The Social Imaginary as Signs of Social Regression: Trump’s Retrotopia

Abstract This essay seeks to contextualize Donald Trump as the embodiment of various political groups operating behind the scenes of institutional changes over the past fifty years. The failures of neoliberal governments, the detrimental entrepreneurial role assumed by the state, and the assault on democratic institutions are features not only of the United States but of the global political landscape (both North and South). Trump is their most prominent exemplar. His comeback should be understood as a reactionary wave that intensifies the dialectic between progress and regression. The historical sediment of those who lost the Civil War, their struggles to preserve segregation, and the defeats they experienced as the civil-rights amendments were constitutionally implemented—all these experiences are reactions that underlie Trumpism and its ideology. He is a consummate performer who can now usher in an ultra-right-wing revolution infused with new features of fascism. This is why he has constructed a retrotopia evoking an image of chaos unleashed by a Behemoth.