awareness of the judges.” ⁽¹⁰⁸⁾ Another very different judge in the U.K., Lord Sumption, seemed to frame the issue accurately;

If nobody had noticed before 2015 that ‘something different’ was taking place in U.S. politics, it became painfully clear as the Republican presidential primary for 2016 gathered speed. Once again, it is important to stress that Donald Trump, the individual, is profoundly uninteresting. He contributes nothing new to political science. He has an obvious personal struggle with self-esteem. The persona and campaign he has crafted reflect this. ⁽¹¹⁰⁾ Nevertheless, the combination of policy positions serves as a useful example of what monopoly capitalism, driven by neo-conservative politics on the U.S. Supreme Court, has led to.

The defining feature of the persona Trump cultivates is hardcore managerialism. This emphasizes his personal belief that he ‘wins’, and this is why he can ‘make America great again’. It begins with his previous reality TV show, The Apprentice, where Donald Trump in the ‘board room’ would tell candidates, who apparently sought jobs in his inherited real estate firm, each week ‘you’re fired’. The psychological spectacle, from the viewer’s perspective, invited a strange empathy with the cult of the business leader. Who would the leader fire? Would you agree with the leader? And if you did not agree, why were you wrong? It seems unlikely that Trump acted differently in real life. For example, Trump dismissed workers who were engaged in organizing a union at his hotels to improve their wages. ⁽¹¹¹⁾ This behavior mirrors the leadership principle.

However, the key element lacking for Trump to be characterized as a real fascist is a concern for insider welfare. Like the Republican majority of the Supreme Court, Trump appears to be situated firmly in the neo-conservative frame and lacks the historical awareness to break out. Despite his talk of ‘jobs’ there is no commitment to full employment. There are pledges to cut the minimum wage. Despite criticizing bad trade deals, there is no commitment to putting labor and environmental standards in them. A Republican candidate, in order to complete the fascist profile, could, of course, pretend to swing sharply to the ‘left’ to capture voters whose living standards have stagnated and declined over the last 40 years. Elements of such a ‘strategy’ might have been detected in Trump denouncing the invasion of Iraq, blaming 9/11 on the Bush administration, criticizing trade agreements, or praising the National Health Service in Scotland. ⁽¹¹²⁾ Trump’s principles are, to put it mildly, not fixed. However, it is doubtful that any coherent fascist agenda has been thought through, rather than policies being made of-the-cuff. This is why, without any serious display of concern for welfare of insiders, ⁽¹¹³⁾ the social ideal of Donald Trump would accurately be termed, not as fascism, but fascism-lite.

Politically, Trump’s strong businessman image is consistent with key elements of fascist behavior. The same, however, is consistent with an indistinctive ‘Hobbesian’ monarch, ⁽¹¹⁴⁾ who would make everyone else’s lives nasty, brutish and short. The infallible leader pledges order and stability, while totally denying rights for individuals. The implicit, yet unenforceable, ‘social contract’ is that those on the inside may be protected, while those on the outside fare less well. So, among other things, Trump has said to combat military enemies “you have to go after their families”. ⁽¹¹⁵⁾ He pledges to do “a hell of a lot worse than water-boarding”. ⁽¹¹⁶⁾ He says there “has to be some form of punishment” for women who have abortions. ⁽¹¹⁷⁾ He promises a mass “deportation force” to be used against around 11 million undocumented migrants. ⁽¹¹⁸⁾ Under international humanitarian law, this means war crimes, torture, violence against women, and premeditated violations of rights of the child. ⁽¹¹⁹⁾ Under the U.S. Constitution this means inhumane and degrading treatment, infringing the right to privacy, and breaching due process of law. ⁽¹²⁰⁾ That said, those very goals – minimizing torture, abolishing the right to choose, total aggression toward rights for outsiders – had been consistently supported by Justice Scalia in minority dicta and media interviews during his tenure on the court. ⁽¹²¹⁾ Trump makes what was implicit explicit, and carries the same ideals to their logical conclusion. The common thread is to proclaim an absolute right for the leader, and an absolute denial of rights for everyone else.

