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Wednesday, April 08, 2026

 

The backlash against the backlash: Socialist feminism & left politics in a time of reaction

By Diana O’Dwyer
Published 

feminism versus far right Rupture

First published at Rupture.

After every crisis of capitalism comes protest and social upheaval — of a progressive or reactionary character. The 2008 crash was followed by a decade of progressive mass movements: Occupy, Black Lives Matter, feminist movements for abortion rights and against gender-based violence, and revolutions and near-revolutions like the Arab Spring. In Ireland, we saw mass movements against water charges, for marriage equality and abortion rights and progressive legislation on gender recognition. Just like in the ‘60s and early ‘70s, when the civil rights movement was followed by second-wave feminism, the gay rights movement, the movement against the Vietnam War and May ‘68, the mass movements of the 2010s sparked other mass movements.

Unfortunately, both waves of progressive mass protest were also followed by, first, a global economic crisis and then a conservative backlash. In the 1970s and ‘80s, this meant the oil crisis, Reagan, Thatcher and neoliberalism. In the 2020s, the Covid crisis accelerated a growing far-right backlash and ushered in a new phase of reaction across the world. If you were looking to pinpoint a date when the anti-feminist backlash took off, it would probably be Trump’s first election as US President in November 2016. A rapist running on an anti-choice platform, Trump promised to overturn Roe v. Wade. This ultimately happened in June 2022, shortly after the Depp vs. Heard trial sounded the death knell for #MeToo. Trump’s second Presidency has put the backlash into turbo drive. The most powerful man on earth is again a known rapist. DEI programmes have been decimated, reproductive rights are under attack and traditional gender roles are being forcibly reaffirmed.

The seeds of the backlash were already there pre-Covid, but lockdown isolated people from real life, and the algorithm enticed them into noxious online echo chambers. This created the perfect environment for a paranoid conspiracy theory pipeline, leading from Covid denialism and anti-vax propaganda to racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia. We all have friends, family members or co-workers who have lost their minds since Covid - their brains swamped by a never-ending flood of shit.

To paraphrase Marx and Engels, no matter how much progress we make under capitalism, short of a revolution, we cannot finally rid ourselves of the “muck of ages” — it will re-emerge in various forms until the whole rotten system is overthrown. This is painfully apparent in two of the main fronts in the current anti-feminist backlash — reproductive rights and the family — and gender-based violence.

Reproductive rights & the family

Historically, fascists were notorious for burning books. Now they want to burn contraceptives as well. It was reported in July1 that the Trump administration had decided to incinerate nearly $10 million worth of contraceptives earmarked for USAID programmes in Africa. A State Department official referred to them as “certain abortifacient birth control commodities from terminated Biden-era USAID contracts” because the stocks included IUDs and emergency contraceptives.2 This is connected to the dismantling of USAID — but the reason the Trump administration wanted to burn the contraceptives rather than sell them or give them away is clearly ideological. Blocked by laws in Belgium (where the contraceptives are stored) that prohibit incinerating reusable medical devices, the plan now seems to be to allow them to expire. Planned Parenthood estimates this will lead to 174,000 unintended pregnancies and 56,000 unsafe abortions.

This literal destruction of reproductive rights is going hand in hand with the rise of a reactionary pro-natalism — championed most notoriously by Elon Musk, the slayer of USAID, who has fathered fourteen children with at least four different women. Outside of Musk’s tech bro weirdness, pro-natalism is more usually associated with the valorisation of marriage, the traditional nuclear family and rigid gender roles. It is intrinsically bound up with racism; its raison d’etre is to avoid immigration - the only other way to grow the labour supply.

The “tradwife” phenomenon is part of this. Sophie Lewis3 analyses it as an attempt to escape the “double shift” of paid and unpaid work. Women’s participation in the workforce has meant they end up doing two jobs instead of one, while their wages are swallowed up by housing and childcare costs. People cannot afford to have children until their 30s or 40s and so end up having fewer children or none at all. Parents, especially women, are exhausted by this double shift.

