Screenshot from 'See Inside Donald Trump's Insane Gold-Plated Plane.' You Tube.Donald Trump’s electoral victory has startled the world. It seems to usher in an era marked by the triumph of fear and anger, brazen disregard for reason and truth, the weakening hold of liberalism, the fracturing of the postwar consensus, and the rolling back of gains made from an integrated world economy. On the horizon, by contrast, is protectionism, wall building, and deeply exclusionary practices.
Yet, little of this is Trump’s invention or design. The postwar order has shown cracks for many years; regional and international institutions have been weakened steadily; nationalism and xenophobia have been on the rise; militant and intolerant discourses have spread like wildfire and authoritarian populism has emerged across many parts of the world. The rise of networked societies which empower open critical discourses also intensify closed information loops where content is tailored to particular ideologies and ideologues.
The roots of this are deep and extensive: the impact of the 2008 financial crisis has been brutally asymmetrical with the poor and working classes paying the overwhelming burden; globalisation has enriched great cities and the professionally mobile while leaving millions behind in de-industrialised towns and rural hinterlands; 9/11 and its legacy, which includes the calamitous failures in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, have not only destabilised the Middle East, but have swollen western deficits, radically enhanced migration and raised the spectre of terrorism throughout Europe and the US; and the rise of networked societies which empower open critical discourses also intensify closed information loops where content is tailored to particular ideologies and ideologues.
