Journal of Transnational American Studies

Introduction by JTAS editor in chief Alfred Hornung

Introduction by special section coeditor Jennifer A. Reimer

This essay reflects on the 2024 US presidential election in light of the conservative movement’s increasing conflation of fact and literary fiction. Recent mobilizations of literature by J. D. Vance, Curtis Yarvin, and Clarence Thomas not only illustrate how literature and literary value can be weaponized in support of right-wing political programs, but also how these readers deliberately obfuscate the distinction between truth and narrative to construct alternative realities. In conclusion, the essay briefly reads Gustavo Petro’s conspicuous invocations of One Hundred Years of Solitude as a cautionary tale for opponents of the MAGA movement not to simply imitate the far right’s deliberate strategies of conflation. 

My work centers on prose and lyrical poetry surrounding diasporic Central American narratives. I explore the stories of my family and their surrounding communities. Focusing on the loss, familial separation, colonization, and displacement that have occurred under the various adiministrations from Reagan through to Trump, my work investigates the first-hand effects of US intervention, immigrant journeys, generational trauma, and community resilience. “Cortex” is part of a cycle of poems written during the election season of 2024. The poems aim to understand the connection between longing and homesickness in times of explicit racism and bias. What does the diaspora call home in times like these? 

The recent presidential election and inauguration—as distant as they may already seem given how much has happened and continues to happen since—gave us a glimpse of the transformation the American political landscape has already begun to undergo: The defunding of public media sources, the targeting of dissenters across private media, the persecution of vulnerable groups as scapegoats for our deeper economic and cultural tensions and the rapid implementation of technocratic mechanisms catering to tech billionaires who bend the knee…among other things. It is important to understand just how we got here to effectively address why we are experiencing such tumultuous political change. Why did the Democrats lose so badly, and how did the previous administration’s blunders contribute to this? How did Trump so easily and effectively woo so many young Americans, and what in particular about his rhetoric was so appealing to so many, given the state of the US during the elections? Most importantly, where may we be headed now? This analysis attempts to provide some context to help answer these questions, and aims to provide a more generous critique of all the moving parts at play, straying away from the bipartisan rhetoric that trips up so many due to the very bipolar nature of American politics.

Seen from France, Donald Trump’s 2024 reelection was not a pivotal event, but the overturning of Roe v. Wade by the US Supreme Court on June 24, 2022 was. On that day, French women discovered that, in the most powerful democracy in the world, the laws protecting women’s bodies could be revoked. A public debate then emerged about securing abortion rights in France by turning the Veil abortion law of 1975 into an article in the constitution.

This commentary explores the resurgence of masculinist movement and far-right ideologies in the 2024 US presidential election, focusing on Donald Trump's strategic use of these elements. Originating from digital spaces like 4chan, the Alt-Right movement emerges from phenomena such as #Gamergate while promoting the "red pill" concept: a metaphor for the awakening of online activists to perceived truths about societal structures, particularly gender and race. Trump's campaign leveraged this lexicon, appealing to young white male voters through associations with figures like Elon Musk and media personalities such as Joe Rogan. The emergence of "Dark Maga," a more extreme iteration of the MAGA movement, can be analyzed as a deeper radicalization of the movement, incorporating elements of the Neoreactionary (NrX) movement as well as building on the Alt-Right's ashes. This commentary highlights the broader implications of these developments, suggesting a potent political dynamic that is reshaping American politics.

The 2024 US presidential election result is, rather than an isolated phenomenon, symptomatic of the alarming rise of a series of extremist right-wing movements throughout the Western world. While history is generally considered to progress in a linear fashion, such a wave seemingly validates a circular model of history, if only given the evident parallelism between our times and the first half of the preceding century. Analysts such as Ray Dalio go even further, arguing that the present cycle, characterized by the United States’s predominance in the world order, is drawing to a close, predictively giving way to China’s imminent relay as the leading power. However, regardless of whether we are experiencing the culmination of a geopolitical cycle or simply reiterating the early decades of the twentieth century, a new element is characterizing today’s rise of the far right. The limelight presence of tech billionaires at President Donald Trump’s 2025 inauguration and their multimillion dollar investments in the Republican campaign evince a different kind of relationship between governments and corporations. While the confluence of politics and private interests is by no means new, the blatant barefacedness of this relationship is somewhat unprecedented, revealing an unashamed move to oligarchy. What is more, an added and more preoccupying novelty is the United States’s apparent shift from libertarianism to authoritarianism. Economist Yanis Varoufakis goes as far as to argue that capitalism itself is experiencing a radical transformation, through the mutation of capital into what he terms “cloud capital.” The result of these discrepancies is unfortunately not a transcending of the cycle, but the alleged demise of capitalism in favour of a return to a new kind of ("techno-")feudalism. This article scrutinizes the current sociopolitical situation in order to consider whether we are in fact trapped in an unending and unavoidable cycle of growth and decay, or if there are ways to break away from it.

At the twenty first–century border, naturalized and native-born citizens are now subject to interrogations about their legal backgrounds and to possible arrests without legal representation and even before they are old enough to possess a criminal record or enter kindergarten. Legal power operates differently in the borderlands, particularly with respect to the presumption of innocence. This short commentary reflects on this legal gray zone: If border exceptionalism lacks judicial oversight, then it is crucial to have clarity on which presidential administration should be held accountable.

