The shock of Donald Trump’s record 142 executive orders in his first 100 days in office and their devastating impact on the president’s key targets is reverberating around the world.
The last week was a staring competition between the world’s major powers. Trump may have blinked, but any temporary easing of international tensions might result only in him refocusing on the domestic war and shoring up support for the next confrontation.
As the Trump administration tears through the US, deporting, sacking and ripping up decades of social progress, the Democratic Party has been playing dead.
World politics is entering a much more dangerous and unstable time in which wars, conflict and repression will be more on the order of the day than they have been for decades.
The authoritarian history of the US shows that faith in the “democratic resilience” of the US or its liberal institutions is misguided. For most of its history, the country has been nominally democratic but substantially authoritarian.
While a left critique of modern identity politics and its effects is necessary, it should in no way prevent us from opposing Trump’s attacks and from recognising their much broader implications.
