Trump wants to be like America's most Racist and Imperialist Presidents
Mississippi community organizer Kali Akuno offers important historical context for Trump's foreign policies
Kali Akuno is the co-founder and co-director of Cooperation Jackson, a group of worker cooperatives and community-led programs in Jackson, MS that fight on behalf of low-income Americans for economic relief and justice. Yet when he spoke with Amherst economist Dr. Richard Wolff on a recent episode of “Economic Update,” Akuno dropped academic-quality truths about American history. (The clip starts at roughly the 18-minute mark.)
I should know. I have a master’s degree in history from Rutgers University-Newark, where I studied 19th century American tariff policies, a subject I still write about today. Hence I understand the importance of Akuno’s observations.
The White House may seem to be shaping its policies based on the whims of self-important ignoramuses like chief trade adviser Peter Navarro and DOGE founder Elon Musk. In fact, Trump is attempting to realize a vision for America deeply rooted in the ugliest aspects of our nation’s history.
“Trump has in his mind, and the MAGA movement have in their minds collectively, that there was some bygone glory days of US empire wherein white men were able to rule the roost not only within the United States, but the world, and could dictate all the shots, and that that was the ordained God-given right to do so,” Akuno said. In addition to idolizing a mythical version of the 1950s — one in which capitalism reigned supreme and women, minorities and the LGBTQ community was firmly under heel — they frame their foreign policies as throwbacks to the 19th century, the “so-called Gilded Age.”
It was a time “when the captains of industry, the captains of finance, were able to do whatever they want,” which Trump and his supporters argue led to widespread prosperity. This explains both Trump’s blatant land-grabbing — Greenland, Canada, the Panama Canal, you name it — as well as his protectionist tariffs.
“If you look at the folks that he himself particularly praises, one is Andrew Jackson and one is William McKinley,” Akuno said, both of whom speak to “this kind of restoration of the bygone glory days of US empire, which are fully about supporting white supremacy, fully about supporting patriarchy in all of its kind of core forms, and he is trying to impose this on the rest of the world so that the United States and its collapsing empire can kind of hold on for as long as possible to the whole position of running the global economy, but also keeping a domestic order where there's this city on the hill that a small group of people can kind of rule the roost over, but bestow all these material gifts upon to ensure their rule.”
On a superficial level, it is unfair to compare Trump to Jackson and McKinley: Jackson was a career soldier motivated by a firm code of physical courage and honor entirely alien to Trump’s mindset, while McKinley was respected even by his bitter opponents as a mild-mannered, kindly-disposed individual (which can never be said of Trump).
Yet Akuno’s deeper point is not only true, but frighteningly relevant. Jackson spent his presidency seeking to expand America’s presence into Texas and northern Mexico, sowing the seeds that would eventually grow into the Mexican-American War. McKinley similarly expanded America’s empire by waging the Spanish-American War, although he also did through protectionist tariffs that funded and fueled the nation’s burgeoning military-industrial complex.
The former war gave the United States more than 500,000 square miles (1,300,000 square km) of land; the latter led to the acquisitions of Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. On both occasions, Americans justified these unprovoked conquests with the language of “Manifest Destiny” and “the white man’s burden.” In their world, America was a nation run for and by white Christian straight men. The government’s role was, as they saw it, to enrich them through policies that allowed them to dominate marginalized people at home and other nations abroad.
As anticapitalists prepare to fight Trump’s political abuses, it is important for them to understand their origins. He isn’t levying new tariffs and threatening former allies merely to sow chaos. These actions are part of a concerted effort to return America to a regressive time.
Our mission must be to stop him.
Back Seat Socialism
Column by Matthew Rozsa who is a professional journalist for more than 13 years. Currently he is writing a book for Beacon Press, "Neurosocialism," which argues that autistic people like the author struggle under capitalism, and explains how neurosocialism - the distinct anticapitalist perspective one develops by living as a neurodiverse individual - can be an important organizing principle for the left.
Twitter (X) @MatthewWRozsa