Refuse Trump's return to open racism

As the US president rapidly escalates pressure on South Africa in the name of white citizens, we must stand up for reason and principle

- Richard Pithouse

Donald Trump's chainsaw massacre of the rules and pieties that shaped the post-Cold War order marks a new moment in both American and global history. But, like the rise of fascism in 1930s Europe when colonial ideas and practices were brought home this moment is nested in longer historical continuities.

The United States replaced the great European powers as the dominant global power after World War II, emerging with overwhelming economic, military, cultural and institutional power. During the Cold War, it shared global dominance with the Soviet Union but remained preeminent in the capitalist world. Its dominance was fully consolidated after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Trump's aggressive nationalism is an attempt to defend the waning global power of the US against new contenders, most notably China. It is also a response to broader shifts in global power, including initiatives by Brics to establish a bank and a unified payment system that facilitates transactions in local currencies reducing dependence on the US dollar and the SWIFT financial messaging network and the proposal for a common Brics currency.

During and after the Cold War the US used a mixture of hard power invasions, coups, assassinations, sanctions and soft power its media, universities, think-tanks, state and allied private donors and its power over the international financial institutions to sustain its domination.

Force was mixed with the seduction of persuasion and incorporation. Vietnam and Iraq experienced devastating violence and Chile and Haiti suffered coups while post-apartheid South Africa got funding for media, think-tanks, universities, NGOs spun as “civil society”, scholarships and regular invitations for selected editors, academics and others to the embassy.