Lebanese writer Hazem Saghieh combines political analysis with the sociology of culture and historical memory. He approaches the United States not merely as a country, but as an experiment in “modernity,” “capitalism,” and “liberal democracy,” in both their enlightened and darker dimensions.
For Saghieh, US President Donald Trump is not simply an American right-wing leader, but a symptom of a broader crisis within Western democracies, a shift in the United States’ role in the world, and a form of what he has repeatedly described as “political infantilism,” where populism intersects with narcissism, social media, and withdrawal from the international system.
In this interview with Daraj, we speak with Saghieh in an attempt to understand the Trump phenomenon and the world he is reshaping.
Trump as a Global Phenomenon
You have written that Trump is not merely an American predicament but a global one. In what sense does “Trumpism” go beyond the borders of the United States?
Behind the fascination with Trump lie several factors, including the familiar admiration for power and success, whatever those terms may mean. In our country and region more broadly, this fascination can also be understood as a product of the dire conditions to which the so-called “resistance” forces, and behind them the Khomeinist regime, have brought us, and of the resulting need for a “savior” who might push this nightmare off our chests.
Yet fascination, by its nature, disables the ability to see calmly, with even a minimum of objectivity, not to say critical vision. When we recall the fierce civil conflicts in our societies, it becomes understandable that enthusiasm comes to dominate positions, and enthusiasm is fascination’s close sibling.
Thus, it is a mistake not to pay attention to what you called the predicament embodied by Trumpism, which indeed “goes beyond the borders of the United States,” precisely because the United States itself transcends its borders. It is present and influential everywhere in the world, whether through its military or economic power, or its political influence, not to mention its immense presence in the economy, education, media, imagery, cinema, and more.
In this sense, the damage caused by rulers like Muammar Gaddafi and Idi Amin in Libya and Uganda, despite its magnitude, remains far less than the damage caused by a close counterpart of theirs in the United States. This is in addition to the disappointment felt by anyone who once believed America to be a stronghold of liberal democracy and progress in all its forms.
Moreover, fascination and success here are linked to the defeat of ideologies that once held sway. This does not apply only to Marxism, but also includes liberalism, social democracy, and traditional conservatism. It is clear that Trumpism, precisely because of its hollowness and lack of coherence, is capable of absorbing certain expressions of religious and nationalist consciousness, as well as some communal fanaticisms in our region and other parts of the world.
Indeed, it is an American predicament, but also a global one, especially given that the man was elected twice. Let us imagine for a moment that this person, who exercises unprecedented control over America and the world, who sits atop an immense movement of people, wealth, and decisions, and over the enormous advances in science, medicine, and technology, possesses a childish narcissism that drives him to insist on receiving a Nobel Prize, in the same way a child insists on getting his toy, and cannot tolerate a principle that emerged two centuries ago bearing its originator’s name, “Monroe,” turning it instead into “Donroe.”
He wants to see and hear his name constantly, to the point that his relationship with himself becomes something of a very heavy-handed joke. Personal makeup is no minor detail here, especially when temperament outweighs institutional continuity and function. Anyone who observes him can see that he is a chatterbox whose reactions are governed by impulse and instinct, vulgar, highly volatile, and incoherent. His stories resemble those of untalented, unlikable children: rambling, strange, and full of abrupt shifts in tone, with a deeply crude sense of humor and pronounced vulgarity. On top of this, he is both vindictive and envious.
“I was the first” to do this, or “I alone” said that, are phrases he repeats endlessly. If he drinks a glass of water, he reminds us that Biden and Obama cannot do the same. He despised and insulted Venezuelan opposition figure María Corina Machado because she received a Nobel Prize, before she later expressed her willingness to offer the prize to him.
He has no political record prior to winning the presidency. His rise was tied to the television show Celebrity Apprentice, and the most prominent personal news about him relates to his skill at tax evasion and to the lawsuits brought against him.
Trump was re-elected twice and has returned even stronger. What makes this phenomenon repeatable despite scandals and deep divisions?
Part of the answer lies in the vacuum I referred to earlier, and in the accompanying rise of populism, for which there seems to be no effective check. There is no doubt, however, that Trump’s repeated success points to a profound malfunction in democracy, in its modes of representation and operation, just as it points to the necessity of addressing and repairing that malfunction. The world has, of course, previously confronted Hitler’s electoral victory, which raised the urgent question of democratic reform and its necessity. Trump, despite all his crudeness, has not reached Hitler’s level. But Germany, which produced Hitler’s rise in 1933, was humiliated and starving as a result of World War I, the Treaty of Versailles, and the Great Depression. This is not the condition of the United States, however dire its circumstances may become.