The far right’s response to this crisis of biological and social reproduction under capitalism is to blame it on feminism — just like they blame the housing and cost of living crisis on migrants. They say that a man’s wage used to be able to support the whole family. But now, because of feminism, everyone has to work. So it’s feminism that is destroying families, driving down birth rates and driving up the cost of housing because mortgages are now based on two incomes rather than one.

This narrative exploits a sense among some men that they are being brought down to the level of women or even below — for instance, through the decline of male manual labour and feminisation of professional jobs. Of course, this ignores the fact that women are still significantly poorer than men. The hourly gender pay gap is around ten per cent but the lifetime earnings gap is much wider; women take more time out of the workforce for childcare and are more likely to work part-time. Women also do twice as much housework as men, even when both are working full-time.

Men’s loss of privilege is in no way absolute; it’s just less than it used to be. This sense by men of a loss of privilege relative to women and a desire to reassert that privilege is fuelling the rise of the far right — just like a loss, or perceived loss, of relative superiority among white people is fuelling racism. Right-wing demagogues fan the flames of this fratricidal resentment, identifying it as the perfect way to prevent working class solidarity against the billionaires they represent.

Richard Seymour writes that the “loss of distinction” is experienced by the supporters of the far right as a massive impoverishment, “tantamount to the downfall of civilization”.4 Women or black and brown people doing less badly than white men than they used to might not sound like a good enough reason to burn things down. So conspiracy theories like the “Great Replacement” are required to link it all into one great big imaginary disaster. That’s why the language of the far right is so ludicrously apocalyptic.

The politics of gender-based violence

Lurking barely below the surface of the backlash is the threat of violence. The far right cynically exploits increased concern about gender-based violence to justify pogroms against “military-aged” foreign men. Yet those involved are often perpetrators of violence against women themselves. Half of those arrested recently for racist rioting in the North of Ireland had previously been reported to the police for gender-based violence.5

Reported rates of gender-based violence are on the rise, too. This is partly due to greater awareness post-#MeToo, but the apparent proliferation of sexist attitudes since the 2010s suggests it’s also a real increase. Some studies have found worsening sexist attitudes among young men. For others, it's not so much that young men have become more sexist but that young women have become more progressive.

Research by Women’s Aid has found that 67% of young men hold, or don’t disagree with, traditionalist sexist attitudes about masculinity, compared to 40% of men overall.6 This includes beliefs like: “men who don’t dominate in relationships aren’t real men”; “Men should use violence to get respect if necessary”; “A man’s worth is measured by power and control over others” and “Real men shouldn’t have to care about women’s opinions or feelings”. Feminists often point to the growth of the manosphere as increasing sexist attitudes among young men. A study by Dublin City University7 found that within hours of setting up a social media account more than three-quarters of content recommended to 16-18 year old males on TikTok and YouTube was masculinist, anti-feminist or otherwise extremist. Big tech companies know that people watch extreme content for longer, which means they see more ads and buy more stuff. So the proliferation of the manosphere is directly driven by the attention economy big tech profits from.

Beyond the instinct to rubberneck, something else in the manosphere is appealing to young men. Women’s Aid describes influencers like Andrew Tate as “discuss[ing] themes around traditional masculinity, independence, and resilience”. Part of the reason this resonates is that the economics of late capitalism have robbed young men of autonomy and control over their own lives that would have been taken for granted in previous generations — for instance, being able to move out of their parents’ house. The average age for moving out of home is now 28.8

Men have also lost economic control over women. Increased female participation in the workforce has made women less financially dependent on men, which makes it harder for some men to form or maintain relationships. On top of this, women have more sexual freedom due to changes in attitudes towards sexuality. A Gallup poll last year found that 29% of Gen Z women in the US identified as LGBTQ+ compared to 11% of Gen Z men.9 In this context, manosphere content around working out, physical and emotional strength and dominating over women may give men back a sense of control.

As with reproductive issues, the far right speaks to real issues and anxieties but provides reactionary, sexist solutions: restoring traditional gender roles, returning women to the home, using male violence supposedly to protect us, denying us economic and biological freedom. Instead of addressing real economic causes and providing affordable housing or public childcare, the far right’s “solution” is to restore distinction and division among the working class and leave the class system intact. Ours is to abolish both distinction and the class system by fighting oppression and exploitation at the same time. That is the only way to unite the working class and end the rule of capital.

