Trump: Revolution or Simulacrum?
Part 2: A Revolutionary Program

Donald Trump with Nigel Farage

Part 2 of 3 (Part 1 here)

Translated by Guillaume Durocher

The First Revolutionary Project to Attain Power in American History

During his first three months in the White House, Donald Trump has promised to take genuinely revolutionary measures in all areas: a freeze in the hiring of civil servants, an increase in the military budget, a reconsideration of NAFTA, TPP, and European free trade agreements (a neo-protectionist policy), the repeal of federal regulations (notably concerning the environment), the lifting of barriers to exploiting fossil fuels, the cancelling of all of Obama’s presidential decrees, taking the initial steps toward expelling millions of illegals, holding American companies responsible for employing Americans, the repeal of Obamacare, massive tax cuts for both individuals and companies, educational  reforms founded on the ability to pick schools and centralization, customs tariffs for American companies that offshore their production, a trillion-dollar plan over ten years to renovate U.S. infrastructure, federal aid for the education of poor children and seniors, and so on and so on.

This is not to mention Trump’s announced intention to completely reorient American foreign policy, having discussed disengagement from NATO, rapprochement with Russia, and a hardened policy towards China. Never has an American President managed to be elected with such a radical program.

An American Conservative Revolution

Trump wants to undertake a political upheaval, proposing a conservative revolution and an isolationist break with the past, similar to Brexit. One finds a similarity – but in another ideological key – with the Thatcher-Reagan alliance. Brexit and Trump’s election are linked. This is quite paradoxical: the Anglo-Saxons, the initiators of globalization, are revolting against their own creature, which has gone mad!

The only European leader with whom Trump gets along is Theresa May. He supported Brexit. She appreciated, or at least did not spit upon, his program. He wants to revive the Anglo-Saxons’ “special relationship.” Between Trump and Merkel and Hollande, obviously, there is no chemistry and relations are icy. Trump is considered an avatar of Satan by them. Just after her election, the Chancellor sent him a ridiculous and arrogant moralizing schoolmarm’s message (“recalling the fundamental values” binding the United States to Germany and Europe), emphasizing the rejection of racism and xenophobia, the need for “democracy” (actually anti-populist pseudo-democracy, which is to say oligocracy), “freedom,” and open borders. In short, precisely those dogmas that were rejected by his popular electorate. Merkel’s threatening message foreshadows the enormous pressures, both from the American establishment as well as European governments, that Trump will be subjected to as soon as he takes office in order to try to force him to give up his program. Will he have the strength to resist?

Everyone had – of course – predicted a generalized market crash if Trump were elected. The opposite happened: the promises of restarting the economy through investments (infrastructure, etc.) and tax cuts stimulated investor optimism. The stock indexes have been on the rise ever since Trump’s election. But, given the volatility of this market, this might not last. In any case, the predicted catastrophe did not occur.

The American elite, even the Republican part of it, is baffled. The Grand Old Party does not know how to manage the dissident ideas of this Trump, who does not come from their ranks, notably his rejection of free trade and questioning of NATO. This ideological shift has not yet been accepted. When Trump is in the White House, he will be asked to amend his program, which is considered unacceptable.

Foreign Policy: A Break with the American Tradition

European governments and the Commission in Brussels are astonished by Trump’s election, like children surprised by a hurricane. In full disarray, they are shocked by Trump’s declared foreign policy, which is both nationalist and isolationist, and which would break with the entire system that was conceived in 1945, which had been developed as a type of “soft imperialism” where Europe was comfortably protected, led, and rendered carefree.

Obama had already begun an American withdrawal from the world scene, particularly in the Middle East, which can be seen as a retreat of the “world policeman.” But Trump’s program goes much further. He seems to want to abandon an entire diplomatic tradition and . . . Atlanticism itself! Indeed, the desire to reach an understanding with Russia and Putin (European leaders’ bête noire), most significantly in order to cooperate militarily to crush ISIS and help Assad, as well as his threat not to honor Article 5 of the NATO Treaty (mutual defense in case of aggression), his demand for Europeans to begin financing their own defense without American assistance or the American military – all this puts the little pond of the European governments into a panic. The vassals are afraid that their overlord is abandoning them.

