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Why has Donald Trump won an enormous victory not just amongst the electoral college votes but the popular vote too? For decades both parties have pursued economic policies that were developed in the Nixon and Reagan eras, which have benefitted finance capital over American society. The Democrats have simply offered more of the same, whilst Trump has presented a racist, nativist solution. Here the rest of my analysis in this special post election recording. I will be running a livestream Q&A for
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In anticipation of today’s vote, the Explaining History Podcast dissects the road to Trumpism, how four decades of neoliberal economics led to the current polarised, oligarchic political moment.I will be running a livestream Q&A for students on Wednesday November 20th. You can access it here, subscribe to the channel to get your reminder.Help the podcast to continue bringing you history each weekIf you enjoy the Explaining History podcast and its many years of content and would like to help the
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Britain is abandoning its commitments to human rights and the protection of refugees, established after the Second World War. Brexit has given the extreme right of the Conservative Party an opportunity to persecute the world’s most desperate people.
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It’s worth reflecting that in the past 2-3 months the following things have happened: It can be tempting to ascribe meaning to clusters of events, and it’s in the nature of human beings to do so. Our understanding of the world is shaped into narratives which by their very nature include some facts and exclude others. Are there some object lessons we can learn from the disparate events of the last few months without making generalisations that are to broad and too sweeping? Perhaps. Let’s look at the failings of the global right by examining Britain, America and Brazil. There…
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One of the defining features of American political discourse in the 21st Century is the almost unstoppable rise of political lying. Throughout the Obama presidency an ecosystem of right wing think tanks, commentators and of course Fox News has propagated everything from willful distortions of events and selective readings of policy to outright fabrication. Donald Trump recognised the political potential of this when he became the centre of the ‘birther’ movement, which alleged that Barack Obama was not born in the USA and was ineligible to be president. Conspiracy theories in American politics have deep roots, however and one of…