Trump, Liberal Crisis Machines, Elite Decay, and the Global Far Right
Inderjeet Parmar
This article advances a central claim: the contemporary rise of Trumpism, the global far right, and the crisis of liberal internationalism are best understood not as separate phenomena but as interconnected expressions of a deeper crisis of hegemony, political economy and elite rule. Bringing together Antonio Gramsci's concept of organic crisis, my own analysis of liberal "crisis machines," Peter Turchin's theory of elite overproduction and elite fragmentation, and Arnold Toynbee's ideas about civilisational decline, the argument suggests that the current historical conjuncture is characterised by a growing inability of established elites to generate legitimacy, competence, consent, and moral authority. This is producing intensified political polarisation, social fragmentation, nationalist mobilisation, elite conflict, and geopolitical instability.
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From this perspective, Trumpism is not simply a revolt against liberalism. Nor is the global far right merely an external challenge to a healthy liberal international order. Rather, both emerge from a broader crisis affecting the institutions, elites, and political-economic structures that have dominated the Western-led world since the late twentieth century. The central issue is therefore not whether liberalism or the far right prevails, but whether either possesses the capacity to construct a new hegemonic settlement capable of addressing mounting economic, social, environmental, and geopolitical contradictions. Increasingly, the evidence suggests that neither does. The implications are potentially profound. Historically, periods of hegemonic transition, elite fragmentation, and declining legitimacy have often been associated with intensified coercion, warfare, political violence, authoritarian tendencies, and international conflict. As U.S. hegemony weakens, rival powers rise, and governing elites struggle to maintain authority, the world is mired in a prolonged period of turbulence whose outcomes remain uncertain.
Donald Trump's return to the White House in January 2025 sharpened these questions. His political comeback, following electoral defeat in 2020, the events of 6 January 2021, and years of legal and political controversy, demonstrates that Trumpism has become a durable political force. Rather than representing an aberration, Trump's re-election and subsequent renewed authoritarian and imperial offensives reveal the depth of the social and institutional crisis from which his movement derives support. Trump continues to present himself as a challenger to liberal globalism, attacking multilateral institutions, international agreements, and cosmopolitan elites. Yet, as I argue, Trump is not an isolationist. His project remains committed to maintaining American predominance, albeit through more unilateral, nationalist, and transactional means. Trump rejects many of the methods traditionally associated with liberal internationalism, but not the pursuit of American power itself. In this sense, Trumpism represents a challenge to liberal hegemony's form rather than its underlying imperial foundations.
This points toward a deeper continuity often obscured in contemporary political discourse. Despite their intense conflicts over immigration, nationalism, democracy, the rule of law, and international institutions, Trumpism and establishment liberalism share important political-economic commitments. Both remain fundamentally embedded within capitalist social relations. Neither substantially challenges the political and economic power of corporations, financialisation, private ownership, growing inequality, or the broader structures of global capitalism. Trump's economic policies, like those of previous administrations, continue largely to accommodate major business and financial interests. The contest between Trumpism and liberalism is therefore less about political economy than it is about culture, authority, identity, sovereignty, and competing strategies for organising consent.
This observation echoes Inderjeet Parmar and Thomas Furse's argument that the Trump administration is not as radical a departure from American establishment politics as many assume. Rather, it combines far-right rhetoric and mobilisation with continued commitment to transnational capitalist interests and U.S. geopolitical predominance. Trumpism mainstreams sections of the far right while remaining deeply integrated into broader elite structures of power.
To understand why such a political formation emerges, it is necessary to situate it within a broader crisis of hegemony. In my Economic and Political Weekly essay, "Poly Crisis or Organic Crisis?", I argue that contemporary instability reflects something deeper than a collection of separate crises. Instead, the United States and the U.S.-led international order are experiencing an organic crisis in the Gramscian sense: a period in which established institutions lose legitimacy, traditional political alignments weaken, and ruling elites struggle to secure social consent. Economic inequality, environmental degradation, geopolitical rivalry, democratic disillusionment, and declining social mobility combine to erode confidence in existing institutions. Yet Gramsci alone – though vital – is insufficient to grasp the full nature of the present moment. Equally valuable are the insights of Arnold Toynbee and Peter Turchin, both of whom focus attention on the role of elites in periods of civilisational decline. Combined with Gramscian insights, Toynbee and Turchin’s contributions enrich our understanding of the roots of the current crisis.