The backlash to the backlash

After several years when the far right seemed to be growing almost unopposed, there is now a growing backlash to the backlash. In the last year, we have seen renewed movements on gender-based violence, including protests in support of Nikita Hand, marches of thousands on International Women’s Day and smaller marches against the manosphere to the headquarters of social media companies. Women are also to the forefront in countering racism and in the Palestine solidarity movement, including through groups like Mothers against Genocide. An exit poll10 from the General Election last November showed twice as many women as men voted for People Before Profit, with 7% of women voting for the Social Democrats compared to 4% of men.

We can also see signs of a backlash to the backlash in recent positive election results for the left in Ireland and internationally. Catherine Connolly won the Presidential election by the largest ever margin, running on a progressive left platform that opposed imperialism and war, championed the “meitheal”11 and spoke out against the rise in anti-immigration sentiment as “misplaced” “anger … channelled to the wrong people.”12

Die Linke performed unexpectedly well in the German elections in February, running on an economically left, anti-far right platform13 and outpolling Sahra Wagenknecht’s economically left but socially conservative BSW. Hundreds of thousands of people in Britain are signing up to join Your Party and the leftward-moving Greens. Zohran Mamdani has just won the New York mayoral election on a cost-of-living-focused left platform, which included universal free childcare as a core demand and defended trans people’s right to healthcare.14 Rather than deciding “woke is dead” and throwing trans and racialised people under the bus, like some on the left have been tempted into doing, Mamdani’s success showed that it is possible to “bake in” socially progressive politics alongside a “bread and butter” left economic programme. Significantly, in addition to increasing turnout, he flipped 15% of Trump voters into supporting him.15

A notable feature of the backlash years has been a growing political gender divide internationally, from Ireland16 to the US, Europe and South Korea. This can be seen as a problem for the left because we obviously need both men and women to succeed — especially in relation to the global ecological crisis. It’s also a massive opportunity: to recruit more women and redress the historic gender imbalance across most left activist organisations.

There are also reasons to be hopeful that the gender divide is more a case of young women politicised by a decade of feminist movements moving left, than it is of young men moving right; that young men have mostly been more apathetic than radicalised.17 This is important because it means organisation and mobilisation can move young men leftward, like it has young women.

Mamdani’s election is interesting here, bucking the trend by attracting roughly equal support from women and men18 while also winning 81% of LGBTQ+ voters.19 What unites all of these recent left electoral successes is a massive youth vote. Die Linke was the most popular party for 18-24 year olds,20 62% of young voters under 30 chose Mamdani,21 and two-thirds chose Connolly.22 After several years of almost uninterrupted gloom and a seemingly inexorable drift to the far right, there is reason to be hopeful again, if we keep on fighting.

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Monday, April 06, 2026

A History of US-Iran Relations


Review of Axis of Empire: A History of Iran-US Relations by Afshin Matin-Asgari (Verso, 2026)
By 
April 6, 2026
Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.

Dr. Mohammad Mosaddegh, the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran from 1951 to 1953. The photograph captures Mosaddegh being carried on the shoulders of a cheering crowd in Tehran. This moment reflects his immense popularity following the nationalization of the Iranian oil industry, which had previously been controlled by the British. His premiership ended in August 1953 after a coup d'état orchestrated by the intelligence agencies of the United Kingdom and the United States. | Image credit: The Granger Collection, public domain

When the US backed dictator of Iran, Shah Mohamed Reza Pahlavi was overthrown in 1979 and the Islamic Republic led by the Ayatollah Khomeini was established in its place–and in November 1979, the Khomeini regime oversaw the taking of American hostages–US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote to President Jimmy Carter: 

“We are never going to be able to work with the Khomeini regime…[Khomeini’s Islamic revolution] was a true expression of deep-seated national will, and the anti-Americanism we are seeing is a true expression of national outrage at US actions over the past 26 years…We are not in control of events and we must prepare for the worst. The oil fields are what count in the final analysis.” 

Brezinski’s memo to Carter neatly encapsulates, 47 years after it was written, why the US has joined Israel in military aggression against Iran. A popular revolution overthrew a US backed dictator in one of the most strategically important and oil rich countries in the Middle East and established Iran as hostile to US and Israeli hegemony in the region. The current war is US revenge on the Iranian people for the 1979 revolution. 

