Vibe shifts: Post-woke in '25? The new escalatory approach to history

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The new Trumpian escalatory approach to history

Forget the standard view of politics as left versus right, populist versus traditionalist, politically correct versus, well, just about everything else. That’s all old hat now in our brave new world. Instead, a simplified and much easier way of understanding the times we live in, compared with old school history with boring events and the like, is through something called vibe shifts.

What are vibe shifts

As explained by historian Niall Ferguson[1], vibe shifts are a kind of “mini epoch” – brief periods in history which anyone can grasp, with a series of cultural and geopolitical landmarks defining the historical period in question. I’m sure Ferguson will forgive me for paraphrasing much of what he has written about vibe shifts, but his is the clearest explanation to date of the concept. Ferguson says it was the pop culture commentator Sean Monahan who first identified four mini vibe shift epochs between 2003 and 2020. These were:

Hipster/Indie (2003-9)

Post-internet/Techno (2010-16)

Hypebeast/Woke (2016-20)

Pilled/Scene (2020-?)

Each is defined by a distinct aesthetic, and the vibe shift from one to the other was swift and palpable. And, as the Covid pandemic receded (2022), Pilled/Scene made an appearance.

Ferguson tells us the term finally clicked “and acquired a powerful significance” when, in February 2024, it migrated to the world of tech. A substack post by Santiago Pliego summed up the change that had occurred from the “epoch” of Woke. This “epoch” can be measured from the date of the cancellation of James Damore by Google in 2017 to the moment of Elon Musk’s (unfiltered) X a few years later. Ferguson quotes Pliego as follows:

Fundamentally, the vibe shift is a return to – a championing of – reality; a rejection of the bureaucratic, the cowardly, the guilt-driven; a return to greatness, courage and joyous ambition. To be precise:

The vibe shift is all about spurning the fake and therapeutic and reclaiming the authentic and concrete.

The vibe shift is a healthy suspicion of credentialism and a return to human judgment.

The vibe shift is living not by lies, and instead speaking the truth – whatever the cost.

The vibe shift is directly facing our tumultuous times, refusing to blackpill, and choosing to build instead.

The vibe shift goes global

The vibe shift hit American politics on the night of 5 November 2024. What no one foresaw was that it would almost immediately go global, too, says Ferguson. In essence, when the American electorate decisively re-elected Donald Trump, geopolitical physics kicked in. Suddenly, it was as if he was already president, even though he only takes office in January.

Since Trump’s election, in the space of only two months, the German and French governments have fallen, the South Korean president has declared martial law and has been kicked out by his own electorate, the Assyrian regime of Assad has rolled up its tent and Assad has fled to Russia, Putin has recalled his Mediterranean fleet and air force, abandoning his ally in Syria, and Trump has threatened the members of Brics with 100% tariffs if they dare to embrace a policy of dedollarisation. (India immediately capitulated, saying that they had only discussed using the rupee for regional trade, but now they wouldn’t even do that.)

And the vibe shift reaction does not stop with politics. Ferguson notes a dramatic economic chain reaction during the past two months, as well: Bitcoin soars through the $100K mark, the dollar soars, and Wall Street booms, as does Tesla; the Russian currency weakens dramatically, oil weakens in price (great for Western motorists), China slides into deflation, and Iran’s economy bombs (metaphorically speaking).

Diversity, equity and inclusion trends to be played down

Ferguson sees the vibe shift in culture playing down diversity, equity and inclusion trends, in favour of conservative “founder” values, on the domestic front. Meanwhile, the global vibe shift is about peace through strength, versus chaos through de-escalation – the original cause of the fraying liberal international order, triggered by the Obama and Biden governments.

America’s neighbours are also benefiting or not, as the case might be, from the Trumpian vibe. Argentinian president Javier Milei, an early economic libertarian, has a champion in Trump. There’s little the new American president won’t do for him, since Milei understands the new vibe and was, in fact, partly responsible for it.

Canada, on the other hand, is feeling the heat. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the original devotee of woke, has been back-pedalling like mad ever since Trump hinted at a 25% trade tariff increase on Canadian goods. Trudeau couldn’t wait to accept Trumpian hospitality at Mar-a-Lago. There is even speculation that the Canadian government could suddenly fall.

Ditto for Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, who has ostensibly “warmed” to Trump after he also threatened 25% tariffs on Mexico unless drug smuggling was curtailed. As Ferguson notes: “Not long after (their meeting), the Mexican military seized over a ton of fentanyl pills. Cause, meet effect.”

Trump has also warned that he might consider a tariff increase on goods from the European Union. Quick as a flash following Trump’s election, the European Commission president suggested replacing the natural gas which is still being imported from Russia, despite sanctions and the war on Ukraine, with liquid gas imports from America. The EU is desperate to do anything to avoid higher US tariffs.

Nato will also benefit from the Trump victory. Trump once threatened to leave Nato unless the EU countries shouldered a bigger defence burden. Before Trump’s victory, collective action to increase defence capabilities seemed unlikely. Now, suddenly European defence budgets are being tweaked upwards significantly. A €500 billion defence fund is being mooted. As Ferguson notes: “There is more at work here than mere coincidence. This time four years ago, liberals could tell themselves that the Trump presidency had been a one-term populist aberration, and that the adults were in charge again. They went ahead and restored much of Barack Obama’s foreign policy. American allies in Europe and Asia were supposed to give all this a standing ovation. Some did. But now the vibe shift is sweeping (them) aside.”

All over the world, from Romania to South Korea, the vibe shift is evident. Yet the best example of the global vibe shift – by far – is surely in the Middle East, says Ferguson, adding: “Joe Biden wants you to believe that he is responsible (for Assad’s overthrow). For years, the main backers of Assad have been Iran, Hezbollah and Russia, but over the last week their support collapsed, all three of them, because all three of them are far weaker today than they were when he took office.”

