Carnival – POP

In this article, Lisa Gaufman presents her (open access) book The Trump Carnival: Populism, Transgression and the Far Right, written with Bharath Ganesh.

Donald Trump’s political philosophy is often overshadowed by the sheer volume of his controversies. Yet at its heart lies a carnival of transgressions—norm-breaking, taboo-violating, and hierarchy-flipping—that has shaped the far-right’s approach to democracy.

As his rhetoric grows bolder and his disregard for rules extends from domestic to foreign policy, understanding the Trump carnival is essential to grasp the erosion of democratic norms in the U.S. and beyond.

His imperialist designs are part of a broader approach to politics, democracy, and foreign policy.

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What is going on in Germany? The country which is supposed to lead European’s economy is plagued by anti-Muslim movements like Pegida, several important strikes (the last one from the Lufthansa pilots), and today the Blockupy movement protests in Frankfurt. They demonstrate against the inauguration of the headquarters of the European Central Bank, hosted in the new Eurotower.

Blockupy is an anti-capitalist network including around 90 organizations from several European countries, showing interesting similitudes of style and content with the protests against the WTO in Seattle in 1999.

With a populist touch, they want to ”draw attention to ECB policies which, they say, have favored the rich over the poor, the banks over the people, the creditor class over debtors – policies that have amounted to bailing out irresponsible financiers at the expense of ordinary citizens”.

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