As Heather Cox Richardson has noted in her Letter from an American this morning:
The plan, as Vice President J.D. Vance explained in a 2021 interview, is to destroy the current government, business, educational, cultural, and scientific pillars of the United States in order to replace them with a new system, although there is tension between the Project 2025 wing of MAGA and the technocrats' wing over whether that new system will be a theocracy or a technocracy. In either case, it will be an authoritarian government in which power and money concentrate in a very few hands.
I think this is a fair summary of the Trump game plan. I think the conflict she notes does exist.
This view is consistent with the opinion of Robert Reuch that I noted yesterday when he said:
Trump's major interest is capitulation itself. Surrender is the whole point. He and those under him who are managing these extortionate initiatives want headlines that say “they” have surrendered to him — whether “they” is a country, a major university, a large law firm, a big nonprofit, even a Democratic state like California. Surrender is the point. Domination is his goal. (It always has been.)
Each surrender feeds the public impression that Trump wants fed — that he is all-powerful, invincible, and able to get every person, institution, and country to cower to him. He knows intuitively that each capitulation feeds his power — because power is itself an impression; invincibility, the consequence of everyone's capitulation.
If we look at Trump's plans as the act of a rational person, they make no sense, as I have suggested this morning. They are, in fact, mad, in the sense that what is being done is detached from reality. But to Trump and those around him, that does not matter. They think that they are creating a new reality, which is based on power and which has the goal of delivering either the technocratic autocracy or theocracy to which Heather Cox Richardson refers.
The really worrying thing about all this is that it would appear that our politicians in the UK are wholly unaware that this is the goal of the Trump administration. Whilst they say that we are dealing with a new world order, both when it comes to peace and trade, what they are not recognising is that this new order is being promoted with the sole purpose of destroying the structure of society in the UK, and of course, most other countries around the world. The aim is to make every country either a subservient or vassal state of the USA or to be its enemy, which has to be crushed.
Trump is not seeking through the policies that he is promoting to simply transform the way in which the US domestic economy is managed, or the way in which its democracy (or lack of it) is structured. His ego is far too big for such a limited goal. He is seeking to crush opposition to his goals and those of his partners, wherever in the world they might arise.
Anyone who cannot see this is missing the obvious signs. Trump is already using his new tariffs as a weapon to impose his views, regulatory requirements, patterns of behaviour, forms of justice and perverted approach to freedom of speech on the world. These tariffs are not serious economic tools. They are weapons for negotiation so that countries might then concede to US authority in a vain attempt to avoid their impact, at a cost of the loss of democracy, accountability and self-government within those countries that capitulate.
The sooner that the world realises that we are at war with a fascist tyrant in the USA, the better off we will be. There might, in retrospect, have been some justification for appeasement in the 1930s. There is none now. Nor is there room for negotiation. The agenda that Trump is pursuing is already so clear that we need not prevaricate. We only need to oppose. The price of not doing so will be very high indeed.
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If, as you assert (& which I accept) that Trump’s plans are mad then I’m not sure there is any benefit from analysing them. If a nutter insists that the moon is made of stilton – what is the point in engaging apart from hoping he gets better.
The best thing that the EU can do is detach itself from the USA. The UK, likewise although that would probably require a replacement of many/most/all the politicos and the upper echelons. UK & EU needs to make themselves independent of the USA, industrially, commercially, financially, militarily, politically. Independence day if you like. Even if the US recovers from this madness, an arms length (barge pole length?) relationship will be healthier. For far too long Europe has seen the USA as an ally, it ain’t, it never has been.
Much to agree with.
Thank you, both.
@ Mike: Are you following the progress of Dominique de Villepin. He’s making headway with what’s left of the Gaullists and on the left. I get the feeling that Villepin was ahead of his time. When I watch him on French tv, I also think of Jack Straw.
Thanks.
In response to Col Smithers – no not following Villepin but I am hopeful that the French are starting to “get it” – obvs the Baltics already do, ditto Poland and Germany. “Getting it seems” to be a direct function of distance from Moscow for a given capital. Which is unfortunate & a reflection of the inability to build an EU in which “we are all in this together”.
Was at Round Point Schumann today (meeting an ex-Commissioner) – lots of either Korean or Japanese activity @ the European external action service.
