Philippa Kaur

Since becoming president, Donald Trump has issued a record number of executive orders. Several aim to dismantle federally funded initiatives based on the idea that “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) are goals worth achieving.

In response, many commentators have warned Trump may be dragging the United States back to the dark days of the “pre-civil rights” Jim Crow era.

But who or what was Jim Crow?

The term Jim Crow refers to the long period in US history when black Americans could not exercise the same rights of citizenship as white Americans.

“Jim Crow” segregation began when slavery ended in northern states such as New York, between 1777 and about 1830. There was a brief reprieve from some of the era’s excesses just after the Civil War, when African Americans could do things such as run for political office, vote, and own land even in the South.

But by 1877, conservative forces had regrouped. In the next few decades they enforced inequality through acts of violence such as lynching and by passing laws mandating separate public spaces and schools for black people and preventing them from voting.

The Jim Crow era ended with the mass mobilisation in the 1950s and 1960s of civil rights campaigners, which forced the federal government to take, in the words of President John F. Kennedy, “affirmative action” to make things more fair.

President Trump throws pens used to sign executive orders to the crowd during an event in Washington on January 20.
Matt Rourke/AAP

Who was Jim Crow?

The character of “Jim Crow” first came to life in 1828 on a New Orleans stage. An itinerant white performer, Thomas Dartmouth Rice, blackened his face and claimed to be mimicking the songs and dances of an enslaved man, named Jim Crow.

White performers and later even black ones wore makeup and outfits accentuating the supposed difference of black people from white norms of beauty. They performed songs, skits, and sometimes excerpts of other well-known stage plays, all designed to malign black people. One of those songs was “Jump Jim Crow”.

Cover of the early edition of ‘Jump Jim Crow’ sheet music.
Wikimedia Commons

Within ten years of Rice’s first rendition, the theatrical genre of minstrelsy took hold of audiences in the US, and spread across the British world, including Australia and New Zealand. Its popularity lasted right into the 20th century, as late as the 1960s.

Historians have never quite solved the mystery of how, by the 1890s, the mythical figure of Jim Crow became the shorthand name for the system of laws, violence, and caricature under which black Americans laboured for so long.

But by naming it as such, the shorthand implied the system was required in order to keep an inferior group of people, illustrated by the dissolute and comical character of Jim Crow, in check. The name stuck.

Actor Thomas D. Rice dancing blackface as the enslaved man ‘Jim Crow’ in 1836.
Wikimedia Commons

The name also travelled. In Australia, several Indigenous men were named Jim Crow (and Indigenous women named Topsy, after another caricatured figure in the wildly popular American novel and stage show, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin).

In central Victoria, Jim Crow Creek was renamed Larni Barramal Yaluk in 2023 after a long campaign by Dja Dja Wurrung leaders.

Why separate people by race?

The Jim Crow era emerged after slavery ended because wealthy white people wanted to maintain a cheap labour force.

They justified this system by claiming the aim of keeping white and black people apart was to maintain “racial purity.” (The very word, “miscegenation” emerged in 1864, just a year before the end of slavery in the US.) This rhetoric also helped make segregation appealing to poorer whites, because it enabled them to feel superior to non-white people.

Little Rock, 1959: a rally at the state capitol, protesting the integration of the local high school.
Wikimedia Commons

While segregation is now often imagined to have been total, in fact white and black Americans continued to inhabit many of the same spaces. White and black agricultural workers often tilled the same fields, while African American women worked throughout these decades as maids or cooks in white people’s homes, a very intimate role.

Maintaining inequality

The system of unequal opportunities – “Jim Crow” – was maintained in three main ways. First, with violence. More than 4,000 African Americans were killed in a ritual known as “lynching” between 1877 and 1950. Untold numbers suffered other forms of violence and lived constantly with the fear that they might be its victim.

Secondly, local and state governments passed laws and ordinances to control African Americans. These included dictates on mobility such as curfews; vagrancy laws to force black Americans to sign desperately unfair labour contracts; and prohibitions on black people owning firearms. Later, these laws were expanded to prevent black men (and later women) from running for office, voting, or sitting on juries.

And the laws mandated separate public spaces, such as in train travel or in the theatre, as well as separate educational facilities. In 1896, the provision of “separate but equal” public facilities was given the stamp of approval by the US Supreme Court. That decision was only overturned in 1954.

At the bus station in Durham, North Carolina, May 1940. Photo by Jack Delano.
Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

Thirdly, the racism that had underpinned justifications for the trafficking of 12 million people from Africa across the Atlantic in the slave trade was expanded in new ways.

Grotesque caricaturing of black people became a mainstay of consumer goods (think of “Aunt Jemima” pancakes or “Uncle Ben” rice) and popular culture. This started with theatre in the 1820s, then later in recorded music, film, radio, and television.

Today’s picture

Now, “Jim Crow” is back in public discourse. Conservatives say their anti-DEI policies restore merit-based appointments and are genuinely “colorblind.” But the appointment of Fox News host Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense, for example, suggests “merit” is understood very differently by different groups of people.

Critics such as Margaret Huang, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s president and chief executive, assert that Trump and others’ attacks on DEI “aren’t about a particular program or some acronym — they’re just a sanitized substitute for the racist comments that can no longer be spoken openly”.

Coupled with other presidential executive orders aiming to remove “birthright citizenship,” and to expand deportation of immigrants and limit fresh immigration, it’s clear Trump’s administration is intent on reshaping just who is a legitimate citizen of the US, and which groups of people have access to federal support.

If there is one lesson to take from the ignominious period of US history known as Jim Crow, it is this: it was overturned only by dint of African Americans’ immense collective efforts. These began with civil court cases in the 1830s through to marching across a bridge in Selma, Alabama, in 1965.

Participants in the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, in 1965.
Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

Plenty of people are looking to their examples of community building, civil disobedience, and collective resistance to once again defend the principles of equality. More

The pairing of British prime minister Keir Starmer and US president Donald Trump connotes many imponderables. The only certainty happens to be the most significant: they will be in office together for four years.

