tranzit.ro/ bucurești/ cluj/ iași/ sibiu/

Tuesday, November 8th 2016, 6 pm

tranzit.ro/ Cluj,
Brassai Sámuel St. 5

Introduction by Cristian Nichitean

The American electoral season confronts us with an unheard of dispute. The final contest for the position of leader of the free world and most powerful man on the planet brought on the stage two of the most despicable politicians in the whole history of American presidential elections. How was this evolution, which throws a ridiculous light on the American political scene as such, even possible?

In our present predicament, the personal traits of the candidates are less relevant. What matters is the way in which they have managed to coagulate around them various groups of interests and electoral coalitions. From this perspective, “Hillary vs. Trump” is the expression of a reshuffling of forces and permutation of alliances inside the body politic, which reflects a deep transformation of the relation between the political and economic establishment and their constituency. If Hillary Clinton is the wager of the neoconservative-neoliberal continuity, Trump gives voice to a conservative insurgency triggered by the economic failures of neoliberalism, which, in its contemporary global convulsions, brings back to life such old and menacing identitarian phantasms and racial stereotypes.