WeeklyWorker

30.10.2025
Donald Trump: a third term is unconstitutional

Notes on America

Second-term Trump has been radically different from first-term Trump. And now there are the on-again, off-again musings about a third term. Either way, argues Jack Conrad, the mould of American politics has been broken

Donald Trump was re-elected a year ago. Since then, “every week, we’ve got a decade”,1 says Steve Bannon (in a claimed reference to Lenin2). There is, though, a profound truth here. Trump’s presidency has already radically changed America and radically changed the world.

There are still those on the left who insist on dismissing Trump as ‘ignorant’ and ‘stupid’ and, of course, a ‘fascist’. Claims which in their own right are ‘ignorant’ and ‘stupid’. Trump is certainly a proven liar, vain, has a short attention span and is almost illiterate.3 However, he is a born showman and possesses a mercurial intelligence and a sixth sense for the public square. Above all, though, out of naked self-interest, and to feed an already hugely inflated ego, Trump willingly serves American capitalism as a “synthesis of a monster and a superman”.4 With few exceptions the plutocracy has bent the knee.5

Unlike his first term, which was dominated by Democrat lawfare, Trump came off the blocks in his second term with an unstoppable, pre-planned barrage of executive orders. Project 2025, note, advocated just that: there is an “existential need for aggressive use of the vast powers of the executive branch”.6 There are two stated strategic objectives: one, defeat the ‘enemy within’; two, shred the ‘rules-based’ post-World War II global order.

At home that means a counter-revolution against undocumented migrants, environmental protection, established working conditions, women’s reproductive health, sexual deviants and civil rights-era gains. Once again, states will be able to ride roughshod over ‘diversity, equality, inclusion and accessibility’.

Trump’s language has been incendiary. He compares migrants to an infection that is “poisoning the blood of our country”. He pledges to “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country”.7 This has seen hundreds of Venezuelans flown off to El Salvador’s notorious CETOT mega-prison using the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, 1.6 million self-deport and 527,000 actual deportations.

In the name of stopping fraud, voters in federal elections are now required to produce documentary proof, such as a passport. This disproportionately disenfranchises black, poor and female voters. Fewer than half of Americans have a passport and 69 million women who have changed their names will struggle to find the necessary documentation.8 A frontal assault on the Democrats and their rainbow coalition.

Government employees have also been retired en masse. That includes top military officers, statisticians, Russia experts, criminal prosecutors, medical specialists, climatologists, etc. To state the obvious, not something driven by cost cutting. No, what we are dealing with is a purge of awkward, off-message people, an attempt to instil fear and the growth of irrationality - a phenomenon given insufficient attention by what commonly passes as Marxism. Too many, including when it comes to the social superstructure, explain events according to narrow economic calculation, neat percentages and mathematical certainties. A parody of Marxism.

People, with all their quirks, flaws, strengths, weaknesses and ideological enthusiasms, make history. That Oliver Cromwell took over the leadership of the English republic, and Napoleon Bonaparte the French republic, were accidents, but it was by no means an accident that such types took over and imposed military dictatorships. Only the army could save the revolution. If it had not been Cromwell or Bonaparte, it would have been some other general. It is the same with Trump.

He is the right man who appeared at the right moment. Since the late 1940s and 50s America has been a superpower in relative decline. A decline temporarily masked by the 1989-91 collapse of bureaucratic socialism in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe, and capitalist triumphalism. Nonetheless, decline is palpable, as is testified by America’s share of global GDP: 40% in the 1960s, 36% in 1970s, 25% in 1980s, 26% in 1990s, 23% in 2000s.9 Add to that the humiliating failures in Vietnam, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan. There are also US living standards, life expectancy stats, drug addiction rates, homelessness and social cohesion - the American dream became the American nightmare for millions. And now there is China and its full-spectrum challenge. Hence Trump.

To state the obvious, Trumpism and the whole Maga movement will, in time, lose its rationale and thereby lose its “right to existence and become unreal”.10 However, in the meantime masses of people rally around Christianity, nativism, traditional family values, gun rights, low taxes and an altogether vague loathing of a ‘rootless’, ‘cosmopolitan’ capitalism ... that, and Make America Great Again. Neoliberalism became inescapably associated with imperial decline, deindustrialisation, stagnant living standards, chronic insecurity ... it had to go.

