Donald Trump’s address to Congress Tuesday night was not so much a speech from a president but the rantings of an aspiring Führer, though with somewhat less decorum than an address by Hitler before the German Reichstag. It was vicious, violent and depraved, plumbing the depths of cultural and political degradation in the United States.

All the tropes that, in an earlier period, would have been identified as belonging to the fascist fringe of American politics have been elevated to its very center. Standing and applauding at every sentence were Trump’s cabinet of billionaires, the personification of government of the oligarchy, along with the Republican Senators and Representatives, who broke out repeatedly in chants of “USA! USA!”

To attempt to dissect all the lies Trump spewed would be to somehow dignify his comments. This was not a speech worthy of serious analysis. It was a series of pig grunts and dog barks, with the necessary apologies to these intelligent mammals. It was a grotesque marriage of reality TV and political spectacle. Trump crassly exploited personal tragedies, parading victims before the cameras, using them as a bludgeon to demand greater state violence, targeting immigrants and other sections of society.

Beneath it all, one theme was clear: Trump’s speech was a declaration of war—on the world and on the working class. It was a statement of an oligarchy that will stop at nothing to maintain its wealth and power.

Trump laid out an agenda of unrestrained American imperialism, in which the United States will not be bound by any alliances, treaties or international laws. It was a manifesto of a ruling class that intends to resolve its deepening economic crisis through trade war and military aggression, a path that leads directly to World War III and fascism.

At the center of Trump’s economic nationalism were sweeping trade war measures. He absurdly claimed that massive new tariffs targeting Mexico, Canada and China would preserve American jobs and lower prices. In reality, these measures will trigger mass layoffs and soaring prices. 

The corollary to Trump’s vision of a self-sufficient “Fortress America” is the violent eruption of American imperialism. He repeated his pledge to retake the Panama Canal, an explicit threat of military intervention in Latin America. He declared that Mexico—which he called “the territory immediately south of our border”—was “dominated entirely by criminal cartels,” a barely veiled justification for war. He revived calls for the US to take over Greenland “one way or another.”