Paper short abstract:

This paper offers a critical; Marxist reading of the Trump victory in the November 2016 presidential election. It looks at the relationship between flexible forms of globalized accumulation and politics as entertainment/entertainment politics.

Paper long abstract:

This paper focuses on two sets of linked fictions: the economic fiction of stability for the majority in an internationalized and neoliberalized economy; and the political fiction of a grand leader who promises to "make America great again." The paper argues that the destabilization wrought since Fordism began to give way to flexible accumulation paved the way for the "politics as entertainment" that promises to characterize the Trump presidency. The paper draws from Marxist theory, ethnography, journalism, and personal experience. In particular, it will include close readings of books such as Hillbilly Elegy (Vance) and Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right (Hochschild).