If we move from generalization to specificity, we find many direct, if sometimes contradictory, reasons that help explain Trump’s success. There is the impoverishment of the traditional, white, industrial milieu caused by outsourcing, through the relocation of production units abroad. There is the fear within conservative environments of policies and theories surrounding sex markers for transgender and non-binary people. There is also anxiety about globalization, which has eliminated a number of jobs and, with the rise of artificial intelligence, threatens to eliminate many more.
Most notably, there is fear of immigration, which alters the demographic composition and balance and threatens the white Protestant majority. From this came the idea of building a wall with Mexico, perceived as Catholic and Latin. Matters were further compounded by the arrival in the United States of some eight million refugees who fled a starving Venezuela.
What we are dealing with, then, is a layered set of fears. Populist movements, by definition, respond to fear by magnifying it and by promising a return to what preceded it. This is precisely the meaning of making America “great again.”
Trumpism, in this sense, is a condition of the “pre-”: pre–local and international institutions, which Trump holds in contempt; pre-diplomacy, replaced by sheer force; pre–United Nations and the idea of collective international responsibility; pre-globalization as an attempt at global integration, countered instead through tariffs; pre–the reconciliation of capitalism, democracy, and the rule of law, through the primitive seizure of the raw materials deemed necessary; pre–America’s pluralism, through efforts to “purify” it of difference, even via mass deportations; and pre–the sensibilities produced by humanized progress, such as the rejection of racism, the emphasis on origin and place of birth (as in his campaign against Obama’s birthplace), and an aggressive masculinity deeply hostile to women.
Incidentally, some have drawn a link between Trump’s hatred of women and his hostility toward the state, based on the assumption that the state, as a welfare state that provides care and services, is an ultimate female figure. Indeed, if we recall that his brain is smaller than that of a chicken, he belongs to a stage prior to grasping a “problem” as an idea and as a concept.
Yet there are other reasons behind Trumpism beyond fear and the reaction to it by retreating to what came before. There is, for instance, widespread resentment toward the repressive atmosphere that has prevailed in American universities over the past three decades, where education has been disciplined according to the standards of political correctness, and any narrative diverging from radical, leftist identity politics has been silenced. This has often occurred with authoritarian crudity, governed by a Gramscian notion of “hegemony” over minds and hearts.
Added to this is the expansion and growing influence of social media, which has produced two consequences in this regard. On the one hand, there has been a decline in shared references of knowledge, further shrinking the space for public debate and opening the door to the poisoning of public life with unverifiable, false knowledge. It should not be forgotten that Trump himself governs more through tweets than through any other means. On the other hand, there has been a waning interest in reading and serious research, reinforced by the retreat of history and philosophy as fields of study, in favor of disciplines believed to generate wealth, such as business and technology and their offshoots. This has unfolded amid the dominance of the religion of money, in the sense discussed by Karl Marx in On the Jewish Question. The key expression here is: “I made it.” Whoever cannot say this about themselves is deemed a failure.
In truth, Vice President J.D. Vance is the most prominent embodiment of this outlook. He comes from a modest background and a broken family, and wrote his memoir, which cinema later adapted into a film. His wife, Usha, the daughter of Indian immigrants, succeeded, like him, in reaching Yale University, long seen as a preserve of the elite. Many people with such trajectories think along these lines: if I succeeded, why shouldn’t other poor people succeed as well? They must therefore be “failures,” and the deep flaw lies within them, not within the socio-economic system.
This is compounded by the weakening of the Democratic Party after it was effectively “nationalized” first by the Clinton dynasty and then by the Obama dynasty, a process that stifled the renewal of its elites and the emergence of new ideas. At the same time, the Democratic milieu, infused with an excessive dose of NGO-style simplification, focused in a deeply unbalanced way on cultural, gender, and ethnic issues, to the point that questions of poverty and economic conditions were almost entirely sidelined, despite having long been central to the Democratic Party’s close relationship with labor unions.
