How Reagan’s revolution became Trump’s spectacle — and what it means for the future of power.
Karl Marx once wrote that history repeats itself, “first as tragedy, then as farce.” The phrase, penned in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, carries the weight of a lesson we never seem to learn. When seized in an era of transformation, power wears the guise of something grand — tragic in its idealism, in its ruthless reshaping of the world. But when history loops back on itself, the second act is rarely a noble sequel. It is a parody of what came before, a grotesque imitation wrapped in nostalgia, hollow where substance once stood.
The 20th and 21st centuries offer their own versions of this political tragedy-turned-farce. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan emerged as a revolutionary force in American conservatism, reshaping the country’s economic and social landscape with the conviction of a man who believed he was writing a new chapter of history. Whether one sees him as a savior or a villain, his era carried the weight of irreversible change.
And then came Donald Trump — a reality TV caricature, a populist illusionist, a leader whose presence in the White House felt more like a poorly scripted satire than a defining historical moment. He is not the architect of an era but its absurd echo, a rerun of Reaganism without the gravitas.
In this article, I draw a parallel between these two American figures and the Napoleonic lineage that Marx analyzed. Just as Napoleon Bonaparte was the tragic force who upended France, establishing an empire from the ruins of revolution, Reagan was the transformative conservative who set the foundations for the neoliberal order. And just as Napoleon III — the nephew desperate to resurrect an empire he did not build — became the embodiment of historical farce, Trump presents himself as a gaudy reflection of Reagan, stripped of strategy and weighed down by the theatricality of his own myth. Through a neo-Marxist lens, this is not just a historical curiosity. It is a warning: the damage is very real when power repeats itself in absurdity.
The Eighteenth Brumaire and the Neo-Marxist Lens
Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire is a blueprint for understanding how power moves in cycles. Written in the aftermath of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte’s rise to power in 1851, the text dissects how historical figures and their imitators manipulate the past to justify the present. Bonaparte, the nephew of the great Napoleon, did not inherit his uncle’s genius — only his name. His rise was not the return of imperial glory but a mockery of it, an echo distorted into something lesser, something performative.
The phrase “first as tragedy, then as farce” is a telling observation but also a damning indictment of history’s repetitions. In its first iteration, power is raw, dangerous, and transformational. It reconfigures history, whether for better or for worse. The tragedy lies in the sheer force of its rupture, the irreversible shift it imposes on the world. But when that same power structure attempts to repeat itself, it loses its gravity. It becomes self-referential, its performance exaggerated, its purpose reduced to spectacle. In farce, history does not progress — it mocks its own past, turning revolutionary zeal into a pantomime of what once was.
A neo-Marxist analysis extends this logic into modern political structures. Neoliberalism, the economic and ideological project launched with Reagan, did not simply survive — it metastasized. It entrenched itself so deeply into the global economic order that it began to feel inevitable, leaving behind a world where alternatives were not only dismissed but actively erased. Much like Napoleonic France, Reagan’s America carried the illusion of forward motion, of radical transformation that could not be undone.
And yet, history has a way of parodying itself. When Trump arrived, draped in the aesthetics of Reagan-era conservatism but devoid of its apparent coherence, he was not a new leader but a symptom of decay. His movement is not and has never been about building something — it is about consuming the little that is left, branding nostalgia as a revolution and performance as policy.
Reagan’s neoliberal revolution reshaped America and the global economic order. His policies — the dismantling of labor protections, the expansion of corporate power, the mythologizing of trickle-down economics — were the defining strokes of an era. And just as Napoleon redrew the European map, Reagan redrew the ideological terrain of capitalism.
But Trump? Trump’s political persona is less that of an architect and more that of a parasite. If Reagan was the tragic visionary, Trump is the farcical imitator — less an emperor, more a carnival scammer selling knockoff nationalism with a gold-plated signature.