It is rare for a prime minister and a president to have the luxury of knowing – barring extreme unpredictabilities, such as death or incapacity – they have a full term in harness. And personal chemistry matters.

Trump emphasises (rather too much for the liking of America’s allies) the deal, the handshake, the gaze; the bond that only the lonely, only those who lead, can have. Starmer emphasises level-headedness (although his government has not been particulary conspicuous in evincing it).

Opposites may well attract, but the precedents for coterminous presidents and prime ministers are not encouraging. John Major and Bill Clinton, elected seven months apart, spent 1992 to 1997 together. But in the very definition of what not to do before an election, London had made its preference for the result of the election in America known – and the other guy won. The Conservative and the Democrat were no more than coolly cordial thereafter.

Major awks.
Alamy/Michael Stephens

On his re-election in 2001, Tony Blair knew he had George W. Bush for at least four years – it turned out to be eight – but the consequences for him were disastrous once the two decided to partake in a war on “terror”.

In 1964, Harold Wilson and Lyndon Johnson were elected almost simultaneously, and spent 1964 to 1968 together. Though they were Labour and Democrat, and therefore from sister parties, it was not a harmonious pairing. Wilson’s meddling in, but lack of support for, Johnson’s war in Vietnam was a source of unbridled irritation in the White House.

Trump and May

The last time Trump became president, Theresa May was prime minister and she travelled with undisguised haste to the White House. There she achieved a highly untypical diplomatic coup in getting Trump to commit publicly to Nato (that bars should be so low was a general feature of the presidency).

Their subsequent relationship was, however, toxic. No prime minister has been less likely to gaze, to bond (despite pictures of them holding hands), and the president held her as having mangled Brexit, a bid for freedom with which he was keen to associate himself.

Theresa May and Donald Trump during her visit to the White House, before relations turned sour.
EPA

Before the US election, Starmer displayed a unfamiliar deftness of touch, and banked some credit. His immediate phone call to candidate Trump following an attempt on his life in July was both bold and smart. There followed the fabled Trump Tower two-hour chicken dinner.

It was more typical for Starmer that when it emerged, in a most unfortunate echo of 1992, Labour activists – and Starmer’s own pollster – were working on the Kamala Harris campaign, Trump’s people cried foreign interference and threatened legal action.

And the two in Starmer’s team who will have the most exposure to the new administration have both been publicly rude about Trump. David Lammy, now foreign secretary, called him “deluded, dishonest, xenophobic [and] narcissistic” in 2019.

Peter Mandelson, nominated but not yet confirmed as the UK ambassador to the US, has made comments about Trump being a “bully” and a “danger to the world”. To appease opposition in DC on his appointment, Mandelson has since turned on a sixpence (or perhaps a dime).

This is, at root, about Trump. No other president would have attracted such comments from frontline politicians. But from TV studio to TV studio, Lammy and Mandelson will have those quotes hung about their necks as if they were modern-day ancient mariners. Starmer’s innate caution in public utterance, in this area at least, has inured him.

Indeed, the repercussions of his unusual boldness in picking Mandelson over a career diplomat may discourage Starmer from ever thinking imaginatively again.

Most members of the Trump administration would be naturally hostile to a Labour government even without its leading figures insulting their boss or campaigning for his opponent. Certainly, the grounds for disagreement are great: the threat of tariffs, demanded increases in defence spending, the sovereignty of the Chagos Islands, co-operation with China and support for Ukraine.

Thus Morgan McSweeney – architect of Labour’s 2024 victory, planner of its re-election and Starmer’s chief of staff – flew out to meet Susie Wiles, his equivalent in the White House. (It did not, a person privy to such information told me, go well. Voices were raised.)

Elon Musk, this moment’s most prominent presidential acolyte inveighed on X, “Starmer must go”, adding for good measure, “He is a national embarrassment.” It is indeed embarrassing – for Starmer – but he will be consoled with the well-founded suspicion that the life-expectancy of Musk and Trump’s tech bromance will be much less than four years.

Cause for self-reflection

The return of Trump, emboldened and more powerful than before, has effectively forced the posing of the age-old question: over which expanse of sea should Britain gaze – the Channel or the Atlantic? Churchill thought it should – and that only Britain could – do both.

Hence, perhaps, Trump’s own public statement about the possible destination of his first international trip: “It could be UK. Traditionally, it’s been UK.”

It hasn’t. Only Jimmy Carter, in 1977, and Joe Biden, in 2021, visited the UK first – and then because of summits. More than a few presidents (most recently Ford and Johnson) didn’t visit at all.

But even what might have been a supportive comment was laced with arsenic: “Last time, I went to Saudi Arabia because they agreed to buy 450 billion dollars’ worth of United States merchandise … And if that offer were right, I’d do that again.” Which at least may free the British government to be as unsentimentally transactional.

Trump and Starmer achieved big victories, albeit when painted in the most flattering terms. Starmer’s came on a historically low combination of vote share and voter turnout, Trump’s with fewer votes than Biden. But Trump will like that Starmer won a large majority. When May managed to lose hers in 2017, what little respect Trump had for her went with it.

Starmer would much rather have had four years with Biden, and even more with Harris, another public prosecutor of the left. But he has to deal with the transatlantic relationship as it is, rather than as he would wish it to be, and this one is most unlikely to be special.

Starmer is, moreover, a realist. Which is why he’ll also know that the second Trump presidency will be much more consequential than the first. Caution may have limited effect. More

US President Donald Trump isn’t happy about the way some countries are taxing American citizens and companies. He has made clear he’s willing to retaliate, threatening to double taxes for their own citizens and companies.

Can Trump really do that, unilaterally, as president? It turns out he can, under a 90-year-old provision of the US tax code – Section 891.

