Dr. Eric Weiner Writes Article for 3 Quarks Daily

Dr. Eric Weiner, Associate Professor in Educational Foundations, recently was chosen to write monthly essays for the prestigious web site 3 Quarks Daily. The online magazine posts essays about art, science, literature, politics, and philosophy from some of the top writers, thinkers, and scholars around the world.

His article looks at the broadening appeal of Trumpism through the lens of Arendt’s seminal work The Origins of Totalitarianism. Trumpism, unlike liberal democracy, promises safety, security, purity, and pride; it represents a viable alternative to a political system that has left his supporters angry, fearful, insecure, guilty, and marginalized. Embracing what Putin calls a politics of “counter-enlightenment,” Trump represents himself and Trumpism as a corrective to what he sees as liberal democracy’s failure to defend the homeland from socialists, multicultural agitators, globalists, and dissident intellectuals. Like Putin’s United Russia party, Trumpists view liberal democracy as a “political arrangement that has outlived its purpose.” Does democratic education still matter in such an environment or are the people who still believe in the power of democratic education and the viability of democracy fighting a losing rearguard effort to preserve what little remains of democratic life? Harvard political science professor Daniel Ziblatt points out that this is no longer a fight between conservatives and liberals, occasionally provoked and troubled by the radical ideas of dissident intellectuals: It is now a struggle over the hegemony of opposing ideological formations. Dr. Weiner argues that this struggle marks the beginning of a “cold” civil war in the United States.