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Much of the working class, feeling neglected and sidelined by the Democratic Party for decades, are increasingly prepared to allow Trump to twist and turn their grievances into shapes that fit a fascist agenda.
We now live during the time of the fasci-clown. In post-election analyses, all the discussions of the appeal of his racism and patriarchy capture important things. But they may not speak starkly enough to why these sentiments run so deep and cut so broad a swath, though for different reasons, through both the white donor class and so much of the working class. Neither do they explain how and why growing segments of the populace laugh so much at Trump's fascist humor. Dressing up and clowning as a "garbage man" illustrates only one recent instance of that conjunction.
The donor class knows, and much of the working class senses, that neoliberal capitalism cannot survive in its old form for much longer. Knowing that, the donor class intends to capture as much wealth and power as it can in the time left to it, prepared to support a transition from neoliberalism to fascism if that is what it takes. Elon Musk is a perfect exemplar here, turning Twitter into a propaganda machine, becoming the fasci-clown’s Goebbels, and informally assuming the role of his economic lieutenant, preparing to impose punishing austerity in the name of a restoration of a pre-New Deal government. So much of the working class, feeling neglected and sidelined by the Democratic Party for decades, are increasingly prepared to allow Trump to twist and turn their grievances into shapes that fit a fascist agenda.
Why? Filtering into the sense of extreme entitlement of the superrich and desperation of growing segments of the working class-- sliding into those intensities in ways electoral polls do not directly capture--is a sense that the old alternatives are not working and cannot be sustained into the indefinite future. Workers, for instance, probably do not truly believe that climate wreckage is a liberal farce. Many sense that it is real, but that attempts to really reckon with it would leave them in the lurch. So they laugh at the clown's outrageous jokes, hateful comments about women, race, transgender people and immigration, and allow the fasci-clown to twist their grievances into support for his themes.
In Mein Kampf, Hitler, the fascist, malignant narcissist, and vicious humorist, summarized in two sentences the essence of his campaign to become Fuhrer:
"It belongs to the genius of a great leader to make even adversaries far removed from one another to belong to a single category, because in weak and uncertain characters the knowledge of having different enemies can only too readily lead to the beginning of doubt in their own right." And: "If he suspects they do not seem convinced by the soundness of his argument, repeat it over and over with constantly new examples."
The irony, just lurking below the rhetorical surface, is that neoliberal capitalism, in both the past and today, fosters the climate wreckage that helps to drive refugees north; and it will increasingly do so in the future.
For Hitler, writing after the massive German defeat in WWI, high inflation, and the return of hardened soldiers from battle with no jobs, Jews became the "red thread" to which he tied, through constant repetition, military defeat, social democracy, and communism. He thus condensed multiple adversaries into one enemy. For Trump, living during a time when imperial instabilities and climate wreckage create more and more refugees heading from southern to northern states, immigrants of color become the new red thread. The stagnation of the working class, the problems facing large cities, the "uppity-ness" of women of color, the snarky-ness of the liberal snowflake, and the loss of "black jobs," are all tied to the red thread of immigration. As you intensify opposition to immigration by, first, treating immigration as something insidious as such, and, second, linking it to everything else you oppose, you thereby loosen the rhetorical reins previously restraining public attacks on women, Blacks, Democrats, cities, and secularists. They are all now placed on the same line of associations, with resentments to any one magnified by those felt against others. A brilliant, cruel campaign.
The irony, just lurking below the rhetorical surface, is that neoliberal capitalism, in both the past and today, fosters the climate wreckage that helps to drive refugees north; and it will increasingly do so in the future. That is the truth that Trump and his followers must resist and shout down whenever it rears its ugly head. That is one reason racism must be intensified by the fasci-clown. This core truth must never be acknowledged: America works to produce the immigration it increasingly abhors.
But what about us? That is, what of those of us on the democratic left who have resisted Trump, supported Harris, and oppose the regime the fasci-comic seeks to impose? We participate, in at least one way, in the very condition we resist. As neoliberal capitalism morphs toward fascist capitalism during the second Trump term, we too have failed to come up with an alternative that could both work and attract droves from the working and middle classes to it.
