“So What IS Anti-Globalism?”: A Guide, Through Brubaker, Illustrated in Trump Tweets

Trump’s incessant tweets may seem nonsensical, but they demonstrate something critically important—that Trumpian politics are a textbook manifestation of what influential scholar Rogers Brubaker described as one of several forms of nationalism:

“A defensive, protective, national-populist nationalism that seeks to protect the national economy, language, mores or cultural patrimony against alleged threats from outside. The bearers of such putative threats are diverse but can include foreign capital, transnational organisations, . . . immigrants, powerful foreign cultural influences and so on.”

In wielding this ideology, Trump typically points to so-called “globalism” as the primary external threat. Globalism functions as a catch-all for the kinds of threats Brubaker describes above.

Trump persisted in this vein with his recent speech to the UN, in which he continued to define a clear opposition between globalism and patriotism: “The future does not belong to globalists. The future belongs to patriots.” This rhetorical style has been a central refrain since the start of his presidential campaign.

So What Does Trump Mean by “Globalism”?

The term “globalism” was most prominently popularized by far-right-wing commentator Alex Jones. In a now-unavailable YouTube video (he was banned from the site last year for hate speech and harassment), Jones called globalism a “global digital panopticon control system.”

The New York Times described globalism as the conspiratorial, right-wing belief in “an economic and political system rigged against the American people for the benefit of shadowy forces in the news media, the banks and the government.” Globalism brings to mind “shuttered factories, unchecked immigration and a distant cabal that, believers say, controls the economy and the media.”

The term “globalism” alludes to globalization, but brings in a whole host of other preposterous, “alt-right” (read: fascist, neo-Nazi) conspiracy theories, including Pizzagate, and the claim that Democratic leaders are literal sulfurous demons, among many others. Using the platform of the presidency, Trump works to amplify these ideas enormously. He even appeared on Jones’ show InfoWars in 2015, where Trump told Jones: “Your reputation is amazing. I will not let you down.”

Key Features of Anti-Globalist Nationalism

In his description of this “defensive, protective, national-populist nationalism,” Brubaker describes an all-too-familiar reality as he names several key qualities now central to Trumpism.

Anti-Semitic

One important feature is that such nationalism, writes Brubaker, “is often receptive to anti-Semitism.” Along with virulent racism, anti-Semitism has been a constant—and continuously escalating—thread in Trump’s rhetoric. Most recently, of the more than 200 House Democrats who signed onto an impeachment inquiry, the only individuals he publicly targeted were either Jewish or women of color:

He has also promoted the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that blames Hungarian Jewish billionaire George Soros for a whole host of hidden machinations, evoking a long history of anti-Semitic propaganda. For example, after Senator Jeff Flake was confronted by sexual assault survivors protesting his support of then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, Trump tweeted:

Frames Political Opponents as Antinational

According to Brubaker, this nationalism also “brands its political opponents as antinational.” When Trump criticized four female Democratic lawmakers (likely Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, and Ilhan Omar) this past summer, he was framing his political opponents as against the nation, and using racist, anti-immigrant rhetoric to do so:

Idealizes the Past

Finally, this national-populist nationalism “tends to idealise an agrarian past,” as Brubaker puts it. In our case, that agrarian past is more like an industrial past, but it serves the same ideological function. It is the past that Trump aims to evoke with “Make America Great Again.”

Why Is This Happening?

Brubaker describes underlying causes of national-populist nationalism that also apply seamlessly to our current situation of runaway neoliberal capitalism:

“The social and economic dislocations accompanying market-oriented reforms – unemployment, inflation, tighter workplace discipline, etc. – create fertile soil for the use of such national populist idioms.”

We have been immersed in that “fertile soil” since the explosion of neoliberalism in the 1980s.

That Brubaker was able to effectively predict the key qualities of Trumpism in 1998, nearly two decades before its rise, speaks to the fact that—for all Trump’s railing against “global-ism”—his ideas are yet another manifestation of a long-standing global ideology, rooted in part in structural economic circumstances.

Just look at the way that far-right parties are on the rise in Europe, all spouting nationalist rhetoric like Trump’s. Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban, for instance, cited similar threats. These included a "multicultural, mixed population,” and an "alliance with multinational power groups." The threats also included a "coalition with financial speculators," including George Soros (as in Trump’s tweet above). Orban said: "Let's reject the ideology of globalism.” Unsurprisingly, along with their shared rhetoric, Orban and Trump share a positive relationship. In May 2019, Trump applauded the authoritarian Orban for having “done a tremendous job in so many different ways.”

This kind of nationalist fascism and authoritarianism is a potent recipe for social control via scapegoating marginalized groups and actively fomenting hatred and fear. Ironically, it also happens to serve elite power in the very way that Trumpists claim to oppose. Trump’s calls to “drain the swamp” and make the government more honest have, of course, been entirely disingenuous.