4 February

For a long time here I’ve tried to persuade people that what Trump represents isn’t fascism. Fascism is about the State, and Trump has no real interest in the State. It’s a shift back to royal forms of governance. Back to kings. And here we are. ‘Neo-royalism’ is now the term used by scholars who study international relations to describe Trumpism and related movements. You can read a fascinating interview with the key scholars below. For most of our history the world was run by international networks of Kings and clerics. In the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, those global elites were shoehorned into territories, what we now call countries or nations. Today’s elites have been acting outside those borders for decades already, restoring the international elite network model.