Trump’s Necro-Populism

The next speaker in this ICA 2018 session is Jack Bratich, who introduces the concept of necro-populism as a description of the Trump Presidency. Hardcore Trump supporters present a particular form of fan culture: they engage in adolescent military play-acting, and can be described as fanboys of tyranny engaging in a form of militant cosplay.

This acknowledges the artificiality of this display; it takes an ironic stance and reuses the visual symbols of ruined empires (Sparta, Rome, the Southern Confederacy, the Third Reich) or uses those of mythical empires (Kekistan). It also displayed an indifference to one’s own survival in an era of decline and has spawned a fashion style called fashwave – it has a necropolitical, carnivalesque element.

Part of this is an attempt to create an infrastructure in ruins, as expressed for instance in Steve Bannon’s exhortations to deconstruct the state, slowly or more quickly. There is a sense that ‘Western’ culture only deserves to survive if it has the will to do so, as Trump himself has said. This is also deeply caught up with misogyny: domestic terrorists and incels are obsessed with the murder and abuse of women, in particular.

This is also not simply a populist insurgency, but rather a downsurgency. It is an example of populor, in the Latin sense: of depopulation in order to build a new, different society.