Donald J Trump and the charisma of leadership is a factor in its own right too. It is not just that Trump is the country’s chief executive, commander-in-chief of the army and chief of state. The Maga base believes in him. They see this real-estate billionaire as both one of their own and yet at the same time an avenging angel. Trump will flame illegal migrants, drug dealers, uppity blacks, self-entitled college kids … and all those who condescendingly dismiss them (eg, as a “basket of deplorables”). Of course, there is calculation on both sides.

Fascism

Does that mean Trump is an American version of Benito Mussolini or Adolph Hilter? Maga an American version of the Fascisti or the Nazis? There is a dull liberal and left consensus - Trump is taking America straight down the road to fascism. Joe Biden said it. Kamala Harris said it. Mark Milley said it. Gilbert Achcar of the social-imperialist outfit, Anticapitalist Resistance, said it too … except he calls it neofascism:

Neofascism differs from traditional despotic or authoritarian regimes (such as the Chinese government or most Arab regimes), in that it is based, like last century’s fascism, on an aggressive, militant mobilisation of its popular base on an ideological basis similar to that which characterised its predecessor. This base includes various components of far-right thinking: nationalist and ethnic fanaticism, xenophobia, explicit racism, assertive masculinity and extreme hostility to Enlightenment and emancipatory values.11

That describes reactionary socialisms of many stripes, reactionary nationalisms too. But, shorn of non-state fighting formations and negatively resolving an unresolved revolutionary situation, whereby the ruling class cannot rule in the old way and the ruled refuse to be ruled in the old way, then using the term ‘fascism’ - or ‘neofascism’ - owes more to tired thinking than to the results of any scientific investigation.

There are too many on the left who are locked into the idea that the 1945-79 period represented some kind of capitalist normalcy: universal suffrage, strong trade unions, the social democratic consensus. That its defining capitalist ‘other’ began in 1922 with Mussolini’s march on Rome. ‘Official communism’ detected the seeds of fascism in everything, including left social democracy - till, that is, the 1935 decree urging, demanding, the unity of the working class movement with the least reactionary sections of the bourgeois class in the name of defeating the growing and ever more ghastly fascist menace. Hence during this 1945-79 period, and there on after, anything that challenges, let alone overturns, the so-called normalcy is classified as fascism, or something going in the direction of fascism (and not only by ‘official communism’).

I well remember Edward Heath being described as a fascist, Margaret Thatcher too. In the US it was Richard Nixon, then Ronald Reagan. Today it is Vladimir Putin, Narendra Modi, Nigel Farage, Marine Le Pen, Alice Weidel, Georgia Meloni and, of course, Donald Trump. But to use a phrase: there are more things than are dreamt of in the black and white philosophy of fascism and anti-fascism.12 In other words, we need to think things through and try to grasp things in terms of where they come from and where they are going.

So Donald Trump, Narendra Modi, Vladimir Putin and their ilk need to be classified, grasped, both according to their political origins, but more importantly according to their being and becoming. In other words, if there is any ‘neo’ going on, it is closer, much closer, to neo-Bonapartism. Of course, each is an autocrat in their own unique way. Trump, Modi, Putin, etc - each comes with their own individual ambitions, foibles and absurdities; each stands at the top of complex, constantly shifting, political and economic coalitions, which both propel and limit them; each uses, and doubtless internalises, their own national histories and ideologies: America’s manifest destiny, Hindutva, a Greater Russia, etc.

Trump, nowadays, has absolutely no need for non-state fighting formations or a military-bureaucratic political party - the defining markers of fascism qua fascism. Maga is about red baseball caps and a slogan. It is not a disciplined body with a clear, strictly vertical chain of command. There is a leader, of course, but no branches, officers, delegates, dues, etc.

True, the totally botched January 6 2021 attempted self-coup, with its Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Three Percenters and other boogaloos, had the whiff of fascism. Not that this was a serious bid to retain power. Neither the army nor the secret state were on board. Indeed the state machine actively opposed Trump. His Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Three Percenters and other boogaloos would not, if it had been put to the test, have lasted more than a couple of minutes, if set against even the regular Washington DC police in a military confrontation.

Not that if January 6 2021 had succeeded - a highly unlikely scenario - that would have made the US a fascist state. Why? Because Trump was going to rely on vice-president Mike Pence, congress, the supreme court … and ultimately the army. The Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Three Percenters, etc, were mere bit players. They were never at the heart of the Maga movement, as were the blackshirts with Mussolini or the brownshirts with Hitler.

