The real scandal lies not just in Trump’s madness but in the cowardice, corruption, and complicity of those who enable him—the press, politicians, and tech moguls alike.

Trump and the Specter of Totalitarianism

Before even taking office, Trump has conjured grotesque visions of what he once called the dreams of a “unified Reich.” His delusions of grandeur, disdain for reason and truth, sycophantic worship of billionaires and despots, militarism, and embrace of white supremacy signal the rebirth of authoritarianism on a scale that recalls the horrors of the Third Reich, Pinochet’s Chile, and Putin’s Russia.

The real scandal lies not just in Trump’s madness but in the cowardice, corruption, and complicity of those who enable him—the press, politicians, and tech moguls alike. Figures such as Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and their allies in the legacy media and the ranks of so-called “Vichy Republicans” have turned participation in what Arwa Mahdawi aptly calls the “obsequiousness Olympics” into a grotesque form of political theater. They offer hollow platitudes while refusing to confront the grim resurgence of some of history’s darkest atrocities. Their deference to Trump’s power is not just a failure of courage but a damning indictment of the moral bankruptcy that permeates the ruling financial elite and its political enablers.

As these Vichy-like politicians and tech overlords churn out superficial commentary and sanitized reporting, the world teeters on the brink. Children are massacred in Gaza, the threat of nuclear war looms ever larger, and fascism spreads unchecked across the globe. Meanwhile, Trump’s incendiary rhetoric—calling for military invasions and mass incarceration of immigrants—has been disturbingly normalized, with little regard for the historical lessons such hate-filled messaging evokes. This chilling indifference signals not just the erosion of democracy but the abdication of basic civic responsibility and the wholesale betrayal of democratic rights and principles.

The Machinery of Neoliberal Authoritarianism

Silence, civic illiteracy, and the G.O.P.’s embrace of ruthless dictatorships have plunged the United States into a moral abyss. Algorithmic authoritarianism and neoliberalism’s “disimagination machines” have gutted the public sphere, eroding critical thought with conformity and turning truth into the enemy of politics and everyday life. Historical consciousness is now deemed as dangerous, and dissent is branded as treason. The impending horrors of Trump’s presidency are starkly evident in his escalating rhetoric of vengeance, labeling critics and political opponents as “the enemy within.” There is no question that Trump in his second term will intensify ecocide, ethicide, the role of the punishing state, and engage in greater state militarization. This is not governance—it is a declaration of war on democracy itself.

Donald Trump is not the architect of America’s descent into authoritarianism but its inevitable culmination. As Chris Hedges powerfully notes, “Donald Trump is a symptom of our diseased society. He is not its cause. He is what is vomited up out of decay.” This decay has been festering for decades. Since the 1980s, neoliberalism has unleashed a brutal legacy of misery, staggering inequality, systemic corruption, and an unflinching allegiance to white supremacy and Christian nationalism. It has done more than widen economic divides and entrench power hierarchies—it has magnified and perpetuated the deep-rooted histories of racial, gender, class, and religious violence that mutilate the nation’s past and shape its present.

For generations, the United States has been willing to place a For Sale sign on its politics, institutions, and professed ideals. But today, we are witnessing a consolidation of power into “an ever-smaller set of hands”—a deepening and betrayal not just of democracy but of the very possibility of justice. Trump represents the endpoint of this trajectory: the embodiment of an unrestrained gangster capitalism that now clings to fascist politics as its final stronghold—a desperate, violent grasp for unchecked power amid a collapsing moral and social order.

Democracy, once a beacon of hope, has been hollowed out, its light dimmed by the relentless forces of neoliberalism. In this moment of history, we are witnessing a global repudiation of a vision of democracy tethered to these values—values that have transformed democracy from a promise of equality and justice into a hollow symbol of bad faith. The architects of this transformation—billionaires and powerful corporations—have turned democracy into little more than a thin veneer, obscuring the vast suffering beneath. Behind this fragile facade lies a brutal reality: staggering inequality, the dismantling of democratic institutions, and the decay of what once gave democracy its substance—the justice system, the separation of powers, majority rule, and the very idea of collective will.

For many, democracy no longer embodies the spirit of shared aspiration; it has become a shield for the crimes of the financial elite. The rise of Trump is not an anomaly, but the inevitable culmination of gangster capitalism—a system rotted by moral decay, built on unbridled corruption, and defined by the systematic dismantling of civic rights. In this world, nothing—whether public goods, human dignity, sustainability, or even the future itself—remains untouched by the cold logic of profit. Everything is commodified, sold to the highest bidder, and cast aside once its value has been extracted. This is the democracy we are left with: not a force for the collective good, but a machine that grinds down the common people, leaving in its wake a world where the few thrive at the expense of the many.

It is worth repeating that Trump is not the root cause of democracy’s collapse but rather its most visible symptom. The deeper issue lies in the failure of the Democratic Party to confront how neoliberalism has eroded the very core of democratic life. As Wendy Brown insightfully argues, Trump did not single-handedly push the nation toward authoritarianism. Instead, he harnessed forces that had long been at work. Ignoring these forces leaves the liberal establishment blind to the origins of today’s antidemocratic currents. Neoliberal policies and financialization have devastated the economic prospects of the working and middle classes, while the Democratic Party’s alignment with these forces over decades has compounded the problem. Complicit media structures, whether corporately controlled or fractured by social media silos, have further undermined public trust. Meanwhile, public education has been devalued, and neoliberalism’s relentless assault on democratic norms has left citizens increasingly anxious about the system’s inability to address pressing global crises—from catastrophic climate change to the enduring inequalities produced by centuries of imperial domination.

Failure to address these systemic failures only deepens the grip of fascism, eroding what remains of democracy and jeopardizing any hope for a sustainable future. As Will Bunch rightly points out, the collapse of democracy in the U.S. is evident in the absence of justice for those who sought to overthrow the government. Furthermore, the fact that 19 million Americans who voted for Biden in 2020 abstained in 2024 reveals a profound disillusionment with democracy. They no longer believed in its viability, nor did they fully grasp the threat posed by a second Trump presidency—one that openly embraced authoritarianism.

Rise of the Totalitarian Subject

What we are witnessing today is the rise of a reengineered “totalitarian subject,” forged in the wreckage of institutions that once upheld the common good, basic rights and civil liberties, replaced by machinery designed to sustain authoritarian rule. This subject is governed by fear, surrendering their agency to the grip of cult-like devotion and the iron hand of strongman figures. It is a subject ensnared in a culture of ignorance, enveloped by the fog of anti-intellectualism, and animated by a disdain for difference and the Other. They are imprisoned in what Zadie Smith calls the dreams of a language of autoimprisonment and the blinding poison of consent. Their worldview is reductive, confined to rigid binaries of good and evil, where complexity is obliterated in favor of simplicity.

This is a subject that values emotion over reason, exalts a toxic machismo that glorifies violence, and harbors a seething contempt for women, LGBTQ+ individuals, immigrants, Black people, and anyone who does not conform to the narrow, exclusionary ideal of white Christian nationalism. Their identity is an unsettling fusion of economic, religious, and educational fundamentalisms, designed to crush critical thought and enforce conformity.

---

---