Bard College Berlin News
Prof. Dr. Boris Vormann gives insights into US-American politics on major German news outlets as Trump is inaugurated president
On Tagesschau Vormann explained the differing views of Republicans and Democrats on the certification of the Electoral College victory of Donald Trump. Noting that until January 6, 2021, this was a ritual that went mainly unpublicized, but now signifies something fundamentally broken about the peaceful transition of power, citing a “creaking in the framework of the American democracy.”
In the days leading up to the inauguration, Vormann discussed the contradictions between Trump's imperialist policies– which Vormann describes as “America of the nineteenth century”—and his continued requests to purchase Greenland and reclaim control of the Panama Canal on ZDF. Vormann returned to ZDF on Inauguration Day to explain that Germany’s relationship with the US will be more complicated under Trump, because he has singled out Germany as an enemy.
On radio eins, Vormann continued speaking about how Trump’s vision of military power has echoes of American Imperialism that date back to the country’s founding. He goes on to warn that this–in combination with rising Chinese and Russian influence–calls on the EU to rethink its place in the world order and exactly how it should react in terms of security policy.
In a segment on Deutsche Welle, which aired in the US on PBS, Vormann analyzed Trump’s inauguration speech, contrasting his Imperialist agenda with a more isolationist, somewhat contradictory call for a retreat from foreign wars and intervention: “There are periodic moments in history where the US has turned in on itself and wants to isolate itself from international affairs… [Trump’s speech] was directed to a domestic audience that does not want to invest in foreign borders but instead wants to take care of its own borders and its own domestic affairs.”
As the three richest men in the world attended the Trump inauguration, Vormann spoke about oligarchies and plutocracies on Deutschlandfunk, describing plutocracy as too simple to accurately describe complex political systems, but oligarchy as a useful term to describe a class of elites with varying types of power: financial, religious, or military. The left and right have differing opinions for how to deal with such oligarchies: the left wants to redistribute wealth and power from the privileged few, whereas the right wants to limit who has access to goods and services to a narrowly conceived ethnic demos.
By providing historical and global contexts for Trump’s return to power, Vormann underscores the pressing need for nuanced analysis and strategic responses, especially from the EU and Germany.
Post Date: 01-22-2025