Today, though, Trump has executive orders, a thoroughly purged state apparatus, majorities in both houses of congress, the supreme court … hell, in the form of ICE, he has even got his own praetorian guard. In the 2026 fiscal year, the agency will receive over $11 billion - a 10% increase from current funding. This will allow the hiring of an additional 10,000 agents, bringing ICE to a near 30,000 total.

There is, moreover, no unresolved revolutionary situation. The working class poses not the least threat, either to the ruling class or the constitution. In fact, there is not even a working class party in the US, let alone a revolutionary working class party. The confessional sects, whatever their grand names, can be categorically discounted.

Yes, there is the Democratic Socialists of America. But, though engaged in a 200,000 membership drive, it still remains joined to the thoroughly bourgeois Democratic Party. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Cori Bush, Jamaal Bowman and Zohran Mamdani must therefore be brought under DSA control through imposing accountability and democratic centralism. That or they will merely serve to direct mass discontent into reviving the Democrats. Exactly what Robert Reich, Bill Clinton’s secretary of labour, hopes for. Mamdani, he says, represents the future of the Democratic Party … at present “dysfunctional, if not dead”.13

Yes, in September, Trump issued his executive order banning Antifa as a terrorist organisation. Supposedly, Antifa is a “militarist, anarchist enterprise that explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States government, law enforcement authorities and our system of law”.14 Evidence included celebrating the killings of conservative martyr Charlie Kirk and United HealthCare CEO Brian Thompson, and a purported 1,000% increase in attacks on ICE agents and anti-police and criminal justice protests. However, given that Antifa is completely decentralised, little more than a badge, it is clear that the ban has nothing to do with some genuine threat. No, this is the opening gambit in what is a much broader attack on “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism and anti-Christianity” … in other words, the first amendment.

Trump is not attempting “to recreate the imperial presidency that was buried in the mid-1970s after Richard Nixon’s resignation”.15 A cosy establishment claim, approvingly echoed by the SWP’s Alex Callinicos.16 Making a similar assessment, Chris Cutrone, former Platypus guru, described Trump as an “unremarkably moderate conservative centrist in his policies”.17 Despite that, this self-proclaimed ‘last Marxist’ called for a Trump vote in November 2024.

Either way, it is all too apparent that Trump is intent on going far beyond a mere restoration of the Nixon presidency. He aspires to be America’s Boss, yes, with a capital ‘B’. A combination of a start-up CEO and a Roman Caesar who exercises absolute power.

This is the sort of goal long pursued by Ayn Rand, the Atlas Society and tech billionaire philosophers such as Peter Thiel. They do nothing whatsoever to disguise their admiration of autocracy and contempt for democracy - dismissed as an unnatural curb on individual creativity and freedom. In fact, there is an open acceptance of what we have long argued: “capitalist democracy” is an “oxymoron”.18

A third term is already being canvassed: “Am I not ruling it out? I mean, you’ll have to tell me,” says Trump. Despite the two-term constitutional limit, a third term is technically possible, if, say, in 2028 Trump and Vance ran on a joint ticket with Trump as candidate vice-president and Vance as candidate president, but with Vance committed to stand down in favour of Trump in the event of victory. But, at the moment at least, Trump calls this idea “too cute”, saying it “wouldn’t be right”.19 Tomorrow he might well change his mind.

Perhaps significantly, Steve Bannon avoids talking about a “third term”.20 Presumably, one of his previous terms could be declared non-valid. Ominously, Bannon promises more on this after the mid-terms and confidently points out that the president is already marketing $50 ‘Trump 2028’ baseball caps.

Bannon certainly wants to keep Trump. He sees him as a once-in-history American leader who has to finish what he’s started. “Trump,” he confidently declares, “will be the nominee of the Republican Party and president Trump will win another term.”

However, overturning the 22nd amendment seems improbable. It would require two-thirds majorities in Congress and three-fourths of the states. But there could be the declaration of a state of emergency and postponing the 2028 election. The Heritage Foundation - responsible for Project 2025 - is backing the call for a constitutional convention (that would require two-thirds of the states under article 5 of the constitution).21 Who would the delegates be? Would they be elected? Would it be ‘one delegate, one vote’ or ‘one state, one vote’? Would there be constitutional amendments? A new constitution? Frankly, we do not know, but the fact that there is such a campaign speaks volumes.

