What Trump’s Election Means

An Essay on Taking Initial Stock in Five Lessons

Abstract

There are five lessons already to be learned from Donald Trump’s re-election which still have to be fully understood: firstly, it is possible to destroy democracy with democratic means (majorities in an election); secondly, Trump was re-elected not in spite of his campaign of hate and discrimination, but by means of it; thirdly, Trump successfully linked in the election an electorate from the working and middle classes to upper-class representatives of ruthless market radicalisation; fourthly, this was possible not least by the mobilization of emotions (often underestimated by the academic left); finally, with the alliance Trump/Musk protagonists of a new stage of capitalist modernization came to power.