If what Richard says is correct, I can’t see any other outcome but some form of violence arising as Trump’s opponents both within the US and around the world refuse to cooperative with his megalomaniac agenda.
With the exception of our pathetic torylab politicians, other countries are pushing back. Australia, Canada, China etc.
As for internal resistance to him? I don’t know but however stupid a lot of yanks are, there are still a lot who aren’t and will push back. PSR seems to think so and he’s better informed than I am.
The one exception? The UK poodle.
Richard ,we should be scared. I know that I am, for our country, for our children and our world. All the freedoms that our ancestors fought for are under threat. We should never stand with evil and greed . We need to be united and stand for the better of all mankind, not the few. Our poorer countries are hit hard…. we live in a world with more than enough resources to share and feed everyone but we choose not to. It all seems very out of control. This is where all countries need to step up and be accountable for their people because what happens next and the decisions they make determine the kind of world we and our children and future generations will live in.
Why not be scared?
Only the irrational are not.
There’s a disturbing clarity in both Richardson’s summary and Reich’s framing of Trumpism as a doctrine of domination. The key insight, though, is not just that Trump is seeking power—it’s that he’s attempting to redefine reality around that power. This is not politics as we know it; it’s the pursuit of submission for its own sake, the weaponisation of chaos to create a vacuum that only authoritarianism can fill.
What’s most concerning is how many liberal democracies, especially the UK, still treat this threat as either a domestic American eccentricity or a temporary fever. It’s neither. Project 2025 is not just a policy platform—it’s an existential challenge to the liberal democratic order. And if Europe fails to detach and defend its own values now, we may find ourselves negotiating with a superpower that no longer even pretends to share them.
The idea of “Independence Day” from the US is not as radical as it might sound—it’s the geopolitical equivalent of setting boundaries with a partner in crisis. We can’t wait for America to “get better.” We have to prepare for the possibility it won’t.
Agreed
The UK is a pretty cork bobbing around on an ocean dominated by the US, China and the EU. It is going to be absolutely fascinating to see how the large trading blocks respond to the US splashing around making big waves. China and perhaps also the EU have large enough internal economies and groups of friends, and enough patience, that they might just shrug and turn away, and wait to see what happens.
The US appears to be busily decoupling itself from friends and allies and clients and followers that it has cultivated for the best part of a century. This is creating a more multipolar world in which the geopolitical and economic power of the US is diminished. Quite extraordinary for a country to do this by choice.
The thing we have to be aware of though is Trump’s potential use of the U.S.military.
We can work around the U.S. I am sure because they are so stupid and hubristic it’s like an open goal. And if we use cunning, we could pull it off.
But I cannot ignore this other feeling I have in that they are goading the rest of us into action if only to justify a more violent reaction.
As ordinary Americans cotton onto what he has done (there are millions of photographers in the U.S!!), and his popularity might plummet, there is nothing like a quickly concocted war to make you popular when your economic plans go to shit- as Margert Thatcher.
As you have said, this is unchartered territory.
Richard, I only recently discovered about the McKinley Tax brought in in the U.S.A in 1890. Do you think in any way this is comparable with the present scenario?
Yes, it is
And it was a disaster
From the Telegraph:
“Donald Trump’s sweeping new tariffs have sparked a global scramble to sign free trade deals with the US. The rush follows warnings that countries that strike an agreement first are likely to get better treatment.
Mr Trump has said countries will have to offer something “phenomenal” in order to win lower tariffs as world leaders race to strike deals.
The US president told reporters aboard Air Force One last night: “Every country is calling us. That’s the beauty of what we do.
“If we would have asked these countries to do us a favour they would have said no. Now they will do anything for us.”
Mr Trump said he was open to negotiating trade agreements with other countries, but warned their offers would have to be “phenomenal”.
I suspect the something “phenomenal” will be countries allowing whatever wealth they may have, be it rare earth minerals or something else, to be signed over to Trump’s crime syndicate in perpetuity; it’s what Trump wants Ukraine to do in return for sweet F-all.
The Trump (aka “Bonespurs”) regime is nothing more than a grubby a criminal enterprise, led by a grubby, cowardly, orange blob whose stock-in-trade is blackmail, bribery and extortion whether of individuals, universities, legal firms, states, countries and now the whole world. This is nothing more than a gigantic swindle.
I feel sick to my stomach that countries maybe calling this contemptible creep to kneel at his feet to beg for mercy.