Let’s examine Reagan and Trump as symbols of how power mutates. I will consider what happens when political movements become simulacra of themselves—when history, rather than progressing, loops back into absurdity. Towards the end, I will ask the critical question: if the cycle continues, what comes after the farce?
The Tragic Vision
Napoleon Bonaparte did not simply seize power — he redefined it. Emerging from the chaos of the French Revolution, he transformed a fragmented republic into an empire, wielding charisma and military genius to justify his reign. His was more than a political takeover but rather a grand reordering of the world. He promised stability and expansion, and for a time, he delivered both. The Napoleonic Wars redrew the borders of Europe, forging new alliances and creating an imperial dominance that had not been seen since the Roman Empire. His rule introduced sweeping legal and administrative reforms, most notably the Napoleonic Code, which remains a cornerstone of modern legal systems. He centralized power, professionalized the military, and reshaped the very identity of France. Yet, for all his victories, his empire collapsed under the weight of its own ambition. The failed invasion of Russia, the relentless wars, and the political fractures he created ultimately led to his downfall. In the end, he was exiled — twice — a stark reminder that even the most powerful figures are not immune to the limits of their own making.
Ronald Reagan, too, emerged from disorder — this time, the economic stagnation and political malaise of the 1970s. His ascent was built on a different kind of battlefield: his forte was his ideological conquest. With a Hollywood smile and a Cold War warrior’s rhetoric, Reagan packaged neoliberalism as optimism. His presidency dismantled the post-war economic consensus, slashing taxes, weakening labor unions, and unleashing corporate power under the banner of prosperity. He sold a vision of America where wealth, if concentrated at the top, would naturally trickle down to the masses — a faith in markets so absolute it bordered on the theological. His economic policies, often summarized as Reaganomics, became the foundation of a new world order, one that prioritized deregulation, privatization, and the empowerment of the wealthy elite. Much like Napoleon’s vision of an expansive European empire, Reagan’s economic doctrine reshaped global capitalism itself.
Yet, like Napoleon’s imperial ambitions, Reaganomics was as much an illusion as it was a transformation. Trickle-down economics, the foundation of his economic doctrine, did not distribute prosperity. Instead, it widened inequality, concentrating wealth in the hands of the elite while hollowing out the middle class. The policies Reagan championed — deregulation, the erosion of social safety nets, and the prioritization of corporate interests over worker protections — set the stage for decades of economic precarity. The financialization of the economy, the explosion of corporate influence in politics, and the decline of organized labor can all be traced back to the Reagan era. Just as Napoleon’s relentless expansion sowed the seeds of his downfall, Reagan’s policies laid the groundwork for financial crises, housing collapses, and widespread disillusionment with the neoliberal project.
Both men were charismatic visionaries who reshaped their nations, but their legacies carried the weight of their contradictions. Napoleon’s empire could not sustain itself; Reagan’s economic order could not deliver on its promises. The tragedy in their stories is in the realization that their revolutions, while profound, contained the very seeds of their undoing. Napoleon built an empire that could not outlast his own ambitions; Reagan built an economic system that promised prosperity but ultimately funneled wealth upward and left the working class struggling. Reagan’s America, like Napoleonic France, was forever altered — and not necessarily for the better.
The question then becomes: if Reagan was Napoleon, the force that transformed, then who came next to parody his vision?
The Farcical Reflection
Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, or Napoleon III, did not ascend to power through military genius or revolutionary fervor — he inherited a name. Elected as president of the Second Republic in 1848, he swiftly manipulated the democratic system to his advantage, orchestrating a coup in 1851 and crowning himself Emperor in 1852. His early reign was marked by economic modernization and the transformation of Paris into a grand imperial capital, but beneath the surface lay a ruler more enamored with his own image than governance. His imperial ambitions, from meddling in Mexico to his reckless confrontation with Prussia, were driven by personal prestige, not strategic foresight. The Franco-Prussian War in 1870 shattered his rule, exposing the emptiness of his empire and leaving him to die in exile, a ruler undone by the weight of his own illusions.
