There’s a hilarious anecdote about Karl Marx that sums up the red delulu very well. Marx, who lived on other people’s money, much like most Leftists, was once taken down to a factory. Appalled at the conditions, Marx berated the person who had taken him there, showing that his desire to seize (cease) the means of production was very much academic. The aforementioned anecdote, like most popular anecdotes, is probably not true. Marx was on my mind when reading Donald Trump’s latest tweets, particularly his letter to the Norwegian Prime Minister stating that he no longer had an obligation to “think purely of peace”. He added: “Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a ‘right of ownership’ anyway? There are no written documents. It’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there….”To paraphrase a quote by a bona fide genius about another bona fide genius: future generations will scarce believe such a man walked the earth. Familiarity normally breeds contempt, but Trump only generates content.Perhaps that’s why he is so misunderstood.Critics often call him a right-wing white supremacist nationalist and, much like the Holy Roman Empire, none of those descriptors are remotely accurate. He’s not right-wing, not a white supremacist, and not even nationalist. Trump doesn’t care about race at all, not in the way people think. He’s barely nationalist and will always put his own self-interest ahead of the nation’s. And right-wing? He’s the most left-leaning POTUS, so much so that if McCarthy were around today, he would blacklist him.Let’s begin with a history lesson, because a lot of reel-scrolling proles have forgotten history. Where do the terms Left and Right come from?Like most ideas—bad (liberalism, republicanism, universal rights, secularism, constitutionalism, and sovereignty) and good (beheadings, bread-free diets)—the term originates from the French Revolution.
While the phrase is an ideology now, it stems from actual seating positions during the debates that followed the French Revolution. Anti-royalist revolutionaries seated themselves to the presiding officer’s left, while conservative aristocratic supporters of the monarchy gathered to the right. The terms, like an old cold cut that somehow survives in your fridge for decades, became a permanent fixture of modern political discourse.With time, the two ideologies went back and forth and, in America in particular, being called a Leftist was to announce that one was largely unelectable, especially in the Republican Party, the ostensible home of conservatives. Or at least it was, before being cannibalised by MAGA.So why do we call Trump a Leftist?For starters, he ran on the campaign slogan Make America Great Again. That is literally the Left playbook for revolution: the idea that the current system is so broken that everything needs a radical overhaul. Burn everything to the ground and start from scratch. A Great Leap Forward. Drain the swamp. Kapeesh?Like all successful Left movements, MAGA is built on a permanent sense of grievance. Trump and his followers are forever oppressed, forever cheated, forever victims of shadowy elites, despite holding extraordinary power. This constant victimhood is not a bug but the core moral engine of the movement. The people are pure. The system is corrupt. Everything that follows is therefore justified. The revolution justifies everything.In his second term, Trump has used every Left authoritarian playbook in existence and would easily give Chairman Mao and General Secretary Stalin a run for their money.Like all leftist statists, Trump loves using the state’s forces of law and order to rough up his opponents. This includes sending hooded ICE hooligans onto the streets to terrorise suburban moms and using the FBI to target former allies.Like every Leftist demagogue, Trump morally delegitimises his critics, who aren’t just critics but enemies, traitors, and saboteurs whose heads must roll. Opposition is not political dissent; it is ethical failure. The only virtue is loyalty to the demagogue’s position, which can vacillate daily.Trump also has the old Leftist love for hafta. The term hafta refers to the money one pays a mob boss for protection. Trump’s hafta comes in many forms. It can be a new ballroom for the East Wing paid for by tech bros. It can be a donation to his Super PAC. It can be a new plane. It can be a billion-dollar fee to join his new Gaza Peace Board. It can even be the Nobel Peace Prize. Like all left-leaning folks, Trump loves seizing (or ceasing) things.Like all revolutions, Trump does not abolish elites, though he spends a great deal of time berating them. The bourgeois need not be eradicated. The old elites are evil, corrupt globalists who must be replaced by new elites who are loyal, generous, and equally rich. A billionaire is only bad when she opposes something. The moment she is co-opted, she becomes a patriot.But his seizing can go beyond products and extend to seizing (ceasing) the means of production as well.This includes pouring taxpayers’ money into big businesses like Intel, demanding Big Oil go to Venezuela “for the country”, pressuring Paramount to settle a lawsuit if it wants regulatory clearance for a merger, demanding a one-year 10% cap on credit cards, and offering a wink-wink nudge to the Netflix–Warner Bros merger that the president must be “involved” in the decision.This is Left economics in its purest form: taking from the have-lots, but not to give to the have-nots. And after a while the have-lots will leave. If they have the option. And become have-nots themselves. The same goes for tariffs, which, like everything else in this worldview, are not economic tools but policy sticks. Ergo, tariffs are wielded to bring the world to heel, whether they make sense or not. Hence, reverse tariffs on bananas, even though America does not produce bananas. Talk about bananas.
Like most other regimes, the Trump one is also openly expansionist, seeing the world as a large pie to be divided. As if kidnapping a foreign head of state wasn’t enough, Trump has now turned his sights on Greenland, daring Europe to do something about it.In revolutionary geopolitics, the world is not a system of sovereign states operating under a Westphalian order but a board of influence zones. Either get into the sphere or get pulled into the sphere.Like most popular regimes, members of the Trump family are very much part of the self-indulgence that comes with complete control of the state. This includes land deals, real estate, crypto, and modern versions of dachas. Power, once captured, must circulate with near and dear ones.Virtue begins at home.And finally, the party apparatchiks must be loyal, with fealty mattering more than competence. Ergo, Washington has turned into a literal St Petersburg, the living embodiment of the Peter Principle.To sum up, America is now led by a man who uses the state police against opponents, nationalises companies, seizes (ceases) the means of production, weaponises the state apparatus against enemies, improves his family’s relationship with Mammon, and treats the world like a global chess board.Seem familiar? We have seen this script before, from Russia to China. Trump is not, as his critics are wont to claim, a right-wing anomaly. He is the logical endpoint of Leftist populism stripped of restraint, a revolutionary Leftist in nationalist drag, governing through fear, emotion, grievance, and loyalty.Orange is the new red. All hail Comrade Trump. Welcome to the United Soviet State of America. Go to Source
