The Phony Populism of Trump and Musk
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
A Donald Trump rally is always a strange spectacle, and not only because of the candidate’s incoherence and bizarre detours into mental cul-de-sacs. (Journalists have faced some criticism for ignoring or recasting these moments, but The New York Times , for one, has finally said that the candidate’s mental state is a legitimate concern.) Trump’s rally on Saturday in Butler, Pennsylvania, was a hall-of-fame entry in political weirdness : Few survivors of an attempted assassination hold a giant lawn party on the spot where they were wounded and someone in the crowd was killed.
The candidate’s tirades are the most obviously bizarre part of his performances, but the nature of the gathering itself is a fascinating paradox. Thousands of people, mostly from the working and middle class, line up to spend time with a very rich man, a lifelong New Yorker who privately detests the heartland Americans in his audience—and applaud as he excoriates the “elites.”
This is a political charade: Trump and his running mate, the hillbilly turned multimillionaire J. D. Vance, have little in common with most of the people in the audience, no matter how much they claim to be one of them. The mask slips often: Even as he courts the union vote, Trump revels in saying how much he hated having to pay overtime to his workers. In another telling moment, Trump beamed while talking about how Vance and his wife both have Yale degrees, despite his usual excoriations of top universities. (He always carves out a glittering exception for his own days at the University of Pennsylvania, of course.)
Trump then welcomed the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, to the stage. Things got weirder from there, as Musk—who, it should be noted, is 53 years old— jumped around the stage like a concertgoing teenager who got picked out of the audience to meet the band. Musk then proceeded to explain how democracy is in danger—this, from a man who has turned the platform once known as Twitter into an open zone for foreign propaganda and has amplified various hoaxes . Musk has presented himself on his own platform as a champion of the voiceless and the oppressed, but his behavior reveals him as an enemy of speech that isn’t in his own interest.
What happened in Butler over the weekend, however, was not some unique American moment. Around the world, fantastically wealthy people are hoodwinking ordinary voters, warning that dark forces—always an indistinct “they” and “them”—are conspiring to take away their rights and turn their nation into an immense ghetto full of undesirables (who are almost always racial minorities or immigrants or, in the ideal narrative, both).
The British writer Martin Wolf calls this “pluto-populism,” a brash attempt by people at the top of the financial and social pyramid to stay afloat by capering as ostensibly anti-establishment, pro-worker candidates. In Britain, former Prime Minister Boris Johnson dismissed the whole notion of Brexit behind closed doors, and then supported the movement as his ticket into 10 Downing Street anyway. In Italy, a wealthy entrepreneur helped start the “ Five-Star Movement ,” recruiting the comedian Beppe Grillo to hold supposedly anti-elitist events such as Fuck-Off Day; they briefly joined a coalition government with a far-right populist party, Lega, some years ago. Similar movements have arisen around the world, in Turkey, Brazil, Hungary, and other nations.
These movements are all remarkably alike: They claim to represent the common voter, especially the “forgotten people” and the dispossessed, but in reality, the base voters for these groups are not the poorest or most disadvantaged in their society. Rather, they tend to be relatively affluent. (Think of the January 6 rioters , and how many of them were able to afford flights, hotels, and expensive gear. It’s not cheap to be an insurrectionist.) As Simon Kuper noted in 2020, the “comfortably off populist voter is the main force behind Trump, Brexit and Italy’s Lega,” a fact ignored by opportunistic politicians who instead claim to be acting on behalf of stereotypes of impoverished former factory workers, even if there are few such people left to represent.
One of the pioneers of pluto-populism, of course, is the late Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, a rake and a grifter who stayed in office as part of staying out of jail. That strategy should sound familiar to Americans, but even more familiar is the way the Italian scholar Maurizio Viroli, in a book about Italian politics, notes how Berlusconi deformed Italian democracy by seducing its elites into joining the big con against the ordinary voter: Italy, he wrote, is a free country, but Viroli calls such freedom the “liberty of servants,” a sop offered to people who are subjects in a new kind of democracy that is really just the “court at the center of which sits a signore surrounded by a plethora of courtiers, who are in turn admired and envied by a multitude of individuals with servile souls.”