United we (should) stand!
The terms with the UK are easuy to imagine
End free speech here
End the NHS
Let Blackrock run the economy
And that Parcel of Rogues, Starmer, Reeves and Streeting are just the people to deliver it all to him.
Thank you, Richard.
Overnight, I received an e-mail from my former employer, now UK Finance. The trade body is engaging the Cabinet Office and European Commission and notes the following:
Both parties see the review of the trade and cooperation agreement as a technical tidy-up.
The UK has “red lines as stated in the Labour manifesto”*, so no return to the single market, customs union and free movement.
The government would like to engage the EU in existing international fora, e.g. the WTO and NATO and Basel Committee. Defence is as important a pillar as the economy. There’s no mention of the environment and other fields for cooperation.
Even with the Trump tariffs and other isolationist and unilateral measures, the government does not think anything substantial has changed, so will continue with current policy, so a trade deal with the US is still on the agenda. The UK also wishes to enhance cooperation with Switzerland, named, and other like minded countries.
This is madness…
Starmer wants to assume Trump has not changed the world
He most certainly has
Developing view in Bx/EC is WTO is dead.
But no surprise that Starmer is backing a dead duck.
It needs to be replaced though asap
I’ll just repeat my comment that Trump is not mad. At least, not in the clinical sense. He is a narcissistic sociopath, but those are personality traits, not mental illnesses.
The clear danger is that a man with those traits is now, arguably, the most powerful person in the world; backed by immense tech influence and secretive, fabulously wealthy organisations. Those two power blocks have never, and will never, deviate from their stated aims – in tech, to own the global software market, giving them the ability to manipulate minds and even the “truth”, and in the organisations, the imposition of a theocratic government.
The tech billionaires have only one ideology – money. The secretive organisations have more than one, but they differ only by a gnat’s knacker – Christian Nationalism.
So yes. Be afraid. Because the longer Starmer continues to parrot the phrase “America is our greatest ally” the shorter our time becomes to build the barricades.
Hannah
I described a particular belief as mad.
I did not say Trump was mad.
It is an important distinction.
Richard
You’re quite right, Richard, and I apologise. My comment was not aimed at your use of the word in the context you postulated. I suppose I’m attempting to rid the narrative of anything which hints of some sort of insanity in Trump himself.
However, as you rightly say, (many of) his beliefs are utterly insane.
Thanks
All good points…. I am continually disappointed by our representatives. They seem to be very happy to suggest that they are suffering slightly less bullying than others, rather than object or take a principled stand. We are presenting a weak, pathetic and unprincipled face to the world. In the US, and outwith the US, people are objecting — in the US, Republican Senators are avoiding seeing ‘the people’. Trump’s position could unravel very very quickly. Trump will flip / adjust when he believes that he cannot dominate his voters – Judges are not being targeted as much (some have shown they are not so easily silenced). Voters have shifted away from GoP. The EU and China’s responses will fairly soon impact normal American people – revealing Trump’s lies. GOP politicians are weak (look how they switched to Trump) – they will soon pivot. Commentators will (belatedly) discover that tariffs have been a disaster in the past. The triumphalism will collapse. Trump will be forced to adjust his position (as long as he hasn’t managed to gain complete control by that time).
And where will that leave the UK? Isolated, Pathetic, Untrusted, Unreliable and without any allies. Starmer and Co, seem unable to look more that a few days ahead. Rachel from accounts is so busy adjusting her 5 year forecast based on today’s updated predictions, she doesn’t see the futility of her micro-corrections. You don’t steer a yacht, a car, a bike or a scooter that way – never mind a national economy.
Strangely, I’m slightly more hopeful than last month…. But for Europe – not so much the UK.
So it seems that all three major axes of power in the world are now at best authoritarian and at worst actively fascist. Where do we turn? And where will non-aligned countries turn?
On a practical level, how do we divorce ourselves from an ally with whom we have such intimate military, intelligence, economic, financial and social ties – it is the work of decades I would suggest.
How do we guard against the barbarians at the gate, when they own both the gate and the gatekeepers?
On another note (re T’s madness), I read this very interesting (maybe overlong) article describing a newly powerful, seemingly ecumenical religious force that bears zero relationship to the CofE christianity that I grew up with, and which provides a (twisted) intellectual framework for T’s societal destruction: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/02/new-apostolic-reformation-christian-movement-trump/681092/
We can only align with Europe, plus Canda, Mexixo, Japan, Korea, Asutralia, New Zealand and, I hope others.