Donald Trump’s rise follows a similar arc, built on branding instead of ideological vision. A businessman and reality television personality, Trump mastered the art of media spectacle, using populist grievance to secure power. Where Reagan crafted a conservative doctrine rooted in Cold War economics and free-market dogma, Trump offers not even such coherence.
I remember the night of November 8, 2016 as a sharp rupture in time compared to the blur that had preceded it. Just a few months earlier, I had stepped off a plane in Philadelphia, an 18-year-old immigrant from Romania, brimming with the kind of idealism that made everything feel possible. I had arrived in what I believed was Obama’s America, in a country that seemed to embody forward motion, in a city where history had been written and rewritten by revolutionaries. My acceptance to the University of Pennsylvania — coincidentally or not, Trump’s alma mater — had felt like a personal triumph. It wasn’t just the Ivy League allure and the full scholarship I somehow managed to get, but also the belief that I was stepping into a place where progress still reigned, where the future would be shaped by competence, not chaos — as Brexit had just demonstrated the contrary in the UK.
For weeks, life was electric. Orientation blurred into the excitement of making friends, exploring the city, and settling into this new world. And then, election night came. The common room in Ware College House was packed — students, staff, a mix of strangers and friends, all united in anticipation. The energy was palpable, the polls reassuring. Hillary Clinton was supposed to break history. And I, as a young woman, was ecstatic. Then, as the results rolled in, the atmosphere shifted. A slow, creeping dread replaced the hopeful buzz. Smiles faltered, then disappeared. Some stared at the screen in stunned silence. Others sobbed or disappeared to take their anxiety meds. Bottles of numbing hard liquor replaced the beer that had, just before, been celebratory.
The following morning, our campus was unrecognizable. Most wore black. Typically composed professors walked into lecture halls with puffy eyes and cracked voices. Conversations in dining halls became eulogies for a country that no longer seemed to recognize itself. The illusion had shattered. America had stepped irrevocably into the farce.
As we all had expected — perhaps even worse — Donald Trump’s first presidency was defined by his personality, by the theatrics of dominance, grievance, and perpetual conflict. Like Napoleon III, he mistook performance for leadership, governing through media sensationalism. From the moment he descended the golden escalator in Trump Tower to announce his candidacy, he turned American politics into a reality show, weaponizing outrage and spectacle to maintain control of the public narrative. His first presidency was an exercise in provocation — each tweet, rally, and off-the-cuff remark carefully designed to dominate news cycles and set the terms of national discourse.
Policy was secondary, if not entirely irrelevant. Trump’s administration operated in a constant state of chaos, with revolving-door staff appointments, abrupt policy reversals, and decisions dictated as much by television coverage as political strategy. His early executive orders, from the controversial Muslim travel ban to the withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement, were less about governance than about delivering shockwaves to his base. His economic vision, if it could be called that, was a hollowed-out version of Reaganomics — corporate tax cuts, deregulation, and a theatrical commitment to an isolationist ’America First’ agenda that did little to serve the working class he claimed to champion.
Even his signature legislative achievement, the 2017 tax overhaul, was more a giveaway to the wealthy than a coherent economic strategy. His trade wars, launched under the guise of protecting American industry, hurt more than they helped, disrupting global markets while failing to deliver on their promises. His public feuds with allies, from NATO leaders to his intelligence agencies, further highlighted his tendency to govern by impulse rather than by ideology. Every crisis — from hurricanes to the COVID-19 pandemic — became another stage for his personal brand of leadership, prioritizing optics over action, loyalty over competence, and slogans over substance.
As with Napoleon III, his grip on power relied on maintaining the illusion of strength, even as the cracks in his administration became impossible to ignore. His presidency was a constant balancing act between scandal and survival. By the time his first term ended, it was clear that Trump had not built a new political order — he had simply accelerated America’s descent into political absurdity.
