After Trump?

It’s the end of March 2025, and we’re already ankle-deep in the slurry. The Department of Government Efficiency is sacking federal workers faster than Elon can rename Twitter, birthright citizenship is under legal siege, and the U.S. now treats Canada like a hostile power with tariffs that’d make even Lord Palmerston wince.

But this isn’t about Trump anymore.

He’s not the story – not really. He’s the symptom. The warning flare. The man-shaped black hole around which a dying republic spins. What matters now is the aftermath. The inheritance.

Political philosophers – the ones who usually dwell in dusty corners of academia or pace around YouTube looking worried – are sounding the alarm. Francis Fukuyama, once bullish about the global triumph of liberal democracy, now concedes it may have been a short-lived exception. Timothy Snyder sees echoes of 1930s authoritarian creep, sharpened by tech and turbocharged by denial. Jason Stanley has been warning for years that America is slipping into fascism not with jackboots, but with memes and merch.

Vlad Vexler, the philosopher-turned-firewatcher, calls it “performative governance” – democracy as empty ritual. The votes are still counted, but meaning and accountability have quietly slipped out the back door. Meanwhile, Slavoj Žižek, between references to Hegel and bodily functions, notes that Trumpism isn’t an anomaly – it’s the logical endpoint of a system that long ago gave up on substance and now runs on spectacle.

And then there’s Yanis Varoufakis – leather-jacketed Cassandra of European collapse – who sees it all as the final unravelling of what he calls “Technofeudalism.” His warning? The danger isn’t just authoritarianism – it’s the merger of big state and big tech into a self-sustaining elite. In that model, Trump’s chaos is useful theatre – a distraction while the extraction continues. Rights get trimmed, the commons gets sold, and the public gets fed cultural gristle to chew on.

Because after Trump goes – whether in four years, two years, or via cholesterol – the template remains. Future strongmen, free-marketeers and frothing populists now have a handbook. And it reads: break norms, cry fraud, repeat. Turns out all those democratic “checks and balances” were more like polite suggestions. Nice ideas. Decorum.

The risk isn’t just that Trump finishes his term with a gutted civil service, an increasingly compliant judiciary, and a cowed Congress. It’s that he proves it works. That you can get away with it. That democracy doesn’t die with a bang – it gets outsourced, streamlined, and told to reapply for funding next quarter.

And the world watches. Hungary smiles knowingly. Modi raises an eyebrow. Farage – now somehow an MP – probably has a private WhatsApp chat labelled “When it’s our turn” without ever articulating a local council pledge for the May local elections.

For Britain, this isn’t abstract. It’s an echo. We’ve got Reform frothing about national service and pub closures, the Tories cosplaying Churchill while fumbling basic governance, and Labour still terrified of its own shadow. Nobody dares say the B-word. The EU? Apparently we’re still pretending it never existed. We might as well be trying to out-stupid America.

So what happens after Trump? After four years of screaming headlines, weaponised grievance, and a political culture built on vibes and vengeance?

Either the centre wakes up – not with a speech but with a strategy – or we’re in for a long, grim decade of ever-slicker authoritarians. The sort who smile for the cameras and swear they’re “just streamlining government” while quietly burning the architecture of democracy behind them.

Trump may go. The chaos might ease. But the damage is done. And unless we’re prepared to fight for truth, trust, and a politics that actually gives a damn about people – someone worse will pick up where he left off.

Of course, there’s a glimmer – a faint one, but there – that Trump’s second term could be so chaotic, so transparently self-serving, that the spell finally breaks. That enough people look around at the scorched landscape – trade wars, democratic drift, tinfoil rhetoric passing for policy – and think: actually, no thanks.

Yascha Mounk calls it the “corrective backlash” – the idea that societies have a kind of political immune system. Push things too far into absurdity, and the public recoils. Fukuyama, too, hasn’t entirely given up. He suggests that the very excesses of populist rule can reactivate civic engagement – if, and only if, the institutions haven’t been gutted beyond repair.

Even Žižek, in his roundabout way, has hinted that the real danger for the populist right isn’t their enemies – it’s their own success. Once in power, they have to actually govern – and when all you’ve sold is rage and nostalgia, delivery becomes a problem.

So yes – there’s a chance. A crack in the wall. Trump’s second term might become the cautionary tale that cures the fever.

But hope is not a plan. And without mobilisation, strategy, and the kind of bold, values-driven politics that doesn’t flinch at hard truths – we may just trade one wrecking ball for another with better hair and a more agreeable accent.