As a result, Trump was left to claim representation of these concerns through his reckless policies and demagogic promises. He appeared as the revolutionary defending the interests of “the people,” while Democrats came across as affluent, condescending liberal elites clustered in major cosmopolitan cities, defending “soulless” institutions and laws that benefit only the rich. Did not Joe Biden’s presidency witness a denial of the sharp inflation that occurred, even though Biden was positioned “to the left” of Obama?
In enumerating the reasons behind Trump’s rise, one cannot ignore the role played by the support of major tech industry tycoons and their donations to his campaigns, especially during his second, current term. The choice of Vance as vice president further reinforced this tendency, given his friendship with German-American entrepreneur Peter Thiel and his close ties to this sector, which, incidentally, is among the most exclusively male-dominated industries. It is also well known that during his presidency, Biden used his regulatory powers to subject cryptocurrencies to securities law. These regulations angered cryptocurrency advocates, who constitute a significant segment of Trump’s supporters in Silicon Valley. Within this milieu, there also prevails an assumption, supported by ample evidence, that Trump grants larger contracts to companies with massive venture capital, particularly artificial intelligence firms whose products and software are sold to the military. This is linked, on the one hand, to competition with China in a field Trump views as a matter of life and death, and, on the other, to the use of artificial intelligence in monitoring the border with Mexico and deploying it extensively to control migration.
Here too, Biden was seen as less friendly to this sector than Obama.
I believe there is yet another cause behind the Trump phenomenon, one that is distant and entirely indirect, but whose effects Trump has nonetheless been able to capitalize on, not only in the United States but across the West, benefiting reactionaries, isolationists, and nationalists of all stripes.
The independence movements and liberation struggles in the “Third World” produced disreputable models such as the regimes of Khomeini, Saddam, Assad, Gaddafi, Kim Jong-un, Idi Amin, and Bokassa, along with civil wars, religious fanaticisms, mass migrations fleeing persecution, and the difficulty of claiming successful integration experiences. I believe that phenomena of this kind reinforce, in the West, feelings of distinction and superiority of the sort expressed by Trump.
Personality and “Political Narcissism”
What makes Trump’s personality a political factor in its own right? Are we facing childish narcissism, or a cold skill in reading the masses?
I believe that the search for a “savior” among those who fear and are anxious about the future makes attachment to any charlatan or madman possible, especially in light of the major decline of grand ideologies since the end of the Cold War.
One of the things we learn from this is that the collapse of the Soviet Union and its bloc, while remaining a major gain for humanity in freeing it from a totalitarian empire, was at the same time a major setback for things that would have been better not to lose. The gain represented by the retreat of the “grand narratives” loses much of its value when that retreat turns into something resembling extinction. This is not only an intellectual issue, but one that directly affects people’s living conditions. What this experience teaches us is that the presence of a strong, coherent left, one that does not govern but opposes, is absolutely necessary, because it sets limits on the excesses of capitalism in the form represented by Trumpism and its many smaller variants. Let us not forget that it was precisely because of the strength of the communist parties in France and Italy after World War II that the Marshall Plan for reconstruction was launched and that the welfare state emerged on the foundations of Keynesian economics.
How do you explain Trump’s persistent grudges against rivals who have already exited the political scene?
The man is a mixture of envy and vindictiveness. Beyond his swollen, childish narcissism, this points to a fragile personality that draws its strength from “defeating” real or imagined enemies, who are constantly summoned daily and to the maximum extent possible, without limits. Can any responsible, mature person say what he once said, that if Iran attempted to assassinate him, he would wipe Iran off the face of the earth? Statements like this make even the rhetoric of Iran’s ayatollahs sound measured and mature by comparison.
What is the significance of his network of relationships with celebrities in manufacturing his political aura?
There is no doubt that the world of spectacle, image, and notoriety is central here. Belonging to it grants the base individual additional gratification for a hungry ego, along with platforms that help him “reach” others, or at least give him the illusion of doing so. In Britain, for example, particularly after the death of Princess Diana, one could observe the enormous compensatory role played by voyeurism into the news of the royal family and the tendency to identify with it and with its members, and by extension with the world of the rich and famous more broadly. Cinema and television series have long invested heavily in this phenomenon, as is well known.
Institutions, the State, and the International Order
Trump has dealt with the United Nations, NATO, and international institutions with clear contempt. What does this say about his worldview?
When hostility toward institutions and laws as a matter of principle is combined with isolationism, and with the rejection of the idea of responsibility and of rights entailing obligations, this triad places us squarely before the coarseness that defines Trumpian conduct.
