A wave of authoritarian populism has flooded many parts of the world. It has common attributes while simultaneously being specific to a given country’s political culture, society and vulnerabilities.
In the United States, the great flooding wave of authoritarian populism manifests in the form of Trumpism, MAGA and the larger neofascist anti-democracy movement. Its origins include but are not limited to (much earned) rage at the elites and the ruling class, extreme wealth and income inequality. There is also sclerotic social mobility, a society that is undergoing rapid demographic and other changes, globalization and the neoliberal gangster capitalist order, a sense that the American Dream for most is dying if not dead, future shock and the rise of social media, AI, and other digital culture(s), technofeudalism, loneliness and social atomization, a decline in happiness, a larger crisis of personal meaning and aggrieved entitlement.
