From trade agreements, imposed on the world as one imposes surrender on a boxer cornered and stunned, to military strategies, i.e. disengagement from European defensive structures, except to demand from the Europeans 5% of the GDP in armaments to be purchased in the USA; from the Middle East to Ukraine; from new forms of “control” in South America to the tug-of-war with China, Donald Trump’s second term in the White House is reshaping international balances.
A global shock, which has a declared objective: to send the democratic architectures that have their roots in Montesquieu’s “The Spirit of the Laws”, or separation of powers and balances, into the attic. Principles enriched by the value of freedom of the press, an irreplaceable safeguard for “control” of otherwise overflowing Powers.
From the Enlightenment to techno-fascism, which is fascism in the twenty-first century version, infected by the web which is a lethal vehicle of disinformation. But what is the terrain in which Trumpism developed, sprayed by the Maga ideology? How was what Curtis Yarvin defines “Black Enlightenment” generated, and therefore – among the effects – the European crisis of democracy?
“Democracy no longer works”
When politics does not improve people’s lives, the concentration of power is presented as a necessary solution. And freedom ends up being considered an obstacle rather than a resource. Steve Bannon, guru of the Maga theories, among the first inspirers of Trumpian policies, makes no secret of it. Democracy no longer works: in the places where real power is formed, mostly overseas, they are convinced of it to the point that for Yarvin “the democratic experiment of the last two centuries has been a historic failure”. Or, in the least catastrophic case, it is no longer needed.
Parliaments and the separation of powers? Useless ballast. The press? An annoying, often apparent, tinsel. International organizations? Useless and expensive. The old and noble Europe? A pool of exploitative countries of “Great America”. So the solution becomes simple: archive democracy and establish technocratic leadership, freeing ourselves from that all-European obsession represented by the principles of equality and solidarity. Healthcare and public schools need to be weakened because the technocratic state must function like a startup, citizens are users, the operator must not be disturbed. The parliamentary liturgies, Byzantinisms to be overcome by strengthening the prerogatives of the executive; the magistracies, in their various articulations, obstacles to be overcome, bodies to be subdued.
As can also be seen in our latitudes, it would be a mistake to think that the problem concerns only the United States in the Trumpian-led version. The sovereignisms that are spreading across Europe – the French, Spanish, German, Hungarian, Slovak and… Italian far right – are an example of this. Russian and Chinese oligarchies parallel government paradigms; the Middle Eastern theocracies the extreme drift. At this point the question can only be one: does old and noble Europe have enough antibodies to stem the tsunami triggered by Donald Trump? In the meantime, resist, anchoring ourselves strenuously to our values.