This core truth must never be acknowledged: America works to produce the immigration it increasingly abhors.
As productive capitalism forges a future it cannot sustain in the face of growing climate wreckage, as many flirt with fascist capitalism to avoid facing this truth, nobody really believes in the alternative models of rapid growth and mastery over nature supported by classical social democracy and communism either. The danger of fascist capitalism, indeed, is tied to the failure of other familiar critical traditions to respond in a credible and sufficient way to the time of climate wreckage. This failure insinuates itself inside climate denialism and casualism today.
Such a failure encourages many to deny climate wreckage, that is, to embrace fascist tendencies. It may also encourage others to pretend that it can be resolved within either old forms of productive capitalism or one of the twentieth century alternatives to it. So, we critics, too are caught in a bind. We insist that immigration is good economically, by which we mean that it will lead to greater economic growth, when the truth is that the pursuit of that growth is at the heart of our current crisis. Is our failure connected in some subliminal sense to the growing attractions of many others to Big Lies today, to lies that growing numbers embrace without necessarily believing?
Our sense—though we cannot prove it—is that growing attractions to, and tolerances for, fascist capitalism within the working classes is tied to a larger intellectual failure to show how to evolve a political economy that curtails the future scope of climate wreckage while speaking to real grievances and anxieties of the working class writ large. Unless and until that happens it will not be that hard for fasci-clown leaders to attract the billionaire class and capture large segments of the working class. Fascist humor flourishes when no other responses to deep grievances appear credible.
We should seek to drive changes so deeply that our country eventually emerges with a new system of political economy, one that routinely delivers good results for people, place, and planet.
Progressives and many others agree on one thing: Across a broad front of national life, the American economy and our politics are not delivering good results. The documented truth is that the conditions of life and living in our country are deplorable for most people, with almost all measures of public well-being behind other upper income countries.
That has been the case for decades, actually, and is one of the things that accounts for the widespread political disaffection in American today. When combined with extraordinary wealth concentrated in the hands of a tiny minority, the unsurprising result is public anger and resentment.
A host of reforms are advocated to improve key aspects of national life—in education, healthcare, child welfare, finance and banking, environmental and climate protection, taxes, social justice, advancement of women, and more. Getting such reforms adopted would make a huge difference. But more and more people are sensing that something deeper must be done, that what we should think of as our political economy—the combination of our economy and the politics that support it—is badly flawed and incapable of meeting today’s big challenges.
What we should be moving toward is the law of the next system, beyond today’s capitalism and yesterday’s socialism.
This realization has led to the now-frequent call for transformative change. There is a hunger for deep change but uncertainty about what that means. I want to spell out here what I think transformative change could and should look like. Overall, we should seek to drive transformative changes so deeply that our country eventually emerges with a new system of political economy, one that routinely delivers good results for people, place, and planet.
I know that this idea of a new political economy is too big to swallow whole. It can best be approached, I think, through a series of interacting, mutually reinforcing transitions—transformations that attack and undermine the key motivational structures of the current system, while replacing these old structures with new arrangements needed for a flourishing of human and natural communities.
I believe the following transitions hold the key to moving to this new political economy. We can think of each as a progression from today to tomorrow. In each of these areas, there are currently laws and policies that shape today’s realities. Collectively, we can think of these laws as the law of today’s corporatist, consumerist capitalism. What we should be moving toward is the law of the next system, beyond today’s capitalism and yesterday’s socialism.
Economic Growth: From growth fetish to post-growth society, from mere GDP growth to growth in social and environmental well-being and growth focused squarely on democratically determined priorities.
Indicators: From GDP (“grossly distorted picture”) to accurate measures of social and environmental health and quality of life.
The Corporation: From one dominant ownership and profit-driven model to new business models embracing economic democracy and goals other than profit, from shareholder primacy to stakeholder primacy.
The Market: From neoliberal market worship to powerful market governance in the public interest, from dishonest prices that neglect external costs to honest ones, from unfair wages that neglect productivity to fair ones, from commodification to reclaiming the commons.
Money and Finance: From money created through bank debt to money created by government, from investments seeking high financial returns to those seeking high social and environmental returns, from Wall Street to Main Street.