Why, in a democratic society, would anybody believe Trump would ‘make America great’, when policies are unrelated to the goal? The answer is, the ‘leader’ plays on systemic corruption. It is said that nothing gets done anymore, “America doesn’t win anymore”, and this contains an element of truth. ⁽¹²²⁾ In the U.S., led by Ted Cruz, government shut down in 2013. Legislation reflecting the electorate’s will has only been possible in America in four years since 1980, two in Bill Clinton’s presidency, and two in Barack Obama’s, before the Congress was disabled by Republican winning majorities or blocking minorities. From the perspective of the most ideological, corporate election spending must ensure, not that Republicans win to implement policy (by now this has become quite irrelevant), but win to maintain a filibustering minority in the Senate, or a House of Representatives majority, and a grip on the Supreme Court. Everything must be done to prevent the reversal of Buckley v. Valeo. ⁽¹²³⁾

Election spending must, of course, be accompanied by linguistic propaganda. Ideology often begins by taking ordinary concepts and extending them to inappropriate subject matter. ⁽¹²⁴⁾ During the Lochner era of the U.S. Supreme Court, the most obvious example was ‘freedom of contract’. The important value of private autonomy, which can be seen as appropriate for commercial transactions, became a constitutional doctrine that legitimized unequal bargaining power in contracts between workers and employing entities, tenants and landlords, or consumers and corporations. ⁽¹²⁵⁾ Similarly, the Powell memorandum in 1971 used the rhetoric of ‘free enterprise’ to defend, not partnerships or small business, but corporate directors, sheltered by asset managers and banks, who appropriate the shareholder votes in the economy with ‘other people’s money.’ ⁽¹²⁶⁾ In Citizens United, the idea of free ‘speech’ under the First Amendment is extended from human beings to corporations, in order to corrupt the basis of democratic discourse. ⁽¹²⁷⁾

Another strategy of linguistic propaganda, with similar effect, is to rebrand concepts with words favorable to the political cause. Instead of changing society to match people’s perceptions of what is right, people’s perceptions are changed to match society. Inheritance tax becomes ‘death tax’. Global warming and environmental damage becomes ‘climate change’. Oil drilling and fracking becomes ‘energy exploration’. Employers, who bark ‘you’re fired’, became ‘job creators’. Language becomes, not a contextually sensitive basis for deliberative discourse, ⁽¹²⁸⁾ but in the words of Newt Gingrich ‘A Key Mechanism of Control’. ⁽¹²⁹⁾ The essential goal is to take people’s trust, and abuse it by making them vote against their own interests. ⁽¹³⁰⁾

The difficulty is, language games last only so long, before the politics of division will pay more. George W. Bush’s ‘ownership society’ was sharply redefined by Barack Obama as the ‘you’re on your own’ society. ⁽¹³¹⁾ Republicans who said they want ‘right to work’ states are called out for really wanting ‘right to work for less’ states. ⁽¹³²⁾ The politics of division become ever more essential as government fails to solve the problems it is meant to: of escalating inequality, poverty, unemployment, and climate damage. Before 2015, the Republican Party had kept a lid on rampant racism, sexism, homophobia, while ensuring that the subtext of its policies still appealed to those sentiments. Donald Trump, however, has arrived at a time when matters are so extreme, it pays to make the implicit explicit. It spurs other politicians to do the same.

So, to distract people from the causes of social problems – of an authoritarian economy, where wealth and power are in the hands of the few – it is necessary to divide people. Citizens are turned against new immigrants. Christians against Muslims. Union members against their colleagues. Workers against the unemployed. White people against black people. Old against young. Educated against uneducated. Straight against gay. Men against women. Mothers against their own children. The politics of division are not accidental. They are meant to inhibit people’s sense of solidarity, the basis for taking collective action. They represent the essential strategy of an interest group that cannot win any other way. As all else fails, they lie and try to steal the vote. Sometimes, just sometimes, and whatever the positive law, there is an inherent right to resist, to “let justice be done, whatever be the consequence.” ⁽¹³³⁾