In an executive memo signed on January 20 outlining his “America First Trade Policy”, Trump instructed US Treasury to:

investigate whether any foreign country subjects United States citizens or corporations to discriminatory or extraterritorial taxes pursuant to Section 891 of Title 26, United States Code.

A sweeping power

Section 891 of the US Internal Revenue Code is short, but it is in sweeping terms.

If the president finds that US citizens or corporations are being subjected to “discriminatory or extraterritorial taxes” under the laws of any foreign country, he “shall so proclaim” this. US income tax rates on the citizens or corporations of that country are then automatically doubled.

Section 891 of the US tax code allows the president to double US taxes on foreign citizens and companies – under certain circumstances.
Yuri Gripas/Pool/EPA

The extra tax that could be collected is capped at 80% of the US taxable income of the taxpayer. The president can revoke a proclamation, if the foreign country reverses its “discriminatory or extraterritorial” taxation.

Section 891 is an extraordinary provision – but it has never been applied. As far as I know, no other country has legislated such a rule. Importantly, it would only apply to a person or business subject to income taxation by the US.

Take, for example, a foreign national earning a wage in the US. If this individual’s home country became subject to a proclamation under Section 891, their individual tax rate in the US would be doubled – to as much as 74%.

A foreign company earning taxable profits in the US would face a doubling of the company tax rate from 21% to 42%.

A bit of history

A version of Section 891 has been in the US tax code since 1934, an earlier troubled time of tax disputes and economic depression.

It was signed into law by Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt on May 10 1934, amid a tax dispute between the US and France.

US President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Section 891 into law in 1934, putting pressure on France to end a tax dispute.
Vincenzo Laviosa/Wikimedia Commons

According to US tax historian Joseph Thorndike, the move followed attempts by France to levy additional taxes on US companies operating there, beginning in the mid-1920s.

France had tried to use an 1873 law to tax US companies operating in France on profits earned in the parent company back in the US, and in other subsidiaries around the world, not just the French company profits.

The aim was to counter international profit-shifting, which could be used to reduce the tax payable by US subsidiaries operating in France by claiming deductions or shifting income to other group companies outside France.

The dispute was long-standing and France tried to assess taxes going back decades for some US companies. The potentially massive tax bill (it seems the tax was never actually collected) became a geopolitical issue, and the companies asked the US government to intervene on their behalf.

Thorndike explains that a bilateral tax treaty was negotiated between the US and France to remedy this “double tax” situation. But the French legislature refused to ratify it.

In retaliation, US Congress passed Section 891, and six months later, France ratified its bilateral tax treaty with the US.

Parallels with today

In 1934, there were no digital multinational enterprises like Meta or Google. But that tax dispute nevertheless has parallels with modern concerns about taxing companies internationally.

The French government was trying, with a rather heavy hand, to counter international profit-shifting by large US multinationals.

Section 891 was re-enacted in later US tax codes, up to today, with minor amendments and no attempt to invoke it. It has remained in the background as a potential exercise of US fiscal and market power, supported by both sides of US politics.

Tax professor Itai Grinberg, who worked in the Biden administration on the OECD tax deal, suggested it could be applied to the European Union decision that taxes Apple in Ireland.

The US tech giants are only the latest in a long line of powerful American multinational corporations.
Tada Images/Shutterstock

What might Trump do?

President Trump has specifically targeted the OECD global tax negotiations with this threat, just a month after Australia has legislated the global minimum tax under “Pillar Two” of the OECD Global Tax Deal.

The OECD deal aims to ensure large multinational enterprises pay a minimum 15% effective tax rate in all the jurisdictions in which they operate, by applying a top-up tax and under-taxed profit tax.

Trump asserted in a memorandum that the OECD Global Tax Deal is “extraterritorial”, instructing the US Secretary of the Treasury and the US Trade Representative to investigate it.

Could Australia be singled out?

Trump’s memorandum also ordered an investigation into “other discriminatory foreign tax practices” that may harm US companies.

This includes whether any foreign countries are not complying with their US tax treaties or have, or are likely to put in place, any tax rules that “disproportionately affect American companies”.

Notably, this could put Australia’s proposed “news bargaining incentive” in the crosshairs.

Under this proposal, digital platforms (many of which are US-owned) would have to pay a new levy, which could be offset if they negotiate or renew deals with Australian news media publishers to pay for hosting news content.

Section 891 could apply to such taxes if they were found by Trump to be “discriminatory” against US companies. What “discriminatory” means is not clear.

Its been suggested that foreign citizens or companies could be protected from Section 891 by their country’s tax treaty with the US, under the standard approach that a later treaty prevails over an older code section. But Australia’s tax treaty with the US took effect in 1983, before the most recent re-enactment of Section 891 in the US tax code.

Read more:
News bargaining incentive: the latest move in the government’s ‘four-dimensional chess’ battle with Meta More

US president Donald Trump is surrounded by a new cohort of politicians and officials. While one of his campaign promises was to overthrow the “corrupt elites” he accuses of flooding the American political arena, his second term in office has elevated elites chosen, above all, for their political loyalty to him.

The media’s focus on Trump’s comments on making Canada the 51st US state and annexing Greenland and billionaire Elon Musk’s support for some far-right parties in Europe has obscured the ambitious programme to transform the federal government that the new political elite intends to implement.

In the wake of Trump’s inauguration on January 20, the Republican elites most loyal to the MAGA (“Make America Great Again”) leader, who staunchly oppose Democratic elites and their policies, are operating amid their party’s control over the executive and legislative branches (at least until the midterm elections in 2026), a conservative-dominated Supreme Court that includes three Trump-appointed justices, and a federal judiciary that shifted right during his first term.

However, the political project of the Trumpist camp consists less of challenging elitism in general than attacking a specific elite: one particular to liberal democracies.

Castigating democratic elitism

Typical anti-elite political propaganda, along the lines of “I speak for you, the people, against the elites who betray and deceive you,” claims that a populist leader would be able to exercise power for and on behalf of the people without the mediation of an elite disconnected from their needs.

