Manifest Destiny: Trump’s speech raises fears of fascism

US President Donald Trump and US First Lady Melania Trump dance to the Battle Hymn of the Republic during the Commander-In-Chief inaugural ball at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, DC, on January 20, 2025. (Pic by Patrick T. Fallon/AFP)

Oh democracy, what crimes are committed in thy name? With apologies to French revolutionary Madame Roland for rephrasing her last words, just as she lamented a hallowed concept like liberty being used to justify acts of violence and oppression during the French Revolution, we worry about democracy fostering fascism in the very country that has made democracy promotion across the globe its avowed state policy known as American exceptionalism.

Democracy is not the be-all and end-all. Democracy is adopted by nations that respect people’s sovereignty not because it is the best form of governance but rather because, as Churchill is supposed to have stated, it is the worst form of government, except for all that has occasionally been tried. Despite its positive aspects, democracy has historically enabled demagogues to ascend to power, only to become tyrants. Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini were products of democracy. 

The United States will once again consider itself a growing nation, one that increases our wealth, expands our territory, builds our cities, raises our expectations, and carries our flag into new and beautiful horizons…. And we will pursue our Manifest Destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the stars and stripes on the planet Mars

Now, democracy has ensconced Donald Trump, a maverick, in the seat of power as the president of the United States, the world’s most powerful nation, for a second term, sending the rest of the world reeling in uncertainty. He is seen to be arrogant, boastful, and a demagogue who liberally utters unverified claims or half-truths. Top mental health professionals have said Trump meets the diagnostic criteria for narcissistic, antisocial, and paranoid personality disorder. Self-centred, there is very little altruism or humanitarianism in the type of politics and governance he believes in. He ditches the World Health Organisation; climate change is not his concern even if California’s wildfires remind the civic-conscious people that hell hath no fury like nature scorned. Yet he believes that God saved him from an assassin’s bullet to make America great again. Most of those who voted him into office also believe that Trump is the chosen Christian nationalist.

Trump’s policy is not inclusivism; it is out-and-out exclusivism. No wonder democracy has little to do with brains and more to do with emotions. Blaming democracy is futile. Blame the people who fail to realise that majoritarianism or populism is fraught with self-destruction.

With Trump assuming office as the 47th President of the United States on January 20, 2025, there are growing fears of a neo-Nazi regime emerging under his watch. His speech was couched in nuances of Nazi language. True, the US Constitution has time-tested checks and balances in place to prevent such an eventuality, but, since Trump is Trump, anything could happen. After all, he refused to concede defeat in the November 2020 presidential election and, on January 6, 2021, encouraged his supporters to storm Capitol Hill in what was seen as an insurrection that tainted the US democratic tradition of peaceful transfer of power.

One of the first executive orders Trump signed on his very first day in office was to release nearly 1,600 Trump supporters facing charges for the siege of Capitol Hill. Although the US Constitution is often hailed as the best man-made document in human history, the presidential pardon makes a mockery of the hallowed judicial principle of equality before the law. What purpose does punishment serve if criminals are pardoned on political grounds? The politically connected can commit blue murder and still walk free with a presidential pardon. As analysts delve deeper into Trump’s speech replete with feared symbolism, the occupied Palestine continues to bleed under his watch. Though he was credited with the ceasefire deal in Gaza, his silence is deafening as Israel doubles down on its atrocities in and around Jenin in the occupied West Bank. In an act of rewarding the criminals, in one pen stroke on day one in the Oval Office, Trump lifted Joe Biden-era sanctions on armed Israeli settlers illegally occupying Palestinian land. Israelis can kill Palestinians at their will. Trump is no different from Biden.

Moreover, he is going to impose the Abraham Accord on Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries that have still not signed the deal to formalise relations with Israel. Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman is seeking US investments in Saudi projects, which may come only if Saudi Arabia abandons the Palestinian cause and embraces the oppressor Israel.

While the West hails the Abrahamic Accord as a significant milestone in Trump’s diplomacy during his first term, the normalisation process, as the accord is also called, is indeed a normalisation of Arab capitulation to the Zionist power—normalisation of timidity and normalisation of the abandonment of Islam that calls on the faithful to protect the oppressed and oppose oppression.

The merits or demerits of the Abrahamic Accord apart, Trump is a toughie and is determined to do what he believes in, regardless of consequences.

In his speech, lambasted by critics as an obscene fascist spectacle, he went on to praise US President William McKinley (1897-1901), raising alarm. During the Spanish-American war, McKinley seized Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. By invoking McKinley, Trump issued a stark warning to US neighbours, especially Canada and Greenland. American expansionism is real and happening. The message to Panama is: run the canal the US built the way the US wants or face the risk of a US military action, about which Panama, however, had some experience when President George H. Bush in 1989 sent US troops to capture Panama’s President and drug lord Manuel Noreiga and install a new government.

When read in conjunction with ‘Manifest Destiny,’ which is prominently featured in the speech, the McKinley reference elevates the alarm to a very serious level. The politically loaded term has serious international relations ramifications. Here is what Trump said.

“The United States will once again consider itself a growing nation, one that increases our wealth, expands our territory, builds our cities, raises our expectations, and carries our flag into new and beautiful horizons…. And we will pursue our Manifest Destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the stars and stripes on the planet Mars.”

The term manifest destiny was coined in 1845 by journalist L. O’Sullivan to explain the belief—a belief that is no different from that of Trump—that God’s vision was for the US to expand its territory across America. The belief was rooted in American exceptionalism, which itself is as controversial as the term Manifest Destiny and as Trump’s claim that God saved him to make America Great Again.

The term Manifest Destiny was often politically interpreted as a divine command to spread democracy and capitalism. But it was nothing but a blasphemous belief that justified the genocide of Native Americans, slavery, the spread of American imperialism during the Cold War, and the invasion of sovereign nations in the current post-Cold War period. It is this concept that gives America a sense of superiority over other nations. American exceptionalism boasts about superior American values, political system, and leadership and was portrayed as a policy to spread democracy, liberty, and individualism, it became a foreign policy tool to dominate the world and gave rise to interventionist foreign policies and a sense of cultural imperialism.

What other presidents did slyly, Trump intends to do overtly. Perhaps Peloponnesian historian Thucydides will be proven right: Trump is taking America on a course to self-destruction.