In the past century, we thought democracy and socialism had defeated nationalism. Wrong.1
Franco “Bifo” Berardi
In Kevin Kelly’s recent book The Inevitable he presents a forecast of 12 trends that will emerge in the coming decades from the continued expansion of digital technologies and globalized capitalism.2 Although Kelly is often unabashedly optimistic when commenting upon the potential socioeconomic and cultural effects this ongoing information revolution will have, he nevertheless acknowledges a certain existential crisis that this very same transformation is now producing, and will further produce. It is an impending, irreducible crisis that essentially divides humanity into two overlapping and competing factions; two factions that Kelly terms The People of the Book and The People of the Screen.
The People of the Book, for Kelly, are simply those individuals, organizations, and ideologies that still maintain a fidelity to the various forms of culture and economic production that were inherent to humanity prior to the widespread arrival of digital technologies: a reverence for printed books, newspapers, and periodicals; an allegiance to the rule of law as well as to classic interpretations of ethics and morality; and a desire to engage in an economic system that is local in its operation and “analog” in its underlying logic – such as a small farm or a productive factory.
On the contrary, The People of the Screen are those who have rather adopted the ideologies and practices that have emerged over the past decades in response to both the proliferation of networked technologies into our social and cultural spaces as well as widespread economic globalization. The People of the Screen prefer to perform their labor while connected into a global network; they gravitate toward digital content in lieu of the written word; they tend to reject traditional norms and values in favor of a pervasive social fluidity; and they are often urban based and individually centered versus having historical ties to a local community or an allegiance to a defined family network:
But today most of us have become People of the Screen. People of the Screen tend to ignore the classic logic of books or the reverence of copies; they prefer the dynamic flux of pixels. They gravitate toward movie screens, TV screens, computer screens, iPhone screens, VR goggle screens, tablet screens, and in the near future massive Day-Glo megapixel screens plastered on every surface. Screen culture is a world of constant flux, of endless sound bites, quick cuts, and half-baked ideas. It is a flow of tweets, headlines, Instagrams, casual texts, and floating first impressions. Notions don’t stand alone but are massively interlinked to everything else; truth is not delivered by authors and authorities but is assembled in real time piece by piece by the audience themselves. People of the Screen make their own content and construct their own truth. Fixed copies don’t matter as much as flowing screens. Screen culture is fast, like a 30 second movie trailer, and as liquid and open ended as a Wikipedia page.3
One cannot help but notice a profound contradiction when we apply Kelly’s dichotomy of contemporary subjectivity onto the cultural symbolism of Donald Trump. That is to say, by all accounts, Donald Trump is the very definition of a “Person of the Screen”: a Reality Television star who lives out much of his social existence as a public spectacle and media sound bite; an individual who communicates his most intimate and personal ideas through his social media feed; and a person who happily allows his own image to be endlessly circulated through the machinery of the global media apparatus.
Yet, and strangely enough, Donald Trump’s rhetoric and the core of his political platform was in many respects addressed to what now comprises the disintegrating population of The People of the Book: the everyday, working-class Americans who were ultimately drawn to his message for the very reason that they have been progressively left behind by the economics and technology that defines contemporary screen culture. This is not to say, by any stretch of the imagination, that Trump supporters were actually conscious of this disjuncture; that they abstained from participating in the emergent screen society and instead read Dickens by night and the daily newspaper by morning over a cup of coffee at the family breakfast table.
But that is the whole point.
In other words, both Trump and his supporters, for the most part, did not even know what their problem was or what it was they even wanted. All they could ultimately articulate was a pervasive feeling of frustration and resentment — often encapsulated in one-line slogans such as “Draining the Swamp” — that was to be effectively channeled at the state of contemporary identity politics, contemporary media practices, and the contemporary economic system that has ravaged their small communities and towns over the past several decades. Their recourse was thus to gravitate toward a political message that promised them a return of collective national identity, a return of law and order, and a return to an industrial-based economic system that was once the base of their collective livelihood.4 In short, what they were promised was a return to the past; a past that once existed in their minds prior to the rise of digital technologies and neoliberal globalization. One can only marvel at the fact that this very political and spiritual message — that of a collective return to a set of traditional socioeconomic practices and national purity — was delivered by a Tweeting, Reality Television star.
Liberal critics have categorically and consistently dismissed the resurgence of populist discourse in American politics that Trump’s rise signifies — a trajectory that can be gauged in recent years from the evolution of neoconservatism, to the Tea Party movement, to Trump’s brand of nationalism — as a dangerous and reactive stance against both cultural and economic progress. They have made the claim that this type of retroactive rhetoric and politics has no place in a fast globalizing world where multiculturalism, social and cultural fluidity, and market dynamics have become the grounding principals of the new global order. But what if the very opposite was true? That is to say, what if this resurgence of American populism that is apparently so disdained by liberal commentators was actually part of the very same process that these same liberal commentators unilaterally defend?