The appeals of the pluto-populists work because they target people who care little about policy but a great deal about social revenge. These citizens feel like others whom they dislike are living good lives, which to them seems an injustice. Worse, this itching sense of resentment is the result not of unrequited love but of unrequited hate: Much like the townies who feel looked down upon by the local college kids, or the Red Sox fans who are infuriated that Yankees fans couldn’t care less about their tribal animus, these voters feel ignored and disrespected.
Who better to be the agent of their revenge than a crude and boorish magnate who commands attention, angers and frightens the people they hate, and intends to control the political system so that he cannot be touched by it?
Musk, for his part, is the perfect addition to this crew. Rich beyond imagination, he still has the wheedling affect of a needy youngster who requires (and demands) attention. Like Trump, he seems unable to believe that although money can buy many things—luxury digs, expensive lawyers, obsequious staff—it cannot buy respect . For people such as Musk and Trump, this popular rejection is baffling and enraging.
Trump and those like him thus make a deal with the most resentful citizens in society: Keep us up in the penthouses, and we’ll harass your enemies on your behalf. We’ll punish the people you want punished . In the end, however, the joke is always on the voters: The pluto-populists don’t care about the people cheering them on. Few scores will truly be settled, and life will only become harder for everyone who isn’t wealthy or powerful enough to resist the autocratic policies that such people will impose on everyone, regardless of their previous support.
When the dust settles, Trump and Vance will still be rich and powerful (as will Musk, whose fortune and power transcends borders in a way that right-wing populists usually claim to hate). For the many Americans who admire them, little will change; their lives will not improve, just as they did not during Trump’s first term. Millions of us, regardless of whom we voted for, will have to fend off interference in our lives from an authoritarian government—especially if we are, for example, a targeted minority, a woman in need of health care, or a member of a disfavored immigrant community.
This is not freedom: As Viroli warned his fellow citizens, “If we are subjected to the arbitrary or enormous power of a man, we may well be free to do more or less what we want, but we are still servants.”
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Fellini would have had a field day with this cast of characterless characters.
It's sad, but I see evidence of those "servile souls" worshiping Trump daily. They regularly carry water for a vile lying narcissist, but they're so blinded by their bitter hatred for their fellow Americans they can't even see it. Trumps followers hate liberals and progressives with such an unmitigated passion they would rather bow down to this fat false God they have created than to admit that liberals and progressives are as American as they are. They have empowered Trump and without this base of abject moron boot lickers Trump would have no power.
You exaggerate. I don't hate liberals and progressives, many of whom are very fine people. But I get along with them because I respect their views even though I don't agree with them. But I despise the views and agendas of liberals and progressives as a whole because they seem intent in destroying our representative republic.
It's silly to call everyone who votes for Trump as abject moron boot lickers....it's half (or more) of the electorate, for heaven's sake. For those people, to vote for Harris would be irrational, irresponsible, and unpatriotic.
And study after study has shown it's progressives who are much more consumed by hate for Republicans than vice versa.
Got links? Pew Research does not say so.
Yet they weren't the ones violently attacking the capital in an attempt to overturn election results because they lost.
It's not half by a long shot, Trump has never and never will get half of American voter's support. He loses by millions of votes in every national election he's been in. And yes, anyone choosing to vote for a convicted felon over a qualified candidate for President either doesn't care about our nation, has no shame or is a gullible simpleton who has been fooled by a lying conman.
Then clearly, they don't understand the meaning of rational, responsible or patriotic. Or, giving them the benefit of the doubt, they're blind deaf and dumb and don't understand what an election is or what they're voting for.
In November we will find out that once again, the VAST MAJORITY of Americans by millions, will not vote for dirty Donald, they know who he is and what a fucking stupid criminal loser he is. Sadly though, we'll also find out whether a bitter minority of Americans will get to decide the President and might pick that stupid loser and the rest of us will have to suffer through four years of until we can finally shut the door on this tragic period in American history where a minority saddled our nation with the most disgusting sack of shit our nation has ever produced.
Musk jumping around on that stage....is he a socially awkward animal or is he on the autism spectrum?
That's his inner gadfly pupating.
it's the ketamine side effects ...