The bottom we have achieved in public life are most likely the guys from CostCo Guys, who were popular on TikToku and YouTuba in 2024 due to films shot in CostCo store. Father-Synowski duo Andrew “A.J.” Befumo and Eric Justice Befumo recorded videos about how products are rated in the store, whether affirmative – “boom” (gunshot), or negative – “doom” (blast).
The recordings are swarming with paradoxes that are hard to understand: they seem to be shot spontaneously by amateurs, but it is already known that they have been carefully directed, with the aid of a staff of helpers. They appear to be advertising for CostCo, but (at least at first) they were made for free, without establishing cooperation with the company – at any point they were thrown out of even 1 of the shops.
The CostCo guys are the embodiment of today's trend for free advertising – let's remember that thousands of girls put online recordings advertising the brand and these are body lotions, and these are lipsticks, and this is nail polish. The dream of all capitalist, a surprise of economical neofeudalism. This paradox of advertising things for free is much worse than its opposite, free creation secretly funded as advertising. This marks the minute erstwhile advertising begins to live its own life – which is possibly 1 of the signs of the end of the world.
This trend is emerging from the fresh lifestyle of younger generations around the world. Its material basis is the fresh digital spaces of communication (Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok, etc.), which presume a short time of focus on content, fast jump from message to message and doing many things at once.
The famed fresh media at first seemed to fulfill the dreams of anarchists, overcome the division into private and public, divide into creators on the 1 hand, and users/consumers on the other. Today, as Janis Warufakis notes, we are all recipients and producers of content at the same time, we participate in an undirected center that could regulate and impose boundaries; no "they" restrict our freedom. That's it. We're doing your job. In neofeudal, private, corporate space.
As for Donald Trump, he is the embodiment of liberalism in the sense that he allows corporations to operate outside the control of the state – which is all the more dangerous, that we are facing a climate crisis. late We found out., that "Data and Environmental Management Initiative secures technological data and investigation results published on publically available U.S. government websites due to concerns that topics specified as climate change and green energy will be removed from them after President-elect Trump takes office". The script is like a nightmare in which people are simply deprived of reliable information, and thus incapable to make rational decisions.
There were never as many billionaires in the American government as were on Trump's list of self-proclaimed The swordsman of the working people. Trump's liberalism is, of course, limited to ensuring much more freedom of action new digital feudals (again Warufakis), the irony is that Trump himself, who officially opposes large corporations, claiming that these globalists exploit American workers, is based on the support of these fresh feudal rulers whose perfect embodiment is Elon Musk.
That is why moderation should be maintained, calling Trump a fascist: there is no place in fascism on corporate feudals, as by definition the ruling fascist organization has a political monopoly. What is now happening in the United States – technofeudals straight occupying advanced positions in government – is unthinkable in fascism.
No wonder Trump's political building scratches are already broken. There has already been a first conflict between digital-corporate rulers supporting Trump (Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Thiel) and populists from the MAGA sign who pretend to talk on behalf of average workers. Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who is to co-chair the fresh Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), defends the rights of the advanced technology manufacture to employment engineers from abroad, while at the same time preparing to take control of the Trump administration intends to halt immigration.
Ramaswamy openly admitted that the Americans did not grow up to the top of abroad brains, guilty of the collapse of American technological and technological dynamics, burdening tv comedy series from the 1990s, by which technology companies were forced to hire a better educated and moving abroad staff to the States: “It will not make the best engineers a culture in which the prom queen is more crucial than the winner of the mathematical Olympics, and the bull from the squad is more crucial than the student with the best grades per year” – wrote On X.
Of course, it is hard to reconcile with the fact that Trump has been utilizing the native racist slogan “First America” for years, that he demands deportations to be mass and “bloody” and that legislature abolishes the law whereby all individual born in the United States receives citizenship, due to the fact that he believes immigrants “pollify the blood of this country”. It is not surprising, therefore, that the reaction of populists from MAGA was fast and violent. As expected, the loudest scream was Steve Bannon, a erstwhile Trumpist and a “leftist” who openly admits“I am a Leninist. Lenin [...] wanted to destruct the state, which is besides my goal. I want all this to go down, so that there is nothing left of today's establishment." Let us remember that Bannon flew out of the White home erstwhile he not only opposed Trump's taxation plans, but besides openly advocated raising taxes for the richest to 40%, and in addition claimed that saving banks with public money was "socialism for the rich."
