Trump is a legitimate son, not a bastard, of modern Europe. Just as Hitler was in his time. The mother who gave birth to these children will give birth to others until she is devoured by one of them, perhaps by Trump himself. Instead of Goya's Saturn devouring its children, Europe will be devoured by its children. In this metaphor, being devoured doesn't mean becoming extinct. It means returning to what it was until the 14th century, an insignificant corner of Greater Eurasia where the Eastern Mediterranean stood as a bridge between the Eastern and Western worlds then known.

Trump began destabilizing Europe in 2016, devouring it to mitigate the worst consequences of the decline of US imperialism. The process didn't start with him and continued after him, with Biden and by other means: instead of the trade war, the war in Ukraine. We are therefore facing a historical process that we analyze with the difficulty of someone who analyzes the current of the waters while being dragged along by them.

Europe called itself the educator of the world from the 15th century onwards. And the educators' primer was dominated by the idea that to educate the other is to devour the other. Devouring is progress for those who devour and a common fate for those who are devoured. Devouring is always progress, whether it's devouring through evangelization, purchase, theft, occupation, war, or assimilation. By devouring, we mean a form of anthropophagy. The European form called itself civilization and, consequently, all the other forms of anthropophagy that European educators found in the world were declared barbaric and, as such, outlawed and demonized. Trump is not only a legitimate son but also a student who has learned well the lesson that European educators gave him.

However significant the ruptures between politics as usual and the Trump tsunami, I tend to see continuities, and it is these that signify the danger of the times we are living in. The fact that the ruptures are highlighted leads us to think that, once Trump is history, everything will go back to the way it was before. It won't. Trump is historically the spectacle of the decline of what we call the West. It's not the decline of the US; it's the decline of Europe and the Western world.

The long cycle that began in the 15th century is coming to an end. The unawareness of this fact on the part of European social democracy (which has been committing suicide since 1980) is well expressed in the recent publication by Social Europe, of the Friedrich-Ebert Foundation, entitled “EU Forward: Shaping European Politics & Policy in the Second Half of the 2020s” (2025). The ruins explained by those who caused them merely propose solutions that they themselves refused at a time when they might have been possible and avoided disaster.

Since 1945, the colonial pact between Europe and the USA has been reversed. The autonomy given to divided Europe and the generosity of its defense (NATO) were aimed at containing the communist danger. Europe has so internalized this role that it now has no choice but to invent the non-existent communist danger in order to survive. Europe is now a colony of its former colony, without any of them having gone through a real process of decolonization.

Trump's European matrix

The European matrix has the following components: civilizational superiority; instrumental rationality; epistemic exclusivity of science-technology; intimate relationship between trade and war; conquest or unequal contract; pacta sunt servanda when it suits; abyssal line between fully human beings and sub-human beings; nature belongs to us, we don't belong to nature; sovereignty, internal enemies, and external enemies; dialectic of revolution/counter-revolution.

This matrix did not come down from the heavens, nor was it revealed to any late descendant of Moses. It is constitutive of the structure of domination (exploitation, oppression, discrimination) of Western modernity made up of three main and intrinsically linked pillars of domination: capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy. This triad has varied greatly over the centuries, but it remains intact, yesterday as today, and has always made use of satellite dominations, be they caste, ableism, ethicism, religion, politics, etc.

This matrix is not exhaustive; it has had multiple interpretations and versions and has produced contradictory effects. European modernity also allowed two great cursed intellectuals, one at the beginning of the cycle and the other at the beginning of the end of the cycle, to see like no other the contradictions of the dominant interpretations of this matrix and the catastrophes it would produce. I'm referring to Baruch Spinoza and Karl Marx.

Civilizational superiority

In Western modernity, civilizational superiority presupposes racial superiority. In turn, racial superiority presupposes that the same procedures and institutions cannot be used with inferiors as with equals. According to centuries-old logic, from Aristotle to Nietzsche, it would be nonsense to treat unequals as equals. Racism and militarism have always been the subtexts of civilizational superiority. Devouring in the name of civilizational superiority, whatever the instrument used, provokes a specific form of anxiety arising from the possible reaction of those destined to be devoured.

Racism dehumanizes to legitimize the brutality of repression; militarism eliminates. Trump prefers extreme racism because it allows him to combine dehumanization with elimination. Unlike Indians, immigrants don't have to be eliminated. They are transferred to their countries of origin or to new reservations, whether in Guantánamo or El Salvador. Immigrants are handcuffed to dramatize the contrast with the liberation of real Americans.

Instrumental rationality and the epistemic exclusivity of science and technology

The modern principle that knowledge is power would only be a benevolent principle if the plurality of existing knowledge in the world were recognized and the possibilities for mutual enrichment were celebrated. Instead, exclusive priority was given to science and then to techno-science.