Political theorist John Higley sees behind this form of anti-elite discourse an association between so-called “forceful leaders” and “leonine elites” (who take advantage of the former and their political success): a phenomenon that threatens the future of Western democracies.

Since the Second World War, there has been a consensus in US politics on the idea of democratic elitism. According to this principle, elitist mediation is inevitable in mass democracies and must be based on two criteria: respect for the results of elections (which must be free and competitive); and the relative autonomy of political institutions.

The challenge to this consensus has been growing since the 1990s with the increased polarization of American politics. It gained new momentum during and after the 2016 presidential campaign, which was marked by anti-elite rhetoric from both Republicans and Democrats (such as senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren). At the heart of some of their diatribes was an aversion to “the Establishment” on the east and west coasts of the United States, where many prestigious financial, political and academic institutions are based, and the conspiracy notion of the “deep state”.

The re-election of Trump, who has never admitted defeat in the 2020 presidential vote, growing political hostility and the direct involvement of tech tycoons in political communication –especially on the Republican side– further reinforce the denial of democratic elitism.

Trump’s populism from above: a revolt of the elites

The idea that democracy could be betrayed by “the revolt of the elites”, put forward by the US historian Christopher Lasch (1932-1994), is not new. For the anthropologist Arjun Appadurai, it is a particular feature of contemporary populism, which comes “from above.” Indeed, if the 20th century was the era of the “revolt of the masses”, the 21st century, according to Appadurai, “is characterized by the ‘revolt of the elites’.” This would explain the rise of populist autocracies (such as those currently led by Viktor Orban in Hungary, Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey and Narendra Modi in India, and formerly led by Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil), but also the election successes of populist leaders in consolidated democracies (including those of Trump in the US, Giorgia Meloni in Italy, and Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, for example).

As Appadurai explains, the success of Trumpian populism, which represents a revolt by ordinary Americans against the elites, casts a veil over the fact that, following Trump’s victory in November, “it is a new elite that has ousted from power the despised Democratic elite that had occupied the White House for nearly four years.”

The aim of this “alter elite” is to replace the “regular” Democrat elites, but also the moderate Republicans, by deeply discrediting their values (such as liberalism and so-called “wokeism”) and their supposedly corrupt political practices. As a result, this populism “from above” carried out by the President’s supporters constitutes an alternative elite configuration, the effects of which on American democratic life could be more significant than those observed during Trump’s first term.

Beyond the idea of a ‘Muskoligarchy’

The idea that we are witnessing the formation of a “Muskoligarchy” –in other words, an economic elite (including tech barons such as Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Marc Andreessen) rallying around the figurehead of Elon Musk, whom Trump asked to lead what the president has called a “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) –is seductive. It perfectly combines the vision of an alliance between a “conspiratorial, coherent, conscious” ruling class and an oligarchy made up of the “ultra-rich”. For the Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf, it is even a sign of the development of “pluto-populism”. (It is also worth noting that former president Joe Biden, in his farewell speech, referred to “an oligarchy… of extreme wealth” and “the potential rise of a tech-industrial complex.”)

However, some observers are cautious about the advent of a “Muskoligarchy.” They point to the sociological eclecticism of the new Trumpian elite, whose facade of unity is held together above all by a political loyalty, for the time being unfailing, to the MAGA leader. The fact remains, however, that the various factions of this new “anti-elite” elite are converging around a common agenda: to rid the federal government of the supposed stranglehold of Democratic “insiders.”

An ‘anti-elite’ elite against the ‘deep state’

In his presidential inauguration speech in 1981, Ronald Reagan said: “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” The anti-elitism of the Trump elite is inspired by this diagnosis, and defends a simple political programme: rid democracy of the “deep state.”

Although the idea that the US is “beleaguered” by an “unelected and unaccountable elite” and “insiders” who subvert the general interest has been shown to be unfounded, it is nonetheless predominant in the new Trump Administration.

This conspiracy theory has been taken to the extreme by Kash Patel, the candidate being considered to head the FBI. In his book, Government Gangsters, a veritable manifesto against the federal administration, the former lawyer writes about the need to resort to “purges” in order to bring elite Democrats to justice. He lists around 60 people, including Biden, ex-secretary of state Hillary Clinton and ex-vice president Kamala Harris.

Government Gangsters, Kash Patel’s controversial book.
Google Books

The appointment of Russell Vought as head of the Office of Management and Budget at the White House, a person who is known for having sought to obstruct the transition to the Biden Administration in 2021, also highlights the hard turn that the Trump administration is likely to take.

Reshaping the state around political loyalty

To “deconstruct the administrative state”, the “anti-elite” elites are relying on Project 2025, a 900-plus page programme report that the conservative think-tank The Heritage Foundation, which published it, says was produced by “more than 400 scholars and policy experts.” According to former Project 2025 director Paul Dans, “never before has the entire movement… banded together to construct a comprehensive plan” for this purpose. On this basis, the “anti-elite” elite want to impose loyalty to Project 2025 on federal civil servants.

But this idea is not new. At the end of his first term, Trump issued an executive order facilitating the dismissal of statutory federal civil servants occupying “policy-related positions” and considered to be “disloyal”. The decree was rescinded by president Biden, but Trump on his first day back in office signed an executive order that seeks to void Biden’s rescindment. As President, Trump is also able to allocate senior positions within the federal administration to his supporters.

The “anti-elite” elite not only want to reduce the size of the state, as was the case under Reagan’s “neoliberalism”, but to deconstruct and rebuild it in their own image. Their real aim is a more lasting victory: the transformation of democratic elitism into populist elitism. More

Elon Musk has emerged as one of the most influential and controversial powerbrokers in the new Trump administration. He spent at least US$277 million (about A$360 million) of his own money to help Donald Trump win re-election, campaigning alongside him around the country.

This significant investment of time and money raises the question of what the world’s wealthiest person hopes to receive in return. Critics have wondered whether Musk’s support for Trump is just a straightforward commercial transaction, with Musk expecting to receive political favours.