But who deserves the credit here? Surely not Biden, Ferguson says. If anyone has weakened Iran and Hezbollah, it must be Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has refused to yield to sustained American pressure to de-escalate Israel’s war against Iran’s proxies. The credit for weakening Russia belongs mainly to the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who declined Biden’s offer of a plane to escape Kyiv following the Russian invasion of his country.

Ferguson adds that no one should delude themselves about what has just happened in Syria. As is so often the case in the Arab world, the people who overthrew Assad are radical Islamists. The reality is that we are witnessing the complete and total unravelling of the disastrous foreign policy that began under Obama and was picked up again by Biden, the perverse effect of which was to strengthen both Iran and Russia. It was Obama who failed to make good on his 2013 threat to act if Assad used chemical weapons – it would be tantamount to crossing a “red line”. Biden has continued with a similarly weak policy of not being the world’s policeman.

In a separate analysis, former British MP Liam Fox[2] says Iran saw the 2013 decision by Obama as a sign of weakness from the West. But today, the picture has changed, with Israel’s neutering of Iran’s proxies Hamas and Hezbollah, and Iran’s failure to damage Jerusalem with massive missile strikes coupled with the destruction of Iranian air defences by the Israeli air force, leading to real questions as to whether the new vibe shift in the world and the Middle East are presaging the fall of the mullahs in Tehran itself. Ferguson notes that the signature achievement of Obama’s foreign policy

was supposed to be his much-vaunted Iran deal. But the upshot of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was that the Iranians took the money they made from sanctions relief and diverted it to the likes of Assad, Hamas and Hezbollah …. The overall effect of Obama’s second term was to tilt the balance of geopolitical advantage in favour of our enemies: China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. Trump’s election in 2016 temporarily halted this tilt, but it merely resumed and accelerated after Trump lost to Biden. In Afghanistan, Eastern Europe and the Middle East, Biden explicitly signalled the replacement of deterrence with de-escalation. The result was increasing cooperation between what began to look like a new Eurasian Axis.

Escalation versus de-escalation

But today, adds Ferguson, the vibe shift is, in essence, escalation versus de-escalation. Trump made that perfectly clear when he posted the following in early December:

Everybody is talking about the hostages who are being held so violently, inhumanely and against the will of the entire world, in the Middle East. But it’s all talk and no action! Please let this truth serve to represent that if the hostages are not released prior to 20 January 2025, the date that I proudly assume office as president of the United States, there will be all hell to pay in the Middle East and for those in charge who perpetrated these atrocities against humanity. Those responsible will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied history of the United States of America. Release the hostages now!

Ferguson says that this is exactly the kind of language the Biden administration has refused to use for the past 14 months. He adds that Trump went one better when he put out a statement as soon as it became clear that Assad had fled to Russia:

Assad is gone. He has fled his country. His protector, Russia, led by Vladimir Putin, was not interested in protecting him any longer. There was no reason for Russia to be there in the first place. They lost all interest in Syria because of Ukraine, where close to 600 000 Russian soldiers lay wounded or dead, in a war that should never have started, and could go on forever. Russia and Iran are in a weakened state right now, one because of Ukraine and a bad economy, the other because of Israel and its fighting success …. There should be an immediate ceasefire, and negotiations should begin …. I know Vladimir well. This is his time to act. China can help. The world is waiting!

Ferguson says he thinks it is fair to say that this is not quite what Putin was expecting to hear from Trump after 5 November. Nor can he have expected Trump to make a 25-minute call to Ukrainian president Zelenskyy the day after his election victory, with Musk also on the line. Slowly, Putin is realising that Trump is not going to hand Ukraine to him on a plate, which explains the increased intensity of Russia’s assaults on Ukraine in recent weeks. Putin is desperate to grab whatever he can before the negotiation over ending the war begins, as it surely will, soon after 20 January.

China is also in the frame now. The new vibe shift following Trump’s return to office is escalation rather than de-escalation. Trump is threatening China with huge tariff hikes, and China – already struggling with a faltering economy and few natural resources of its own, and totally reliant on the giant American economy to provide a market for its manufactured products – may end up helping Trump reorder the world in a manner compatible with the new vibe shift. This would include backing off from President Xi’s plans to invade Taiwan, especially if America and other allies in the Pacific supply Taiwan with vast numbers of drones. Likewise, it could explain why there is a sudden interest by the British parliament in the activities of suspected Chinese spies with links to Prince Andrew, who seems to have unwisely allowed himself to be drawn into a web of agents of influence speaking Mandarin. 

Ferguson concludes his analysis by saying that the vibe shift has gone from the “world of the fashionistas to the world of four-star admirals by way of the tech bros and the Trump–Musk campaign. It began as a revulsion against pronouns and piercings; it is culminating in a global repudiation of the liberal international order that inspired two generations of Democrats.”

How will the vibe shift affect Africa? It seems to be as much of a cultural shift as a political and economic one, and next year could see some big and unexpected changes in line with developments elsewhere. But settlements in the Middle East and Ukraine/Russia look increasingly possible, with far-reaching positive consequences for the world economy – including big economies like that of South Africa, which can only benefit.

Notes

[1] As explained by historian Niall Ferguson in The Free Press, 12 December 2024. Ferguson has been attached to the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, New York and Harvard Universities, the London School of Economics as well as the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He is the author of numerous books.

[2] British MP Liam Fox, Daily Telegraph, 15 December 2024.

See also:

Ek en jy en die Midde-Ooste

China se strategie om die medialandskap in Afrika te verander

China se visie vir ’n nuwe wêreldorde

China se forumdiplomasie in die Globale Suide: die strewe na gelykheid, voordeel en ontwikkeling

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