We need to have the vision to create a new world order.
Thanks for that link, Peter. I remember Peter Wagner from his days in the Church Growth Movement but I hadn’t realised how far he’d gone down the rabbit hole before he died.
The British scene is significantly different, both inside and outside the churches – Britain is a much more secular culture than the USA – but there are some disturbing trends, and some groups in our society that may be prone to spiritual and political exploitation.
I notice in many accounts of the growth of Christo-nationalism, the adherents stop attending church, and they stop studying their bibles in any systematic way. The bible becomes a source of out-of-context but authoritative proof texts.
In the charismatic groups the “prophetic” element in the movement is very significant, because it allows an enormous opportunity for mass and personal manipulation in very specific ways including spiritual, political and physical abuse.
The focus on spiritual warfare is also v helpful when you want to demonise your opponent rather than demolish their ideology or refute their factual evidence-based arguments. You just accuse them of being a tool of Satan. Job done, and you can reassure yourself that they deserve all they get.
Lest secular people get too smug about this I’ve seen exactly the same tools used in the secular world of politics – how easy it is for the true disciples (on left or right) to demonise opponents as Trots, class enemies, imperialist Zionists, Putin sympathisers, Corbyn cultists, MAGA fools, – these are words that can be used in a quasi religious sense, and to challenge their use is to be labelled as unclean by your opponents.
.
But when it truly becomes “faith based” and made immune from facts or historical reality – whether in the world of religion or secular “isms” then we are in trouble – then it gets very dangerous and very effective too.
And that is where we are now, in danger of becoming caught in a “religious” war of “isms” and cultures and kingdoms, when what really matters is improving the lot of our fellow human beings. Yes, even including our “enemies”, because if you don’t want to improve the lot of disillusioned rust-belt MAGA supporters in Michigan, or struggling left-behind Reform UK voters in my neighbourhood, as well as families in Gaza, Myanmar, or Sudan or Northern Nigeria, then we aren’t on the zame side. (I spent this morning in conversation with a friend from Gaza)
Thanks Mr Fenton for the link. Scanning through I was struck by the parallels with other utopian belief systems e.g. USSR & neoliberalism.
“Wagner became captivated by a concept called dominionism, …………..God was calling his people to establish the Kingdom now”.
All based on what, exactly? ….earliest bit of the New Testament – Ryland’s fragment (circa 120AD) has bits of various gospels – oh dear……..the word of god? don’t think so.
King James VI bible is a great work of art and bits of it are highly relevant to humans/society. Word of god? don’t make me laugh.
The imbecile Wagner is no different to Hayek and the other morons that worsphipped at the alter of the god of neoliberalism.
Like Hayek he wants us to worship the god he defines.
Seriously, why are Starmer, Lammy, Rayner, Reeves and other politicians not calling Trump out?
Surely, now more than ever its time to take a solid moral stance. If not now, when? Seriously, what are they waiting for? What more needs to happen? How many more lives need to be put at risk and lost? What’s the worst that can happen? There is no point entering politics if this is what its all about. These politicians are utterly and completely useless, and shameful. Many, many people are hugely disenfranchised and in complete despair.
The facts speaks for themselves:
Trump’s false or misleading claims total 30573 over 4 years – https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/01/24/trumps-false-or-misleading-claims-total-30573-over-four-years/
Mehdi Debunks Vance’s Immigration Lies
https://zeteo.com/p/mehdi-debunks-vances-immigration
All the president’s lies: Media coverage of lies in the US and France
https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/our-research/all-presidents-lies-media-coverage-lies-us-and-france
Fact check: Trump’s false claims about tariffs and trade
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/04/02/politics/fact-check-trump-tariffs-trade/index.html
Thanks
Thank you, Eric.
One could also ask why they did not call out Biden over Gaza.
Sure Trump is bad, but some other US presidents were genocidal, hence, outside the west, America, not just Trump, is seen as the problem.
Forty odd years ago, my RAF doctor father wrote a publication about the US use of defoliants in Indochina, an impact felt even today. It’s harrowing. It’s America, not just Trump.