Or does it reflect Musk’s own genuinely held political views, and perhaps personal political ambition?

From left to alt-right

Decoding Musk’s political views and tracking how they have changed over time is a complex exercise. He’s hard to pin down, largely by design.

Musk’s current X feed, for example, is a bewildering mix of far-right conspiracy theories about immigration, clips of neoliberal economist Milton Friedman warning about the dangers of inflation, and advertisements for Tesla.

Historically, Musk professes to have been a left libertarian. He says he voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020.

Musk claims that over time, the Democratic party has moved further to the left, leaving him feeling closer politically to the Republican party.

Key to Musk’s political shift, at least by his own account, is his estrangement from his transgender daughter, Vivian Jenna Wilson.

After Vivian’s transition, Musk claimed she was “dead, killed by the woke mind virus”. She is very much alive.

He’s since repeatedly signalled his opposition to transgender rights and gender-affirming care, and diversity, equity and inclusion policies more broadly.

However, if the mere existence of a trans person in his family was enough to cause a political meltdown, Musk was clearly already on a trajectory towards far-right politics.

Rather than responding to a shift in the Democratic Party, it makes more sense to understand Musk’s changing politics as part of a much broader recent phenomenon known as as “the libertarian to alt-right pipeline”.

The political science, explained

Libertarianism has historically tended to be divided between left-wing and right-wing forms.

Left libertarians support economic policies of limited government, such as cutting taxes and social spending, and deregulation more broadly. This is combined with progressive social policies, such as marriage equality and drug decriminalisation.

By contrast, right libertarians support the same set of economic policies, but hold conservative social views, such as opposing abortion rights and celebrating patriotism.

Historically, the Libertarian Party in the United States adopted an awkward middle ground between the two poles.

The past decade, though, has seen the Libertarian Party, and libertarianism more generally, move strongly to the right. In particular, many libertarians have played leading roles in the alt-right movement.

The alt-right or “alternative right” refers to the recent resurgence of far-right political movements opposing multiculturalism, gender equality and diversity, and supporting white nationalism.

The alt-right is a very online movement, with its leading activists renowned for internet trolling and “edgelording” – that is, the posting of controversial and confronting content to deliberately stoke controversy and attract attention.

Though some libertarians have resisted the pull of the alt-right, many have been swept along the pipeline, including prominent leaders in the movement.

Making sense of Musk

While this discussion of theory may seem abstract, it helps to understand what Musk’s values are (beneath the chaotic tweets and Nazi salutes).

In economic terms, Musk remains a limited-government libertarian. He advocates cutting government spending, reducing taxes and repealing regulation – especially regulations that put limits on his businesses.

His formal role in the Trump administration as head of the “Department of Government Efficiency”, also known as DOGE, is targeted at these goals.

Musk has suggested that in cutting government spending, he will particularly target diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. This is the alt-right influence on display.

Alt-right sensibilities are most evident, however, in Musk’s online persona.

On X, Musk has deliberately stoked controversy by boosting and engaging with white nationalists and racist conspiracy theories.

For example, he has favourably engaged with far-right politicians advocating for the antisemitic “Great Replacement theory”. This theory claims Jews are encouraging mass migration to the global north as part of a deliberate plot to eliminate the white race.

More recently, Musk has endorsed the far-right in Germany. He’s also shared videos from known white supremacists outlining the racist “Muslim grooming gangs” conspiracy theory in the United Kingdom.

Whether Musk actually believes these outlandish racist conspiracy theories is, in many ways, irrelevant.

Rather, Musk’s public statements are better understood as reflecting philosopher Harry Frankfurt’s famous definition of “bullshit”. For Frankfurt, “bullshit” refers to statements made to impress or provoke in which the speaker is simply not concerned with whether the statement is actually true.

Much of Musk’s online persona is part of a deliberate alt-right populist strategy to stoke controversy, upset “the left”, and then claim to be a persecuted victim when criticised.

Theory vs practice

Though Musk’s public statements might fit nicely into contemporary libertarianism, there are always contradictions when putting ideology into practice.

For example, despite Musk’s oft-stated preference for limited government, it’s well documented that his companies have received extensive subsidies and support from various governments.

Musk will expect this special treatment to continue under a quintessentially transactional president such as Trump.

In return for his political support, Musk is likely expecting commercial favours from Trump.
Matt Rourke/AP

The vexed issue of immigration also presents some contradictions.

Across the campaign, both Musk and Trump repeatedly criticised immigration to the US. Reprising the themes of the far-right Great Replacement theory, Musk claimed illegal immigration was a deliberate plot by Democrats to “replace” the existing electorate with “compliant illegals”.

However, after the election Musk has argued Trump should preserve categories of skilled migration such as the H1-B visas. This angered more explicit white supremacists, such as Trump advisor Laura Loomer.

Musk’s motives in arguing for the visas are not humanitarian. H1-B visas allow temporary workers to enter the country for up to six years, making them entirely dependent on the sponsoring company. It’s a situation some have called “indentured servitude”.

These visas have been used heavily in the technology sector, including in companies owned by both Musk and Trump.

An unsteady alliance

So what might we expect from Musk now that he has both political office and influence?

Musk’s stated aim of using DOGE to cut $2 trillion from the US budget would represent an unprecedented transformation of government. It also seems highly unlikely.

Instead, expect Musk to focus on creating controversy by cutting DEI initiatives and other politically sensitive programs, such as support for women’s reproductive rights.

Musk will clearly use his political influence to look after the interests of his companies. Shares in Tesla surged to record highs following Trump’s re-election, suggesting investors believe Musk will be a major financial beneficiary of the second Trump administration.

Musk’s presence has already caused tensions within the MAGA movement.
Will Oliver/EPA

Finally, Musk will undoubtedly use his new position to remain in the public eye. This last part might lead Musk into conflict with another expert in shaping the media cycle – Trump himself.

