Donald Trump, Media Spectacle, and Authoritarian Populism

TheoristExplaining the Donald Trump phenomenon is a challenge that will occupy critical theorists of U.S. politics for years to come.My first take on the Trump phenomenon is that Donald Trump won the Republican primary contest and then the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election because he is the master of media spectacle, a concept that I've been developing and applying to U.S. politics and media since the mid-1990s.[1] In this study, I will first discuss Trump's use of media spectacle in his business career, in his effort to become a celebrity and reality-TV superstar, and his political campaigns.Then I shall examine how Trump embodies Authoritarian Populism and has used racism, nationalism, xenophobia, and the disturbing underside of American politics to mobilize his supporters in his successful Republican primary campaign and in the hotly contested win in the 2016 general election. Donald Trump and the Politics of the SpectacleI first came up with the concept of media spectacle to describe the key phenomenon of US media and politics in the mid-1990s.This was the era of the O.J. Simpson murder case and trial, the Clinton sex scandals, and the rise of cable news networks like Fox, CNN, and MSNBC and the 24/7 news cycle that has dominated US politics and media since then.[2] The 1990s was also the period when the Internet and New Media took off so that anyone could be a political commentator, player, and participant in the spectacle, a phenomenon that accelerated as New Media morphed into Social Media and teenagers, celebrities, politicians, and others wanting to become part of the networked virtual world joined in.The scope of the spectacle has thus increased in the past decades with the proliferation of new media and social networking like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instangram, Skype, and the like that increases the scope and participation of the spectacle.By "media spectacles" I am referring to media constructs that present events which disrupt ordinary and habitual flows of information, and which become popular stories which capture the attention of the media and the public, and circulate through broadcasting networks, the Internet, social networking, smart phones, and other new media and communication technologies.In a global networked society, media spectacles proliferate instantaneously, become virtual and viral, and in some cases becomes tools of socio-political transformation, while other media spectacles become mere moments of media hype and tabloidized sensationalism.Dramatic news and events are presented as media spectacles and dominate certain news cycles.Stories like the 9/11 terror attacks, Hurricane Katrina, Barack Obama and the 2008 U.S. presidential election, and in 2011 the Arab Uprisings, the Libyan revolution, the UK Riots, the Occupy movements and other major media spectacles of the era, cascaded through broadcasting, print, and digital media, seizing people's attention and emotions, and generating complex and multiple effects that may make 2011 as memorable a year in the history of social upheaval as 1968.[3] In today's highly competitive media environment, "Breaking News!" of various sorts play out as media Donald Trump, Media Spectacle, and Authoritarian Populism