For Toynbee, societies thrive when led by a vigorous "creative minority" with solutions to collective problems and inspiring broader social consent. Civilisations decline when this creative minority degenerates into a "dominant minority" that seeks primarily to preserve its privileges. Elites become defensive, inward-looking, coercive, and increasingly detached from the wider society. They continue to govern but lose the capacity to lead. Authority gradually gives way to manipulation and force.
Recent revelations surrounding the late financier and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and the networks of wealth, influence, philanthropy, academia, finance and politics associated with him provide a particularly vivid illustration of Toynbee's argument. As I have argued in The Wire, the Epstein affair is significant not simply because of the criminality involved but because it exposes how sections of the American elite have become insulated from normal standards of accountability while exercising disproportionate influence over public life. The affair reveals dense networks linking billionaires, politicians, elite universities, media organisations, foundations and policy circles, demonstrating how power is reproduced through personal connections, patronage and mutual protection rather than public service. The continuing political fallout, including controversies surrounding the release of Epstein-related documents and allegations of efforts to suppress scrutiny of powerful figures, has further deepened public distrust of governing institutions. Rather than a "creative minority" generating solutions and legitimacy, Toynbee's "dominant minority" appears increasingly concerned with protecting status, wealth and influence. As argued in my recent Wire essays on elite corruption and the Epstein network, these revelations have become emblematic of a wider perception that American elites operate according to different rules from the rest of society, thereby accelerating the crisis of legitimacy that fuels both Trumpism and broader anti-establishment politics. In this sense, the Epstein affair is not a peripheral scandal but a symptom of the deeper processes of elite decay, moral corrosion and institutional discredit that characterise the contemporary crisis of U.S. power.
Turchin's work offers a complementary perspective through his concept of elite overproduction. He argues that instability often emerges when the number of educated, ambitious, and status-seeking elites expands faster than the opportunities available to them. Competition within elite strata intensifies, generating factional conflict, ideological polarisation, institutional breakdown, and struggles for power. At the same time, living standards stagnate for wider populations while inequality grows. The combination of elite conflict and popular dissatisfaction creates conditions for political turbulence.
Contemporary Western societies display many of these characteristics. Political, financial, media, academic, and corporate elites are increasingly viewed as self-serving and detached from the experiences of ordinary citizens. Public confidence in governments, political parties, media institutions, corporations, universities, and experts has declined significantly across many democratic societies. Economic growth continues but appears increasingly disconnected from improvements in the lives of large segments of the population. Housing crises, labour insecurity, declining public services, precarious work, and widening wealth inequalities reinforce perceptions that governing elites have failed.
My recent work on the Hewlett Foundation deepens this analysis. I argue that influential liberal institutions – especially so-called philanthropic foundations – increasingly function as "crisis machines" designed to manage instability while preserving existing structures of power. Through networks linking philanthropy, think tanks, universities, corporations, media organisations, and government agencies, these institutions attempt to reconstruct legitimacy and organise elite consensus without fundamentally transforming the social relations that generate crisis. Their objective is not revolutionary change but controlled adaptation. This is starkly revealed by the liberal-progressive Hewlett Foundation’s financial support for pro-Trump organisations like American Compass that helped author parts of the Heritage Foundation’s Project2025 – the blueprint for Trump’s second term. In Gramscian terms, they engage in forms of passive revolution designed to absorb and neutralise pressures for deeper transformation.
This framework is particularly useful because it challenges the assumption that liberal institutions constitute the principal alternative to Trumpism. Instead, liberal and nationalist elites can be understood as competing factions within a broader ruling bloc attempting to manage the same systemic crisis. Liberal crisis managers advocate technocratic reform, multilateral cooperation, and institutional adaptation. Trumpists advocate nationalism, sovereign authority, border enforcement, and cultural traditionalism. Yet both remain committed to preserving the basic structures of capitalist political economy.
This shared foundation helps explain another paradox of the contemporary period: the rise of polarisation across the political spectrum. Far-right movements undoubtedly deploy polarising strategies, mobilising resentment against immigrants, minorities, international organisations, and liberal elites. However, liberal and mainstream conservative parties increasingly engage in their own forms of polarisation. Across North America, Europe, and elsewhere, political competition is often structured around identity, culture, historical memory, nationalism, race, religion, and symbolic conflicts. These divisions are not merely responses to the far right. They also function as mechanisms for managing and fragmenting populations increasingly dissatisfied with the consequences of capitalist globalisation. Rather than confronting structural questions concerning inequality, corporate power, financialisation, and labour precarity, political systems frequently redirect conflict toward cultural and identity issues.
