Donald Trump is America’s first elected autocrat. Seventy-seven million American voters — more than supported the Democrats — chose this outcome. Trump’s MAGA movement is driven by authoritarian populism. Trump is reveling in his role as a disrupting influence who is smashing America’s democratic norms, culture and institutions — and expectations of what is normal and even possible. As much as it enrages his detractors and others who find him contemptible, Donald Trump is a great man of history. There is America before Trump and Trumpism and MAGA and there is America after Trump and Trumpism and MAGA. Donald Trump is a nexus point.
Trumpism and MAGA’s rise to power here in the America is not an isolated phenomenon. It is part of a global turn towards authoritarian populism (and outright fascism and naked authoritarianism).