Indeed that is the real reason for the war–not the Iranian regime’s massacre of thousands of protestors in the months before the war–or most particularly, the supposed threat of–in reality non-existent–Iranian nuclear weapons program. After all, Iran scrupulously adhered to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)–the nuclear agreement it signed with the Obama administration in 2015 until Trump abrogated it in 2018, claiming he could get a better deal out of Iran. Going back to 2007, and including the current Trump administration, US intelligence agencies have consistently determined that Iran has no active nuclear weapons program. According to Oman’s foreign minister–who mediated talks between Iran and the US–Iran had agreed to completely give up its stock of enriched uranium just before Israel and the US launched their aggression on February 28th. 

The current aggression is but the latest crime against the Iranian people by American imperialism going back many decades. Brezinski’s Iranian “national outrage at US actions over the past 26 years” referred to the US being the primary foreign sponsor of the Shah’s dictatorship. It was the US and Britain who engineered the August 1953 coup which overthrew the Shah’s Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh after the latter nationalized the holdings of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC–later British Petroleum). The coup allowed the Shah to eliminate the last vestiges of Iran’s parliamentary system and establish a near totalitarian dictatorship. 

While criticism of his human rights record started seeping into American mainstream media in the 1970s, the Shah was frequently portrayed by politicians and media hacks alike as a glamorous and enlightened monarch, bringing his backward people into the modern age. In contrast, Martin Ennals, Secretary General of Amnesty International, described the Shah’s dictatorship in 1976 thusly: “the Shah of Iran retains his benevolent image despite the highest rate of death penalties in the world, no valid system of civilian courts and a history of torture which is beyond belief. No country has a worse human rights record than Iran.”

The US entanglement with the Shah’s regime went well beyond selling it billions of dollars in weapons annually, allowing the dictator to build up a bloated military with his oil riches while most of his people lived in misery. The US and Israel trained SAVAK, the Shah’s notorious secret police. The US endorsed the Shah’s so-called White Revolution launched in 1963, supposedly a multifaceted effort to modernize Iran. However much of the White Revolution was hollow PR: for example, US Peace Corp volunteers on the ground in Iran discovered that health and education programs for Iran’s rural communities publicly touted by the Shah simply didn’t exist in any form; the villagers lived in as much misery as before.

After the Shah’s 1979 overthrow, the US inflicted additional punishment on the Iranian people: for example, the US deliverance of components to make chemical and biological weapons to Saddam Hussein for  use against Iranian troops during the Iran-Iraq War; the shootdown of Iran Air flight 655 in 1988 by the USS Vincennes, killing 290 civilians; and most significantly decades long economic sanctions which have immiserated much of the Iranian population while strengthening the government. 

The Iranian Working Class 

In January a compelling and timely book on Iran-US relations–which provides almost all the quotations and points I make above–was published by Afshin Matin-Asgari, professor of history at California State University, Los Angeles.  What makes the book particularly unique is the author’s attempt to weave a key player into his narrative that is often missing from accounts of US-Iran relations: the Iranian working class. 

The Iranian working class has been a key force over the last century in struggling against foreign domination of Iran–as well showing great courage in struggling for better working and living conditions against the wishes of economic oligarchs, domestic and foreign. One of the most legendary movements of the Iranian working class during the early and mid-20th century  was the oil workers movement centered in Abadan, the port city and capital of Khuzestan province, 

 Another notable Iranian working class  achievement was the establishment of social democratic governments in Iran’s northern Azerbaijani and Kurdish provinces under Soviet military occupation during and just after World War II. Although operating under Soviet military occupation, Matin-Asgari notes that western diplomats believed that these regimes had massive support amongst the poor and working class in the region. When, under American pressure,  the Soviets withdrew their military from northern Iran in 1946, and the Shah’s British and American backed military re-occupied the region, Matin-Asgari relates what happened next from a quotation by US Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, who was travelling in the Middle East at the time: 

“When the Persian Army returned to Azerbaijan it came with a roar. Soldiers ran riot, looting and plundering, taking what they wanted. The Russian army had been on its best behavior. The Persian Army–the army of emancipation–was a savage army of occupation. It left a brutal mark on the people. The beards of peasants were burned, their wives and daughters were raped. Houses were plundered; livestock were stolen. The Army was out of control. Its mission was liberation; but it preyed on civilians, leaving death and destruction behind.” 

