Interview
Historian Arash Azizi: The Republican Party has fundamentally changed
‘I don’t think Trump has a programmatic authoritarian project: he has authoritarian instincts, but not a fascist-like ideological program ready to implement. He will let others around him carry that out.’
“Trump has done all the worst things imaginable. Many people thought Americans wouldn’t like that. But this was not the case,” Arash Azizi told us from Boston as we interviewed him on the resounding result of the latest U.S. election.
Azizi is a historian and political observer for The Atlantic, Newsweek, and Washington Post, as well as author of The Shadow Commander. Soleimani, the US, and Iran's Global Ambitions (2020) and What Iranians Want: Women, Life and Freedom (2024, also published in an Italian edition by Solferino).
The results of this election were a big surprise to everyone. What’s your take on what happened?
It’s a devastating outcome. It’s not a matter of losing one state, or one demographic: Harris did worse than Biden in every single county in the United States. That’s no accident: there was widespread discontent, particularly with inflation, which really hurt people. Prices rose 20 percent higher than four years ago, and that affected everyone.
Although the economic data tells a different story – for example, unemployment is at an all-time low – the electorate didn’t really care about that. Furthermore, Harris wasn’t able to do what Biden did four years ago, which was to turn the campaign – as I pointed out at the time – into a Scranton versus Mar-A-Lago campaign; even when she held a rally in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where Biden was born.
Biden had presented himself as something like a moderate, a hard worker, tailor-made for the average person. By contrast, Harris was seen as the archetypal California liberal, and she was unable to change that image.
So does she bear most of the responsibility for this defeat?
The candidate is responsible for the defeat and takes the credit for the victory. I see politicians looking at these results and saying, “America is messed up.” If you think the country doesn’t deserve you, then you should not be in democratic politics. By the same token, Kamala Harris is fully responsible for what happened.
Certainly, it can be argued that Harris couldn’t do much because there was too much opposition and too little time. Some voters probably saw her as a fallback option, and, according to the polls, there were some who only found out at the polling place that Biden was no longer the nominee. Moreover, Harris had a poor approval rating in the past: during the years of Biden's presidency, she had not been set up for electoral success, if one can call it that. She was given the most thankless duties, like border security; then there was also Biden's terrible policy on Israel. On the other hand, she didn’t do enough to distinguish herself from Biden. It’s not easy to win elections in this country, especially when running against Trump, a one-of-a-kind political talent.
Can this election be considered a lost referendum on Trump?
Certainly. Democrats and so-called moderate Republicans have done nothing but try to prove that Trump was just a flash in the pan. At the same time, Trump didn’t offer a polished version of himself. He didn’t choose as his VP a moderate who represented the average Republican, but someone like J.D. Vance, a kind of bellwether of online sentiment, the political equivalent of Tucker Carlson. Contrary to what we expected, Americans liked that. This is America: 70 million Americans are fine with it.
Trump's victory challenges what used to be fundamental pillars of the state: for instance, the armed forces. It was once thought that those who didn’t pay fealty to the armed forces had no chance at the polls and would condemn themselves to political suicide. On the other hand, Trump attacked the military repeatedly and still won the election.
Donald Trump is about to have an enormous amount of power. What are the real risks in this scenario?
I think it’s a terrible situation for the country and the risk is high. But at the same time, there will be a lot of resistance and there will be very many checks and balances: while it’s true that the Democrats don't control the House, the Senate or the Supreme Court, it will be the governors and mayors – not only Democrats – who will counter his authoritarian tendencies. On the other hand, I don’t think Trump has a programmatic authoritarian project: he has authoritarian instincts, but not a fascist-like ideological program ready to implement. He will let others around him carry that out. All this points to a very worrying time: a situation similar to the ones in which Israel and Poland have found themselves.
Tech tycoons like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel have played a major role in this election. What role do you think they might have in the near future?
Thiel and Musk will have access to state power, and that is very concerning. I'm not sure what they want to do with this power, but I don't think they have a coherent agenda. As powerful as they are, these individuals have limited room for action, because we live in a world where there are so many powers acting all at once. Trump himself is not someone who trusts people readily: if they get caught up in their ambitious agendas, they might find that Trump will be the first one to be displeased.
However, one figure that represents a danger for many of us is Robert Kennedy, who has a definite agenda. He’s getting the FDA handed to him: if he is able to implement some kind of deregulation of health care, this would have a devastating effect. I think it would be similar to what we saw happen in Brazil, but on a much larger scale.
What we’re looking at is not just four years of a Trump presidency, but a possible Vance candidacy in the future. Could this be the beginning of a new political era in American history?
There have been six different party systems in American history. America is a very unusual country: you don’t have the usual political parties, but there are electoral lines and people coming together and forming various parties, which change often. We might be looking at an ideological realignment in American politics, in which J.D. Vance and others would form a major party of “American nativism,” if you can call it that, which could be followed by centrists splitting off and a left-wing coalition.
J.D. Vance represents a new chauvinist ideological form, which is also interesting because of its methodology: these are people who are very online, rely on certain media outlets, and think globally, more so than the left. They follow the example of Orbán in Hungary, and they’re not that far removed from Putin; in truth, they like his model of white nationalism, which can be repurposed for American purposes.
There’s also something new in the voting patterns: 20 percent of Blacks voted for Trump, as did the majority of Latinos. This new heterogeneity will be an enduring feature of American politics. This is not your grandfather's Republican Party; the party has fundamentally changed, and there will be no going back.
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/con-la-vittoria-di-trump-situazione-terribile-ci-sara-molta-resistenza on 2024-11-08