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Prof. ANTHONY KILA Tells City People
Since President Donald Trump became US President a few weeks back, global attention has shifted to him.
All over the world what everybody is talking about right now is: What kind of person will this Republican President be? What are we to expect from him?
City People Magazine recently asked Professor Anthony Kila for his analysis of the new US President. Kila, who is a Jean Monnet Professor of Strategy & Development, is a Political Economist, Strategist and Public intellectual. He is the Director General of CIAPS.
For 60 minutes last week, Prof. Kila spoke to City People Publisher, SEYE KEHINDE and Reporter, GIFT about the man called Donald Trump.
What are your thoughts on the recent elections in the U.S and the emergence of President Trump. How do you think that played out?
Well I think 2 things come to mind in the American election. Number one is that, contrary to what a lot of analysts were thinking it wasn’t a tight race. Donald Trump won a very clear outstanding majority home run. He won the majority of popular votes. He won the electoral votes, and he has a majority in parliament. Even some of his supporters thought it would be a tie.
The other thing is that he won not from the center, he won from the extreme, as it were, you know, good or bad, but he didn’t win by saying, I’m going to be nice to everybody. He won by saying, I’m going to be tough for these people. I’m going to help this one. So it was a very, clear mandate, a very radical choice he has made. So if you link his program to this… and by the way, he won against celebrities, Hollywood, the so called good people. He won against all those people. So it’s a very peculiar kind of victory, and it’s a clear victory. So if you link his mandate, popular vote, electoral vote and the parliament to his program, what would you expect from him, that he could do anything. You know, he at least can attempt to do a lot of things, and he’s demonstrated it in one week in office by rolling out those Executive Orders. So, that gives you an insight. I think Trump is going to as much as possible, become the President of Legacy. He’s going to do things that others have not dared. He’s going to simplify things. He’s going to do it. The only thing is, when you go into those policies, what kind of legacy is he going to create? Before we go to the kind of legacy, it is important to identify the kind of person, politics and statesman Trump is going to be. Trump is a very personal person. He’s a very humane, touchy, emotional person. He’s more about personal relationships than state or institution.
So what that means is that we’re going to see more of the person, the persona, the personality of Trump and less of the American president. That is institution. Of course, he’s still going to wear his black or blue suit and perhaps white or light blue shirt, but, you know, he’s a Show man, and he’s the man, and that’s going to affect all his policies. So he’s going to do things other people have not thought of doing.
He’s going to dare to do those kind of things others have not done, whether you like him or not, because I know we’ve also seen millions like him. Unless you tell me the American election was rigged. We have to agree that majority of American voters like him. So whether you like it or not, we must admit that what defines Trump is his personal taste, and he’s not defined by the traditional virtues of kindness, of being nice, of promising to help the weak. Trump is a “you have the might go for it”. “You’re not lucky Well, life is tough”. “You’re lucky get all the money you can” “well, if you’re not lucky to be born here, well, good luck to you”. He’s very clear about that. He’s not the kind of let’s be humble, let’s be humane, let’s help the poor, let’s be generous kind of person. He is not all that so, and people have agreed that, that is the way he is so we should expect that to come out from everything he does.
Do you think he represents the general view of the white Americans and not the black Americans?
Well, its both a product and both a creation and the creator of both. But we should really care about one thing. A lot of people make this mistake of thinking that Trump got his vote from White America alone. Let me tell you something. Nobody can rule America by getting votes from only one sector. Trump got his votes from a lot of Black people as well. Maybe not the majority, but he did very well across sectors, Trump did well from white and black people. I mean, obviously, let me say something. I believe that not every Trump voter is a racist, but I believe every racist voted Trump, so you can see that. And I want our viewers to think about that and readers to think about that. But here is the thing. There are some people who are not racist that voted Trump because of the following 4 or 5 reasons. One, they like the strong man to be in charge. And Trump comes across as that person. Biden was definitely weak. When Kamala Harris came up, she tried to be the strong man, not even woman. She tried to be the Strong man. But Trump came out a strong man because Kamala Harris had the burden of still trying to be nice. So the Strong man Syndrome, people went for it. Another thing is a social issue. The democrats have become what we call the radical shake. You know, they try to rule by saying, Women’s rights, abortion, gender right, equality right, and why that might be no good or might be futuristic, They miss out the fact that there are people who are afraid that their children are losing their natural Gender identity.