Social Conditions: From economic insecurity to a guaranteed income; from vast inequalities to equitable distribution and fundamental fairness; from racial, religious, gender, and other invidious discrimination to firm protection of rights and personal security.
Consumerism: From consumerism and affluenza to sufficiency and mindful consumption, from more to enough, from materialism to finding meaning and value in non-material things.
Communities: from runaway enterprises and throwaway communities to vital local economies, from social rootlessness to rootedness and community solidarity.
Dominant Cultural Values: From having to being, from getting to giving, from richer to better, from isolated to connected, from me to us, from apart from nature to part of nature, from near-term to long-term.
Politics: From weak democracy to strong, from creeping corporatocracy and plutocracy to true popular sovereignty and empowerment of marginalized groups, from threatened civic and personal rights to secure ones.
Foreign Policy and the Military: From American exceptionalism to America as a normal nation, from hard power to soft, from military prowess to real national and international security.
The good news is that we already know a great deal about the policy and other changes needed to move strongly in each of these directions, even value change. There are books full proposals and, importantly, advocacy groups working for many of them.
Also, we are seeing the proliferation of innovative models along the lines sketched here, particularly at the local level: sustainable communities, transition towns, solidarity and local living economies, sustainable and regenerative agriculture, participatory budgeting, locally owned and managed energy utilities, local currencies, and community development and investment institutions. Campaigns proliferate: Black Lives Matter! Move Your Money! Take Back Your Time! Own Your Own Utility! Live Lightly That Others May Live!
We are also seeing the spread of innovative business models that prioritize community and environment over profit and growth—including social enterprises, for-benefit business, worker-owned and other cooperatives, and local credit unions—as well as numerous campaigns for fair wages, worker rights, pro-family policies, climate action, and minority justice. Together with new community-oriented and Earth-friendly lifestyles, these initiatives provide inspirational models of how things might work in a new political economy devoted to sustaining human and natural communities. Practical utopians at work and play, bringing the future into the present!
Out there, between despair and hopium, are the grounds for struggle.
If Amazon and Apple and Microsoft wanted to avoid a world where, by century’s end, people had 60% less money to spend on buying whatever they plan on selling, then they should be putting pressure on their banks to stop making the problem worse.
A new study released today in Nature examines data from 1,600 regions of the earth for the last 40 years, and concludes that by 2050 climate change will be causing economic damage worth $38 trillion every single year. That seems like… a lot. The entire world economy at the moment is about $100 trillion a year; the federal budget is about $6 trillion a year. $38 trillion is 150 Bezoses (which is sick in its own way).
If those numbers seem impossible to comprehend, then let Bloombergbreak it down for you, “planetary warming will result in an income reduction of 19% globally by mid-century, compared to a global economy without climate change.”
This is the largest study of this kind I know of; it comes from the Potsdam Institute in Germany, and as James Murray, writing in BusinessGreen points out, it’s more “granular and empirical” than past efforts. It concludes that these losses are already locked in, thanks to the carbon and methane we’ve already poured into the air.
“Strong income reductions are projected for the majority of regions, including North America and Europe, with South Asia and Africa being most strongly affected,” said PIK scientist and co-author of the study, Maximilian Kotz.
“These are caused by the impact of climate change on various aspects that are relevant for economic growth such as agricultural yields, labour productivity or infrastructure… We find that economies across the world are committed to an average income loss of 19% by 2049 due to past emissions. This corresponds to a 17% reduction in global GDP.”
If anything, as Murray points out, the numbers are quite likely conservative:
The projected damages are mainly the result of rising average temperatures and changes in rainfall and temperature variability. But other weather extremes that are harder to model, such as storms or wildfires, could result in higher economic costs. The study also assumes that over time economies start to adapt to more intense climate impacts, serving to curb the resulting negative economic impacts. As climate scientists have repeatedly warned, there are plausible scenarios where some regions find it near impossible to adapt and development is thrown into reverse. Such outcomes would trigger huge geopolitical risks that could impact the entire global economy.
What might cause even deeper problems? Just for fun, read another European study from last week, on the rapid slowdown in the Atlantic Ocean circulation and the possible looming shutdown of the entire system.
