NETWORK STATES? NO THANKS!

For the people despite the people.

Photo by NASA on Unsplash

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One cannot understand Trump's politics towards Ukraine and Europe without taking into account his business approach. It is common knowledge that until now, the US has guaranteed Europe's safety by providing a nuclear umbrella, but what is less well-known is that in exchange, Europe has tolerated the US dollar as a universal currency, thereby guaranteeing a great influx of money to the US. Now that the US has announced it is no longer ready to cover Europe's safety, Europe should also make a counter-move and no longer accept the US dollar as a universal currency—a prospect to which Trump reacted with utmost fury. Trump also demands that European states should spend 5% of their GDP to strengthen their military and thus lessen the burden on the US (he plans to cut the US military budget by hundreds of billions over the next five years). Plus, one should bear in mind that the US itself spends less than 5% of its budget on military expenses, and military costs are not exploding around the world as peaceniks claim; the long-term tendency is still their diminishment, with the exception of countries directly at war (Ukraine, Russia, etc.). So, I think Trump's 5% demand is not meant seriously; it is part of a business strategy—a demand expected to be rejected and thus make Europe weaker. Trump is well aware that its fulfillment would make Europe more independent of the US. This is, I think, the reason the EU should do what Trump demands and thus regain its autonomy from the US.

However, one should always be attentive to the fact that the gap between Trumpian populism and Europe cuts across Europe and the US themselves: there are strong forces that oppose Trump in the US, while rightist populists are gaining traction in Europe. Plus, one should not underestimate the genuine popularity of Trump: assuring open space for economic initiatives with less state regulation, promising lower costs for the state apparatus (the big parasite hated by the large majority as the big destroyer of the American dream), and contrasting this dream to the over-regulation practiced by the EU has a great mobilizing force. Furthermore, many of the measures and practices opposed by Trump effectively deserve to be criticized and abolished. Cancel Culture and Politically Correct regulation, while intended to guarantee inclusion and diversity, are massively experienced as an oppressive force of exclusion. The EU's over-regulation often intervenes in ridiculous details. If the Left is to regain any chance, it has to clearly demarcate itself from such practices and denounce them as a catastrophe. The fact we should always bear in mind is that the way to beat Trumpian populism does not go through a renewed welfare state liberal democracy—only a new radical Left will be able to do it, but this is difficult even to imagine today, after the long years the Left spent in self-destruction.

The first step in a critical analysis of Trumpian populism should follow the old wisdom that, in order to beat a group of enemies, one should isolate individual enemies and liquidate them one after another, thereby exploiting the immanent inconsistency of Trumpian populism—a unique combination of formal social freedoms and political expert dictatorship (a world ruled by corporate "monarchs" supported by experts). One cannot but recall here Marx's critique of anarchism, where he pointed out how their self-organization was extremely authoritarian. Musk promises to get the government "off the back of Americans" and "out of their pocketbook"—less taxation, less regulation, even a lower military budget, decentralization, free initiatives from below. However, the lesson we have learned in the last hundred years is that strong state regulation is needed to prevent market competition from gradually turning into monopoly—this is the ultimate reason why the new oligarchs so passionately advocate for less state regulation.

And does Trump also not practice state regulation when needed? Paraphrasing Marx's ironic description of the "free" contract between a capitalist and a worker as the "very Eden of the innate rights of man, where alone rule Freedom, Equality, Property, and Bentham," one can say that Trump promises freedom, openness, deregulation... and protective tariffs. And there is no freedom for those who criticize Trump's politics, even if they have nothing whatsoever to do with the Left: "Trump threatens to sue media after Wall Street Journal editorial criticizes tariffs." The same goes for Jeff Bezos, who announced on February 26, 2025, a new regime at the Washington Post: "his paper's comment pages will promote libertarianism ('free markets and personal liberty'), and will not publish opinions contradicting these central principles."

An exemplary case of how slashing state expenses with a chainsaw is counterproductive is the fate of the Affordable Care Act, which provided health insurance to poor people by expanding Medicaid. A conservative Supreme Court ruling gave states the right to opt out of the expansion, turning down free funding from Washington if they wished. Turning down the money not only hurts people who can't get health coverage but also hurts hospitals which legally must treat people who show up in the emergency room, even if they lack coverage. What this means is that when some states opted out of Medicaid, they were not choosing between spending money and hurting people; helping people get insurance was practically free. These states literally had to accept economic sacrifices in order to pay for the privilege of denying health insurance to low-income citizens in their state. And—a paradox and proof of the material force of ideology—in Florida, opinion polls showed that even the majority of the poor supported opting out because they were so scared by the idea that the federal state was taxing them too much. There is thus a moment of truth in how sometimes Atatürk’s way to save and modernize Turkey is described: “For the people despite the people.”

So let’s focus on one of the tendencies of Trumpian populism. Authors like Curtis Yarvin and Balaji Srinivasan should be read because they formulate the underlying fantasy (more precisely, one of them) of Trumpian libertarianism in a pure form. Yarvin founded the anti-egalitarian and anti-democratic philosophical movement known as the Dark Enlightenment. He sees liberalism as creating a Matrix-like totalitarian system and wants to replace American democracy with a sort of techno-monarchy. His premise is that democracy is obviously failing, and that libertarianism is a doomed project without the inclusion of authoritarianism. Actual politics occur through the actions of elites, which effectively control and regulate the apparent democratic or socialist rhetoric of public discourse. If these elites will not be replaced by new, better elites, history will inevitably progress toward left-leaning societies. Adapting a phrase from The Matrix, we should swallow a "red pill" to shatter progressive illusions.

Democratic governments are inefficient and wasteful and should be replaced with sovereign joint-stock corporations whose "shareholders" (large owners) elect an executive with total power, but who must serve at their pleasure. The executive, unencumbered by liberal-democratic procedures, could rule efficiently much like a CEO-monarch. Yarvin admires Deng Xiaoping for his pragmatic and market-oriented authoritarianism, and the city-state of Singapore as an example of a successful authoritarian regime. He sees the US as soft on crime, dominated by economic and democratic delusions.