This had the following consequences: unprecedented scientific and technological development; massive epistemicide, i.e. the destruction, suppression or marginalization of all knowledge deemed unscientific; the construction of a common sense according to which to be rational is to adapt the means to the proposed ends without these being subject to discussion (efficiency); the devaluation of ethics resulting from the substitution of rationality for reasonableness; growing discrepancy between technical awareness and ethical awareness, to the detriment of the latter; rejection of the external limits of scientific knowledge, i.e. the questions that science will never be able to answer no matter how far it goes, for the simple reason that these questions cannot be formulated scientifically (for example, what is the meaning of life? ); the tendency to turn political problems into technical ones and to reduce qualitative questions to quantitative ones.

Elon Musk is the visible and caricatured face of the extremism to which this type of rationality can lead. But he is not the cause; he is the consequence. Those who criticize him for his delusional triumphalism are the same people who celebrate artificial intelligence without realizing that they are two manifestations of the same type of intelligence and the same type of artificiality. Taken to the extreme, instrumental rationality implies ethical-political irrationality. The current growth of the extreme right is one of the signs of this.

The rational use of natural and human resources

The instrumental rationality of modern capitalist, colonialist, and patriarchal domination set itself the goal of maximizing the accumulation of resources as a condition for maximizing profits; the means of achieving this were those that each era made possible, in the face of resistance from those who were being “de-accumulated” or dispossessed, be they human beings or nature. Before being used by Marxists to characterize labor relations, the concept of exploitation had long been used to exploit nature according to the same principle that knowledge is power. Neoliberalism in labor relations and ecological collapse are two sides of the same coin. Just as “drill, baby, drill!” and the treatment of migrant workers are two sides of the same coin.

In the logic of modern rationality, everything that is rationally usable is nature. It seems contradictory because the distinction between nature and humanity has been central at least since the Enlightenment: nature belongs to us; we don't belong to nature. There is, in fact, no contradiction because the definition of each of the terms always remains open so that everything that can be used rationally as an accumulative resource is converted into nature. Native peoples were nature, as were women, as were slaves. And if we look today at how human bodies are being industrialized in order to function effectively in the new configurations of work, it is the re-naturalization of the human that is at stake.

Intimate relationship between trade and war

Since its inception, trade and war have been the two faces of European colonial expansion. Francisco de Vitoria (1483-1546), the great advocate of free trade, individual property, and international law, is also the advocate of just war whenever the above values are violated. In fact, in the opinion of critics of liberal universalism, it has always carried with it the stigma of justifying war in the name of principles that only favor one of the parties, the one that has the power, at a given historical moment, to define what liberal universalism is. Double standards as a principle of governance are inherent to Western modernity. The principle that pacts are to be kept (pacta sunt servanda) has always been applied with an invisible clause (to the unwary): “always and only when it suits the powerful.”

In the matrix of modern domination, war is the beginning and the end, the first and the last resort. In between is dispossession or primitive (and permanent) accumulation, theft, trade, unequal exchange, slavery, unpaid women's work, etc. To ensure that everything takes place within the framework of civilization and not barbarism, diplomacy and unequal contracts were invented. Adam Smith warned that unequal contracts exist whenever there is an inequality of material or other conditions between the parties to the contract. The greatest inequality occurs when the weaker party has no other option but to accept the contract with the conditions offered by the stronger party. From employment contracts and service contracts between individuals and multinational companies to contracts for the exploitation of natural resources and trade agreements between central and peripheral countries, there is a long history of unequal contracts in Western modernity.

The abyssal line between fully human beings and subhuman beings

The hierarchy between civilization and barbarism has taken on different characteristics over the centuries. From the 16th century onwards, this hierarchy was used to justify colonialism, first justified by religion and then, with the Enlightenment, justified by science. Civilizational superiority became racial, white. As Frantz Fanon says in Black Skins White Masks, it is the racist who creates his inferior. From then on, the idea of universal humanity, so dear to the Enlightenment, came to depend on the limits of the universe of what is considered human. And, by definition of civilizational superiority, this universe does not encompass all humans. An abyssal line emerges between fully human beings (those who belong to metropolitan sociability) and subhuman beings (those who belong to colonial sociability).

The demarcation of exclusion/inclusion is so radical that, although it was institutionalized during the period of historical colonialism (slavery, the code noir of 1695, the segregationist Jim Crow laws of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Portuguese indigeneity codes from the 1920s onwards), it became the second nature of Western civilization and, as such, survived the end of historical colonialism and the end of all discriminatory legislation.