Maybe Trump wants to transform America into a version of Vladimir Putin’s Russian Federation. He certainly openly expresses his admiration of such regimes. There will still be courts, lawyers, parties and elections, but only one eminently predictable winner. Either way, a Christian nationalist autocracy … and Trump.

However, age will, some time, catch up with him. Trump will be 82 in November 2028. In his second term he wants to appear to be strong. Talk of a third term does that job. If the mid-terms go badly, who knows, he would be in danger of becoming a lame-duck president. Meanwhile JD Vance and Marco Rubio circle … and weigh their chances. If Kamala Harris decides to run again, as she is threatening to do, that would be a gift to any Republican candidate.

Global order

What about shredding the international order? That has happened in no uncertain terms.

Trump unleashed a trade war against friend and foe alike. There were, of course, counter-tariffs. But, showing who has the strongest hand, it is America which gained concessions. Effectively it is therefore extracting additional tribute from the rest of the world. The sole exception being the People’s Republic of China. Time and again Trump has slapped on punishing tariffs … only to blink.

Naturally, mainstream economists predicted disaster. So far, at least, it has not happened. In the first three months of 2025 there was a contraction in US GDP - companies rushed to get ahead of Trump’s tariffs. However, since then there has been a bounce-back. GDP grew at a 3.8% annualised rate between April and June.22 As for the US and global stock exchanges, they have reached historic highs (though many predict an ‘adjustment’, especially when it comes to AI, widely seen as a bubble).

Trumpian mercantilism is redevelopmental. That explains the ability of Trump to reach out to and connect with sections of the US industrial working class that feel (and were) abandoned by the 1980s turn to financialisation and neoliberal offshoring. Hence the United Steelworkers Union welcomed Trump’s tariffs, but not when applied to Canada (where the union organises too). Instead, pitting worker against worker, it wants the president to concentrate on ‘unfair’ Chinese competition. Of course, Trumpian mercantilism ignores, or refuses to acknowledge, the ultimate source of profit lying in the surplus value pumped out of living labour. It is a form of nationalist mystification, but one admirably suited to the needs of a US state determined to reverse its relative decline - crucially by stopping the ‘inevitable’ rise of China.

As an aside, there are those who imagine that China is doing no more than re-establishing its historical position as the world’s leading country. A case of the rise, fall and rise again of the great powers. One might as well expect the restoration of the Roman or Ottoman empires.

True, in the 15th century Ming China was more powerful economically, more technologically advanced and more populous than Europe. But with the rise of capitalism Europe surged ahead and was soon dominating the world. Portuguese, then Dutch colonists carved out concessions. Faced with drought, famine and huge peasant revolts in the 17th century, China essentially fell apart. Part of a repeated division-fusion pattern seen over two thousand years … and something which haunts Xi Jinping and the Chinese leadership. Of course, Marxism seeks explanation not in some super-historical law, but rather, in the final analysis, in state, class and economic forces.

Eg, there was nothing inevitable about the rise of the US. George Washington and his continental army could have been defeated. Certainly if the southern confederacy has secured active British involvement, the outcome of the US civil war could easily have been very different. America would perhaps remain a British neo-colony dependent on its supplies of black slaves and its cotton and tobacco markets. But, with the Yankee victory, America really gained independence and could therefore think about being a great power in its own right.

There can be no doubt that over the last 30 or 40 years China has seen a spectacular rise. There has never been anything like it before historically. According to the World Bank, 800 millions were lifted out of poverty.23 However, this owes everything to China’s ability to integrate itself into the world economy. Something, especially to begin with, fully in accord with the wishes of US imperialism. It is quite conceivable that this integration cannot be reversed. That America is now as dependent on China as China is dependent on America. But there is nothing inevitable about its rise. Whether or not we are seeing the end of US hegemony and the birth of a bipolar world order will be decided by a combination of international great-power struggles … and internal class struggles. Hence Trump.

When it comes to the western hemisphere, the determination to reverse America’s relative decline has seen Trump threatening to close the Mexican border, offering to buy Greenland, promising to take back the Panama canal and incorporate Canada as the 51st state. Then there are the war threats against Venezuela and the attempt to bring down the Bolivarian regime of Nicolás Maduro. In part this is about the ‘re-hemisphering’ called for in Project 2025 and reviving the Munroe Doctrine. Amongst the GOP elite the Donald Doctrine has become something of a rallying cry. Regime change in Caracas would certainly squeeze out China, which has ploughed huge amounts of money into Venezuelan oil projects (and in neighbouring Guyana and Suriname).24

With the cold war won and long gone, Trump’s America has no need to cover its imperialism with cant about freedom, justice and democracy. Trump can afford to arrogantly parade America’s reasserted power and naked greed. America no longer asks the world to love it: instead the world is expected to fear it. Liberals are mortified - often reduced to spluttering incoherence. And most of the left miserably tails liberal opinion.

