What Is To Be Done about the Radical Far-Right?
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.53981/destrocos.v7i2.66443Keywords:
Lenin, far right, Hegel, State, TrumpAbstract
The far Right in America has become radical. In the process, it has outmaneuvered the progressives. In the first months of his second mandate, President Trump has mounted a revolution (or counterrevolution) against the liberal democratic state. Steve Bannon said he was Leninist and wanted to “smash the state.” President Trump has done just that. In this essay, I explore the far Right’s embrace of Lenin. I return to the Hegelian roots of Lenin’s politics to explain what he meant by “smashing the state machine.” I then argue that the Left should reclaim Lenin’s dialectics and his call, in the April Theses, for a second wave of social movements to overcome President Trump’s revolution. The time is right. The American people are hungry for a more radical politics—one that is centered on solidarity and cooperation rather than on hate, exclusion, and violence.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Bernard E. Harcourt; Augusto Jobim do Amaral, Paula Fernanda Failace Antunes de Oliveira

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