Upper Right

When Trump was elected president the first time around, a Richard Rorty quote from 1998 went viral. If the cultural left continued ignoring issues of material relevance, argued the noted philosopher, »something will crack«. Poorer voters would look for a strongman, and a return to Sadism seemed to be looming on the horizon. As prophetic as this prognosis was, the focus on the »woke« left and the »losers« of liberalism in the debates over Trump and his allies have produced a blind spot. If we assume that politicians like Trump also vote for their own ilk, we begin to get a glimpse of another »class faction«: conservative men who run their own companies. This milieu has not only produced predecessors like Berlusconi, but also many of their supporters.

The essays in this volume take a closer look at this group. Who do the members of the classical petite bourgeoisie vote for? How have their networks laid the foundations for this »vibe shift«? And why is this faction only now becoming the focus of attention since Elon Musk entered the political arena?

The volume is edited by Heinrich Geiselberger, who was also responsible for the highly successful 2017 anthology The Great Regression, which was translated into 14 languages.