How do you read the idea of “seizing resources” as a component of his political discourse, from Greenland to Venezuela to Gaza?
This too is the product of the convergence of the previous factors. The result, by leaping over state sovereignties, is a return to a bygone colonial era, one that inevitably recalls what some have called the “primitive accumulation of capital,” where violence, enslavement, and conquest are employed to seize land and resources. Major historical events such as the colonization of the Americas, the African slave trade, and the Opium Wars in China provided prominent examples of this process, which we once believed had become a thing of the past.
Can the models of Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani serve as a lever for a path now taking shape to confront Trump?
I believe that the Sanders–Mamdani duo represents one of the possible, or hoped-for, currents of opposition. Mamdani, however, is a New York–specific phenomenon that is difficult to replicate in other cities. As for Sanders, who advocates a Scandinavian model, the culture of the most backward and fanatical sectors portrays him as a “commy,” a term of exclusion used by the rabble for communism. For these groups, even the mildest demand for reform and justice appears “commy,” making Sanders seem as though he were proposing a North Korean model, rather than a Scandinavian one, to Americans.
What I want to say is that Trump does not represent merely a political crisis for America and the world, but a civilizational crisis. This requires a kind of civilizational convergence, if the expression is valid, in order to bring him down.
That said, the midterm elections at the end of this year will be an important indicator, and Trump knows this well. Just days ago, he warned Republicans that if they fail to win those elections, he could be impeached. In the very same statement, and in keeping with his habit of saying contradictory things, he also spoke of canceling those elections as a possibility.
One must also keep an eye open to the possibility of a sudden collapse, particularly on the economic front, or perhaps a resounding scandal that would be difficult to overcome or conceal. Collapses and scandals are necessarily associated with a person like Trump and with behavior like his.
Trump and the American Right
Since World War II, the United States has experienced several waves of the right. What makes Trump stronger than figures like Reagan or Bush? And has the Republican Party today become Trump’s party, or does a conservative right still exist without Trump?
America has indeed known more than one extremist model, among them George Wallace, the segregationist who ran four times for the presidency between 1964 and 1972, without ever securing his party’s nomination.
The same applies to the anti-Semite Pat Buchanan, who defended Nazi criminals. Barry Goldwater, known for his hostility to New Deal policies and especially for his call to use nuclear weapons to curb communist expansion, did succeed in securing his party’s nomination in 1964, but he suffered a crushing defeat.
America also experienced McCarthyism with the onset of the Cold War, but it did not last long and remained confined to the United States, while Europe was living through a successful marriage between democracy and socialism. There was, of course, Richard Nixon, who cooperated with the McCarthy committee, was known for his anti-Semitism, and whose rise was seen as a reaction to Lyndon Johnson’s reformist “Great Society.”
Nixon’s greatest impact, however, was in foreign policy, and it was generally positive. He signed the SALT Treaty with the Soviet Union in 1972 and opened relations with Maoist China.
Something similar applies, to one extent or another, to Ronald Reagan. Although it was during his era that we began to hear about the “conservative revolution” and the influence of the evangelical right, and that the dismantling of the state, its institutions, and its services began, mirrored by Margaret Thatcher in Britain, Reagan’s most important achievement remained the strengthening of NATO and winning the struggle against the Soviet Union through the “Star Wars” initiative, after which the Soviet Union soon collapsed.
With George H. W. Bush, the ideological dimension receded and politics reaffirmed its rotation around the center. Extremism returned with George W. Bush through the “neoconservatives,” but even they were internationalist and interventionist. They were also a reaction against Henry Kissinger’s “realism,” arguing for the compatibility of interests and values. In this sense, they were the opposite of Trump’s policies. From here, in addition to Trump’s volatility and improvisation, emerged his crisis with John Bolton.
As an extension of Reaganism, the Tea Party movement also appeared within the Republican Party as a reaction to Democratic policies, emphasizing the “small state” and opposing government spending, especially, a few years after its emergence, Obama’s healthcare program, which expanded access to medical care.
But it is with Trump that we see, for the first time, three distinctive phenomena, in addition to electoral success:
First, the extent to which institutions have been marginalized in favor of the supposed savior. Trump, as has become abundantly clear, is hostile to all the institutions that traditionally organized American life, and hostile to the very idea of thinking about politics. He alone embodies salvation from a corrupt and diseased life.
