Adam Tooze

I do think the race, I don't want to play these off against each other, but I think the race as an organizing category is more powerful than woke in general.

Because historically, I think the form of conservatism and rightism that has clustered around Trump comes out of the backlash against civil rights.

I mean, if you think about the American polity as going through a series of convulsive major changes, one is the New Deal.

And another one is the Civil Rights Revolution and then the Civil War and Reconstruction before that.

And immigration happens at the same time, 65, right?

So Trump has a solid track record as a standard racist, an anti-black racist.

In his party days, he was...

Notably, he's not a standard conservative on sexuality, including on homosexuality.

I think the line, this idea of great displacement, the savagery of ICE, the casual anti-black, anti-Chinese, just the comprehensive white power vision, that rings true to me as an organizing idea of a conservatism.

Does it make you hostile to democracy?

I'm not sure that follows.

It makes you hostile to liberal versions of it or the version that American liberals have pushed.

It makes you hostile to the inhibiting norms of the rule of law, all those kind of things.

But of course, their idea is that once you get the citizenry down to the sort of people who should be allowed to vote,

then that group will solidly return their kind of politics.

It's illiberal.

One of the most shocking pieces of news in the last 24 hours is that the Americans have clearly been waging a campaign against French judges

presiding over the case that was going to prosecute Marine Le Pen for various types of corruption, corrupt practices.

And officials from the American embassy visited French judges.

And so they have a thing for judges.