MAGA politics optimistically embraces chaos against expert doomsaying elites

Evidence

A speculative imagination was mobilized in an attempt to reinstate a more nativist sovereignty through railing against finance’s institutional guardians—most notably the Federal Reserve. Consider this passage from Trump’s speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January 2020: “To embrace the possibilities of tomorrow we must reject the perennial prophets of doom and their predictions of the apocalypse—they are the heirs of yesterday’s foolish fortune tellers.” The statement captures vividly right-wing populism’s regressive albeit optimistic embrace of an unpredictable chaos, which runs counter to the “apocalypse” allegedly preached by liberal elites. In that sense, “Make America Great Again” should be interpreted as a politics of “going back to the future”; not just a call for returning to yesteryear’s Leviathan, but an optimistic act of divining the future. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 291

Categorization

• XREF: Extends the reader’s core thesis that populists aren’t voting against interests but making speculative bets; ‘going back to the future’ version of speculation ties to the book’s own ‘counter-speculations’ assessment.
• SEED: Grist for an article on how financialized language (‘perennial prophets of doom’) lets right-wing populism frame liberal expertise as risk-aversion and itself as the side betting on the future.