A lucid, clear-eyed analysis of the morbid spectacle of Trump's racist counterrevolution. Mikkel Bolt proposes to add to the rubble of the neoliberal order by demolishing the political form of capitalism - democracy itself - as it slides into fascism. Welcome to life in the postcolony. ~ Iain Boal, co-author of Afflicted Powers: Capital and Spectacle in a New Age of War

The rise of Donald Trump and his regime has produced an abundance of analysis, much of it merely ideological. But Marx cautioned us that it is not the job of a worker's movement to inquire into the thinking of capitalists, but to inquire into their power. Mikkel Bolt takes up this challenge with this important inquiry into what W.E.B. Dubois anticipated in his concept of 'democratic despotism' - a cross-class white alliance, allied with ethnocentric fascism around the globe. Bolt asks us to consider the potentiality of an emergent communist counter-power - the very one that provoked this fascist turn. ~ Stefano Harney, co-author of The Undercommons

Trump is the symptom – but of what? Mikkel Bolt’s provocative answer is “of democracy,” that is, of democracy under conditions of capitalism and white supremacy. With this original intervention, Bolt rejects the conventional wisdom that makes democracy the cure for all that ails it. He challenges any and all concerned about the politics of Trump to consider what his victory tells us about democracy. ~ Jodi Dean, author of The Communist Horizon