War on socialism

THE presidential election season in the United States has assumed a permanence of sorts. “Anyone but Trump” was a popular slogan before his first election and it resonates today amongst more than half the U.S. population. By January 2016, months before the election, Trump confidently told his supporters in Iowa: “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.” A combination of racism and machismo, as well as old-fashioned nativism and right-wing nationalism, fuelled Trump’s campaign. Trump’s culture war appealed to a section of the U.S. population that felt it had been “left behind” by globalisation. Particularly if the Democratic Party’s establishment flinches from Trump’s attack on socialism and if it takes cover in a “moderate” programme.