In an interview with CNN in June 2018, Steve Bannon stated that his political perfect was to unite right-wing and left-wing populism against the old political establishment. He praised the coalition of the right-wing League and the left-wing populist movement of the 5 Stars, which ruled in Italy about 10 years earlier, as a model to follow and evidence that politics had already gone beyond the left and the right. The intent of this (politically and aesthetically) disgusting thought is, of course, to blur the basic social antagonism, which is why it is doomed to neglect – although before it yet falls, it can do quite a few damage.
No pact between Steve Bannon and Bernie Sanders for apparent reasons it will not happen, and the key component of the left's strategy should be the ruthless usage of divisions in the enemy camp and efforts to drag Bannon's supporters to their side. The Left has no hope of any triumph but for a broad alliance of anti-establishment forces. We must not forget that our actual enemy is the worldwide capitalist system, not the fresh populist right, which is simply a reaction to its collapse. If we forget this, the left simply disappears from the map, which is already the case in the case of average social democracy in most European countries, or as Sławomir Sierakowski put it: "As left parties fall, the only option that remains for voters is conservatism or right-wing populism".
The divided among the Trumpists gained faces: Elon Musk against Steve Bannon. Bannon demanded Musk and another heads of technology companies “repairs” for cutting off Americans from jobs, for him the issue of visas is “central to the way the mediate class in this country was used”. He besides noted“We love converts, but these converts sit in the back bench and learn for years before they yet comprehend the fresh faith, realize the nuances of this faith, realize how to internalize it.” specified converts should not “come to know each another and go consecutive to the pulpit to preach about how it will be now. [...] If anyone does so, we will cuff his mouth.”
Trump finds himself in large trouble: his full charm is based on an impossible coalition between digital feudals and exploited workers (who feel threatened by immigrants among others). If Trump comes on 1 of these sides, the MEGA movement will just fall apart.
In late December 2024, Trump made that choice for the first time erstwhile he sided with Musk. In the long run, however, he will gotta compromise – only what? He will have no choice but to separate between good immigrants (educated and highly skilled) and bad immigrants, whom he calls criminals, rapists and "illegal" taking the occupation of Americans. So he's gonna gotta play the racism card harder and harder.
In the short term, this strategy can work, but the paradox is that if it works, there will be double side effects: new, highly qualified immigrants will be well-paid and will power the rich layers of American society, while ordinary, penny-making Americans will gotta do work so far done by mediocre or illegally working immigrants – anti-immigrant populists will so be even more dissatisfied with the system. Not to mention the fact that immigrants, working mostly in black, execute many tasks – starting with homework (cleaning, gardening, childcare), on seasonal work in the field, which enable the mediate class to lead her lifestyle. If Trump goes besides far to get free of illegal immigrants, he will shortly besides face discontent from another side if mediocre white Americans do not want to take over the work done by immigrants so far.
Already in the midst of America’s poverty, there is anger against well - earned and educated immigrants employing white Americans for home work. Mythical position has programmers from India (although there are not as many as it might seem). More than 10 years ago, a young British baby-sitter employed by (relatively) a wealthy couple of Indian programmers surviving in Boston was accused of causing their child's death by negligence – amazing in this case was that the sympathy of the public was on the side of a British nanny, while hatred was directed at a couple of Indians.
There has besides been ideological tensions in each of the 2 aspects of Trumpian politics: corporate feudalists dress up in the feathers of extremist liberals, urge the usage of mass media without any barriers posed by the state (the real effect of this freedom, as we have seen, is the freedom of feudal control over their digital feudal broadcasts), and self-proclaimed defenders of the grey man are to the depths of authoritarians, postulating closer control of the state over political and cultural life, including the ban on movements and activities which they consider to be subversive (and of course they are simply left-wing) – let us remember, for example, what laws passed in Florida in the last fewer years, from book dissemination bans after direct intervention by state authorities in the curriculum after completion.
Trump defending the interests of the average grey man is like Kane from the classical cinema directed by Orson Welles – erstwhile a wealthy banker accuses him of speaking for a mediocre mob, he replies that yes, his paper speaks for a grey man, but only to avoid the real danger – so that mediocre grey people do not accidentally talk for themselves.
What will this tension lead to? There is no automatic solution: the consequence depends on political struggles, not on "objective" socio-economic processes. Nor is there any certainty that the tensions described above will lead to the collapse of the Trumpists – it is possible that they will proceed to hold their end indefinitely by rapidly gluing fresh compromises. 1 thing we can be certain of – the longer the Trumpist policy prevails, the more disastrous the planet will be.
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From English she translated Catherine the Formers.