The descent into farce is becoming even more pronounced in Trump’s second term. His near-daily appearances from the Oval Office, addressing a chaotic mix of topics with little warning to the press, turned the presidency into a rolling reality show. Rather than using communication as a governance tool, he wields it as an instrument of distraction, echoing Napoleon III’s reliance on grand public spectacles to maintain authority while the substance of his rule crumbled beneath him.
Nowhere is this performative style more evident than in Trump’s surreal proposal to annex Greenland — a move met with international bewilderment and diplomatic friction. The suggestion, lacking in strategic or economic merit, epitomizes his tendency to conflate impulse with governance. It is a spectacle of power divorced from purpose, a modern counterpart to Napoleon III’s reckless foreign adventures, where the grandeur of the vision is more important than its feasibility.
Perhaps the clearest signal of Trump’s transformation of power from tragedy to farce lies in his decision to pardon individuals convicted for their role in the January 6 Capitol riot. By shielding those who had attempted to overturn the very system that legitimized his presidency, Trump makes a mockery of the rule of law.
Taken together, these moments reveal a fundamental shift from Reagan’s era of tragic idealism to a modern distortion of power, where politics is no longer about governance but sustaining a spectacle. Reagan, for all his faults, pursued an ideological vision; however, like Napoleon III, Trump is a ruler who governs not to transform but to remain at the center of attention. And as history teaches us, such figures do not build lasting empires — they simply preside over their collapse.
Implications for Modern Politics
The evolution from transformative leadership to a commodified, media-driven political spectacle carries profound implications for contemporary society and its political systems. This shift, viewed through a neo-Marxist lens, underscores the transition from genuine revolutionary change to a superficial performance, where politics is consumed as entertainment rather than engaged with as a civic duty.
Neo-Marxist theory posits that commodification extends beyond goods and services to infiltrate culture, ideas, and even political processes in advanced capitalist societies. This pervasive commodification transforms political discourse into a product designed for mass consumption, prioritizing profit and viewership over substantive engagement. The result is a political landscape where image supersedes ideology, and spectacle replaces authentic policy discussions.
Guy Debord’s concept of the “society of the spectacle” elucidates this phenomenon, describing a social reality where authentic experiences are supplanted by representations, leading to a passive citizenry more inclined to observe than to act. In this context, political figures become performers, and their policies are reduced to mere backdrops for the continuous display of power and charisma. The media, serving as the primary conduit for these spectacles, amplifies this effect by focusing on sensationalism and conflict, further detaching political discourse from the material conditions it ostensibly addresses.
Trump’s tenure embodies this governance style that prioritizes media presence over material change. This shift is evident in several key areas. Firstly, the Trump administration has actively sought to dismantle DEI programs across federal and educational institutions. Executive orders have been issued to eliminate funding for initiatives aimed at addressing systemic inequalities under the guise of combating so-called “wokeness.” This move not only undermines decades of progress in civil rights but also commodifies social justice into a partisan spectacle, diverting attention from the structural issues these programs aim to address.
Secondly, a surge of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation has been observed, with numerous bills introduced across various states targeting transgender individuals’ rights, particularly in sports and healthcare. These legislative efforts often serve as performative acts to galvanize certain voter bases, reducing the complex realities of LGBTQ+ individuals to political talking points. The tragic death of non-binary teenager Nex Benedict following a school bathroom assault underscores the real-world consequences of such politicized hostility.
(If only) finally — there has been a concerted effort to censor educational curricula, particularly concerning discussions of race, gender, and sexuality. Legislation has been enacted to restrict teachings on systemic racism and LGBTQ+ topics, framing them as radical indoctrination. This stifles critical discourse and transforms education into a battleground for ideological spectacle, where the focus shifts from enlightenment to control.
