It
would be a serious error to judge President Trump by the criteria of the
Washington ruling class, ignoring the History and the culture of the United
States. It would also be an error to interpret his actions from the point of
view of European thought. Indeed, his defence of the right to bear arms or the
racist demonstrations in Charlottesville have nothing to with support for
extremists, but exclusively the promotion of the Bill of Rights.
Thierry Meyssan explains the train of thought that he represents, and draws up
an assessment of his highly important economic, political and military
realisations. He also questions the limits of US political thought and the
risks of dismantling the « American Empire ».
It is now a year since
President Trump took office in the White House. It is becoming possible to
discern his political ambitions, despite the destructive confrontation in the
US between his partisans and his adversaries, detrimental to all.
The facts are all the more
difficult to establish since Donald Trump himself masks his principal
realisations behind a flood of contradictory declarations and Tweets, and his
opposition presents him, via their own medias, as a lunatic.
Before anything else, the
division of the United States has never been so pronounced since the Civil War.
Both camps demonstrate great violence, and for certain of the protagonists,
total dishonesty. In order to understand what is happening, we must first set
aside the brutal exchanges between the two sides, and identify what each side represents.
The
United States were created both by the « Pilgrim Fathers », in other words the
Puritans of the Mayflower, whose arrival is
celebrated during « Thanksgiving », together with a crowd of migrants from
Northern Europe.
The former were no more than
a tiny group, but they had a religious and political project. Their aim was to
establish a « New Jerusalem », organised according to the Law of Moses, and to
strive for purity. At the same time, they intended to pursue the confrontation
between the English and Spanish Empires in the Americas. As for the latter,
they sought to find fortune in a land they believed was empty, without
inhabitants, without any constraint, and with no more than local government. As
a whole, these two groups are described by sociologists as the White
Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs).
When
the Constitution was being drawn up, the « Founding Fathers » mostly
represented the Puritans. Under the influence of Alexander Hamilton, they
imagined an anti-democratic text which reproduced the system of the British
monarchy, but transferred power from the gentry to the local elites, the
governors. This text sparked fury among the North-European migrants, who had
given their lives during the War of Independence. Rather than re-writing the Constitution
and recognising popular sovereignty, a dozen amendments were added by James
Madison, the result constituting the Bill of Rights.
These additions guaranteed citizens the right to defend themselves in court
against the « Reason of State ». Both of these texts remained valid for two
centuries and gave satisfaction to both groups.
On 13
September 2001, Congress adopted, in haste, an extremely voluminous
anti-terrorist Code, the USA Patriot Act.
This document, which had been prepared in secret for many years before the
attacks on New York and Washington, suspended the Bill of Rights in all circumstances connected to
terrorism. From then on, the United States of Republican George Bush Jr.
(himself a direct descendant of one of the Puritans of the Mayflower) and
Democrat Barack Obama, were governed exclusively according to modern Puritan
principles (which now include multiculturalism, distinct rights for each
community, and an implicit hierarchy between these communities).
Donald
Trump presented himself as the candidate of the North Europeans, in other
words, the non-Puritan WASPs. He based his electoral campaign on his promise to
give them back their country, which had been confiscated by the Puritans and
invaded by Hispanics who refused to integrate their culture. His slogan America First! must be understood as the restoring
of the « American Dream », that of finding fortune, at once against the Puritan
imperialist project and against the illusion of multiculturalism.
The
defence of the Bill of Rights includes the
right to demonstrate, including for extremist groups (1st amendment) and that
of the citizens to bear arms in order to resist possible excesses of the
Federal State (2nd amendment). It is therefore perfectly legitimate for
President Trump to have supported the right to demonstrate for the racist
groups in Charlottesville and to have expressed his support for the National
Rifle Association (NRA). This political philosophy may seem absurd to non-US
citizens, but it nonetheless corresponds to the History and the culture of this
country.
The two main powers of a US
President are:
the nomination of thousands of
senior civil servants;
the determination of military
objectives.
the nomination of thousands of
senior civil servants; the determination of military
objectives.
But it so happens that Donald
Trump has only a few dozen loyal supporters with whom to fill these thousands
of posts, and the Pentagon already has its own strategic doctrine. Trump
therefore has to ascertain the decisions which are capable of swinging the
system, and concentrate on them.