Accordingly, his entourage does not include politicians or intellectuals. There is no Kissinger, Brzezinski, or George Kennan, but rather real estate developers, high-tech company owners, personal friends, and relatives. Naturally, in such a milieu, it would be absurd to look for people of color, or even for white Americans who are not wealthy.
The Republican Party itself has come to resemble his personal group in a direct and intimate sense, as though the relationship were akin to that between Hafez al-Assad and the Baath Party. There is no longer a figure within the party like John McCain, or even Liz Cheney.
Second, hostility toward institutions, which dismantles the national fabric and the consensus around a reference point to which everyone can appeal. This was clearly evident in Trump’s denial of the COVID-19 pandemic and its treatment, a denial he repeated some 40 times, as well as his refusal to acknowledge the existence of a devastating environmental problem in the world. There was also the sharp decline, during his tenure, in federal government spending on scientific research, threatening the standing of American universities compared to Chinese ones. On another level, there was his incitement to storm the Capitol and his questioning of the results of the presidential election he lost to Biden, an act tantamount to incitement to a coup in a country known for its constitutional continuity.
The common denominator in all these positions is the sidelining of rational standards and the replacement of science and medicine with myths and conspiracy theories, and of objective knowledge with tweets. Institutions lose all standing, and Trump, in violation of the Constitution, may even contemplate a third term.
The third phenomenon is hostility toward Europe and NATO, contrasted with special, personalized relationships shaped by mood with strongmen such as Putin, Netanyahu, Orbán, and more recently the Syrian president Ahmad al-Sharaa, whom Trump has repeatedly described as “strong.”
What is most dangerous about the relationship with Europe, the continent from which two world wars emerged in the last century, is pushing it toward militarization and rearmament in ways that impoverish it and could once again lead to its ruin and to global devastation. Trump’s hatred of Europe stems from his hatred of liberalism, of supranational unions, of Europe’s tendency to break with its colonial past, which he sees as European laxity toward non-Western peoples represented by refugees and migrants, and of the principle of cultural pluralism. It is worth noting that the Europe Trump besieges from one side is besieged by Putin from another, and by postcolonial movements from a third.
Trump recently claimed that he resolved three major issues with Netanyahu in a five-minute meeting. But in addition to impoverishing politics, thought, and institutions, he also impoverishes language itself, reducing it to no more than twenty words, most of them exaggerated descriptors.
If it is true that his second term shed some of the flaws of the first, particularly his obsession with changing ministers and officials, making it appear more stable and reasonable, the fundamentals have not changed.
Trump and the Middle East
In the Middle East, is it realistic to rely on Trump economically or politically? Or is alliance with him a case of “short-term gain, long-term loss”?
I believe relying on him is alarming, because by principle he is not someone one can rely on. His temperament is volatile, and his interests, or his assessment of them, can shift abruptly. Weak states like ours must think carefully after his threat toward Denmark over Greenland, and in light of the small-merchant mentality that governs him. The proposed “Peace Council” for Gaza, conditioned on paying one billion dollars to participate, is merely one example of this logic.
Even if we were to overlook his policies toward countries like Venezuela and Iran because of their political systems, which of course we should not, what about Denmark? His insistence on Greenland should frighten every weak country, because it means that nothing offers protection except force. How much more dangerous is it, then, when the application of this approach in the Middle East is entrusted to a criminal like Netanyahu? In Lebanon’s specific case, any delay in disarming Hezbollah provides further pretexts for the Trump–Netanyahu duo to activate the principle of brute force and impose it on our necks.
What Does Trump Add to Political Thought?
There is no doubt that it is a deeply pessimistic idea. Hegel taught his students that there is a “cunning of reason,” whereby reason makes use of the great heroes of history, or “world-historical individuals,” exploiting their ambitions, desires, and egotism to bring about major transformations through which the consciousness of freedom, and freedom’s consciousness of itself, advance.
Figures such as Alexander, Julius Caesar, and Napoleon were driven by desires for power and greatness, yet reason, through its cunning, was able to use them to serve its own purposes, pushing history to a higher stage.
What we are witnessing with Trump is one of the cases that invalidate this interpretation. It appears that if that reason or spirit (Geist) exists at all, it is too weak to overcome unreason and transcend it. Unreason, too, makes use of figures like Trump, who render life less rational and less free.