… the problem is rather to conceive of this populism as a new form of “false transparency,” which, far from presenting a serious obstacle to (liberal) capitalist modernization, paves the way for it.5
In other words, the recent surge of American nationalism and its accompanying populist rhetoric runs directly with the progressive dynamism of (liberal) global capitalism. So, what is thus essential when reading the cultural symbolism of Donald Trump and his unique brand of virtualized populist-fundamentalism is not to see his political ascendancy as some external intrusion into the normal order of things; but rather to see his dramatic political entrance as simply a part of a singular ongoing sociopolitical process: to perceive that his emergence onto the national political stage was synonymous with the general trajectory of our societal, economic, and technological development that has been part and parcel of neoliberal globalization over the past four decades.
Writing about Donald Trump brings about a rather peculiar feeling in myself, and that peculiarity has to do with the asymmetry of how seriously I take the task. In a certain respect, writing about the politics of Trump — his unhinged personality, or the childlike rhetoric that he often uses to communicate important matters of foreign and domestic policy — it is nearly impossible to keep up even the appearance of a serious commentary. It can’t help but become equal parts absurdity and comedy when encountering the concrete fact that this man is now the leader of the free world. Yet, and in exact opposition to the absurdity of the situation, writing about and attempting to make sense of the cultural symbolism that Donald Trump represents in the early decades of the twenty-first century is a deadly serious matter. And it is a deadly serious matter precisely because humanity, in this very moment, is fast approaching a crisis point. It is a multifaceted crisis that is equally ecological, economic, political, psychological, and technological. But ultimately, the planetary crisis that is now revealing itself in no uncertain terms in various instances and guises across the globe — while being ruthlessly suppressed at the very same time — is ultimately a crisis that can only be appropriately named as an existential breaking point; what we could even term as an ontological crisis. It is a crisis of our collective Being. And the underlying nature of this crisis can be most effectively characterized as the very same transformation referenced by Kevin Kelly: that The People of the Book are now being displaced wholesale by The People of the Screen.6 But when trying to conceptualize this emerging division of humanity it would be a critical mistake to assume that this looming division of planetary society is an external one; that there is a clear demarcation point or a precise catalog of distinguishing features that now separates The People of the Book from The People of the Screen. More appropriately, this is a division that is now being inscribed within us all: we are now, each and every one of us, caught between two worlds that are rapidly diverging from one another while tearing us apart — our psychological health, social fabric, and economic productivity — in the process. In other words, we are now painfully discovering that there is no possibility of a happy medium between The New York Times and our Facebook feeds; there is no real common ground to be found between fully automative factories and a stable American middle class; and there is no real symmetry between an engaged politics and civic responsibility with widespread digital consumerism and celebrity culture. And this emerging recognition, a recognition that is simultaneously repressed and displaced at every turn, is also producing a fracture not only in our political, economic, and social structures — but also within our minds and hearts.
This ongoing and truly radical reconstitution of human productivity, consciousness, and culture is what has emerged in response to global capitalism’s transformation over the past several decades; as it has moved beyond its industrial phase and into its postindustrial, technological phase in the present. The core of this transformation has been essentially two-fold. The first part is that the entire range of human experience has been progressively reduced to pure economic efficiency; the manifold of human life has been reconditioned to only exist within an economic framework and a consciousness that principally reflects the state of global markets and capitalist logic. The now infamous line from Chicago-born hip hop artist Kanye West perfectly summarizes this point — “I’m not a businessman, I’m a business, man“:7 our very lives and bodies have become “businesses” unto themselves in the era of twenty-first century global capitalism. In other words, the practices and logic of the economy are no longer confined to what occurs during a 9–5 shift. Such logic has now extended beyond the perimeter of the office building or the factory, the very places where it was once confined in the previous order of capitalism, and now lives and breathes as the all-encompassing fact of our lives. From the constant and pervasive exposure to this logic we have all become, unwillingly and unknowingly, homo economus: humans who now regard their own lives — and the lives of others — as purely instrumental, as “subjects of neoliberal achievement” whose primary purpose in life is to produce, compete, and create within the parameters of a purely capitalist logic.
The second part of this same transformation is how digital technology now determines and mediates this very same reduction of human life into a purely economic framework: the constant generation of quantifiable sets of data, discrete personal information that can be aggregated and monetized by third-party corporations and tech companies, while at the very same time creating the very infrastructure within which the majority of our socioeconomic interaction now occurs: within the virtual realm, in our social media feeds, and on the various global networks. That is to say, the recent metamorphosis of human life into primarily existing as an extension of game theory, within a purely economic schema, would have been impossible without the accompanying technological transformation: digital and networked technologies are the material forces that have provided the framework for this transformation to so effortlessly emerge in recent decades.
