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Trumpism seeks to maintain white domination. President Trump's policies aimed to restore white power at a time when it seemed to be in jeopardy. This chapter examines Trump's policy record and its impact on the US Black population, focusing on voting rights, policing, and criminal justice. I also discuss the far right's attack on history curricula and public education, specifically its demonization of Critical Race Theory. These efforts to protect and extend white power are not new. They are based on the principles articulated by the Founding Fathers, who asserted the right of white settlers to control the nation. More recent precedents for Trump's racism include the presidencies of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, who, like Trump, ascended politically by mobilizing white racism. While many have labeled Trumpism a fascist movement, I argue that it is better understood as a precursor to fascism. It represents a continuation of the racist origins and traditions of the United States, where the national oppression of African Americans is core to the operation of capitalism. In closing, I offer a strategic proposal for stopping this reactionary movement and preventing it from developing into a full-fledged fascist movement.

Most analyses of Donald Trump's presidency stress its uniqueness. For many commentators, the “crisis of democracy” refers to Trump's January 2021 coup attempt and his other authoritarian machinations. Some analysts speak of the “Trump effect” on the Republican Party. Yet in most respects Trump is an extreme expression of longstanding patterns. Trump's style of demagoguery draws from the historic repertoire of the Right, while most of his policies as president were consistent with those of his predecessors. The Democratic Party, meanwhile, appears incapable of stopping the spread of far-right politics, largely because the party is unable and/or unwilling to deliver major redistributive reforms. Trump and Trumpism are symptoms of this deeper systemic crisis. This brief introduction previews the chapters that follow, which will examine the roots, impacts, and future prospects of Trumpism and the possibilities for combatting it.

At a time when the gradual collapse of democratic norms and processes is obvious to anyone who cares to read the headlines, the tension between self and society is fertile soil for understanding democratic decay. While we may wish to see democracy refortified, the fact remains that citizens equipped to handle democratic practices are a necessary precondition for democratic revitalization. Yet, the deterioration of democracy suggests breakdown in the gears of democratic production of the democratic citizen. The following chapter examines a particular cancer that is antithetical to democracy and has afflicted your author – the authoritarian personality. Critical theorists and social scientists in the mid-twentieth century identified this personality disposition as one that cultivates receptivity to fascism and is today the beating heart of right-wing extremism in its particular incarnation as Trumpism. I develop the theory of the authoritarian personality as it shaped and inflamed at the familial, societal, and global levels. Contributing to the project of planetary sociology, I demonstrate how the changes occurring on the world stage incite the most pernicious and antidemocratic features of the authoritarian personality. All the while, I subject myself to critical scrutiny in order to illustrate the inner-workings of this personality disposition. Your author stands before you as a recovering authoritarian and hopes that by reading this chapter, you will begin to see authoritarianism all around you, perhaps even within yourself.

Most US activists place a high priority on elections. The default strategy for those seeking policy change is some combination of electoral campaigning and pressure campaigns targeting politicians. Yet policies show a high degree of continuity across recent presidential administrations. Despite substantial differences in rhetoric and legislative agendas, the policies resulting from Republican and Democratic presidencies have stayed within a narrow range, defined by the promotion of corporate profits, the impunity of law enforcement agencies, the defense of imperial prerogatives, and nearly unfettered ecological destruction. Focusing on the Trump and Biden presidencies, I analyze some of the structural barriers that inhibit major policy change. I also explore why the ruling class as a whole has not yet united against parasitic industries like fossil fuels and pharmaceuticals that endanger the interests of other capitalists. I argue that activists must move beyond electoral and legislative approaches by directly disrupting ruling-class interests that have the power to change policy. Only then will we win major progressive reform.

Since 1986, there has not been another federal immigration reform policy that has legalized the status of the undocumented migrants living and working inside the United States. Instead, there has been only criminalization and punitive measures. From the administrations of Bill Clinton to Donald Trump, and now that of Joe Biden, there has been a bipartisan continuity of the “enforcement-only approach,” which has corresponded with capital's increased reliance and preference for non-citizen labor. The abandonment of inclusive citizenship and rights-based immigration reform in favor of restrictive measures allows for capitalists to increase capital accumulation through greater exploitation of migrant workers. Working backwards from this process shows how this method of labor procurement and exploitation extends from the roots of imperialist expansionism abroad: the imposition of free-trade agreements and economic displacement, regional militarization, and the regulation and criminalization of cross-border migration. Because of these factors, it has become apparent that prospects for citizenship and rights-based reform will not likely be advanced electorally within the current configuration of party politics in the United States, and has therefore shifted to different forms of class struggle in workplaces and communities across the country.