Right-wing populism embraces optimistic chaos against expert prediction rather than seeking security

Evidence

In the United States, the Trump narrative operated in a much similar manner. Contrary to “evidence” provided by experts on a range of issues, the administration habitually took the position that “things will get sorted”—even when pursuing policies that seem to aim specifically at creating chaos, as during the ongoing political impasse leading to the longest government shutdowns in US history in December 2018 and January 2019. 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: Directly supports the core thesis already mapped for this book: speculation as optimism-under-uncertainty rather than security-seeking. Connects to previous chapter’s ‘homo speculans’ framing. — connects to: Neopopulism strategically manufactures and amplifies uncertainty rather than offering alternatives — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 442; Ruling-class anti-intellectualism masks inherited stupidity as populism; Right-wing populism today is swarm politics, not mass fascism. — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment: The Left After the…, 32
• SEED: Potential essay angle: ‘Make America Great Again’ as a forward-looking divination rather than backward-looking nostalgia — populism’s temporal politics.