The great little man is according to Adorno “a person who suggests both omnipotence and the idea that he is just one of the folks” (Adorno 1951, 142). Trump constructs himself as the great little man on Twitter and reality TV. Trump’s demagogic, aggressive, attack-oriented, offensive, proletarian language, and style make him appear as a great little man who is on top, but at the same time is an ordinary person. He acts as a politician just like he acts as a reality TV entertainer. He brings populism in the form of popular culture and authoritarianism into politics. Trump appeals to the working class by his direct, rude manners, behaviour, and language. He is a billionaire who likes McDonald’s culture. The focus on the latter distracts attention from the antagonism between billionaires and workers. In reality, Trump is not workingclass but someone who appeals to the working class but is a rich billionaire whose interests are opposed to working-class interests. Trump is a figure for projection that allows collective narcissism that results in the “enlargement of the subject: by making the leader his ideal he loves himself, as it were, but gets rid of the stains of frustration and discontent which mar his picture of his own empirical self” (Adorno 1951, 140).
4.4.2 Nationalism
Second, nationalism is an important feature of right-wing authoritarianism. Let us have a look at a video that Trump posted on Twitter (Figure 4.2).
In the video, Trump says about the American Labor Day:
The American worker built the foundation for the country we love and have today. But the American worker is getting crushed. Bad trade deals like NAFTA and TPP, such high and inexcusable taxes and fees on small businesses that employ so many good people. This Labor Day, let’s honour our American workers, then men and women who proudly keep America working. They are the absolute best anywhere in the world. There is nobody like ‘em. I’m ready to make America work again and to make America great again. That’s what we are going to do on November 8.
There are four ideological features of Trump’s tweet:
- Trump constructs the US-Americans as a mythic collective;
- He claims that there is a unified national interest of US capital and US labour;
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Theorists