But here is Trump’s Greater America. And it makes a grisly fit with a whole history of expansionism. Beginning as 13 seaward-orientated former British colonies, the US expanded westwards and southwards through genocide and seizing native lands, wars of anti-colonial/colonial conquest and cash buy-outs. Alaska was bought from tsarist Russia for a paltry $7.2 million in 1867. The Louisiana and Florida purchases served as the model. And, throughout, there were intermittent claims over British Columbia, Quebec and the whole of Canada.

No less to the point, what is to stop the US unilaterally annexing Greenland as some sort of incorporated territory? Indian troops overran the pocket-sized Portuguese colony of Goa in just 36 hours in 1961. The 626,000 population were not consulted. Why do liberals assume that Greenland’s 57,000 population would be given a say, except in a sufficiently well-rigged referendum? Were they consulted when Denmark first incorporated Greenland, after the Danish and Norwegian kingdoms separated in 1814? Obviously not. Does anyone really expect Denmark to fight if American forces based in Greenland stroll in to occupy the key centres of Nuuk? Again, no. Will Greenland’s indigenous population launch a winnable war of national liberation? Hardly.

Not that we communists are indifferent. On the contrary, we favour the voluntary union of peoples. But that does not prevent us from recognising the role of brute force in the past ... and in the future.

The same goes for Panama. Trump recently ordered the US military to draw up plans to seize - ‘reclaim’ - the Panama Canal zone. The US Southern Command has drawn up various potential plans to ensure that America has “full access”, reports the Daily Mail.25 Options range from partnering closely with Panamanian security forces to using American troops to forcibly take the waterway - which, it should be stressed, officials say is the least likely option.

But, remember, in December 1989 the US invaded Panama to overthrow the de facto ruler, Manuel Noriega, who was wanted in the US on drug trafficking charges. Operation Just Cause concluded in January 1990 with the “surrender of Noriega” and Panama’s defence forces “dissolved”.26 Will it be any different in 2026 or 2027? Unlikely - the odds are simply overwhelmingly against Panama.

True, Canada is a different matter. It has a population of over 40 million and would be no pushover. No wonder Trump talks of persuading Canada to join the US … in return for the lifting of those tariffs. Pan-Americanism has, though, little purchase in Canada at the moment. Only 25% are prepared to consider the proposition, while only 6% positively support it.27

So America has to find, or create, a unionist party and bring around a good section of the electorate. Not impossible. England did something like that with Scotland in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Custom tariffs were imposed, Scotland’s Darien colonial adventure wrecked and bribes were liberally doled out. Union of the parliaments in 1707 saw an end to tariffs, compensation paid to the elite for Darien and an economic boom in Scotland.

Ukraine

JD Vance spelt out the new global realities at the 61st Munich Security Conference on February 14 2025. Breaking with the normal diplomatic conventions, the vice-president berated European mainstream politicians for their liberal intolerance and apparent indifference to mass migration. Hence, he described the greatest dangers in Europe being “internal”, rather than from the external challenges of Russia or China. Adding insult to injury, he subsequently met with AfD leader Alice Weidel (not chancellor Olaf Scholtz, nor the CDU’s chancellor-in-waiting, Friedrich Merz).

Weidel and Vance discussed the war in Ukraine. Weidel and Vance discussed German domestic politics. Weidel and Vance agreed that the so-called Brandmauer, or ‘firewall’, that bars the AfD from joining governing coalitions in Germany, was an outrage that should immediately be extinguished. Those who do not, or cannot understand the significance of this change in US policy and its impact (and not only in Germany) understand nothing.

What about Ukraine? Instead of Joe Biden’s ironclad insistence on Ukraine getting everything back and seeing the back of the last Russian soldier, there have been formal and informal bilateral negotiations with Russia. Volodymyr Zelensky was firmly put in his place during his February 2025 visit to the White House. He must be prepared to concede territory, even if that costs him the presidency.

