TY  - JOUR
A1  - Fuchs, Christian
T1  - Donald Trump: A critical theory-perspective on authoritarian capitalism
T2  - TripleC
N2  - This paper analyses economic power, state power and ideological power in the age of Donald Trump with the help of critical theory. It applies the critical theory approaches of thinkers such as Franz Neumann, Theodor W. Adorno and Erich Fromm. It analyses changes of US capitalism that have together with political anxiety and demagoguery brought about the rise of Donald Trump. This article draws attention to the importance of state theory for understanding Trump and the changes of politics that his rule may bring about. It is in this context important to see the complexity of the state, including the dynamic relationship between the state and the economy, the state and citizens, intra-state relations, inter-state relations, semiotic representations of and by the state, and ideology. Trumpism and its potential impacts are theorised along these dimensions. The ideology of Trump (Trumpology) has played an important role not just in his business and brand strategies, but also in his political rise. The (pseudo-)critical mainstream media have helped making Trump and Trumpology by providing platforms for populist spectacles that sell as news and attract audiences. By Trump making news in the media, the media make Trump. An empirical analysis of Trump’s rhetoric and the elimination discourses in his NBC show The Apprentice underpins the analysis of Trumpology. The combination of Trump’s actual power and Trump as spectacle, showman and brand makes his government’s concrete policies fairly unpredictable. An important question that arises is what social scientists’ role should be in the conjuncture that the world is experiencing.
KW  - Donald Trump
KW  - critical theory
KW  - capitalism
KW  - political economy
KW  - Franz L. Neumann
KW  - Theodor W. Adorno
KW  - Erich Fromm
KW  - authoritarian statism
KW  - state theory
KW  - ideology critique
KW  - USA
KW  - United States politics
KW  - 2016 US presidential election
Y1  - 2017
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/53673
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-536731
SN  - 1726-670X
N1  - tripleC is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal (ISSN: 1726-670X). All journal content, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Austria License.
VL  - 15
IS  - 1
SP  - 1
EP  - 72
PB  - Unified Theory of Information Research Group
CY  - Vienna
ER  -