Not Even Trump Believes in Trump

US Attorney General Pam Bondi described the recent public burning of Tesla cars, in protest against Elon Musk and DOGE, an act of "domestic terrorism". The New Republicans seemingly pride themselves on their free-speech enthusiasm. And yet it is interesting to see such sharp limits drawn to this free speech when it gets uncomfortably close to the administration’s private interests. Storming Capitol Hill is, according to Trumpian logic, a reasonable expression of discontent with representative democracy, but burning a few electric vehicles produced by Elon Musk is a clear act of terrorism. The Trump administration draws an almost comically clear distinction: if it serves private financial interests, it is an exercise in freedom of speech – if it threatens the private financial interests of the international oligarch team that Trump wants to appease, it is a clear act of terrorism.

It is becoming clearer than ever that the free-market, openly capitalist-libertarian system that Trump espoused is a system that he himself does not believe in. Take for example his very quick reversal of the unregulated free-market economy that – following Argentina and Javier Milei – Trump’s team were so certain about implementing. Despite the plummeting shares of Tesla due to Musk's antics, they promise us that the company's car production will double by 2027. In other words, regardless of a market trend dictating a potential demise in Tesla, the White House will intervene in the production of Tesla products, in order to overrule the laws of the market and protect their vested interest in the rise of Tesla stock.

The free market that the New Republicans so proudly defended is therefore clearly only defended when it suits their private needs – where the market dictates that Tesla will go under, the bureaucratic face of State interventionism once again rears its head. When Gandhi was asked what he thought of Western civilisation, he gave the wonderful answer that “it sounds like a good idea.” ‘West’ and ‘civilised’ were for Gandhi mutually exclusive terms. When Noam Chomsky was asked what he thought about capitalism, he gave the same response, a response which reaches into the core of the fragile economic ideals of the Trump administration. “Capitalism sounds like an interesting idea”, because we’ve yet to experience a State-independent, unregulated capitalist market. In fact, US capitalists such as Trump and Musk would never accept the instability of a genuinely free