Ahmed Jazbhay writes that a Trump presidency may be what the world requires, to reignite the drive for true and meaningful liberation.
Against all odds, Donald Trump’s bigotry towards Hispanics, Latinos, Muslims and Sikhs has catapulted him to the White House.
His extremist vitriol made him quite popular among evangelical Zionist Christians, ultra-right-wing white extremists and even the white middle class dissatisfied with the Obama administration, with the Republican Party and with their personal economic circumstances, which saw a firm deterioration in the 1970s.
This accelerated in the 21st century and many were attracted to Trump’s bigotry.
Political commentators expected Trump’s campaign to fizzle out sooner rather than later, but his ever-growing support base caught some hardline Republicans by surprise.
He never stopped making controversial statements at any point in his campaign. Even claims of sexual assault could not damage him.
In effect, Trump's popularity represents the success of bigotry and much that is wrong with mainstream politics in the US. It has also helped reignite a long-discredited xenophobic feature in the country.
No one seemed able to conjure up a meaningful plan to halt Trump's bigotry-laden steam train in its tracks. Strategists in the US are now scampering around to figure out how to contain the situation.
However, should Trump really be contained? Perhaps a Trump presidency is what the world requires, to reignite the drive for true and meaningful liberation.
The US presents itself as a bastion of democracy and capitalism, protector of the free world and the guardian of the international human rights dispensation.
The American Public Relations machinery (the mainstream media, Hollywood, etc) have punted this facade for decades and it has taken the bigotry of a billionaire businessman to bring it into question.
A Trump presidency is beginning to expose the true nature of the modern/colonial Islamophobic world under the stewardship of the American empire.
At the commencement of the War on Terror following the 9/11 attacks, George Bush and the American establishment were at pains to argue that this was not a war on Islam.
Trump does not pretend to do so, even stating that, under his presidency, Muslims would be banned from entering the US and that all Syrian refugees would be sent home as they could be Islamic State operatives.
The fact that his views hold so much currency after having been accepted by American voters speaks volumes about the real nature of the American empire.
His Islamophobic rhetoric has woken up many liberals and even conservatives from their slumber. It has conscientised oppressed populations that the world has descended into disorder of the highest proportion where the paradigm of war is increasingly going to be used as a tool of resolving political conflicts with far-reaching consequences for human life.
The non-Western world has begun to realise that the empire only wants complete control, domination and subordination of non-white people.
The grand opera of non-racialism, multiracialism, inclusivity and mutual respect purported by the American empire was just meant to pacify the oppressed.
It will soon begin to crumble, since a Trump presidency will expose the illusion of the international human rights regime and reveal the myth of the American venture of spreading democracy.
A Trump presidency will help unmask, attack and obliterate these myths because it clearly demonstrates that the American empire, as the global leader of the modern/colonial world, can only be sustained through a combination of violence, deception, insincerity and lies.
It will demonstrate that we live in a world governed by the idea of coloniality - the continuation of power arrangements that emerged from colonialism and continue to manifest themselves long after the end of formal colonialism.
A Trump presidency will assist in making it clear that we are not free. Oppression has merely managed to change forms.
It may just be the spark to conscientise the world to this fact.
We may begin to realise that everything we know about ourselves and the world has been constructed for us by Eurocentric thinkers to further a neo-colonial agenda of dominance and subservience.
Thank you, America, for voting Trump into power.
* Dr Jazbhay is executive member of Media Review Network.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
The Sunday Independent