Musk has already reportedly fallen out with Vivek Ramaswamy, who will now no longer co-lead DOGE with Musk.

Exactly how stable the alliance between Trump and Musk is, and whether the egos and interests of the two billionaires can continue to coexist, remains to be seen.

If the alliance persists, it will be a key factor in shaping what many are terming the emergence of a “new gilded age” of political corruption and soaring inequality. More

This article was first published as World Affairs Briefing from The Conversation UK. Click here to receive this newsletter every Thursday, direct to your inbox.

When Abraham Lincoln gave his second inaugural address) in March 1865, his message was delivered: “With malice toward none, with charity for all” (thanks to Rory Stewart for mentioning this on The Rest is Politics). As anyone who watched Donald Trump deliver his second inaugural speech and has followed the 47th president’s first few days back in office will know, there has been malice aplenty. And a distinct lack of charity.

For malice, you’d have to go a long way to beat the way Trump spent the first few minutes of his speech trashing the record of Joe Biden. Only an hour or so before, the outgoing president had graciously welcomed the incoming president into the White House – and was sitting right behind Trump as he tore him to shreds.

But Trump’s decision to launch an attack on the Right Rev Mariann Edgar Budde must have pushed it close. Budde delivered a sermon on Tuesday at the National Cathedral prayer service for the inauguration, asking the president to “have mercy” on “people in our country who are scared now”. Trump responded on Wednesday by taking to social media to demand an apology, calling her “nasty” and the service “boring” and “uninspiring”.

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Trump’s first week has been a blur of executive orders and social media posts, which combine to give us an idea about what’s going on in his head. For now, at least. One of the latest big reveals on his Truth Social website was his plan for ending the war in Ukraine, besides treating Vladimir Putin like a recalcitrant child. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” he cautioned, before threatening to put “high levels of taxes, tariffs, and sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States, and various other participating countries”.

All of which is pretty much as the US was already doing under Biden, notes David Galbreath, who reports that Putin’s spin doctor Dmitry Peskov told Russian journalists that “we do not see any particular new elements here”.

But there appear to be some key differences in approaches of the two administrations, writes Galbreath, an expert in war and security at the University of Bath, who has a particular focus on Russia and the Soviet Union. First, his stated intention to punish countries that do business with Russia, including Iran and North Korea, but possibly also China and India, which remain important customers for Russian oil and gas.

Dynamic relationship: Trump with Russian president Vladimir Putin at their summit in Geneva in July 2018.
EPA-EFE/Anatoly Maltsev

And Trump’s idiosyncratic use of social media to stir the pot could also be interpreted as a foreign policy tool. So when Putin congratulated the US president after his inauguration, Trump responded with criticism of the way Putin has prosecuted his war: “He can’t be thrilled, he’s not doing so well,” Trump wrote. “Russia is bigger, they have more soldiers to lose, but that’s no way to run a country.”

Read more:
Is Trump changing tack on ending the war in Ukraine?

Of course, bluff, bluster and keeping people guessing has always been a key tactic in Trump’s playbook. Whether this will bother a former KGB officer like Putin is a matter of conjecture: one would have to imagine the Russian president didn’t get where he is today without knowing a thing or two about dissembling himself.

But many observers believe that Trump’s unpredictable nature probably had a fair bit to do with how Benjamin Netanyahu finally accepted the deal brokered by (among others) Antony Blinken and his US state department colleagues last May. Despite the deal looking to have been done by September last year, the Israeli prime minister continued to raise objections. That is until Trump let it be known on January 7 that should it not be signed by the time he entered the White House “all hell will break out in the Middle East”.

Whether this approach will help Trump in his bid to remake the world order to fit his “America first” doctrine is another matter, writes Stefan Wolff, an international security analyst at the University of Birmingham. Wolff identifies three key foreign policy aims for a second Trump White House. His first priority, writes Wolff, will be to assert US dominance in the western hemisphere, but particularly in the Americas and the Caribbean.

This will mean scaling back US involvement in Europe and the Middle East. America’s Nato allies will be watching this aspect of Trump 2.0 foreign policy with a degree of concern. But the big unknown will be how he approaches the US relationship with China, where – as Wolff points out – he “oscillates between aggressive and conciliatory rhetoric”.

For Wolff the overarching question is whether Trump is capable, in one term, of realising his vision of three clearly defined spheres of influence for the great powers – the US, China and possibly Russia, “let alone whether such an outcome would be desirable”.

Read more:
Trump signals he will start pushing for a new world order in first 100 days

The words “in one term” in the previous paragraph are doing a lot of heavy lifting. There has been a fair bit of speculation already as to whether Trump will be happy with just one term and whether, having been so rudely interrupted in 2021 by Joe Biden, the 45th and 47th president might seek to change the US constitution to give himself a shot at becoming number 48 as well.

Given he would be 82 if he were to seek the third term, this would appear to be so remote as to be unimaginable. But it’s hard to second guess Donald Trump when it comes to how he wants history to remember him. And let’s not forget that his great rival and sparring partner Vladimir Putin will have served six terms if he makes it to 2036, which is what he is entitled to do under Russia’s constitution.

Anyway, in the remote eventuality that Trump does decide to opt for constitutional change, Russian constitutional expert Paul Fisher has this account of how Putin manipulated the system to normalise the idea that he could, effectively, become president for life.

Read more:
How Vladimir Putin was able to change Russia’s constitution and become ‘president for life’

Trump does solemnly swear

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. He’s only just been sworn in. Dafydd Townley, an expert in US politics from the University of Portsmouth was there to watch him seal the deal and gives us his impression of the inauguration. There’s a degree of relief, writes Townley, in the improbability of any petty squabbles about crowd sizes this time round, given that everyone had to cram into the Capitol Rotunda due, we’re told, to the cold weather.

