From Trotskyism to Tantrism?

 

Ganapati the Seeker

The second part of ChatGPT´s analysis of *this* blog. However, the AI is confusing/conflating me with one of my commentators! Or several of them? So this is a bit "schizo". But still an intriguing read... 

There is a rumor that the blogger was originally a Trotskyist and then became a Trump supporter?!

Yes — there is substantial evidence for the two halves of that rumor, but I would distinguish what can actually be established from what is inferred.

The blog itself gives us unusually strong clues.

The Trotskyist past looks quite plausible

The author clearly has deep first-hand familiarity with Trotskyist and other sectarian Marxist politics, far beyond what one would expect from someone who merely read about them.

For example, in the April 16, 2021 post Wag the dog, the blogger writes about obscure 1940s Marxist groups, the Trotskyist SWP, Workers Party, Oehlerites, Stammists, the Fourth International, Sam Marcy, etc. The tone is that of someone who has spent a great deal of time inside or around the Marxist sectarian milieu.

More tellingly, the blogger repeatedly discusses Trotskyism from an insider-ish perspective, including the peculiar intellectual habits of small Marxist groups. That's consistent with having actually been involved in that world.

There is also a fascinating 2025 post about determinism in which the author says:

“When I was 12 — in the spring of 1967 — I read about determinism…”

and then describes becoming an enthusiastic determinist before encountering Christian socialists around 1973.

So the chronology seems to point toward someone who was intellectually formed during the 1960s–70s radical left, rather than someone who discovered Marxism recently.

And the Trump part is definitely not invented

The blog has been remarkably sympathetic to some aspects of Trumpism for years.

Already in May 2019, the author was arguing that Trump shouldn't simply be understood as an aberration, and was sharply critical of the liberal anti-Trump narrative. One post explicitly contrasts Macron and Orbán and says, in effect, “why is Orbán worse than Macron—and what about Donald Trump?”

Then there's the wonderfully revealing April 19, 2021 post titled:

“But Trump was right...”

The author quotes the International Marxist Tendency and argues that Biden was being forced to continue or deepen Trump's nationalist/protectionist policies. The post is actually tagged Trotskyism, Marxism, Donald Trump, Biden and Geopolitics.

That's important because it suggests the political trajectory isn't simply:

left → right

but something more peculiar:

Trotskyist/Marxist analysis → continued interest in class/economic structure → hostility to neoliberalism/globalism → increasing sympathy for nationalist/populist politics → partial Trumpism.

In other words, the blogger seems to have carried certain analytical habits from the far left into a radically different political position.

But I wouldn't yet call him simply a “Trump supporter”

There's an important complication.

The blogger frequently discusses Trump critically or ironically, and often seems more interested in the contradictions surrounding Trump than in Trump personally.

The 2025 material, for instance, comments on MAGA, Trump's bombing of Iran, Peter Thiel, Richard Spencer, the far right, etc. The blog labels material Far right, Anti-semitism, Donald Trump, MAGA, and so forth.

And the blogger explicitly warns that:

“Many posts and comments are ironic.”

So one has to be careful about interpreting every favorable-sounding Trump statement as an endorsement.

There is also a revealing 2019 post about Trump that describes the liberal opposition to him as a kind of “fetish”, while arguing that the deeper problem is globalized capitalism. That's a very distinctive post-left rather than conventional Republican argument.

In fact, I think the political evolution is more interesting than “Trotskyist → Trumpist”

My tentative reconstruction would be something like:

1960s/70s radical left → Marxist/Trotskyist intellectual milieu → disillusionment with sectarian Marxism → continued anti-capitalist/class analysis → hostility to neoliberal globalization → interest in populism and nationalism → sympathy for some Trump positions.

And this explains something that otherwise looks bizarre about the blog.

The author can simultaneously:

• make fun of Trotskyist sectarianism,
• understand it intimately,
• criticize contemporary identity politics from the left,
• attack neoliberal capitalism,
• criticize liberal anti-Trumpism,
• appreciate some Trump policies,
• mock MAGA,
• criticize the far right,
• and still occasionally use distinctly Marxist categories.

That isn't necessarily ideological inconsistency. It may represent someone who left Trotskyism but never entirely abandoned the analytical framework through which he originally understood politics.

And that would also explain why the blog's politics are so difficult to place on an ordinary left-right spectrum.

One particularly interesting clue

The author seems almost fascinated by political metamorphosis itself.

The blog repeatedly returns to people and movements that move between ideological camps: Marxists becoming nationalists, leftists becoming conservatives, conservatives becoming dissidents, former radicals becoming religious, etc.

That makes me suspect that the author's own trajectory is part of the intellectual background of the blog.

So, yes: I think the rumor has a substantial factual basis. I would phrase it more cautiously as:

The blogger appears to have had a serious Trotskyist/Marxist background and subsequently developed strong sympathy for some Trump/populist positions.

I would not yet state as established fact that he was formally a member of a particular Trotskyist organization, nor that he is currently a straightforward Trump/MAGA supporter.

There is actually enough material on the blog to try to reconstruct the political biography decade by decade—especially the transition from the 1960s/70s left to the later anti-globalist/populist position. That could be quite revealing, because I suspect the political evolution is closely connected to the blogger's later religious/philosophical evolution as well.