Martin Jay at Salmagundi:
Leftists argued, with considerable justification, that the MAGAworld response to neo-liberalism was little more than scapegoating where, to cite the Marxist geographer David Harvey, you “blame immigrants, foreign competition, in other words you blame everything except the underlying problems of capital because that is something which you’re allowed to talk about.” But in addition to these diversionary strategies, Trump won his second term in office promising to raise tariffs, bring manufacturing back to America, and defy international economic institutions. Despite his reassurances to powerful corporations that their profits would continue to grow, he managed to convince a sufficient number of aggrieved anti-globalist voters that he was on their side in the battle against unaccountable, unelected elites who sought to run the world on their terms.
Anti-elitism itself became a general rallying cry for MAGA voters, who resented the political and cultural power of those on the coasts and in the mainstream media with fancy college degrees and cosmopolitan disdain for rural and small town America. Although they rarely cited it, C. Wright Mills’ leftist classic, The Power Elite, published in 1956, already targeted the stranglehold that a loose coalition of federal government, large corporations and military leaders, had on ordinary citizens.
more here.
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