Donald Trump’s mindset and political persona can be understood as a typical embodiment of the spectacle, the concept central to Situationist critique. The spectacle; the dominant mode of social organisation under late capitalism, which mediates social interactions through images, appearances, and commodified relationships.

Trump’s entire career, from his branding as a real estate tycoon to his reality TV stardom and eventual double whammy in The White House, is a masterclass in the construction and manipulation of the spectacle. His identity is not rooted in authenticity but in a carefully curated image of success, power, and defiance. This hyper-commodified persona, which thrives on media attention and public fascination, exemplifies the Situationist critique of a society where representation replaces reality, and individuals are reduced to passive consumers of pre-packaged identities.

Trump’s political strategy further reveals his reliance on the mechanisms of the spectacle. His use of social media is a modern manifestation of the colonisation of everyday life by media and technology. His posts on social media, often inflammatory, contradictory, and devoid of substantive content, function as micro-spectacles that dominate public discourse and distract from material realities. This aligns with Debord’s assertion that the spectacle fragments and alienates, and that it reduces communication to performative outbursts, while preventing meaningful dialogue. Trump’s ability to dominate the news cycle through spectacle-driven behaviour underscores the extent to which contemporary politics has become a theatre of images, where the appearance of action has replaced the genuine engagement with systemic issues.
Worse, because this theatre is much easier to pursue than working on structural engagement and solution-oriented change, it’s the spectacle which, in this capitalist entrapment, carries the advantage.

At the core of Trump’s worldview is an unapologetic embrace of capitalist logic, the very root of social alienation and commodification. His policies, such as tax cuts for the wealthy, deregulation, and the prioritisation of corporate interests, reflect a commitment to a dictatorship of the economy, where human needs are subordinated to profit. Trump’s transactional approach to relationships, whether personal or political, reduces human interactions to exchanges of value, reinforcing the alienation inherent in capitalist society. His celebration of wealth as the ultimate measure of worth further entrenches the commodification of social life, reducing individuals to mere cogs in the machinery of accumulation.

But, even the genuine discontent which the movement around Trump has been able to harness, the potential in revolutionary energy which is willing to take on the elite, the “deep state”, is co-opted by Trump’s spectacle, and repurposed to reinforce the status quo. His populist rhetoric ultimately serves to redirect discontent with the elite and the system into support for his spectacle-driven persona. By positioning himself as an outsider fighting against a corrupt system, Trump neutralises the potential for genuine systemic change. This process of recuperation of this subversive energy ensures that the spectacle remains intact, as the energies of resistance are absorbed and repackaged into a form that sustains the very system it claims to oppose.

So, Trump’s mindset and political project epitomise the spectacle in its most distilled form. His mastery of image-making, his reliance on media-driven distraction, his unapologetic embrace of capitalist values, and his ability to co-opt dissent all reflect the mechanisms of alienation and commodification, as recognised by the Situationists. Trump is not an anomaly but a logical product of a society dominated by the spectacle, where authenticity is eroded, relationships are mediated by exchange value, and resistance is neutralised through recuperation. 

Keep walking. And keep resisting.

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