American Brumaire?
Does Trump’s victory mark a fundamental shift in US politics? Yes, but perhaps not in the way you might expect. Far from reflecting an incipient fascism, Trump’s presidency represents a tendency towards “neo-Bonapartism”: it substitutes a charismatic leader for a hegemonic project. Like the French nineteenth-century version, this latter-day Bonapartism is linked to a crisis of hegemony stemming from an erosion of the material base...