According to Matin-Asgari, as many as 20,000 people may have been executed by the Iranian army and its allied right wing militias during the reoccupation campaign.

Mullahs vs. Leftists

Matin-Asgari writes that the rulers of the Islamic Republic in Iran have, over the years, specifically invoked the Azerbaijani and Kurdish republics in an attempt to bolster their own anti-imperialist and pro-worker cachet. Indeed, they have periodically indulged in socialist sounding, pro-worker rhetoric. 

During the Shah’s regime, Ayatollah Khomeini–then in exile in Qom, Iraq–endorsed opposition to a 1970 conference in Tehran attended by representatives of American corporations to discuss investment in Iran. Khomeini declared that “any agreement that is concluded with these American capitalists and other imperialists is contrary to the will of the people and the ordinances of Islam.” Matin-Asgari notes that one of Khomeini’s proteges, a young Shiite cleric, was tortured to death in SAVAK custody for publicly opposing this conference.. 

The Iranian working class and secular progressives led the 1978-79 revolution which overthrew the Shah–before it was co-opted by the Islamists led by Khomeini. It has been long forgotten, but Matin-Asgari notes that hundreds of thousands of workers across Iran seized control of their workplaces during the revolution, establishing shuras (workers councils)–these were eventually crushed by the Khomeini regime and the Iranian left as a whole was violently repressed.

Matin-Asgari writes that in 1979, the Khomeini regime and the United States seemingly had little ground for hostility. In spite of its mimicking of left wing rhetoric, the Khomeini regime was, in reality, ferociously anti-communist. The US made no initial attempt to overthrow Khomeini. Matin-Asgari suggests that the regime’s endorsement of the seizure of American diplomat hostages on November 4th 1979 by Islamic student radicals was motivated by the regime’s domestic political battles rather than any real antagonism to the United States. Khomeini feared his government was losing popular support to radical leftists within Iran and so decided to support the seizure of hostages so as to bolster his own anti-imperialist credibility among his people.

The Role of AIPAC

Matin-Asgari describes a picture where it seems rather curious that the US and Iran should be enemies rather than friends: in different ways both regimes are devoted to repressing workers in the interests of capital accumulation. Moreover after it was established in 1979, the Islamic Republic displayed a ferocious anti-communism: Matin-Asgari writes that the CIA and MI6 may have even fed the Khomeini regime intelligence which lead it in 1983 to launch show trials against leaders of Tudeh, Iran’s once proud Communist Party. 

Since the 1990s, Matin-Asgari notes, Iran’s leaders have adopted neoliberal policies within the country. They have sought to make Iranian workers more insecure: 6 percent of Iranian workers were classified as temporary employees in 1990 but that rose to 90 percent by 2014. The regime has also sought to create favorable conditions for foreign investment in the country–and of course, the Iranian working class has paid the price for this. In contrast to the views of pro-Iranian campists like Max Blumenthal–who imply that any mass protest against the Iranian government is entirely rooted in the machinations of the CIA and Mossad–Matin-Asgari writes that economic grievances among ordinary Iranians have driven the periodic wave of mass protests which the regime has violently suppressed. Key economic sectors in Iran are controlled by the Iranian Revolution Guard Corps in a highly secretive  fashion–corruption has flourished under such conditions. 

Thinking that the US and Iranian ruling classes share the same broad interest in facilitating capital accumulation at the expense of ordinary workers and thus have no real reason to be enemies, Matin–Asgari points to AIPAC’s influence on the US congress as being the primary source for driving hostility between the US and Iran. In the 1990s there arose a strong corporate lobby in the US–centered in the oil and agricultural industries–advocating for normalizing US relations with Iran so they could take advantage of business opportunities in the country.  The late Dick Cheney, as CEO of Halliburton in the 90s, even advocated for easing US-Iran tensions. Yet this lobby was unsuccessful, defeated by the anti-Iran pro-Israel lobby which induced President Clinton to issue an executive order voiding a contract to develop oil fields that the American company Conoco (now Conoco-Phillips) signed with Iran in 1995. 

