The far right-wing populism in the United States in the Trump Era: from “faceless” democracy to the identity reaction

Abstract

The article addresses the phenomenon of the so-called alternative right in the United States, which has experienced a considerable boom with the campaign and electoral victory of Donald Trump in January 2017. Although it is a relatively heterogeneous movement and not always ideologically well defined, its search for an exclusive identity singularity would allow it to be addressed in a unified way. At the same time, the article raises the need to understand the irruption of this new right based on some of the characteristics of the democratic-capitalist system in which it was born. Thus, the denial of a proper human identity, with its correlate of affirmation of identity proliferation, a preferentially formal system of rights, an accentuated individualism and the bitterness of social competence in the wake of the economic crisis, can be found among its explanatory roots.