BY NIALL McCRAE
Andrew Carnegie and Donald Trump: realisers of the American Dream
At Donald Trump’s championship golf course at Turnberry in Scotland, the Guardian reporter found some local dog-walkers to ask them what they thought of the man who will be returning to the White House. ‘How can the Americans be so stupid’ was a typical response. Yet an opinion poll just before the election showed that, compared with other countries, Scots were the most likely to favour Trump.
This is not so surprising when you consider that Trump, like many outstanding American figures, is half-Scottish by parentage. Trump’s mother hailed from the Isle of Lewis, and her bible will soon be returning to the desk in the Oval Office. Elvis Presley is another example, but particularly relevant here is the steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, who was born in a crofter’s cottage in Dunfermline, Fife.
In 1897, Carnegie had his first and only child. Although he made his fortune across the Atlantic, he never cut his roots in Scotland, and he wanted his daughter Margaret to be raised there. After a long search for a suitably impressive home he found Skibo, a former Viking stronghold on the Dornoch Firth in Sutherland. There he built the baronial castle of his dreams.
Carnegie stayed at Skibo for four or five months every year. His vibrant social calendar featured visits by Rudyard Kipling, Edward Elgar, David Lloyd George, the Rockefellers and King Edward VII. At eight o’clock every morning a piper marched through the castle, and breakfast was served to musical accompaniment from the organ. Carnegie’s favourite instrument was installed, on his generosity, at seven thousand churches.
Carnegie is best known for his provision of free libraries around the world. From his study at Skibo he signed many a philanthropic cheque, including a huge sum for the Peace Palace at The Hague as the Great War wreaked devastation in Europe. He died in 1918, but Margaret continued to spend summers at Skibo until 1981, when her ailing health prevented her from making the annual journey from Connecticut, and the estate was sold.
Trump is not a philanthropist but a businessman and media personality who, despite no background in politics, won the presidency in 2016. He has been the bête noire of the establishment ever since. In his boorish style he eviscerates narratives on climate change, woke identity politics and collectivist policies suggestive of a sneaky creep of socialism. He speaks the language of the ordinary American, and has drawn most of his support from the working class, traditionally a constituency of the Democrats. But the more that he appeals to the masses, the more he is despised by the metropolitan progressive elite.
When the first minister of Scotland and SNP leader John Swinney urged Americans to vote for Kamala Harris, the most unconvincing and out-of-depth candidate on the presidential ballot for as long as anyone can remember, Trump called this ‘an insult’. His investments in Scotland have never been welcomed by the Holyrood class.
After his second election triumph, Patrick Harvie, leader of the Scottish Greens (until recently a coalition partner in the Scottish government) raged:
This is a profound threat for reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ rights and our climate. The implications for Ukraine, for Gaza and for global security are terrifying. There is no way that Scotland can have a normal relationship with a president who has shown a total contempt for democracy and for truth.’
In throwing his toys out of the pram, it is ironic that Harvie thinks something should be ‘normal’ when everything he promotes is abnormal: limitless abortion, subversive trans ideology and the Net Zero ratchet for a claimed climate emergency devoid of scientific evidence.
Will Trump care? He is thick-skinned, but if the Scottish government wants to develop trade and cultural links with the USA, it should learn not to bite the hand that feeds it. Politicians did not refuse Carnegie’s offerings. Trump’s leisure developments, while they are for profit rather than charitable gifts to society, have created many jobs and revitalised part of the Scottish economy.
I feel sure that Andrew Carnegie would have found more in common with Donald Trump than with Bill Gates. The latter is no friend of the common people, and does not pretend to be. In contrast to Carnegie and Trump, Gates exudes a form of dark paternalism, with echoes of the eugenics ideology that preoccupied his father. The former computer salesman has somehow positioned himself as a global authority on health, food, and climate change, presenting himself as the solution to these crises. Meanwhile, Trump is portrayed as a fascist, threatening to dismantle democracy and erode freedom.
As for freedom, wasn’t it the current Democrat administration that sacked hundreds of thousands of workers for refusing the experimental Covid-19 vaccines? And many believe that far from threatening democracy, Trump had the last election stolen from him by systematic vote-rigging. The fact is that Trump has had more votes in total for any presidential candidate, successively increasing his support. Like Carnegie, Trump epitomises the American Dream.
Niall McCrae is the author of ‘Green in Tooth and Claw: the Misanthropic Mission of Climate Alarm’ (2024).