In placing such stress on AIPAC influence, I think that Matin-Asgari misses the point that I argue above: that, regardless of what AIPAC or corporate lobbies do, US policy makers have long sought  to punish Iran for taking itself outside the US sphere of influence in 1979. The Iranian regime–however hollow its posturing may be–brands itself as the leader of “anti-establishment” forces in the Middle East: as the champion of Palestinians facing US-Israeli genocide, of Lebanese resistance to Israeli aggression, of the Shia living as second class citizens in US backed dictatorships in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. This makes the regime a mortal enemy from the perspective of US policy makers, whether Democrat or Republican. 

In spite of such a disagreement, I can well recommend Matin-Asgari’s book. It is very readable and has admirably judicious analysis of primary sources. 

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Trump Is the Most Dangerous Man in the World


By , Alexandra Boutri 
April 3, 2026
Source: Common Dreams



Does President Donald Trump have an endgame in Iran? Are personality traits a factor in Trump’s foreign policy behavior? How different is Trump from his postwar predecessors? Will he end US democracy? Political scientist, political economist, author, and journalist C. J. Polychroniou tackles these questions in an interview with the French-Greek journalist and writer Alexandra Boutri, but does not hesitate to point out that whoever thought that some of the acts associated with mad Roman emperors (like Caligula’s war on Neptune) belong to a bygone era probably hasn’t been paying attention to how crazy and disruptive things are in the Trump era.

Alexandra Boutri: The war in Iran has entered its second month and one cannot rely on the US president for when it might end. Trump refuses to give a clear timeline, although he has boasted on numerous occasions that his war was won. In your view, what is Trump’s endgame in Iran?

C. J. Polychroniou: Let me start with the following statement: The second Trump presidency is far more dangerous than its first but no less incompetent. Whether it’s the economy and his “beautiful”  tariffs or world affairs, Trump has no clue what he is doing. His decision-making style is governed by self-interest and a gut-instinct approach. And he has, given who he is, surrounded himself not only with loyalists but with subservient yes-people.

Indeed, it is most unlikely that Trump engaged in a comprehensive review of intelligence reports and military analyses before he initiated military action against Iran. My guess is that he simply became convinced by war-criminal and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu  and the most pro-Israel officials in his administration that the strategy of taking out Iran’s leadership would paralyze the country and lead to regime change. That was a gamble, not a plan. The Iranian regime did not collapse after the decapitation strikes because it is not a one-man dictatorship like Iraq was under Saddam Hussein. The power hierarchy in Iran is very complicated. Power is actually distributed throughout several layers of the government, and there are parallel armies and intelligence services. Of course, the fact that power is not concentrated in the hands of one man does not make the Iranian regime less brutal. But it makes it less likely to collapse because of an attack on the country’s top political and military leaders.

Incidentally, and this needs to be strongly emphasized, the decapitation of Iran’s top leadership is criminal and illegal. Trump’s war on Iran is in violation of international (and US) law. It’s a war against the United Nations Charter. Israel and the United States don’t give a hoot about international law and  human rights, but it doesn’t mean the world should allow them to think that they are being perceived as anything other than rogue states.

We live in dark, perilous times for humanity and the planet as a whole. Whoever thought that the acts of mad Roman emperors (like Caligula’s war on Neptune) belong to a bygone era probably hasn’t been paying attention to how crazy and disruptive things are in the Trump era. The current occupant of the White House is mentally unhinged. He threatens to bomb Iran “back to stone ages” and do whatever he wants with Cuba. I fear he is capable of unbelievable acts of cruelty and madness. In fact, and I said this about his second presidency long before he decided to go to war with Iran, we haven’t seen anything yet. The Trumpian nightmare has a long way to go before it is over, and it’s bound to get much worse.

Alexandra Boutri: How much worse can it get? What is it that you are really worried about Trump and his actions?

