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I will not focus extensively here upon the broadest political strategies to adopt with respect to the Trump phenomenon and the constituencies drawn into the dangerous movement he has intensified (It is certainly not a new movement).1 That is largely because the strategies I support have recently been adumbrated in chapter 5 of Facing the Planetary.2 Briefly, they involve articulating a militant, pluralist, cross-regional assemblage consisting of diverse constituencies who together contest the priorities of investment capital, expose Trumpian tactics, attract a larger segment of the white working class into an assemblage, and seek to reduce inequality, nurture pluralism, and cope with climate change. I call this the politics of swarming because it rolls across role experiments that help to recode the visceral registers of cultural life, to social protest movements, to renewed attention to electoral politics, and to cross-world regional citizen actions that may culminate in cross country general strikes. The recent actions against Trump tyrannies in the States have begun to encourage me that such cross-state actions could come into being.
My agenda today is to drill down into how the Trumpian politics of persuasion is joined to shock politics. First, to think more closely about the rhetorical power of the Trump phenomenon, second, to explore counter-rhetorical skills needed today and, third, to ask how to fold a larger section of the white working class once again into pluralizing, egalitarian movements that have largely forsaken them. Radicals, liberals and democrats have recently ceded large sections of that class to Trump. I treat it as axiomatic that counter movements of today must oppose exploitative race and class hierarchies with demands for sharp reductions in inequality, must counter the aggressive white territorial nationalism of Trump with the politics of pluralism and pluralization, and must counter the aggressive leadership principle that has been pursued (in different ways) by Trump, Putin, Hitler and Lenin with multi-tiered horizontal communications, charismatic democratic leadership, care for the earth, and concerted efforts to address class, race and gender hierarchies.
How can critical theorists and public intellectuals better grasp the rhetorical power of Trumpism and pursue such counter-strategies? I am sure that the thoughts I offer do not yet add up to a sufficient response to the issues posed.
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