Community development in the second Trump era

Abstract

Ruth has a strong memory of a story once told by her German language teacher when she was a student at secondary school.Her teacher had attended university in the late 1980s, and took a course on East German politics.On 10th November 1989 he went to class as normal.The previous night, the world had watched the fall of the Berlin Wall, an event that would come to herald the reunification of Germany and the end of the Cold War.At the start of the class, the lecturer made an announcement.'Everything I have taught you is now irrelevant'.It is too early to speak of the long-term impact of Donald Trump's initial actions in his second term as President of the United States of America.But regardless, we are living in times of momentous change.We are undoubtedly seeing the dismantling of US-dominated international aid and policy structures that have impacted the lives of billions of people since the end of the Second World War.We may also be witnessing the beginning of the end for post-Cold War neoliberal global order, which has been under increasing stress since the 2008 global economic crisis.The fall of the Berlin Wall was not simply a moment for hope.Many feared a re-unified Germany, and the possibility that this would usher in a new era of resurgent nationalism and unfettered capitalism: fears that were realized in the experiences of 'transition losers' in the former East, and in political shifts that continue to play out with the rise of the far-right party Alternative fr Deutschland (Berdahl, 2005;Richardson-Little et al., 2022).At the same time, the rush of people to the Wall was a powerful moment of people power, which brought hope to those who sought to breach borders