Colonel
some 45 years ago I was a member of the Somerset Ecology Party and we became aware that 245T being used by the Forestry Commission and it was affecting the wives of the workers, causing miscarriage. We passed it on -to the Guardian, as I recall who took over the story and we heard nothing after that.
I had almost forgotten that.
If it were me, I’d be off to talk to China.
That would get right up Trump’s nose.
It would get over just how serious we were taking this issue and that we were no longer friends, and it might create that new world order. I am convinced that China does not want war.
There is long standing enmity between the U.S. and China. The U.S just wants to do to China what it did to Russia. The EU could just choose China as a partner and forget about the U.S. China is more serious about trade and I’m sure something could be done. China’s relationship with Russia might temper Russian aspirations in Europe, if the benefits of the EU/Chinese relationship are manifest.
My view is that the Trumpian U.S. will fall apart from the inside – there could be a civil war over there. It is going to get really ugly. The tension between the coastal and fly-over states is going to rise I think.
This was another time america tried tariffs and surprisingly it didn’t end well either.
Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act
Wikipedia; Hoover signed the bill against the advice of many senior economists, yielding to pressure from his party and business leaders. Intended to bolster domestic employment and manufacturing, the tariffs instead deepened the Depression because the U.S.’s trading partners retaliated with tariffs of their own, leading to U.S. exports and global trade plummeting.
Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome!!!
mad as box of frogs
Agreed
Thank you, Richard.
This comment from a techie at Naked Capitalism caught my attention:
“Even if waving the tariff wand magically transforms the US into a resurgent manufacturing powerhouse, the lofty rhetoric about the jobs that will be created in the slipstream is just Trump throwing meat to the MAGA base. Pigs will fly over the Whitehouse before the techbros allow the assembly lines along a resurgent rustbelt to be staffed by pesky humans, they’re funneling eye-watering sums of venture capital into robotics and so-called “embodied AI” to deliver the best in low cost, high throughput manufacturing. The robots will be making stuff, and the logistics of getting the stuff into the hands of consumers will be, from the first mile to the last mile, handled by autonomous fleets of driverless vehicles and drones with no humans in the loop. This is the bright future of US manufacturing the upper crust of the upper echelon of the MAGA base (aka techbros) is actively colluding to lock ordinary Americans out of, even as they trot out the “bringing jobs back to America” soundbite.”
I know the person a bit. The techie was based in the UK, but returned home a some years before covid, lives near Elon Musk’s dad and reports that Musk senior lives there happily and shows no sign of heeding his son’s advice to leave.
I agree re those new manufacturing lines
If I may add. TMSC is building a new semiconductor fab in Arizona. The Americans are not up to the job & the Taiwanese are struggling (because of a lack of skilled Amercians that… you know.. know what they are doing). US might have been good at semiconductor mfu once, those days are long gone.
I can recommend reading “Material World”. The bit on semiconductors has some very interesting titbits (I know a fiar bit about the tech). Best thing EU could do it tempt Taiwan to set up – wholesale in the EU.
That all resonates with me
Trump is the megaphone being used to cause the chaos that the technocrats want. He is a distraction from the true agenda which is truly frightening: a Theocracy/Technocracy that will enslave the people of the US and if they can across the world as well while accruing the wealth of the world to themselves. The timescale to stand against this is becoming shorter by the day as the US government is dismantled before our eyes day by day.
As difficult as it is to imagine that such a kkkorrupt and kkklownish buffoon having his finger on the nuclear trigger is not the worst problem today, I think that it is not.
I see Trump, Netanyahu, Putin, Bolsonaro, Orbán, Mohammed bone Sawman, the Iranian mullahs, whichever Philippine Strong Leader, the techbros, the opus “dei” heretics, the “christian” nationalists in the US with their tentacles around the world, oiligarchs, many corporate oligarchs, etc. essentially as allies against the vast majority of humanity, even against those in the hoi-polloi who themselves support authoritarianism and whichever Strong Leader.
Unfortunately, because of anthropogenic climate change and humanity’s milquetoast response to it, I doubt that we, the people, could mount an effective response to the generally allied authoritarian threat before serial cereal harvest failures kill billions and send the majority of humanity scurrying to look for a Strong Leader with quick and sure answers. Whatever we do, it must be soon. And because the US is so powerful in so many ways our actions should expose the US authoritarian power structures as completely as possible.