C. J. Polychroniou: Trump is a real threat to world peace. That’s already well established. He has unleashed what can be best described as lunacy imperialism. He is also dismantling US democracy at unprecedented rate and has launched an equally unprecedented assault on the environment. He is a wrecking ball, and it’s simply shocking that there is still a sizeable portion of the citizenry that thinks he is doing a great job. But what else can one expect from people who believe that explosive conflict in the Middle East will trigger Christ’s return and see Trump as the man God has chosen to defeat the satanic forces in the United States and Christianize it? No wonder why Trump behaves like a king and views himself as an emperor who can do whatever he pleases. There has never been a bigger sociopathic megalomaniac in Western democratic polities than Donald J. Trump, which is why he lacks self-awareness, lies about everything, all the time, and is so fixated with attaching his name to institutions, buildings, and symbols.

Imperialist adventuring is standard US foreign policy. But Trump’s foreign policy agenda, I would argue, seems to be less about the advancement of US interests than about his own legacy, his own personal political immortality. The US doesn’t need Greenland for national security; it can access its resources without gaining sovereignty over land. The US doesn’t need Venezuela’s oil (there is a global oil oversupply anyway), and leaders of the industry have shown little interest in making the massive investments needed to revive its outdated  infrastructure, despite the fact that Venezuela has the largest known oil reserves in the world. Annexing Canada and making it the 51st state will not make the US necessarily richer or more secure. But there is no doubt that Trump likes the idea of being the president who expanded the country’s borders. This is how he may be remembered by the future generations.

In saying all this, I do not doubt that there are “strategic” rationalizations circulated by Trump’s national security team for the revival of naked US imperialism. Or that these rationalizations are insignificant in the making of foreign policy. But, for Trump, I believe the foreign policy decisions that he ultimately reaches are based on how he thinks they may cement his own legacy. And most of these decisions are as irrational as those driving his domestic agenda. Abstract theorization about the revival of US imperialism under Trump II is fine and well, and much needed, but I think this is one outstanding case where personality becomes an important factor in decision-making and therefore adding to our understanding of both domestic and foreign policy behavior.

Alexandra Boutri: How different is Trump from his recent predecessors? Also, I can conclude from what you have already said that you don’t expect Trump to go down without a fight. But does he really want to end democracy in the United States?

C. J. Polychroniou: Trump is a very different president from all of his postwar predecessors in several critical ways. First, he has monetized the White House. Trump and his family have made huge amounts of money off of the presidency. Second, he views himself above the law and makes everything about his own ego. Third, he suppresses and ignores scientific research and findings like no other president I am aware of and simply doesn’t give a hoot about public health and the environment or the lives and the livelihoods of anyone outside his own family and his rich donors. Fourth, he is a racist, misogynist, and bigot who also hates working class people and the poor. Fifth, he is carrying out an anti-democracy project both inside the United States and across the globe, while also seeking to create “a kind of a Trump world.”

It would be naive and dangerous on the part of anyone to think that Trump will go down without a fight. His numbers are collapsing, and he is terrified of the possibility that the Democrats will flip the House and the Senate while he is still president, which is why he is trying to undermine this year’s  midterm elections. If it was entirely up to Trump, US democracy would be already dead by now. But he is trying to rig the 2026 midterm elections, and my fear is that he may succeed. Also, I don’t think it is far-fetched to say that he may declare martial law to keep the Democrats from winning. I hope I am dead wrong, but I am of the view that the worst is yet to come with Trump.Email

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C.J. Polychroniou is a political scientist/political economist, author, and journalist who has taught and worked in numerous universities and research centers in Europe and the United States. Currently, his main research interests are in U.S. politics and the political economy of the United States, European economic integration, globalization, climate change and environmental economics, and the deconstruction of neoliberalism’s politico-economic project. He has published scores of books and over one thousand articles which have appeared in a variety of journals, magazines, newspapers and popular news websites. His latest books are Optimism Over Despair: Noam Chomsky On Capitalism, Empire, and Social Change (2017); Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet (with Noam Chomsky and Robert Pollin as primary authors, 2020); The Precipice: Neoliberalism, the Pandemic, and the Urgent Need for Radical Change (an anthology of interviews with Noam Chomsky, 2021); and Economics and the Left: Interviews with Progressive Economists (2021).

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