Donald Trump and the Civilization of Death
HAVANA TIMES – The recent inauguration of Donald Trump as President of the United States for the second time left no one indifferent, following various announcements ranging from the expulsion of millions of migrants, the constitutional imposition of gender binarism, withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, appropriation of the Panama Canal, deepening oil exploitation, and colonizing Mars.
However, it was not his denialist, cruel, and anti-rights rhetoric that drew the most attention, but rather the iconic image of support from the owners and representatives of the world’s largest digital platforms, such as X, Meta, Google, and Amazon, through the attendance of figures like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, and Jeff Bezos.
This support marks a before and after, not only ending the idea of a liberal, plural, and democratic project in the United States but also ushering in a dystopian scenario on a civilizational level, where the brutal economic concentration of digital capitalism becomes an increasingly accelerated threat to our survival on the planet.
What could have been an opportunity for a change of course after the pandemic, to reflect on how civilization has colonized practically everything in existence and the damage our production models have done to the planet, ended up being a regression that has brought us to the brink of socio-environmental collapse.
In this context, the fact that someone like Donald Trump has once again become president, controlling both chambers of Congress in a country like the United States, represents a much greater threat than when he first arrived at the White House as an outsider. This development has made the rhetoric of the denialist far-right no longer a marginal phenomenon, but something increasingly accepted and tolerated by many sectors today.
Even more so in a digital, algorithm-driven context, where major digital platforms operate unchecked, without any state or social regulation. This allows disinformation and the spread of denialist rhetoric in various spheres to go viral much faster than before, with no counterbalance whatsoever.
Given this dystopian scenario, it is difficult to see a hopeful future, especially in a global context where, on the one hand, leftist movements lack clear projects and are full of contradictions, and on the other hand, leftist factions brimming with rage and certainties support authoritarian and tyrannical governments such as China, Russia, Venezuela, or Iran.
Nevertheless, I believe that the underlying issue is much deeper than merely criticizing these new denialist right-wing movements, which are framed within digital capitalism, where figures like Trump lead a fascist-libertarian discourse against political correctness, accompanied by figures like Elon Musk, who have no qualms about making a Nazi salute.
The issue, in my view, concerns the continuity or discontinuity of a civilizational project that began thousands of years ago in Mesopotamia with the Sumerians, following the Neolithic revolution. While it may have brought productive, economic, and technological development to humanity over the centuries, its very foundations were at odds with the planet’s limits, as it was then that patriarchal structures, a masculinity of domination, and ways of living increasingly disconnected from the Earth’s rhythms were established.
This is why many leftist movements get lost in merely criticizing capitalism and the West, failing to see that the problem did not start with conquest, modernity, or the industrial revolution, but much earlier with the birth of agriculture, states, private property, and the formation of power domains increasingly detached from the planet. These domains have imposed themselves worldwide and are now represented not by gods or kings, as in the past, but by great imperial powers.
In light of the above, Donald Trump’s idea of conquering Mars is a direct continuation of the space race initiated during the Cold War and the consequence of civilizational logic dating back many centuries, where planetary domination was increasingly extreme. Only now, technological development has reached such an extreme and a level of destruction so profound that it seems we will soon have to choose between civilization and life itself.