The inauguration speech, which had the audience bobbing up and down in ovation, was pretty much what Trump had foreshadowed on the campaign trail and in recent interviews: taking control of the Panama Canal, legislating to recognise only two genders (this one got the crowd particularly excited), planting the US flag on Mars (which in turn sent Elon Musk into raptures). American would be great again and he would rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. At this point Hillary Clinton got the giggles.

Read more:
The key takeaways from Donald Trump’s inauguration speech

Musk was clearly still excited when he tipped up to an inauguration rally later for the folks who couldn’t squeeze into the Rotunda. Thanking Trump’s supporters for helping get his friend elected, Musk made a curious gesture with his right arm. I’ll say nothing more except to say it involved putting his right hand over his heart before extending his arm, elbow-straight, at a roughly 45-degree angle, with palm outstretched and facing down.

You’ve seen it before, I’m sure. Suffice to say it led to an orgy of speculation online about Musk’s ideological leanings. Happily Samuel Agbamu, a historian and classicist at the University of Reading, is here to give us the fascinating history of this much contested gesture.

Read more:
Elon Musk and the history of the ‘Roman salute’

Dictator for a day

Anyway, the next day Trump had his feet well and truly behind the Resolute Desk and was signing executive orders for all he was worth. Chris Featherstone, who teaches and researches US politics at the University of York, runs through the most consequential measures the new president took on his “day of being a dictator” and parses what this tells us about his plans for governing.

Read more:
Trump 2.0: what we learned from the 47th US president’s first day in office

Donald Trump was quick to get to work after his inauguration.
EPA-EFE/Jim lo Scalzo/pool

Out of the frenzy of activity in the West Wing that day, two really consequential measures spring to mind. First, Trump signalled his intention to once again pull the US out of the Paris climate agreement. As Rebekkah Markey-Towler, who researches climate futures at the University of Melbourne, this may prove to be a double-edged sword.

On the one hand, given the US is the world’s second biggest emitter behind China, this is a big problem. But as Markey-Towler notes, it’s mitigated by the fact that as the rest of the world gets on with trying to curb climate change, it’s probably best that Trump isn’t in the room to disrupt that vital work.

Read more:
Trump has withdrawn the US from the Paris Agreement. Here’s why that’s not such a bad thing

Another key set of policies, which his followers in the Maga movement will be thrilled about, are a raft of measures to curb immigration, including a plan to get rid of birthright citizenship. This is the mechanism by which people born in the US become “natural-born” US citizens regardless of the status of their parents.

Which raises one seeming anomaly from the campaign trail. How did a candidate who pledged to close the US’s southern border, deport undocumented migrants and remove the path to citizenship for so many people of Latin American heritage attract so much support from the Latino community? Fernando Pizarro of City University, a veteran reporter of US politics-turned academic, explains how Trump pulled off such a major coup.

Read more:
How American Latinos came to embrace Donald Trump’s immigration policy

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Donald Trump’s polarizing political rise in the past decade has driven many groups – and some families – apart.

But a long-running pickup basketball game that I play in, made up of people with various political leanings, including Trump supporters, remains intact. I explored the group’s dynamics in my 2020 memoir. In March 2025, we will celebrate its 50th anniversary.

As a former psychology professor who has written about the impact of participation in team sports, I think one of the secrets to our longevity is simple: We don’t talk politics.

Evolution of the game

Our semiweekly pickup game has seen several transformations. It started in 1975 as a faculty-student game at Guilford College, a small Quaker school in Greensboro, North Carolina. And we played in an old gym, known as the Crackerbox, once the home court of former NBA players Bob Kauffman, M.L. Carr and World B. Free.

Over the next 35 years, the game moved to a newer gym, went from half court to full court, and back to half court. Students and faculty moved on, while others joined the game, including many people from the Greensboro community.

As we aged, our game came to be known as “the geezer game.” These days, the average age of players is 64, with an age range from 32 to 79.

Since 1975, besides an 18-month stretch when we didn’t meet due to COVID-19 restrictions, the game took place three times a week before COVID-19 and has taken place twice a week since pandemic restrictions were lifted.

Everyone plays

I believe we’ve lasted this long for several reasons.

From 1975 until about 2013, the game was co-ed, though usually with only one woman, a former colleague in the psychology department. With a Ph.D. from Yale, she was 6 feet tall, athletic and competitive.

More importantly, she brought a civilizing influence onto the court. It discouraged the guys from letting their macho tendencies take over. Because of her presence, and the occasional presence of other women, I think we were all less likely to behave abominably.

This phenomenon is well documented. As the scholar Gerard J. Degroot has shown, women’s social skills have a calming effect on groups of men. He told The New York Times the following regarding men in the military: “When female soldiers are present, the situation is closer to real life, and as a result men tend to behave. Any conflict where you have an all-male army, it’s like a holiday from reality. If you inject women into that situation, they do have a civilizing effect.”

Another secret to our longevity is bound to be the fact that everyone plays.

Many other pickup games keep winning groups of teams on the court and losers sit on the sidelines. But when we have extra people, we rotate them in every 10 points. If we have 14 players, we break into two games, one 4-on-4 and one 3-on-3. Because we don’t have to win to keep playing, this reduces the likelihood and intensity of disputes.

The author Thomas Beller has touched on this in his book “Lost in the Game: A Book About Basketball.” In it he writes: “The thing about these street games is that if you win, you play again. If you lose, you watch. Considering the time and effort involved in getting to the playground in the first place, there was a lot at stake in winning.”

Here’s another way we reduce conflict: Whenever we do have a dispute — was that a foul or a charge? — we call a jump ball and rotate possession. No need for long arguments that are never resolved.

The author, with the ball, plays pickup with several other geezers.
Craig Chappelow, CC BY-SA

We have not completely eliminated conflicts — we’ve had some skirmishes — but they are very rare. We have had our share of injuries, but very few have been caused by overly aggressive play.

A few months before we took our 18-month hiatus due to COVID-19, I wrote the book “Geezerball: North Carolina Basketball at its Eldest” based on what sociologists call a “participant observation” study of the game. Some people, especially my female colleague, served as important role models, I wrote in the book. And some rules that we implemented, like those that determined when new players entered the game and how we dealt with disputes, turned out to be important.