American politics today may appear dangerous, but there is an alternative. The politics of ‘democracy and social justice’, to make a ‘living law’, ⁽¹³⁴⁾ celebrated its 100^th birthday in 2016, and remains far stronger. Social justice means everyone is empowered to achieve their fullest potential. It turns the ways of an old Platonic Republic on their head, so that instead of the individual being subordinated to society, ⁽¹³⁵⁾ all law, every social institution, serves human freedom. ⁽¹³⁶⁾ This means universal education, full and fair employment, social security, and democratic voice in every social institution: in government, the workplace, in enterprise, and public services. Power cannot be in the hands of the many, rather than the few until everyone can realize their potential. And people cannot realize their potential unless they have a voice in community decisions which make that possible. It is not an accident of history that half the Amendments to the U.S. Constitution since 1789 directly related to democratization, from votes for people who had no property, for people once classed as property, for women, for young people, for all. ⁽¹³⁷⁾ When everybody can participate in the life of the law, reason, not rancor, prevails in discussion. Democracy makes the rule of law, not the rule of some man, legitimate.

The important question, in the next shift of politics, is how the interest groups that produced the Powell Memorandum, Buckley v. Valeo, and Trump, will be undone. Long-term political shifts are not about winning elections but altering the underlying forces of social power. Politics reflects this. Law entrenches barriers to democracy and social justice in three main ways. First, shareholders monopolize the votes in the economy, in corporations, over the voice of employees in general, and consumers or the public in regulated enterprises. This is the heart of “the ‘Donald Trump’ model of workplace relations”. ⁽¹³⁸⁾ Second, shareholder voting rights are themselves monopolized, not by people whose money is invested, but asset managers and banks with ‘other people’s money’. ⁽¹³⁹⁾ This has led to an ‘Enron economy’ prone to financial crisis. Third, wealth discrimination blocks equal freedom to be educated, to access public and private schools and universities. Rich parents bribe their way to the front of the college line, ahead of students with more merit. The tools to achieve modern social security, universal health care, equal campaign finance, fair trade, progressive tax, and an end to climate damage are well known. But for democracy and enterprise to revitalize, we need (1) votes at work, (2) votes in the economy, and (3) an end to wealth discrimination and segregation in all education. ⁽¹⁴⁰⁾

In these problems, it should not be thought the United States is alone. Movements similar to the ‘Trumped-up’ Republican Party have been spreading. The ‘United Kingdom Independence Party’ and the ‘Brexiteers’, the German ‘Alternative für Deutschland’, the Austrian ‘Freedom Party’, and Putin’s ‘United Russia’. They thrive on social division. They have no principles, but to secure privilege for their industrial or financial masters, and their defining issue is climate damage. Russian backing for Trump and for Brexit, show its precarity. ⁽¹⁴¹⁾ Russian coal and oil are $183bn of its total $316bn in exports, ⁽¹⁴²⁾ near 60 per cent of its export economy. So, Russia is backing political movements that deny climate damage. It will do anything to stall a zero-carbon future. For Russia’s kleptocrats, breaking American democracy and the European Union are questions, not just of business sense, but economic survival, because every lump of coal, every drop of oil, will be worthless when outcompeted by solar and wind. Compare China with fossil fuel exports under 2 per cent (but imports of 13 per cent), ⁽¹⁴³⁾ the U.S. or U.K. under 8 percent, or France under 3 percent. ⁽¹⁴⁴⁾ Russia must stop renewable energy among its UN Security Council partners at all costs. It cannot touch China, so it attacked the E.U. and U.S. ⁽¹⁴⁵⁾ In 2016, climate damage became geo-political.

Where does that leave the neo-conservative politics that made Donald Trump? In this larger perspective, those business interests are in the process of being eclipsed. Coal powered the British Empire’s 19^th century. Oil powered the Empire State’s 20^th century. Renewable energy will power the 21^st century. But sunshine and wind cannot be monopolized like fossil fuels. As a new plurality transforms the global economy, proprietary domination will matter less, networks more. The corporations building combustion motors, pumping oil they run on, and bankrolling oil’s extraction, may dominate the global economy today, but that will not last for long. ⁽¹⁴⁶⁾ The unending barrage of crisis and moral collapse is beyond words. ⁽¹⁴⁷⁾ The people who are growing up with this reality, the once silenced majority in America, are building strategies to contain those interests. This is the real and necessary “wall”. The United States of America risks descending into a new dark age, but the case for social transformation is compelling, and greater.