This essay examines the possible impact of Donald Trump’s return to the US presidency in 2025 on Italian politics, focusing on Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and the country’s deep-rooted right-wing populism. Framing Italy as both a laboratory and a mirror of global populist trends, the analysis explores Meloni’s alignment with Trump’s rhetoric and domestic policy priorities—particularly on migration and national identity—while also highlighting potential divergences in foreign policy and Italy’s position within the European Union. Drawing on recent political developments, including Meloni’s visit to Washington and Trump’s attendance at Pope Francis’s funeral in Rome, the essay argues that Italy’s role in a potential “populist axis” remains contested. It further warns of the domestic repercussions of Trump and Meloni's alignment: rising racism, xenophobia, and the normalization of exclusionary discourse. Ultimately, the piece positions Italy as a crucial case study for understanding the global entrenchment of populist ideologies and the futures of liberal democracy.

This piece looks at the political use of (in)security discourse. MAGA has far exceeded the boundaries of the old Republican party; the big tent of the GOP now houses a wide range of political and ideological interests, all of which, while often contradictory, are sufficiently tied together with the string of fear and insecurity. The Democrats, on the other hand, have failed spectacularly in recognizing and utilizing the insecurity of the American people the way their Republican counterparts have done. Rather than responding with force, be it symbolic or real violence, this moment of collective affect demands reflection on the state of internal struggles Americans are facing, and requires exacting actions to see them through. 

This article provides analysis of how Danish critics of the state draw on the languge of conspiracy theorists in the United States to bolster their values.

This piece is written in the wake of damaging projects of extractive capitalism. As the Trump administration pulls back government support for clean energy, energy policy and market forces are past the tipping point of change. Trump brings uncertainty to the structural reorganization of the global economy, yet he will not reverse it. Writing from Denmark, David Struthers looks to the Indigenous analyses of ongoing colonialism to make an argument against a corrosive authoritarian encroachment.

This reflective essay analyzes the deepening polarization in the United States following the 2024 presidential election and the victory of Donald Trump. Ewa Antoszek contextualizes the rise of populist and anti-intellectual rhetoric, drawing on cultural, political, and media dynamics that have reshaped public discourse. The essay uses George Packer’s framework of the four Americas—Free, Real, Smart, and Just—to explain ideological fragmentation. Antoszek connects the US political climate to broader European trends, particularly in Poland, highlighting how right-wing populism and patriarchal norms are gaining traction transnationally.

This short article explores the opinions of Chinese people resident in China concerning Donald Trump and the 2024 US presidential election. Political thinking in China is often perceived through West-centric perspectives, which fail to capture the ways in which Chinese people perceive political events. Few Chinese people have interest in American politics, but among those who do, opinions surrounding Trump and the 2024 election are split. These opinions are split in ways that challenge West-originating ideas of left-right divides. Chinese people find reasons to support or oppose Trump on the basis of support for or opposition to elements of China’s political and economic system. It is important to avoid the exceptionalism of understanding the world through the lens of American politics.

This essay argues that with the 2024 reelection of Donald Trump as president of the United States, the concept of “American exceptionalism” should be put to rest once and for all. The essay traces some of the history of the idea of American exceptionalism, paying particular attention to how it has been deployed in American political rhetoric over the past twenty years or so. During Trump’s first presidential campaign, some observers noted that Trump was the only major political figure who did not embrace the idea of American exceptionalism, noting that then-President Barack Obama, as well as Trump’s fellow Republican presidential candidates, all asserted the special nature of the United States. This essay argues that such perceptions were a misreading of Trump’s rhetoric and beliefs, an argument supported by Trump’s later embrace of American exceptionalism. The essay further argues that the rise of Trump, when viewed alongside a global retreat from the values of liberal democracy, reveals that there is nothing special, unique, or exceptional about the United States.

Reflections on the 2024 US presidential election.

Mark Twain's writings edited by Twain expert Shelley Fisher Fishkin for a critically relevant appraisal of our contemporary moment.

Afterword by special section coeditor Kevin K. Gaines

This is the editors' introduction to Forward, a curated selection of excerpts from important new publications in the field of transnational American studies. For this edition, we have chosen to explore the afterlives of empire and slavery through award-winning works by Jodi Kim, Heidi Kim, Shelley Fisher Fishkin, and Anita Gonzalez.

In this excerpt from Jodi Kim's book Settler Garrison, Kim maps the use of debt as a form of power wielded by the creditor over the debtor, examining the dynamics of this assymetrical relationship through the case studies of sex camps outside military bases in South Korea and Okinawa. Kim extends this analytic to a trenchant examination of the injustices legitimated by colonialism, tracing the ways that the US extends its power into the sovereign spaces of Asian countries and marshalling them through structures of IMF-indebtedness into the settler garrisons of the book's title.

In this excerpt from Heidi Kim's book llegal Immigrants: Model Minorities: The Cold War of Chinese American Narrative, Kim presents new research on the life and family history of Chinese American novelist Jade Snow Wong, often regarded as a paradigm of immigrant upward mobility and whose memoirs written years apart suggest contradictory narratives of the family's immigration to the United States. Kim's deeper purpose in examining Wong's family history is to provide context for the collective history of Chinatowns and the Chinese American communities who were targeted as presumed fraudulent immigrants during a period of intensive anticommunist sentiment.

“Jim on the Dnieper: Wayland Rudd (1936) and Feliks Imokuede (1973) Enact the Soviet Critique of American Racism” and “Jim on the Danube: Serge Nubret (1968) and Jacky Ido (2012) Reflect Changing German Attitudes Toward Race.” Two excerpts from Shelley Fisher Fishkin's new book. 

Black Performance Studies scholar Anita Gonzalez takes us onboard a cruise ship that travels between the US and the Caribbean in this excerpt from Shipping Out: Race, Labor, and Performance at Sea.

Author biographies