Since his arrival at the
White House, he has been acting effectively to
develop the economy and
inhibit finance;
dismantle the « American
Empire» and restore the Republic, which is to say General Interest;
defend the identity of the
WASPs, and expel Hispanics who refuse to integrate US culture.
develop the economy and
inhibit finance; dismantle the « American
Empire» and restore the Republic, which is to say General Interest; defend the identity of the
WASPs, and expel Hispanics who refuse to integrate US culture.
So, Donald Trump has just
nominated Jerome Powell at the head of the Federal Reserve Bank. For the first
time, the President of this institution will not be an economist, but a lawyer.
His function will be to put an end to monetarist policy and the rules which
have been current since the defeat of the US in Vietnam and the end of the
convertibility of the dollar into gold. He will have to create new rules which
will put capital back in the service of production instead of speculation.
Donald Trump’s fiscal reform
should eliminate all sorts of exonerations and cause company taxes to fall from
35% to 22%, even 20%. Experts are divided as to which social classes this
change will benefit. The only certainty is that, when linked with Customs
reform, it will cause many delocalised jobs to lose their cost-effectiveness
and quickly lead to the repatriation of a number of industries.
On the international level,
he has put a stop to the recruitment of new jihadists and the support that was
provided to them by many States – the exceptions are still the United Kingdom,
Qatar and Malaya, who continue this policy. However, he has not ended the
implication of transnational companies and international senior civil servants
in the organisation and financing of jihadism.
Rather than dissolve NATO, as
he had initially envisaged, he has transformed it by imposing the abandon of
the use of terrorism as a method of war, and forcing NATO to become itself an
anti-terrorist alliance.
Donald Trump has also
withdrawn the United States from the Transpacific Treaty which was designed to
counter China. In a gesture of thanks, Beijing has considerably reduced its
Customs costs, which demonstrates that it is possible to replace the previous
antagonism between States with cooperation.
As
for internal affairs, President Trump has nominated Judge Neil Gorsuch to the
Supreme Court, which is the instance charged with exploring the interpretation
of the Constitution, including the Bill of Rights. He
is a magistrate well known for his studies on the original meaning of these
texts, and as such, is capable of re-establishing the compromise at the heart
of the creation of the United States.
In 1998, Igor Panarin, who was
at that time one of the directors of the Russian secret services, predicted
civil war and the partition of the United States into six distinct States by about
2010. However, the coup d’Etat of 11 September September 2001 pushed back the
deadline. In 2012, journalist Colin Woodard revived Panarin’s data. He noticed
that the mobility of US citizens had caused them to group together in eleven
separate and co-existing cultural communities, where Afro-Americans did not
form a community but
were both integrated and discriminated against in two of these eleven
communities.
However, although this
assessment is very satisfactory for the electors of President Trump, it is
still too soon to know whether it will facilitate the integration of non-WASPs
or, on the contrary, provoke their expulsion from the national community.
According to the Mexican geopolitician Alfredo Jalife-Rahme, two-thirds of the
Hispanics in the US who do not speak English live in California, an old Mexican
territory. It could be tempting for Donald Trump to solve this cultural and
demographic problem by favouring the secession of this State – « Cal-Exit ». In
this case, the White House would have to deal with the problems posed by the
loss of the show business industry in Hollywood, the software in Silicon Valley
and above all, the military base in San Diego. The operation led by the White
House and its agencies against Hollywood during the Weinstein scandal seems to
indicate that the process is already underway.
The
secession of California could begin an ethnic dismantling of the United States
until it retreats back to the initial territory of the 13 States which adopted
the Constitution, including the Bill of Rights. In
any case, this is the long-held hypothesis put forward by Russian geopolitician
Igor Panarin.
French
intellectual, founder and chairman of Voltaire Network and the Axis for Peace
Conference. His columns specializing in international relations feature in
daily newspapers and weekly magazines in Arabic, Spanish and Russian. His last
two books published in English : 9/11 the Big Lie and Pentagate.
The
articles on Voltaire Network may be freely reproduced provided the source is
cited, their integrity is respected and they are not used for commercial
purposes (license CC BY-NC-ND).
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