The caricature of Donald J. Drumpf, sketched through bellicose gestures, is mesmerizing in its shock value. While this political turn holds and has meant immediate danger to already vulnerabilized populations, it is insufficient to see Drumpf’s rise as a one-off celebrity rupture of an otherwise democratic society. It is also insufficient to attempt to determine if Drumpf, his cabinet nominees, and/or those who voted for him are individually racist, misogynist, ableist, and on. Drumpf is reflective and refractive of a long-standing structure of heteropatriarchal and racial violence in this nation. The fact that he has handily gained traction with large swaths of the population demands an analysis that transgresses a single individual’s psychology. Drumpf’s popularity can be apprehended through the lens of settler colonialism, which relies on various technologies, including racism and heteropatriarchy, to accomplish its aims.

In the shortest-term memory, the political rise of Donald Drumpf began with the election of Barack Hussein Obama.

Read the rest of the essay here, published in CTheory online magazine.