How does History move? A generation ago, in the Nineties, it seemed to have forgotten how: perhaps, as Elijah mocked the prophets of Baal, History was on a journey, or it was sleeping and not to be awoken. Francis Fukuyama infamously proclaimed, with apparent triumph but actual melancholy, that History had reached its end. For Fredric Jameson the situation was even more grave: amid the uncanny blur of late capitalism, a sense of the historical had not just expired but vanished altogether.

Now, we are told, History is back, and so is action, power, and ferocious ideological combat. Donald…