Today it is a line that is as radical as it is invisible in institutional norms. Such a line is the basis of racism, the continued theft of natural resources from the global South, and the unequal exchange between the central and peripheral countries of the world system. In Eurocentric modernity, humanity is not possible without subhumanity. As it is an abyssal line, its existence does not depend on laws or physical demarcations (like apartheid) because it is inscribed deep within the collective unconscious of Western modernity. This doesn't mean that it isn't always available to be made visible when it suits the political powers in charge of reproducing modern domination. Walls closing borders and mass deportations of alleged criminals are the two most visible forms today.

Let's remember that deportations, although they have a very long history, were one of the main forms of punishment-settlement in the early period of European colonial expansion. The Portuguese used it from the 16th century onwards, sending convicts to the “discovered” territories; from 1717 onwards, the British deported around 40,000 people to the colonies, first to North America and then to Australia (between 1787 and 1855). In the light of this history, it's understandable why Trump is so insistent that immigrants are all criminals. He has learned the European lesson well.

Conquest

The principle of conquest is inherent in Western modernity. It is not limited to territorial conquest; it also includes the conquest of religion, spirituality, the mind, emotions, and subjectivity. Conquest uses multiple weapons, from military to economic, educational, discursive, religious and playful. Conquest “knows” that it will encounter greater or lesser resistance and therefore operates according to the logic of preventive neutralization. The most effective and economical use of force is to threaten. Conquest involves theft, purchase, appropriation, diplomacy and violence. If we look at the current US territory, we can see that it is the result of the most radical exercise of the modern plan of conquest. Trump remains faithful to this exercise when imagining his new territorial conquests.

Sovereignty, internal enemies and external enemies

The idea of modern sovereignty that emerges from the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) is at the origin of both modern nationalism and internationalism. Each of them was as much a reality as an invention, and their political meanings were different and even contradictory over time and depending on the circumstances. The exacerbation of nationalism among the colonizing countries was always the harbinger of war, while the nationalism of the colonized countries was a condition for independence. As the USA is a colony that became independent without decolonizing itself, nationalism has been at the service of both war and isolationism.

This ambiguity of the concept of sovereignty, while creating the distinction between internal and external enemies, made it possible to manipulate it to serve the political interests of the moment. Thus, immigrants are, according to Trump, a hybrid entity, between the internal enemy and the external enemy. The same manipulation is possible with internal and external friends. Many will have been surprised that Trump began by punishing his closest friends (Canada, Mexico, Europe) with tariffs. In Trump's logic, as in Francisco de Vitoria's, anyone who is an economic rival is a political enemy, no matter how friendly they may seem.

Dialectic of revolution/counter-revolution

Due to its incessant and unconditional expansionism, Western modernity is constituted by the dialectic between insurgency and counter-insurgency. Both used more or less violent methods at different times and depending on the circumstances. We are in a period in which insurgency uses non-violent methods (democracy, the judicial system, public opinion), while counter-insurgency increasingly uses violent methods (hate speech, the rise of the extreme right, the threat of war). No one can anticipate the consequences of this discrepancy. In the past, this discrepancy led to the prevalence of counterinsurgency.

And now? Is American exceptionalism disconfirmed?

Yes. Like Europe and every country in the world, the US can produce heroes as well as villains; it can create democracies as well as destroy them. The difference in benefit or harm lies in the power of each country in the modern world system.

Can fascism come back?

Yes and no. Hitler carried out the coup in 1933 after winning the 1932 elections. Trump won the first elections in 2016 to prepare the institutional coup (the appointments to the Supreme Court) and is now exercising the new mandate as if it were a democratic coup. The far right around the world is paying close attention in order to define in each country which strategy, along the same lines, will lead to the same results.

Will there be a global war?

It's likely. In the case of previous wars, some of the greatest defenders of peace were the ones who prepared for the war the most and then fought it. If there is a war, it will be with China, and this time, US territory will be the theater of war. I think the Americans are so addicted to the idea of exceptionalism that they haven't realized it yet.

Can the left occasionally agree with Trump?

Yes. This answer is certainly the most controversial. But let's take the example of USAID. For years, critical analysts have criticized USAID as the benevolent side of CIA counterinsurgency. It was created in 1961 to prevent the Cuban revolution from spreading throughout the subcontinent. Humanitarian aid has always been about developing attitudes and behaviors favorable to US imperialism. The commentators at the service of the empire (who are always wrong about the empire's intentions) are all lamenting this latest blow by Trump to the benevolence of US aid to the most disadvantaged peoples.

Undoubtedly, this aid has been precious to the populations and its abrupt cut-off will create a lot of suffering. But it won't be long before China and its allies fill the void left by USAID. With better conditions for the beneficiary countries? Probably yes, as long as China is the ascendant empire. After that, we'll see.