Description
This paper would like to focus upon proto-fascism as part of US foreign policy under the Second Trump administration, as it is not a fully-fledged fascist regime yet. Various academic works have analyzed US foreign policy by locating “America first” in transactionalism, great power politics, hard and soft power, or the decline of the Liberal International Order. These analyses tend to focus on the Trump administration’s self-projection of strength in either repositioning the US globally or in dealing with other countries, even if the policies are not successful. Instead, this paper emphasizes the US self-projection of weakness, or victimhood, which is embedded in fascism. Fascism heralds victimhood by which the progress of other groups is regarded as degrading to their own group, weakening the natural order, with therefore a need to rejuvenate to regain their strength and position. Some scholarship on (authoritarian) populism and fascism also analyze the humiliation by others. However, this paper would like to make the separate contribution that these discussions hide the more corporal aspect of this victimhood: the diseased body politic which can only be strong through cleansing or violently removing it from parasites in terms of race, gender, religion, and liberal elites.