Oh, and if we don’t take strong action now to limit the rise in temperature, then the economic losses just keep growing—that 19% at mid-century becomes 60% by 2100, when people currently being born will still be alive, and cursing us.
There are a couple of things to say here.
One, some of you may remember the famous Limits to Growth report from the early 1970s. It predicted that without serious efforts to change our demands on the planet, economic growth would begin to suffer right about now. We thought about it as a society and then, with the election of Ronald Reagan, rejected it; we are now harvesting that bitter fruit. If we don’t act now then our children may wish they still had bitter fruit to harvest.
These people are supposed to care about money, and for once it would help us if they actually did.
Two, capitalism—which regularly acts homicidally—is acting truly suicidally. Having been warned for years now, it resists every effort to rein in its excesses. As Exxon’s CEO helpfully explained earlier this year, it’s not that you couldn’t make good money from renewable energy—you just couldn’t make “above average returns” because sunshine is free. So instead we’ll tank the world, and with it the world economy (which is a subset of the first, not the other way round).
In Europe, for instance, climate protest has finally persuaded regulators to start slowing loans to the fossil fuel industry—but new data this week makes it clear that the slack is being taken up by American banks, and not just the mighty money center banks that are already most deeply implicated in this immoral trade. Now regional banks are taking it up too:
Some of the U.S. regional banks stepping up oil, gas, and coal lending are based in states that have either passed or are reviewing anti-ESG laws. In Oklahoma, which enforced its Energy Discrimination Elimination Act in late 2022, local bank BOK Financial recently soared up the league table to become one of the world’s 30 busiest dealmakers in fossil fuels.
Marisol Salazar, senior vice president and manager for energy banking at BOK Financial, says the bank is now seeing “much more opportunities” in the fossil-fuel industry.
“We’re not just picking up customers,” she said. “We’re also picking up talent, we’re picking up engineers, we’re picking up investment bankers, we’re picking up experienced relationship managers.”
All of this makes even more important the release of the Carbon Bankroll 2.0 report earlier this spring. You’ll recall the first version of this report a year ago, which made it clear that for many companies—Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and on and on—the bulk of their carbon emissions came from the cash they kept in the bank, where it got lent out to build more fossil fuel infrastructure. That’s because, as the new report makes clear,
If the largest banks and asset managers in the U.S. were a country, they would be the third-largest emitting country in the world, behind China and the U.S.
So let’s think about this for a moment. If Amazon and Apple and Microsoft wanted to avoid a world where, by century’s end, people had 60% less money to spend on buying whatever phones and software and weird junk (doubtless weirder by then) they plan on selling, then they should be putting pressure on their banks to stop making the problem worse. They should also be unleashing their lobbying teams to demand climate action from Congress.
These people are supposed to care about money, and for once it would help us if they actually did. Stop putting out ads about how green your products are—start making this system you dominate actually work.
This is not a radical proposition. A radical—and probably wise, if unlikely—proposition would be get past capitalism. But for the moment this is where we are, and the people who dominate it have an obligation to make it work, if only out of their own sad self-interest.
Here’s how the unradical Todd Stern—longtime American climate negotiator at international talks—put it in a quite powerful speech he gave last week in the U.K.:
“We are slowed down by those who think of themselves as grownups and believe decarbonisation at the speed the climate community calls for is unrealistic.”
“They say that we need to slow down, that what is being proposed [in cuts to greenhouse gas emissions] is unrealistic,” he told The Observer. “You see it a lot in the business world too. It’s really hard [to push for more urgency] because those ‘grownups’ have a lot of influence.”
Stern says that the ‘grownups’ will only listen when the rest of us push:
The original Earth Day in 1970 happened in a societal moment that isn’t easily replicated, but it does teach that there is still more to do in filling the streets and campuses with young people and people young at heart who see the danger of climate change for what it is.
What that original Earth Day represented was not just norm change but a sociopolitical tipping point in environmental concern—the kind of positive tipping point we need to reach on climate change as well. And it will come. But it has to be our collective mission to make it come sooner.
Indeed! Watch this space.