Bespoke corporate autocratic rule

This is not normal authoritarian rule. The White House has become the headquarters of an attempt to secure global corporate dominance and act as an agent for the flow of global capital.

I wake up every day anxious, and as I sit down to write, I focus on how I can moderate the delivery of information so as not to frighten people, because they live in enough fear, as a result of their lived experience in this moment. There’s an inevitability about the demise of this regime, but my anxiety comes from how totally unprepared the world is to deal with the economic and societal desolation that will follow.

I think it’s maybe time for us all to remove the blinkers we are forced to wear to spare us from thinking about the unthinkable and face up to where we find ourselves. It’s nothing new that governments find themselves unable to admit mistakes. If only they had, many of the wars that have resulted in so much loss of life over the years would never have happened. It’s always the lies that ultimately see governments fall. However, there is a unique and dangerous characteristic of the Trump regime that sets it apart from governments that preceded it.

Previous governments have at least entered office with the intention of serving the people. Since time began, politics has been about influence. The wealthiest in societies across the world have always helped politicians get elected in return for favours; it’s been part of the DNA of political power throughout history. However, one thing has always been understood: regardless of the political system, governments can generally rule only with the consent of the people. It’s an unavoidable fact of life.

For dictators who have come to power, their biggest challenge is to control the masses, and there is no alternative but to spend enormous amounts of money to secure control over the population. Domestic state security services’ and defence spending are wholly disproportionate to spending on government and social services. In short, those in power invest the people's own money to protect themselves from the people.

If we step back to the Roman Empire, the mighty Roman army was feared around the world. Rome became experts at putting down rebellion, but they understood that at the heart of power, the people of Rome needed to be constantly distracted in order to keep their minds off the corruption and exploitation, hence the Colosseum games. The simple strategy was to provide basic sustenance, alcohol and entertainment, while crushing dissent at the first signs of disquiet. As with all dictatorships, there comes a point when those in power lose control of the people, and everything comes crashing down.

Power is cyclical; empires have their day, eventually, hubris and arrogance lead to overextension, and they fall. As a Brit, I know better than most the geopolitical cost of imperial arrogance. As a nation that once controlled 25% of the world’s landmass, the UK now stands alone as an island nation that, by choice in 2016, decided to set fire to ourselves and £100 billion a year in return for the gift of a blue passport and a false dream of making Britain great again by Nigel Farage bankrolled largely from funding from outside the UK.

This was a moment in history that coincided with the rise of Trumpism in the US, which actively played a role in promoting BREXIT and its nationalist campaign to ‘Take back control’. It was a dummy run for the likes of Steve Bannon and Trump acolytes, who, for the first time, weaponised social media to influence an election using UK-based Cambridge Analytica’s software to profile and micro-target voters with disinformation. It was a unique partnership between fascism and communism to poison democratic elections and plant the seeds of democratic decline in Europe.

Russia and the US far right came together in a common goal to begin the dismantling of the existing world order. There is no question that the UK's separation from Europe was a defining moment in what would become the war against democracy. Later that year, Trump was elected President for the first time, and the real nightmare began. Since that time, we have seen the slow but purposeful rise of the far right in both the UK and Europe.

After Trump was elected for the second time, his new regime was, in my view, the first dictatorship built from the ground up using Viktor Orbán’s model of redefining the meaning of government. As I stated in my last piece, Kevin Roberts, head of the Heritage Foundation, who authored Project 2025, said:

“Modern Hungary is not just a model for conservative statecraft, it is THE model”

I know I keep banging on about the importance of Orbán’s defeat, but it simply can’t be emphasised enough, as described in her excellent piece entitled:

I Lived in Orbán’s Hungary. This Is What It Actually Takes to Bring an Autocrat Down.

After Trump’s defeat in 2020, the Heritage Foundation looked to what Orbán had done in Hungary since 2010. I know that to my American friends, Hungary might seem like a small, insignificant country, an ocean away, with little relevance to the problems America is facing today. However, I believe it to be the single most significant example of a precision assault on Western democracy in modern history.

