Trump’s victory was imminent. Its scale, no. Now, is this result due to the magnitude of the character, to his historical dimension? Trump is a brash and loud man, immeasurably ambitious, probably with a large load of resentments accumulated from his earliest childhood. But the fact that many of us find his way of doing and thinking unpleasant should not prevent us from recognizing his tenacity and his political sense. I wrote a few years ago: “Beyond Trump, there is a powerful and living Trumpism, and he himself can still wage war. As long as the current social and cultural crises persist in the United States, the threat of Trump 2.0 will always loom large. This is where we are.
In this campaign, Trump has been compared to Hitler. He had previously been likened to other historical figures: the Prussian Emperor Wilhelm II (who was considered a madman by those around him); to Emperor Napoleon III (who played the national-populist card); to Louis XVI (who according to De Gaulle “did not have the passion for power, but the jealousy of decision”), to the proto-fascist poets of Annunzio and Marinetti, etc.
