Trump, AfriForum are 'the problem of stupidity'

The 'crisis' they decry is more a stubborn refusal to let go of an outdated past

- ALI RIEKHA KHAN

IN OUR age of information overload, the term “stupidity” has evolved from an insult into a persuasive condition – a systemic malaise that undermines democracy and feeds authoritarian impulses. In this fractured era, success is not the absence of intelligence but a deliberate strategy of performing simplified narratives and hollow polemics that mask deep social and economic dysfunction. This is the problem of stupidity we face today.

Consider the refrain of Donald Trump to the presidency in 2024-2025. With a flourish of executive orders and tariffs, Trump has once again transformed the White House into a stage for spectacle over substance. His new trade war, heralded as a patriotic defence of American workers, imposes sweeping tariffs on imports. Yet behind the fanfare lies a policy whose economic costs like hidden tax on American families, raising prices, endangering manufacturing jobs, and undermining global confidence in US economic leadership. Rather than a nuanced strategy to rebuild domestic industry, Trump’s tariffs echo a crude, simplistic “America First” rhetoric that sacrifices long-term prosperity for short-term national ambition.

This approach – emblematic of a broader malaise in the US – is not confined to the US. In countries across the globe, the rise of right-wing populism reveals a consistent pattern: the rallying cry of nationalised cronyism coupled with a call to return to a mythic past. Think of Hungary’s Viktor Orban or Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, whose illiberal policies betray the same challenges of modernity as assaults on national identity.

They speak a language that equates diversity and globalisation with cultural death, insisting that only by reclaiming lost sovereignty can their people be saved. That, in the very essence of greatness end up undermining economic stability and democratic norms, turning the shadowiness of the ideology behind them.