The essence of Trumpism is vitalism, the belief that energy is the key political virtue. Don’t worry about my specific plans, he says, just believe that I will shake things up, even smash things up. Hillary ‘lacks energy’ he keeps saying.
This should worry us. For this approach to politics was the seed of European fascism, almost exactly a century ago. The movement initially overlapped with the avant garde art movement, Futurism. Its founder Filippo Tommaso Marinetti announced a punk-like attack on the arts and politics in his manifesto of 1909. Liberal democracy was sapping Italy of manly energy, he said: ‘We wish to glorify war – the sole cleanser of the world.’
Such talk seemed like harmless posturing at first, closer to performance-art than politics – but soon it was clear that such slogans were helping to fuel an angry new Italian nationalism, bitterly hostile to the liberal political establishment.
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