Social transformation and the rise of trumpism in the United States

Abstract

The election of the businessman Donald Trump as the president of the United States surprised experts. Without having served political office before and running against both the elite of his party and the majority of the US media, the unexpected win of the Republican candidate raises several questions. The goal of this research is to investigate the causes that led to the rise of what we could call "trumpism", singling out the changes within US conservative thought. Our hypothesis is that Trump's election, which initially did not have the full support of any significant wing of the Republican Party, and did not represent any of the major currents of modern US conservative thought, indicates broader changes within US conservatism, derived from equally broader changes within US society. However, far from representing a wholly new phenomenon, "trumpism" finds correspondence in a conservative strand, which was marginalized since the 1950s: "paleoconservatism." Thus, an analysis on paleoconservatism is crucial in order to understand the future of the conservative thought in the United States at the beginning of the 21st century. At the conclusion of this research, we intend to be able to offer a more comprehensive picture in order to better analyze the current dynamics of contemporary US politics. (AU)