Since the inauguration of Trump’s second term a year ago, the world has shifted: instead of making America great again, his arbitrary and often violent measures have made the country look increasingly hateful, turning the American dream into a nightmare. By acting like a tyrant, he improves the Democrats’ chances of winning the 2026 midterms. And there is hope that he will be reined in after the midterms. But, even in this eventuality, the tectonic geopolitical change now unfolding will not stop, because Trumpism is one manifestation of a profound civilisational transformation.
This civilisational transformation concerns the way the economy was instituted as a political principle1 in the 17th century, and later as a social grammar2 in the 19th. The centrality of the economy has become so self-evident that it is hard to step back and see it as such. Most critiques approach it through the lens of capitalism or liberalism; in doing so, they often overlook the fact that socialism, too, has been organised around the pursuit of growth. Now, the gradual slowing down of Western growth since the 1980s, the competition of Asian countries, the automation of the processes of production or the rising inequalities undercut the promises of a shared prosperity.3
In this context, the far-right movements, including MAGA, appear as forms of extreme conservatisms that resemble fascism. Indeed, the United States is witnessing a surge of patterns of conduct that echo the core of fascism as defined by Robert Paxton,4 namely “a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity”. Fascism tends to abandon democratic liberties and pursue “with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion”. Yet, Paxton also stresses interesting differences between fascism and authoritarianism: the latter does not “reduce the private sphere to nothing”, it accepts groups such as local notables, economic cartels, families or churches. Moreover, authoritarians strive for a “strong but limited state.”5
Even if Trump invokes the “nation” as a symbol of unification and glory, often against enemies who spur a so-called decline, he sees it through economic lenses, as a springboard for wealth creation. On this view, economic strength grounds power, and power in turn secures wealth. Power thus appears as a consequence of the economy, not the other way around. This is clearly stated, for instance, in the 2025 National Security Strategy:6 “The U.S. economy is the bedrock of the American way of life, which promises and delivers widespread and broad-based prosperity, creates upward mobility, and rewards hard work. Our economy is also the bedrock of our global position and the necessary foundation of our military.”
The centrality of the economy in these lines is explicit. Paradoxically, Trump has been taking measures that seem to go against growth with his tariffs, which drive inflation, his education and science budget cuts, which hinder innovation, or his geopolitical aggression, which is not commercial. Trump’s mercantilist policies hark back to eras fundamentally different from ours, when empires ruled the world, each one managing a higher degree of economic independence. They sit uneasily in a globalised world, in which every country depends economically on others. Moreover, they overlook the fact that technologies are eroding creative destruction, they don’t guarantee, as they largely did in the 19th and 20th centuries, a sustained growth.7
The far-right reflects an attitude in Western countries: the denial of a multilateral world ‒ a world in which the balance of power is shifting towards the East and the South.8 This shift is structural and unlikely to be reversed; what remains a choice is how Western countries respond to it. If leaders respond by refusing limits, demanding unilateral advantage, or treating allies as dependants, they weaken the credibility of the very arrangements that have kept rivalry within bounds. In that configuration, tensions can multiply: deterrence becomes harder to manage, misperceptions grow, and economic confrontation spills into security postures. The consequence would be a more fragile international system in which local crises are more likely to escalate because the guardrails are thinner.
Whatever happens, current events show that the economy ‒ which from the 19th century has been driving prosperity and, to a certain extent, democracy ‒ could be the democracy’s gravedigger; this will be the topic of my 2026 series of articles. Economic slowdown, automation and rising inequality feed social anxieties and distributional conflicts. Meanwhile, global competition allows politicians to dismiss these structural constraints or their effects, to evade the reconfiguration of the global balance of power, and to scapegoat foreign countries, including old allies. This context fosters geopolitical instability and, domestically, the rise of far-right movements, especially Trumpism: they are not the disease, but a symptom of the denial of a global evolution.
Notes
1 https://damiengimenez.fr/wpdgi_article_en/wealth-as-a-political-principle-england-17th-18th-centuries/
2 https://damiengimenez.fr/wpdgi_article_en/utility-work-distribution-a-new-grammar-of-the-social-19th-century/
3 https://damiengimenez.fr/wpdgi_article_en/how-technologies-are-eroding-creative-destruction/
4 Robert O. Paxton, “The Anatomy of Fascism”, Alfred A. Knopf, 2004, p. 218.
5 Ibid., p. 217.
6 https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025-National-Security-Strategy.pdf
7 https://damiengimenez.fr/wpdgi_article_en/how-technologies-are-eroding-creative-destruction/
8 Again, the 2025 NSS is explicit on the US domination: “We want . . . the world’s most powerful, lethal, and technologically advanced military to protect our interests . . . We want the world’s strongest, most dynamic, most innovative, and most advanced economy. . . . We want the world’s most robust industrial base . . . the world’s most robust, productive, and innovative energy sector . . . to remain the world’s most scientifically and technologically advanced and innovative country . . . to maintain the United States’ unrivaled “soft power” through which we exercise positive influence throughout the world that furthers our interests.”