The Polish and Baltic governments – which imagine a Russian attack that is completely impossible – feel abandoned by their supposed American “protector.” They consider Trump’s election to be a catastrophe: America and NATO will no longer be there to protect them from what they call Russian imperialism.

That said, an American “letting-go,” a weakening of NATO, and the departure of Great Britain would theoretically be very positive for the construction of a European continental defense. We can add to this Trump’s anti-Chinese position – which is in line with his isolationism and protectionism – that aims to block Beijing’s exports and economic offensives, and his desire to renounce the various free trade agreements. Let us also mention his plan to increase the American military budget, which is probably in light of a confrontation with China in the Pacific area in the medium term and the need to deter the Islamic world. This is a precautionary principle which Russia also applies.

National-Isolationism

Trump’s “America first” slogan is the same as the name of the aviator Charles Lindbergh’s isolationist movement against Roosevelt, which opposed America’s participation in the Second World War when it first broke out. Trump wants to put an end to costly and unproductive military interventions (except against ISIS, side-by-side with the Russians, interesting . . .). He rightly wants to bury the Bush-era neoconservatives’ policy of “regime change,” that is to say the forced imposition of a “democratic” regime on another country. But Obama had already begun this by “leading from behind” (managing from backstage). Obama – who was in no way isolationist, was an immigrationist, and was an advocate of an America less and less in line with its European roots, who never dared to qualify terrorism as “Islamic.”

Trump, the isolationist, is seductive to the French and European sovereignists and identitarians, despite their anti-Americanism. He rejects TAFTA, the US-EU free trade agreement that is being negotiated, on the grounds that it is harmful to America. Yet European sovereignists had argued that it had been an American commercial imperialist ruse against European interests! Trump is shaking everything up, as when he praised Putin and a future alliance with Russia. Here again, the European sovereignists and populists, who thought that America was Europe as well as Russia’s absolute enemy, are now witnessing the rise of a Donald Trump, who more or less shares their ideas! And he is an American nationalist . . . The solution to this paradox is that Trump has intuitively understood – but imperfectly formulated – the idea that, ultimately, Europe, North America (except Mexico), and Russia form a single civilization that is being threatened by the same enemies.

The US’s two fundamental alliances in the Middle East, namely with Israel and Saudi Arabia, will remain in place. The Israeli alliance will even be consolidated, contrary to Obama’s policy, which always remained very distant from the Jewish State and was hostile to Prime Minister Netanyahu.

The Case of Mexico, a Nation Hostile to the United States

Mexico is wounded, humiliated, and distressed by the election of Trump, who has called their border-hopping compatriots “criminals, drug-dealers, and rapists.” The protective border wall, which is to be paid for by Mexico, is unacceptable to President Enrique Peña Nieto. Likewise, Trump wants to reconsider the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) of 1994. There is a small problem with this: there is trade worth $1.5 million passing through this border . . . per day! Mexico is the second biggest buyer and importer of American goods. The challenge will then be to let goods circulate, not migrants, which is entirely possible if only one has the will. Millions of illegals will have to be forced to go back. European countries should be doing the same with their own land, maritime, and airport borders, if only they were not paralyzed by the cosmopolitan ideology of those who are facilitating the invasion in the first place.

Mexico is not a nation friendly to the U.S. It has objectively been an enemy nation for a long time, even though trade with it has been very significant, just as all the countries of the Maghreb and the Middle East are the objective enemies of Europe. Why? Because they all aim to invade our ancestral lands via their compatriots – a bottom-up invasion, through settlement colonization. The situation is much worse for Europe than it is for the United States, because for the former it is an Islamized migratory invasion – Islam having been in constant conflict with European civilization, which it wants to destroy, since the eighth century – and because the masses of migrants are much larger here than in the U.S.

Trump’s election, in a country far less threatened than Europe is, should be a cause for celebration among Europe’s populist and anti-oligarchic movements. One must hope, however, that once he has moved to the White House, the new President will not be neutralized.

This article was originally run in French on Faye’s blog, J’ai tout compris, on 18 November 2016.