For progressive movements, this landscape presents both challenges and opportunities. The reduction of complex social issues to media spectacles necessitates a reevaluation of strategies. Grassroots organizing, community-based education, and the creation of alternative media platforms become essential tools to counteract the dominant narratives. The work of activists like Natalia Villarán-Quiñones, who advocates for queer communities on the front lines of the climate crisis in Florida, exemplifies the power of intersectional approaches that address multiple axes of oppression simultaneously. On the other hand, efforts to advocate for systemic change and social justice are often co-opted, diluted, or overshadowed by the prevailing spectacle. The media’s tendency to favor sensational narratives can marginalize nuanced discussions, reducing complex issues to simplistic binaries that fit neatly into the existing spectacle.
Moreover, the commodification of activism can lead to performative allyship, where individuals and organizations engage in superficial displays of support without committing to meaningful action. This performativity undermines the credibility of progressive causes and diverts attention and resources away from grassroots organizing and substantive policy advocacy.
The trajectory towards a media-driven spectacle in politics raises concerns about the future of democratic engagement. As political discourse becomes increasingly commodified, there is a risk that citizens will become further alienated from the political process, perceiving it as another form of entertainment rather than a participatory civic duty. This alienation can lead to apathy, decreased voter turnout, and a general erosion of public trust in political institutions.
To counteract this trend, there is a pressing need to reclaim political discourse from the grips of commodification. This reclamation involves fostering media literacy, encouraging critical consumption of political information, and supporting independent media outlets that prioritize investigative journalism over sensationalism. Additionally, reinvigorating civic education and promoting community-based political engagement can empower citizens to move beyond passive observation and participate actively in the democratic process.
The shift from the “tragic” idealism of transformative policies to the “farce” of commodified political spectacle poses systematic and significant implications for modern politics. It challenges society to look beyond the performative acts of governance and engage deeply with the underlying structures that perpetuate inequality. For progressive movements, it underscores the necessity of building resilient, informed, and engaged communities capable of envisioning and enacting genuine social change.
A Call to Break the Cycle
The journey from tragedy to farce is not simply an intellectual exercise but a diagnosis of a political system spiraling into absurdity. We have seen how transformative figures like Napoleon Bonaparte and Ronald Reagan reshaped their nations with revolutionary ambition, only to be followed by lesser imitators — Napoleon III and Donald Trump — who wielded spectacle in place of substance. This cyclical nature of power, where genuine ideological shifts are later parodied by figures more concerned with image than governance, reveals a grim truth: without intervention, history does not progress — it loops.
I hope my analysis has shed some light on how Trump’s presidency was not an aberration but an inevitability within the system of neoliberal spectacle. Reagan’s economic restructuring set the stage for deepening inequality, while Trump took the aesthetics of power and hollowed them into pure theater. Neoliberalism, once a doctrine of market supremacy, has morphed into a self-sustaining performance, where policy is written in headlines, governance is dictated by the media cycle, and political discourse is consumed rather than acted upon.
But what comes after the farce? This is the pressing question of our time. If history continues along this path, we risk descending further into governance devoid of responsibility — where populist entertainers take the stage, distracting from the structural decay beneath their feet. In fact, I'll take this opportunity to ask you to subscribe if you want to read my next article, which will be about Europe's current descent into chaos.
Yet, history does not have to repeat itself indefinitely. The lessons of past cycles offer an opportunity to reject political theater, reassert collective power over governance, and build movements that transcend the spectacle.
For progressives, the challenge is not only to resist but to reclaim. The erosion of labor protections, the rollback of civil rights, and the commodification of social justice — more than incidental consequences — result from a system designed to neutralize real change. Breaking the cycle means moving beyond reactionary politics and engaging in long-term, systemic transformation. It means shifting the focus away from personalities and back to policies, from spectacle to structure, from governance as performance to governance as responsibility.
The future of politics depends on whether we choose to passively observe or actively rewrite the script. The tragedy of Reagan’s neoliberal revolution has played out, and the farce of Trump’s spectacle has followed. What comes next is not preordained. It is, as it has always been, ours to define.