In a certain respect, the election of Donald Trump can be seen as symbolic of this very same uncomfortable and traumatic passage that has occurred in the early decades of the twenty-first century; a passage in which humanity itself is being drawn further and further into the horizon of neoliberal globalization and Silicon Valley logic.
As we collectively leave behind the world of books and the rule of law for a world of pixilated screens and computational technology, a sense of collective panic sets in, confusion reigns supreme, and a whole range of psychological pathologies suddenly and dramatically infect global culture as we attempt to make sense of (or simply block out) this ongoing transformation. As new markets and new technologies emerge ever more rapidly, we are conditioned by economic and political authority to adjust, evolve, and adapt — or else.
And it is only in this environment of collective fear — socially decomposing, spiritually and ecologically fragmented, psychically overwhelmed by the trove of the most banal data and content that we are daily exposed to — that a person like Donald Trump could be elected President.8 And a person such as Trump could become President not simply because of the fact that he radically simplifies and dumbs down these complex socioeconomic changes for his supporters to effectively grasp, but also because of the fact that he openly disrespects them: he locates the incongruities and aberrations of neoliberalism and exposes them in the most brutal (and occasionally comical) of ways.
What is ironic here is only the fact that Trump appears to be a reactionary force, a force that is opposed to the core features of this very same development. But this reactionary gesture that Donald Trump is said to embody is fundamentally misleading. It is misleading because, despite his rhetoric, Trump absolutely signifies the universal frame that is now emerging within the new global order at its most elementary level. That is to say, for instance, there can be no doubt that Trump’s attitude toward women and minorities is fundamentally reactionary, a giant leap backwards in public civility and in the struggle for equality. But yet, in his work as a global real estate developer and as a representation of contemporary media practices, Donald Trump is practically of the avant garde: in this regard Donald Trump actually signifies the most progressive elements of twenty-first century global capitalism and culture, a fact that is often conveniently overlooked when analyzing his political rise.
From this perspective, one can only find it extremely curious how Donald Trump and so many contemporary Republicans have the audacity to actually see themselves as “conservatives.” In one sense they claim they want to maintain, even enforce if they had the chance, a set of traditional moral principals and normative behaviors that would serve to appropriately moderate civil society. Yet, in another sense, the exotic financial products they unleash daily from Wall Street and the multinational corporations they defend are what are primarily responsible for the very same moral blackout they endlessly complain about. The fact of the matter is that people like Donald Trump are the most impassioned and committed revolutionaries; they are the true radicals of twenty-first century globalized capitalism.
This is the true paradox of the situation at hand: the de-politicized economic logic and style of media engagement that Trump signifies in his very person — what we can effectively describe as being homologous to the core ideology of neoliberal globalization — is exactly what comes to greatly intensify and even radicalize those very same reactionary outbursts that Trump has engaged in throughout his campaign and first year as President. In the now standard critiques of Donald Trump that permeate the liberal mediascape of contemporary American society, one cannot help but feel that these critiques are missing the entirety of the forest as they endlessly point out the broken trees.
I will conclude this introduction with a rather bold and provocative statement: that Donald Trump may in fact signify something more disarming, and far more horrifying, than anything we have given him credit for thus far. I will even make the incredible claim that Donald Trump may in fact symbolize the emerging fissure of humanity with itself and its past. That is to say, what the election of Donald Trump may actually mean is that the condition of humanity is now undergoing a metamorphosis unlike any other in our history. We are in the process — through the combinatory forces of a global capitalism fully linked in with the power of computational technologies – of becoming something Other: human beings whose lives and brains are now plugged into a sprawling global network and are now suffering, and will further suffer, the consequences of such a radical transformation.
What this Other-ness will ultimately entail is not fully answered as of yet; we can only see glimpses that are both horrifying and potentially even promising. But what we can now see for certain is that the early decades of the twenty-first century are the very period in which the struggle to define what is to come for humanity will be determined.
Of course, we know how dangerous Donald Trump and his policies could potentially be. But what we also must realize is that Donald Trump is a sign — a public figure who nearly registers in the field of ancient mythology versus contemporary global politics — whereby we can encounter the limits of our cultural pathologies, the reality of our social and economic inequalities, and the tragic fact of our collective spiritual decomposition.
For what reason has this collective encounter with Donald Trump taken place? This is the precise question that remains unanswered as of yet. The future — a global destination that now appears increasingly dangerous and hopeless, not to mention completely unimaginable from our present vantage point — is fundamentally a space of potentiality, a space that has yet to be fully inscribed.9 Could it be that Donald Trump is only symbolic of a chance to re-write the history of this very future, that his political rise represents a chance for humanity to re-ask questions that we have been told were already answered?
These are the very questions that must be brought to the surface if we are to excavate the true meaning of Donald Trump.