To put an end to the “liberal-conservative establishment”, the appropriate strategy “must be what we could call ‘right-wing populism’: exciting, dynamic, brutal, cultivating conflict”, led by a “charismatic leader” capable of “speaking directly to the masses” and “bypassing the media elites”.
These words are from Murray Rothbard (1926-1995), a central figure in American right-wing libertarianism. He would have loved what the Republican Party has become under the yoke of Donald Trump, whose influence was reconfirmed Tuesday evening by his victory in the New Hampshire primary against Nikki Haley.
Murray Rothbard? His name surfaced in the news thanks to the election last December of the “anarcho-capitalist” Javier Milei as president of Argentina. Of anarcho-capitalism, one of the chapels of the heterogeneous far-right movement, Rothbard was one of the main theorists: federal state reduced to a trickle, private property as an absolute value, socio-cultural ultraconservatism. McCarthyism was his credo. He appreciated Hitler for his ideological clarity and Lenin for his organizational methods. He abhorred the welfare state spawned by the New Deal. He denounced the “unnatural myth of egalitarianism” (social, racial, sexual) in the same way that Milei declared during the electoral campaign that “the redistribution of wealth [était] a violent act.”
In the United States, his radical ideas, yesterday marginal within the Republican Party, are among those which have spread within the nebula of the alt-right and the white supremacist movement which revolves around Trump and the republican organization.
From theory to practice, the desire to “deconstruct the administrative state” expressed by Steve Bannon, briefly advisor to President Trump in 2017, has “Rothbardian” overtones. In wanting to plunge the American government into a permanent budgetary crisis, the Trumpist elected officials gathered in Congress within the Freedom Caucas (whose organic links with supremacist groups like the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys are documented) have no other project than that of seizing up the state apparatus. And Mr. Trump, who presumably does not know Rothbard from Eve or Adam, is the strangely accomplished incarnation of this authoritarian and violent design. If he has ideas, he is the fractious supporter of a deconstruction of institutions, in the sense that he wants them at his complete disposal.
What conclusions can be drawn from the New Hampshire primary? That Mr. Trump, obviously, is de facto crowned candidate for the November 5 presidential election. And after Ron DeSantis’ withdrawal last Sunday, Nikki Haley should in turn withdraw before long.
By denouncing the “chaos” that the ex-president is creating everywhere, Nikki Haley will have carried the flag of resistance to Trumpism. Albeit sluggishly. A good-natured neoconservative, she is far from representing the democratic overhaul and the political refocusing that the Republican Party would need to become something other than a party of power. Like many others, she is too protective of her back to have the courage to clearly state the unacceptability of the candidacy of a man who attempted to commit a coup d’état in the name of a falsely “stolen” presidency.
Further, the results of this primary confirm that the field of Trumpism remains incredibly influential, although electorally limited. Because it turns out that the electorate of small New Hampshire is quite representative of the diversity of the electorate nationally. Mr. Trump won in all segments of the Republican electorate in the state, among women and men, in urban and rural areas, exit polls indicated. Proof that, part of a global trend, the authoritarian project carried by Trump – against a backdrop of populist and xenophobic discourse of astonishing appeal, of nostalgia for an imaginary past and fear of the “great replacement” – is today today more complete and more organized than it was in 2016 when he took power.
On the other hand, it is notable that the so-called independent voters, who had the right to vote in this primary, massively rallied behind Mr.me Haley. A sign that, come November 5, independents – who represent up to 40% of the American electorate – will tend to do like the Democrats by postponing their vote, without much enthusiasm, on Joe Biden rather than on a liar overwhelmed with trial.
Advantage to Mr. Biden, therefore. But an advantage which, like American democracy itself, remains very fragile.