There is a story, much beloved of historians and pundits, of the Chinese leader, Zhou Enlai, being asked what he thought about the impact of the French Revolution. Zhou’s answer, apparently, was that it was too soon to tell.
In the case of Trump’s sweeping victory in the just-concluded 2024 US Presidential Election, that response might make more sense, given that it has been only a few days since the declaration of the results and that it will be two months till he assumes the presidency. Yet, his record as the American president from 2016 to 2020 and his relentless expression of extremist sentiments in the course of his campaign give us some sense of what lies ahead.
The most dire consequence of Trump 2.0, should his plans come to fruition will be the gradual transformation of the US into a racialised carceral state. Trump appears set to embark on implementing his campaign vow of deporting undocumented migrants, including those who arrived in the US as children, as well as those who have permission to stay temporarily in the US on humanitarian grounds.
This project, though, should be understood more broadly as one in which the movements and agency of specific social groups are subject to restrictions and barriers, and one which, consequently, creates de facto tiers of citizenship even among legal citizens based on their race.
Stephen Miller, the former advisor to Trump, has already declared that the administration will undertake denaturalisation of various US citizens. The objective of the mass deportation of millions of people will require the detention of large numbers of individuals as an interim step. Discussions regarding the construction of centres to hold detainees are already underway among Trump’s allies and advisors. The stock price of private prison companies that will benefit from contracts to build these centers has immediately soared after Trump’s victory.
Along with the horrific social costs and unimaginable cruelty of these actions, the economic consequences will be devastating for the US in terms of their impact on GDP and their burden on numerous industries. The cost of just the deportations range from 88 billion dollars to 315 billion dollars a year.
Compounded with the inflationary pressures that Trump’s promised tariffs will unleash, there is simply no way in which these measures will redress the economic burdens that large numbers of Americans feel they have been saddled with as a result of the policies of the Biden-Harris administration over the last few years.
Despite the US economy having been on firm footing for the last year, the “vibecession”, or sense of living through a recession, in the term coined by economic commentator Kyla Scanlon, was apparently a significant factor in the strong support for Trump among voters across most demographics.
Yet, though economic populism may have played an important role in the election results, Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric, overt racism about non-White groups, and hysterical invocations of nativist nationalism should leave no doubt that his presidency will essentially be a White majoritarian project as indeed was his campaign.
Mass deportations are a key initiative of Trump’s Day 1 agenda, and he has recently issued a statement that considerations of cost will not prevent him from undertaking these endeavors. It is entirely unsurprising that Trump won the majority of the White vote, with the majority of White women voting for Trump as well.
Trump’s support among the majority of White women, given his conviction for sexual assault, the record of countless allegations along similar lines, and litany of rank misogynist remarks, reveals the ugly reality of the pervasive racism in American society. Misogyny and the lack of belief in the capability of a woman to be president, factors that arguably cut across demographics, played a role in the election results, as did economic considerations, but the centrality of race as a factor simply cannot be ignored.
Trump’s significant gains among Latino voters, men in particular, may seem to contradict this but the range and diversity of the social groups encompassed under the term “Latino” provide an explanation. An academic colleague (who wishes to remain anonymous), an expert on South and Central American communities in the US, shared with me that the term “Latino” encompasses numerous immigrant streams in the US, with histories that are distinct yet entangled in enormously complex ways.
There are tensions among these communities, among those who have emigrated legally and those who are undocumented, and between sections that identify as White or multiracial and those who are marked as not White.
Perhaps it is not a coincidence that Elon Musk, who has mutated progressively from liberal to rabid right-wing demagogue, and has thrown his lot in with Trump with the objective of remaking America, grew up in apartheid South Africa.
Project 2025, a blueprint for transforming American society along deeply conservative lines, also emphasises mass deportations as well as ending federal support for initiatives related to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
And yet, most of the election post-mortem in mainstream American media is silent about the extent to which racism might have influenced the election. That silence reflects a particularly American malaise, that of historical amnesia and an unease across most of the political spectrum in talking about racism as an abiding, and central, force in American society.
The racialised carceral state that threatens to come into being under Trump is, tragically, not an entirely new creature. For much of their history, the experience of non-White groups in America, whether it African-Americans, or those of Asian or Latino ancestry, has been that of living under such a state, the anchor and foundation of a segregated society.
The reborn racialised carceral state, though, will be much more powerful, with its capabilities for violence and surveillance amplified exponentially. As it lurks in the shadows, like Yeats’ proverbial rough beast, its hour come around again, slouching toward Bethlehem to be reborn, we can only hope that Marx’s words that history repeats itself as tragedy and farce come true.
Given that we have already suffered these tragedies before, perhaps the spirit of history, or some deux ex machina, or residual force of American democracy, will put paid to the ambitions of the project of the carceral state, rendering it a brief nightmare rather than a horrifying reality that materialises again.
Rohit Chopra is a professor of communication at Santa Clara University.
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