Category: Articles
The Farce of Neoliberalism is over
Written by Alfonso Elizondo
Created on Thursday, November 17, 2016, 14:05
Views: 23
With the Trump win in the US presidential elections, the famous phrase repeated after the fall of the Berlin Wall that “globalization will make us a fairer and freer country” is no longer valid. Although the unlimited expansion of financial capital has been part of the farce of cosmopolitanism, the truth is that there is now no democracy outside the nation state and within the state there is even less democracy. Paradoxically, the removal of barriers against financial capital has not led to rights becoming international, but to the loss of national rights.
There are millions of citizens in the United States who are convinced that foreign policy and military spending are not directed towards defending US hegemony against Nazism or the dictatorship of the USSR as happened in the past, but to defend a stateless international elite of Jews, Arabs, Chinese, Koreans, etc. They do not hesitate to move their businesses to other regions and to encourage illegal emigration. Right now there is a world government that nobody elected and which senior political leaders and the media serve like faithful lackeys. Perhaps this is why Trump has focused his attacks on the relocation of companies, immigration, flawed foreign policy and the Washington ‘establishment.’
The neoliberal revolution of Reagan and Thatcher was designed to destroy so-called socialism and to adjust the distribution of incomes as a result of the working-class and popular struggles after World War II, although this revolution did not even address the democratic liberal imaginary. But Trump addresses and challenges it at the global level and he is trying to unmask the double standards of a political elite that is very dangerous. He is also trying to fight against the rhetoric about gender and ethnicity. And just as in the case of Fascism, he is exploiting popular reaction to that false rhetoric that became the official language of the elites and he has put an end to all reality and to the yearning for equality and democracy that existed at the start of the process of building the American nation.
There is no doubt that neoliberalism has died and that the next few years will see the collapse of many of its false myths about the end of the State and the conciliatory politics that the social democratic left came to believe. The bad thing about this situation is that the person who is proof of this is someone more immoral than neoliberal. Since Trump is not a random accident, but an egocentric psychopath who has relied on the discreet support of other individuals on the Planet who think like him, but do not have his high level of narcissism and stupidity to declare it publicly. We do not yet have a clear idea of what Trump will do and perhaps he doesn’t either, but there is no doubt that he will do something concrete, far from the pipe-dreams of the postmodern left or the indecent and double standard of morality of the Clintons and the billionaire elite of the Davos Forum who have been stunned, or at least silent, in the face of this unexpected situation, and who perhaps are plotting a new economic and political conspiracy to regain the position of ‘owners of the world’ that they have enjoyed for a little over a century.
Fortunately, within this unexpected change in the direction of global geopolitics is a young man of Jewish origin, Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who seems to be the main organizer of the complicated transition process for the government to be led by Trump. This 35-year-old young man is married to Trump’s eldest daughter and although he is very conciliatory and very skillful in business, he is not ignorant about political science, and because he has the absolute trust of his father-in-law he is likely to help settle the first phase of the selection of senior politicians who will serve Washington over the next four years.
Addendum: Although Trump’s behavior is apparently that of a peculiar fascist of the extreme right, he does not seem to feel personal hatred towards other ethnic groups, but rather a kind of contempt that surfaces when it comes to his own relatives or employees. The only thing that worries everyone about Trump is his total lack of experience in the political world and the difficulty he has negotiating with people who do not have his financial standing.
So he will have to take on individuals from the current political world who already know all the mechanisms of negotiation used in the US establishment and the world in general. At the end of the day, the reality is that ‘neoliberalism’ is completely exhausted and another economic and political model has to emerge that is in line with the new tripartite world order led by China, Russia and the USA.
Perhaps the only issue that Trump may not take on is the issue of climate change, but it is very likely that this problem will not be so critical if the other major world leaders agree and leave the US out of the matter since apparently the US economy will never recover and its pollution will decrease every day.