Synopsis

While celebrating Trump's surprise victory, his ideologue and campaign manager, Steve Bannon, reportedly stated «I want [them] to talk about anti-racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity and we advance economic nationalism, we crush them». Since then, this has been a heated discussion: is Bannon right (and should the left then give up the defence of social rights) and will the right always win if it instrumentalises imperial nationalisms and religions?

In response to these questions, in this book we discuss various processes of identification, be them individual or social. We show how the discourse and practices of hate are constructed on the right, or how it establishes fear as a social norm. We find that the right has become radicalised in the time of Trump and Bolsonaro by being obsessively identitarian.

And we discuss how democracy must respond to this rampant authoritarianism, recognising identities as an experience of difference and as an affirmation of rights, but not failing to also fight for a politics that constitutes an inclusive and universal response, promoting social distribution against social and economic inequality.

Thus, the book argues that the way to confront Trumpism is the combination of recognition of identities that express the life of communities and a clear socialist alternative.

Drawing on the experience and debates of the feminist and anti-racist movements, as well as social movements of recent decades, the authors challenge the Bannon curse and point to paths towards a society in which I can be who I am and we can be who we are.