However, what Trump wants is not only US peace, but a US peace paid for by Europe. Europe has already agreed to ramp up arms spending with a 5% of GNP aim for 2035. Trump is determined that most of that extra spending will benefit the US military-industrial complex. Russia will get territory, but in return, is expected to accept 100,000 European troops along the whole of the new border). Meanwhile, one might guess that the rump Ukraine will be armed to the teeth and provided with various US security guarantees. A sort of Israel, but much, much bigger. Unacceptable for Putin and the FSB regime in Moscow … for the moment.

Trump comes not only bearing an olive branch: he carries a big stick too. Given the failure of the Alaska summit, there has been the upping of the sanctions regime. Russia’s two oil giants, Lukoil and Rosneft, were targeted and their biggest customers, India and China, responded by curbing imports and thus significantly reducing Moscow’s tax revenues.

The western media has been carrying all manner of stories about massive borrowing, bad debts, high interest rates and even the Russian economy being on the “brink of a recession” (Maxim Reshetnikov, Russian minister of economic development). Talking in the Oval Office, Trump confidently told reporters: “All of a sudden this economy is going to collapse.” Once that happens - more accurately, if that happens - conditions could be readied for renewed bilateral negotiations and, failing that, a colour revolution. Well, maybe.

  1. Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief of staff, interviewed by Katy Ball in The Times October 24 2025.↩︎

  2. “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” Almost certainly an apochryfal quote. A pity.↩︎

  3. Michael Wolff claimed in his Fire and fury (2018) that “Trump doesn’t like to read at all”. Nor does he “process information in any conventional sense”. In some ways, he is “postliterate - total television”. But that does not make him “ignorant” or “stupid”.↩︎

  4. F Nietzsche The genealogy of morals: a polemic London 1913, p56.↩︎

  5. Not that the overt subordination stopped some stupid left and liberal commentary: eg, The Guardian’s US columnist, Moira Dunegan, claiming that it was billionaires such as Elon Musk, who “controls government operations and federal spending” (The Guardian February 6 2025). As I commented at the time: despite his unequalled wealth, Musk “could be fired in an instant and probably will be at some point” (Weekly Worker February 20 2025: weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1526/notes-on-the-war).↩︎

  6. R Vought ‘Executive office of the president of the United States’ in P Dans and S Groves (eds) Project 2025: mandate for leadership Washington DC 2023, p44.↩︎

  7. abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-compares-political-opponents-vermin-root-alarming-historians/story?id=104847748.↩︎

  8. The Guardian March 25 2025.↩︎

  9. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_United_States.↩︎

  10. As Friedrich Engels explained, “All that is real in the sphere of human history becomes irrational in the process of time, is therefore irrational by its very destination, is tainted beforehand with irrationality, and everything which is rational in the minds of men is destined to become real, however much it may contradict existing apparent reality. In accordance with all the rules of the Hegelian method of thought, the proposition of the rationality of everything which is real resolves itself into the other proposition: All that exists deserves to perish.” (K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 26, London 1990, p359).↩︎

  11. anticapitalistresistance.org/the-age-of-neofascism-and-its-distinctive-features.↩︎

  12. To paraphrase Hamlet, act 1, scene 5.↩︎

  13. The Guardian October 28 2025.↩︎

  14. www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/designating-antifa-as-a-domestic-terrorist-organization.↩︎

  15. E Luce ‘Trump’s imperial emporium’ Financial Times February 5 2025.↩︎

  16. Socialist Worker February 12 2025.↩︎

  17. C Cutrone ‘Why not Trump, again?’ May 2024 - platypus1917.org/2024/05/01/why-not-trump-again-2. An article which not only echoed the Luce-Callinicos theory of the restoration of the Nixon presidency, but justified voting for Trump in November 2024.↩︎

  18. P Thiel ‘The education of a libertarian’ Cato Unbound April 13 2009.↩︎

  19. www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c797q57ple9o.↩︎

  20. The Times October 24 2025.↩︎

  21. www.commoncause.org/articles/a-constitutional-convention-with-no-guardrails-is-a-real-possibility-we-must-stop-it.↩︎

  22. www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjedze7e95lo.↩︎

  23. www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/04/01/lifting-800-million-people-out-of-poverty-new-report-looks-at-lessons-from-china-s-experience.↩︎

  24. The Telegraph October 25 2025.↩︎

  25. Daily Mail March 14 2025.↩︎

  26. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_invasion_of_Panama.↩︎

  27. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canada-join-u-s-poll-1.7434317.↩︎