The Predictor of Trumpism? Richard Rorty (1931-2007)
The US philosopher Richard Rorty achieved a species of posthumous and retrospective fame, outside of academic circles, by “prediciting”, in 1998, the advent of Trumpisim.
In Rorty’s view, the left-wing tradition in the US had swerved away from the dirty-hands business of practical politics, attentive to the political and economic needs of the blue collar classes. What the left had swerved towards was an academic-inspired tendency to “give cultural politics preference over real politics, and to mock the very idea that democratic institutions might once again be made to serve social justice.”