I would urge EVERY American to read this piece from the European Council on Foreign Relations to better understand just how significant Hungary was in the rise of Trumpism. It’s an extensive article written by Jeremy Shapiro, Research Director, and Zsuzsanna Végh, Associate Researcher, Hungary. It’s well worth bookmarking for future reference, too. Written in October 2024, just a month before the US General Election, it shows how the Heritage Foundation had spent four years modelling Project 2025 on what was a field-tested, successful assault already in operation in Hungary.

Image - Getty Images

The opening summary begins with:

Viktor Orban has seized control of nearly all the levers of power in Hungary since he became prime minister in 2010, effectively turning the country into an electoral autocracy.

It continues:

In the four years since President Donald Trump left office, veterans of his administration have thought hard about how to make a new administration more effective than the last. Many believe that a similar seizure of control of the instruments of US governance is necessary.

If Trump wins the presidency, Republicans will likely adapt many of Orban’s techniques to the US context to end what they view as liberal control of the “administrative state” and civil society.

I strongly urge you to take the time to read and absorb the entire piece because, to beat your enemy, you have to understand it. As I have always said, knowledge is power, and it has never been more important than it is in this moment. I could join today in the speculative conversation of ‘Will he, won’t he?’ that is dominant in the media in relation to the Iran War, but it would be nothing other than that, ‘speculation’.

Yesterday, Trump delivered his usual bedtime story when speaking to the compliant press. He suggested, as has now become customary on market trading days, that Iran is desperate for a deal and that:

“If it happens, it’ll be announced fairly soon, and that’ll give us free oil, free Hormuz Strait, everything will be nice. And I think your oil price will go down to lower than what it was before”

You’ll have to excuse me, but I have no intention of engaging with an imbecilic sociopathic liar. There is no need to counter this idiocy, much as the press seeks to sanitise his comments daily. We have to STOP constantly parsing his ludicrous, meaningless statements. While I acknowledge today's developments, in which Iran has declared the Strait of Hormuz open to shipping, it remains just one step forward.

This conflict is nowhere near close to a conclusion; Trump remains hellbent on taking control of Iran’s oil, and believe me, everything else is incidental to him, including the enriched uranium. Americans need to get used to ever-growing economic pain and stop falling for his never-ending ‘jam tomorrow’ promises. It is NOT going to get better any time soon, even if the war ends today. Iran will not capitulate; it WILL cost the US money, of that there is no doubt.

The Trump administration has not evolved into an authoritarian regime as a result of geopolitical events like war or economic collapse. This is a bespoke autocracy, built from the ground up on a blueprint drawn from Orbán’s field-tested model in Hungary over the past decade. It’s an evolution of that model designed to meet the specific needs of America’s wealthy elite.

When Curtis Yarvin advocated for ‘Dark Enlightenment’, and the introduction of Caesarism to the US, and Peter Thiel advocated for ‘Freedom Cities’ reminiscent of ‘Company Towns, they believed that Orbán’s model provided the perfect incubator for corporate rule via a presidential proxy. If you want to know who Yarvin is, read this piece in the New York Times, which I have gifted. This is not advocacy for box-standard authoritarian rule. You might also want to read my take on the threat:

The White House has become the headquarters of an attempt to secure global corporate rule as an agent for the flow of global capital. This is not hyperbole; it’s very real and, in my view, is why Trump is on a mission to steal resources around the world. Gunboat diplomacy and geopolitical extortion are now the hallmarks of US economic and foreign policy. All was going well until the move on Iran. After Trump’s raising of the ‘Jolly Roger’ flag over the US Navy to invade Venezuela, he felt he was on a roll.

Image - Getty Images

This did not escape the attention of Benjamin Netanyahu, who had been waiting for a useful idiot in the White House for almost half a century to fund the castration of Iran. Trump felt invincible, and Bibi exploited that, but $40 billion later and with 13 US service personnel dead, he is being forced to write a false fairytale ending in pursuit of political survival.

In part two, we’ll drill into the inevitable consequences, not just for the American people but for the global economy as a whole. I believe his actions are writing his own political obituary, but the fall of imperial ambition should terrify all Americans. They will be rid of Trump, but will inherit an economic wasteland. The only unknown is the extent of the damage.

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