The United Kingdom provides a clear example. Since Brexit, themes associated with Trumpism – national sovereignty, anti-immigration politics, hostility toward supranational institutions, and anti-establishment rhetoric – have become deeply embedded in political discourse. Yet the significance of Trumpism lies not only in the electoral fortunes of Reform UK but also the extent to which mainstream political actors adopt and reproduce forms of polarised politics. Debates concerning migration, culture, identity, and national values increasingly dominate public discussion while structural economic grievances often remain unresolved.
Hungary demonstrates a more institutionalised form of illiberal politics. Viktor Orbán's model of "illiberal democracy" gained legitimacy from the weakening of liberal democratic norms internationally and from Trump's continuing influence within global conservative networks. Yet Hungary does not abandon capitalism. Instead, nationalist governance coexists with integration into global markets. What changes is less the political economy than the ideological framework through which it is legitimised.
Italy, similarly, illustrates the limits of far-right transformation once parties enter government. Giorgia Meloni mobilises themes associated with Trumpism—national identity, sovereignty, and opposition to liberal elites—but remains constrained by economic realities, financial markets, and international institutions. Radical rhetoric often coexists with considerable policy continuity.
Spain presents perhaps the clearest example of organised resistance to aspects of Trumpism. Pedro Sánchez's government has taken positions on Gaza, Israel, Iran, and the International Criminal Court that directly challenge the unilateralist tendencies associated with Trump's foreign policy. Spain increasingly emphasises international law, humanitarian norms, and multilateral institutions. Yet even here, intense political polarisation shapes domestic politics, reinforcing the broader argument that division has become a structural feature of contemporary governance rather than simply a characteristic of the far right.
India represents a case of convergence rather than direct influence. Hindu nationalism predates Trump, but the political styles of Narendra Modi and Trump share a number of similarities, including majoritarian nationalism, strong-leader politics, and scepticism toward liberal criticism. Their mutual support reflects broader global trends rather than direct causation.
Ireland remains relatively resistant to far-right mobilisation, owing to its anti-colonial experience and political culture, commitment to European integration, and support for multilateralism. Nevertheless, tensions surrounding migration, housing, and public services indicate that even societies traditionally insulated from exclusionary politics are not immune to the wider forces driving political discontent.
Across all these cases, transnational networks remain essential. Trumpism circulates not simply through governments but through think tanks, media platforms, advocacy organisations, wealthy donors, digital ecosystems, and elite political relationships. These networks diffuse narratives, symbols, and strategic repertoires internationally, contributing to a fragmented but increasingly interconnected global right. The broader historical significance of these developments may lie in what they reveal about the condition of contemporary elites. Toynbee's declining "dominant minority," Turchin's fragmented and overproduced elites, Gramsci's ruling groups facing an organic crisis, and my concept of liberal crisis managers all point toward a common diagnosis. The most serious challenge confronting contemporary political orders is not external attack but the weakening legitimacy, competence, and moral authority of elites themselves.
Historically, such periods rarely pass smoothly. Elite fragmentation often encourages political radicalisation. Governing groups become increasingly reliant on coercion, surveillance, nationalism, and ideological mobilisation as traditional sources of legitimacy weaken. Internationally, hegemonic decline frequently generates geopolitical rivalry and conflict. The weakening of U.S. dominance, the rise of China, prolonged wars in Ukraine and Gaza, growing tensions in the Middle East, and increasing great-power competition may all be understood as dimensions of a wider transition whose outcome remains uncertain.
The danger, therefore, is not simply the rise of Trumpism or the global far right. It is that neither liberal crisis management nor nationalist populism appears capable of addressing the structural contradictions driving contemporary instability. If the analyses in this essay are broadly correct, the world is in a period in which elite conflict, declining legitimacy, social fragmentation, geopolitical rivalry, and political coercion are likely to (continue to) intensify simultaneously. Such conditions do not make greater turbulence, violence, and wider war inevitable. But they do suggest that the current crisis is deeper than the political fortunes of any individual leader, party, or ideology. What is at stake is the future of a hegemonic order whose elites increasingly struggle to govern, to persuade, and perhaps even to understand, let alone seriously care about the societies over which they rule, rather than “the markets”.
Inderjeet Parmar is a professor of international politics and associate dean of research, School of Policy and Global Affairs, City St George’s, University of London. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and writes the American Imperium column at The Wire. He is the author of several books including Foundations of the American Century, and is currently writing a book on the history, politics and crises of the US foreign policy establishment, and one based on his columns in The Wire – Ten Years That Shook the World: Trumpism and the Crisis of US Power.
Editorial Credit: Simon Hilditch