The Problem of Stupidity: Trump, AfriForum, and the Rise of Authoritarian Populism

In our age of information overload, the term “stupidity” has transformed from a mere insult into a pervasive condition—one that hinders the functioning of democracy and fuels authoritarian impulses. This isn’t a simple absence of intelligence but a deliberate strategy: a performance of simplistic narratives and hollow policies that mask deep social and economic dysfunction. This, in essence, is the problem of stupidity we face today.

Take, for example, the return of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency in 2024–2025. With a series of executive orders and tariffs, Trump has once again turned the White House into a platform for spectacle over substance. His new trade war, positioned as a patriotic defense of American workers, imposes broad tariffs on imports. But behind the flashy rhetoric, these policies carry a significant economic cost. They act like a hidden tax on American families, raising prices, endangering jobs, and undermining global confidence in U.S. leadership. Rather than a thoughtful strategy for rebuilding industry, Trump’s approach echoes the crude “America First” rhetoric, sacrificing long-term prosperity for short-term emotional gratification.

This oversimplified style of governance isn’t confined to the U.S. Around the world, the rise of right-wing populism follows a familiar script: the rallying cry of nationalism, often wrapped in victimhood, and a promise to return to a mythical past. Leaders like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán or Italy’s Giorgia Meloni use this language to depict globalization and diversity as existential threats to national identity.

They suggest that only by reclaiming lost sovereignty can their people be saved—a notion Wendy Brown calls “wounded attachment,” where collective grievance transforms into political identity. The remedy they offer is both a return to past glory and a defense against imagined cultural destruction.

In South Africa, this narrative adds a layer of absurdity. AfriForum, a lobby group representing Afrikaner interests, has reinvented itself as the defender of a beleaguered white minority in post-apartheid South Africa. Their exaggerated claims of “reverse discrimination” and farm murders paint a picture of white victimhood. With leaders like Kallie Kriel and Ernst Roets leading lobbying campaigns in Washington, AfriForum calls on U.S. policymakers to intervene against a government they claim is threatening their people.

However, these narratives, when critically examined, unravel into a tragicomic farce. Despite the high-pitched rhetoric, AfriForum operates within a democratic South Africa, where whites, although fewer in number, remain economically and politically influential. The so-called “crisis” they decry isn’t about survival, but about a stubborn refusal to let go of an outdated past.

At the heart of this global shift is a paradox noted by thinkers like Bernard Stiegler and Gilles Deleuze. Stiegler warns of technological and economic shocks that create a “state of shock” in society, a condition where our capacity for critical thought is short-circuited by an overload of images and slogans. In this environment, stupidity becomes not an accident but a design—a kind of “pharmacology” that sedates public debate and suppresses the emergence of true wisdom.

Deleuze’s idea of “difference and repetition” reminds us that history doesn’t simply repeat itself; it mutates. Today’s authoritarian populism borrows from the past, invoking echoes of fascist demagoguery and reactionary nationalism, but it reinvents itself in an age of social media and globalized fear.

In Trump’s America, tariffs and executive orders are more symbols of impotence than strategy. His actions are not measured by rational analysis, but by their ability to rally a base that finds comfort in simplistic answers to complex problems. Similarly, AfriForum’s claims of white victimhood may seem absurd, but they tap into genuine anxieties about cultural displacement. These groups do not emerge in a vacuum; they are products of economic dislocation, rapid social change, and a media landscape that rewards outrage over nuance.

As George Orwell warned, political language often works to conceal the truth, replacing meaningful discourse with slogans. Yet, amid this cacophony of unreason, there is hope. The very excesses of authoritarian stupidity create openings for resistance. When policies meant to defend national greatness end up eroding economic stability and democratic norms, they expose the hollowness of the ideologies behind them.

In South Africa, while AfriForum clings to a nostalgic fantasy of lost supremacy, a new generation of Afrikaners is emerging—one that embraces pluralism and integration rather than isolation and victimhood.

This struggle is not just about policy—it’s a battle of narratives. The right-wing tendency to offer oversimplified answers to complex problems is a collective self-delusion. It’s the stupidity of those who believe that clinging to past glories can solve modern challenges.

To overcome this condition, we must foster a culture of critical reflection—a public space where ideas can be rigorously debated rather than reduced to sound bites. The antidote to stupidity isn’t just traditional education, but a reclaiming of public discourse, a willingness to engage with uncomfortable truths, and an acknowledgment of our own fallibility.

The problem of stupidity is deeply political and profoundly human. It’s the interplay of ideology and emotion, the collision of memory and reality. As Friedrich Nietzsche once said, “Madness is rare in individuals—but in groups, parties, peoples, and ages, it is the rule.” Today’s political follies—whether in Trump’s tariffs or AfriForum’s white nationalist rhetoric—are symptoms of a broader malaise, a failure of our collective imagination to confront the complexities of modern life.

To move beyond the empire of stupidity, we must first recognize our complicity in perpetuating it. By understanding that stupidity is not the absence of intelligence but its misuse, we can commit to a politics that values nuance over noise, depth over demagoguery. Only then can we hope to transform our state of shock into one of reflective, inclusive wisdom—a society where reason triumphs over the siren call of unreason.

{Source IOL}

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