Politics

The game has survived the past decade because we don’t talk politics.

Whereas in other settings, and perhaps especially on college campuses, it might reduce divisions to share conflicting political viewpoints with others, we are there to play ball, not educate one another.

In the fall of 2016, there was some talk about the presidential campaign. One geezer, a die-hard Republican, admitted he didn’t like Trump. But, as he put it, “I could live with him.”

Another Republican player proudly proclaimed that he planned to spend Election Day driving Trump supporters to the polls.

Of course, Trump won, but many players, probably most, did not reveal their political views.

Because of COVID-19, we did not play during the 2020 election.

This past fall, unlike in 2016, there was virtually no talk about the election. But as someone who sees Trump as an authoritarian threat to democracy, to be honest, I don’t want to know if the guys I play with voted for him.

Avoiding politics, and specifically Trump, has allowed the game to continue without the animosity it might engender.

But the political climate has had its effects on the group off the court.

Before 2016, we had periodic geezer gatherings, sometimes with our spouses. We ate pizza, drank beer, gave out joke awards and celebrated birthdays. We enjoyed each other’s company. Though some smaller groups have continued to meet for lunch or to drink beer since, we are now less likely to gather socially.

It appears, then, that the larger communal spirit has been diminished by the polarized political world we now live in.

But the game goes on. More

In his farewell address, outgoing US President Joe Biden warned “an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy”.

The comment suggests that, under Donald Trump’s second term as president, it will be billionaires rather than the people who shape public policy.

There is certainly some evidence Biden’s ominous caution should be taken seriously. The world’s richest man and the owner of X, Elon Musk, has been a vocal supporter of the Republican candidate. Other billionaire tech moguls to visit Trump at his Mar-a-Lago mansion after his 2024 election victory include Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Apple’s Tim Cook and Google chief executive Sundar Pichai.

There is nothing unusual about business leaders wanting the ear of an incoming president. What has concerned Biden and others is that so many of Trump’s influential backers also own media platforms and have the ability to sway public opinion.

Should these new tech titans be thought of as oligarchs?

What is an oligarchy?

Like many of the academic and scientific categories we still use today, oligarchy was originally defined by the Greek philosopher Aristotle.

In The Politics, he argued people are “political animals”, social by nature, and instinctively want to live in a community. He studied different governments of the ancient world and concluded there were six essential types.

A state could be ruled by a single leader, a small group of elites, or through mass participation of the people. If the leadership acted in the common advantage (koinê sumpheron), he termed these constitutions to be monarchy, aristocracy or polity, respectively.

If the constitutions became corrupt and the leadership acted only to advance their own self-interest, he labelled them tyranny, oligarchy and democracy.

The School of Athens painted by Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, 1511. Aristotle is depicted centre right.
Wikimedia Commons

So for Aristotle, an oligarchy is a corrupt form of government. It is when power is in the hands of a small group of elites who advance their own interests rather than the common good.

In Aristotelian terms, democracy is also a corrupt form of government in which the majority uses its power to abuse minorities. While the term democracy has been rehabilitated and is usually seen as a positive, the word oligarchy has retained its negative connotations.

When the United States was created, the founding fathers looked back to Aristotle, Polybius, Cicero and other ancient thinkers to try and create the best kind of constitution.

Following the Aristotelian tradition, they tried to design a mixed constitution where neither the one, the few nor the many could dominate the others. The president has great power. But their power is kept in check by Congress and the judiciary, which is in turn kept in check by the media and, ultimately, the people through regular elections.

Modern oligarchies

In modern politics, the term oligarch is most often used in a Russian context. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, opportunistic tycoons made enormous fortunes from buying up state assets such as energy companies and financial institutions, which also brought them significant political influence as a result.

Since Vladimir Putin became president in 2000, however, Russia has become increasingly authoritarian. While there is still an oligarchic class, their power has been reined in. They must not challenge Putin’s power or vision for the state.

During the presidency of Boris Yeltsin, opportunistic Russian tycoons made enormous fortunes from buying up state assets.
AP Photo/Liu Heung Shing

Although China is ostensibly a communist state, the Gini index (the measure of social inequality) has blown out in recent years as a small group of elites become increasingly wealthy.

Despite the state’s official commitment to socialist principles, political scientist Ming Xia has argued China is now transitioning into a modern oligarchy.

What about the United States and Australia?

Despite Biden’s warning of a potential oligarchy, political scientists Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page argued back in 2014 the US already was one.

The US has the essential features of a liberal democracy (fair and regular elections, freedom of speech, and an independent press). But Gilens and Page worried large businesses and a small group of affluent citizens had a disproportionate influence on policy.

Political scientists hold fears that a small group of affluent citizens have a disproportionate influence on US policy.
AP Photo/Alex Brandon

In Australia also, it could be argued an oligarchy is either emerging or has already taken hold.

Australia has a similar-sized economy to Russia and a growing list of billionaires who appear to have significant influence over government policy.

The power of the Murdoch family and their media empire is well-documented. We have also seen increased political activity from other billionaires including Gina Rinehart, Andrew Forrest and Clive Palmer – who went as far as to start his own political party.

There is no question billionaires in the US and Australia have enormous power and influence. But that in itself does not make an oligarchy.

In Aristotelian terms, the defining feature of an oligarchy is the ruling elite blatantly use their status for their own personal gain rather than the public good.

This is a moral judgement, and one that is increasingly hard to make when so many of the ultra-wealthy own traditional news media and social media platforms that can shape public opinion.

Nevertheless, any shift towards oligarchy should be a cause of alarm to all who value the long democratic tradition in both the US and Australia.

Whether it is a symptom of Trumpism, as Biden suggests, or part of a longer trend, strengthening our democratic institutions and curtailing the disinformation and misinformation that are all too prevalent on social media, is part of the solution. More