They lose out that there are millions of people who believe that being Gay is a sin. They believe that there are millions of people who are struggling with unidentity, and they’re still managing to be male or female, and there’s a rule out there allowing them to be exposed. They’re forgetting a lot of people who are trapped in bad marriages. And if you now tell them that it is easy to just walk out of it and do what you like, they despise the people who are free, and they don’t want it to be that way. So we’ve talked about the strong man issue, and there is a social issue. There is also the economic issue. There’s a lot of people who voted Trump, because under Trump, they bought their first house. Under Trump, the economy was better. You know, under Trump, Business was booming, and then this administration came and the prices of food has gone up. A lot has gone up. So there’s that, economic issue as well. Then there are the, I think that’s the fifth group. Now there’s a fifth group of my house, my rules, I’m an American citizen, and, you know, I want a government that’s going to be tough on non Americans, and that’s interesting. It doesn’t matter if I’m American just last week. It doesn’t matter if I was just lucky to be born here. Maybe my parents even just were tourists. They gave birth to me and they don’t live there. The key thing is that I’m American, you are not, and Trump gives them a chance to feel superior to the other people, and they hold on to that, Barack Obama, in his first coming talked about people who cling to their guns and their Bible, they exist. People clinging to their guns and their Bible exist. I’ve been in America and I noticed, there are people in America, that all they have is their citizenship in their life, they’re very proud of it.
So they look at themselves that, you know, even if I’m a nobody, but I’m still American, so those people are going to protect us. And Trump played to that. And those people exist, and that is how he got his vote. And among those people there are whites, blacks, Latinos, a bit of everybody’s there. It is wrong to think it’s a white vote, maybe majority, but it did cut across and outside America, There are people in my country, Nigeria, that are supporting Trump, there are people against him. So Trump just has that effect, so it is not correct to say the white vote.
What do you make of this his favorite phrase: I want To Make America Great Again?
I think it’s a fascinating phrase, but it’s not an original phrase. You know people, okay? I speak as the scholar now because I studied this thing. It is a good phrase. It’s a fascinating phrase, but there’s nothing original about it. But we must also understand that, above all, there is no person, whether good or bad, including Nigerian leaders, including Zimbabwe an leaders, including Hungarian leaders, that have stood up to say, I want my country to be weak. Everybody wants their country to be great.
So everybody wants their country to be first, to be as great as possible, at least they say so. It now depends on what they do and how they do it, therein lies the rub as Shakespeare would say. You know, it all depends on what they do and how they do it. You might want your country to be great, but if all of a sudden, because of whatever you’re doing, whatever your intention, all of a sudden, the whole country is very hungry. You have not made it great. Your intention might be good. So I think people focus too much on what he’s saying. Its a good slogan, you know, change, hope, they are all good slogans but history will judge.
What does the emergence of Trump mean or say to the whole theory of Leadership, because it has provided a new perspective. And I am wondering whether as a scholar you want to examine it?
Unlike people in the Mass Media or the general public, the scholars are very clear that Trump is not the first to come this way. We’ve had different kinds of attempts. It’s been seen before, and we’ve seen how we started and how we ended. So it’s just a wave, and it’s a gamble that Trump has won because he laid out all his cards. I think that is where his generality comes in.
When Trump was running that election, he had 2 options: Become President or go to jail. So you can see why he will push it to the last, and he’s done it. I don’t advise aspiring leaders to take that road. They might win it, you know. But let me speak to the young people in this segment. I am speaking directly to young people. When you plan your life, don’t plan it on exceptions. Don’t plan it around extreme things. Don’t plan your life thinking you might win the lottery. Yes, you might win it, but don’t plan your whole life based on that. Don’t plan your life based on miracles. Yes, they do happen, but when you plan your life, try to plan your life on normal things to know that if I study I will pass, if I prepare well for an interview, I will get the job. If I propose something, I will sell it. Plan it on simple, straightforward things. So the same thing for Leadership. I don’t advise leaders to build around the model of Trump. It’s a very dangerous model if they want to win. But you know, don’t forget that Trump won, but before Trump, we’ve had far right people. We’ve had far left people, they haven’t won. Le Pen has been there for decades. He never won until, you know, he went away, and he’s been doing far right. So the people like Trump are, exceptional, they come once in a while. But you can’t build on that.
