Post US Election: JD Vance and the Globalisation Set
Trump's alliance between blue collar workers and the billionaires
This was first published in July, but seems relevant to yesterday’s outcome.
By choosing JD Vance as his vice-presidential pick, Trump has made crystal clear his anti-globalisation, anti-establishment, anti-strong dollar, anti-democracy, anti-abortion and pro-Wall St. credentials.
What does not make sense to many is why Trump’s vice-Presidential choice of the ‘blue collar’ senator, JD Vance, is backed so enthusiastically by libertarian billionaires Peter Thiel and Elon Musk - both massive beneficiaries of financial globalisation.
On the apparently contradictory nature of that relationship, Edward Luce of the Financial Times writes:
It would be a negligent Democratic campaign that did not exploit the tension between Vance’s blue-collar roots, which are genuine, and his plutocratic sponsors.
The problem with Luce’s typically establishment analysis is this: there is no tension twixt Vance’s blue-collar roots and the billionaires.
Like wealthy elites that have always backed totalitarianism, the reasoning behind the oligarchy’s support for Trump is entirely rational.
Plutocrats prefer to do business in the globalised sphere, beyond the reach of regulatory democracy, and want elected governments to get out of their way - permanently.
If it takes a fascist to achieve that goal, so be it.
The Trump-backing working class want protection from globalised markets that have cut their wages and lowered their living standards.
If Trump is the president to do that, so be it.
Both groups are disappointed in the the Biden administration.
Billionaires resented Biden’s responsiveness to democratic pressure and the appointment of a lawyer, Lina Khan to the Federal Trade Commission where she launched a high profile lawsuit against Amazon, and challenged the uncompetitive behaviour of healthcare companies.
As to blue collar workers and the middle classes: President Biden continued the process of undermining their living standards by not re-regulating globalised commodity markets responsible for inflating food, energy and property prices from 2020 - 2024. (President Clinton, aided by Larry Summers, had de-regulated these markets in 2000.)
This perspective on the Trump phenomenon is beyond the grasp of pro-globalisation commentators in the Financial Times and other establishment outlets.
The far-right takes the lead, worldwide
I have long argued that in the absence of progressive left wing resistance to financial globalisation, the direct rebuttal of, and reaction to globalisation would be led by the far-right.
That resistance in most countries is now led by authoritarian, anti-democratic parties - and not the negligent, self-absorbed, often sectarian left. (France’s new, inclusive left-wing parties may prove to be the exception.)
Nor is there resistance from establishment ‘centrists’ like President Macron, Tony Blair and their hangers on. They actively collude in the weakening of democracy by backing the immense power of globalised finance (Wall St. and other financial entrepots) over democratic nation states.
The centrists want elected, democratic governments to get well out of the way of the economy (markets). They subvert organised resistance to globalisation and climate breakdown. They care not a damn for the ecosystem. In Britain they offer no opposition to the locking-up and jailing of young and old activists fighting the immense power of the globalised fossil fuel lobby.
For these elites the world is merely their ashtray. So careless are they of the dangers of rising GHG emissions, and so regardless of political opinion at home, many took private jets to attend the grotesque wedding of a billionaire Indian heir, Anant Ambani, last weekend. His wedding celebrated the link between globalised wealth and authoritarianism, blessed as it was by the nationalist and Hindu extremist, PM Narendra Modi.
Even given this carelessness, London and Washington elites would prefer to relegate the task of subverting democracy to anonymous and unaccountable ‘markets’.
They find the misogynistic, brutal and vulgar authoritarianism of the Trump campaign a little distasteful, but they will not stand in his way. To do so, they would have to end what is effectively government by markets - and fight to defend democracy.
From now on that role is down to the people - the demos - and especially to organised labour.
No pasarán!
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"Plutocrats ..
want elected governments to get out of their way - permanently," writes Pettifor. So they enable fascism. Musk was in a way predicted by Walter Benjamin
I wish this was much more widely read. It’s a phenomenon in most western “democracies”. Centrist parties (even those that see themselves as centre-left) do nothing to oppose the power and manipulation of the plutocrats which disappoints and then alienates those who have hitherto supported democratic rule, believing that now can change for the better. The failure of centrist governments to acknowledge problems or do anything about them drives those who feel powerless and put upon into voting for populist authoritarian politicians who acknowledge the problems and “promise” to do something about it. Noe evidence of misogyny lying or corruption matters if there is a prevailing view that things must change and mainstream politicians will not act.