Wednesday, January 25, 2017

A VERY LONG, DARK POST. READ WITH CARE

Those of us who choose to make our careers in the Academy learn even as undergraduates that its greatest virtue is originality.  Correspondingly, its greatest vice is plagiarism.  To have a new idea, an idea never before expressed, is a triumph worthy of the greatest reward the Academy has to offer – tenure.  But to steal another’s idea warrants expulsion.  I have lived my life by these twin commandments, striving always to say something new and obsessively crediting those who have said anything even passably similar with the academic get out of jail free card, the footnote.  But not every philosopher has embraced these twinned norms.  Recall the exquisite passage in the Gorgias, which I have quoted before [giving credit to Plato, of course.]  Here is what I said in this space several years ago [I cannot help it, I even footnote myself!]

“Callicles has triumphantly announced his brilliant new doctrine -- justice is the interest of the stronger -- and he impatiently awaits the praise of those listening.  Socrates quietly undertakes to explore this novel teaching, using everyday examples of cobblers and ship builders and herdsmen.  Callicles is deflated by this banausic colloquy, and finally says, in exasperation, ‘Socrates, you keep saying the same thing.’  And Socrates replies, ‘Yes, Callicles, and in the same way, too.’  This is so beautiful that it makes me weep every time I read it.  Callicles is in thrall to what Kierkegaard, twenty-two hundred years later, would call the Aesthetic, a mode of existence that strives above all for novelty.  But Socrates is committed to the search for moral truth, which is eternal and never changes.  So he is content to say the same thing, over and over, and in the same way.”

These past few days, I have been growing increasingly alarmed by the behavior of Trump and his minions.  As I have surfed the web, reading analysis after analysis, I have reflected that there already exists a vast and quite brilliant body of literature devoted to precisely the sorts of political behaviors we have been witnessing.  I refer to the writings of the great German, French, American and other social theorists of the middle of the 20th century whose best work was devoted to an anatomization of Nazism.  For Horkheimer, Adorno, Arendt, Fromm, Marcuse, Benjamin, Orwell, Camus, Sartre and many, many others the Nazi regime was the defining event of their personal and intellectual lives.  The Frankfurt School intellectuals in particular were driven to understand how a culturally rich, intellectually vibrant Weimer Republic could devolve so rapidly into the horrors of Nazism.  In countless books, some of the century’s greatest intellectuals and scholars anatomized the Nazi era, most of them having fled to England or America.

With the benefit of their insights, we can now see the relationship between small beginnings and disastrous endings.  I have been struggling to gain some understanding of what is happening in these early days of the Trump regime.  I claim absolutely no originality for my observations and reflections.  The best of them, if there are any deserving of praise, are simply repetitions of the thoughts of others.  I am retired and have no need of tenure. 

Let me begin by drawing a distinction.  Some of the bad things Trump is doing or is proposing to do, along with many terrible things the Republican majorities in Congress are planning to do, are, if I may put it this way, standard issue terrible things that are the predictable and unavoidable consequence of the workings of democracy.  These include attacks on women’s reproductive health, attacks on the social safety net, attacks on public schools, massive tax cuts for the rich, further economic burdens for the poor and the middle classes, an assault on America’s foreign policy obligations, and the closing of the borders to immigrants and refugees.  All of these have been on the Republicans’ wish list for decades, and their control of both the Executive and Legislative branches of government gives them an opportunity to achieve them.  There is nothing new about all of this, and we know how to fight it:  get out the vote and take back control of the House and Senate.  Most of what the Republicans seek to accomplish is actually opposed by a majority of Americans.  If they will get off their collective asses and vote, we can stop them.  These things are not evidence of a flaw in the American political system.  They are evidence that more Republicans than Democrats vote in off year elections.  But what about gerrymandering and voter suppression laws?  They are the result of Republican control of state governments, which in turn is a consequence of low Democratic turnout in off year elections.  If Democrats turn out in off year elections, they can take back state houses and legislatures in time for the 2020 census, on the basis of which new non-gerrymandered districts can be drawn and voter suppression laws can be repealed.  If Democrats cannot be bothered to turn out for these off year elections, they have only themselves to blame for all the terrible things Republicans do.  Mind you, gerrymandering is not the only problem, nor are voter suppression laws.  Part of the problem is that Democrats are demographically more concentrated than Republicans.  Unless five million California Democrats wish to sacrifice themselves on the altar of progress and move to Kansas or Texas, there is nothing much to be done about that.

But there are some actions the Trump coterie are beginning to take that are completely different from these old and well-understood threats.  If all those books by all those social theorists are right, then what we have been seeing these past few days are the very first signs of an incipient totalitarian fascism.  If I am right [or rather if Orwell, Horkheimer, Adorno, Fromm, Marcuse, Arendt, and all the rest are right], then we had better act right now to stop this before we lose the ability to oppose it.  What am I talking about in these apocalyptic terms?

Well, I am, for example, talking about Trump’s obsessive insistence that he won the popular vote, if you subtract five million “illegals” who voted.  I am talking about Trump’s obsessive insistence that more people attended his Inauguration than Obama’s.  I am talking about Trump making his Press Secretary, Sean Spicer, appear before the White House Press Corps and repeat these obviously false claims.

But this just shows that Trump is a self-deluded narcissist.  What on earth does this have to do with fascism?  Let me reproduce here most of a profound and, in my judgment, important column by Tyler Cowen of Bloomberg News.  [This is what I mean when I say that I am going to rely on the wisdom of others rather than strive for originality.]
“One of the most striking features of the early Trump administration has been its political uses of lying. The big weekend story was the obviously false claim of Donald Trump’s press secretary, Sean Spicer, that Trump pulled in the largest inauguration crowds in American history. This raises the question of why a leader might find it advantageous to promote such lies from his subordinates.
First and most obviously, the leader wishes to mislead the public, and wants to have subordinates doing so, in part because many citizens won’t pursue fact-checking. But that’s the obvious explanation, and the truth runs much deeper.
By requiring subordinates to speak untruths, a leader can undercut their independent standing, including their standing with the public, with the media and with other members of the administration. That makes those individuals grow more dependent on the leader and less likely to mount independent rebellions against the structure of command. Promoting such chains of lies is a classic tactic when a leader distrusts his subordinates and expects to continue to distrust them in the future.
Another reason for promoting lying is what economists sometimes call loyalty filters. If you want to ascertain if someone is truly loyal to you, ask them to do something outrageous or stupid. If they balk, then you know right away they aren’t fully with you. That too is a sign of incipient mistrust within the ruling clique, and it is part of the same worldview that leads Trump to rely so heavily on family members.
In this view, loyalty tests are especially frequent for new hires and at the beginning of new regimes, when the least is known about the propensities of subordinates. You don’t have to view President Trump as necessarily making a lot of complicated calculations, rather he may simply be replicating tactics that he found useful in his earlier business and media careers.
Trump’s supporters are indeed correct to point out that previous administrations also told many lies, albeit of a different sort. Imagine, for instance, that mistruths come in different forms: higher-status mistruths and lower-status mistruths. The high-status mistruths are like those we associate with ambassadors and diplomats…. These higher-status lies are not Trump’s style, and thus many of his supporters, with some justification, see him as a man willing to voice important truths. If Trump’s opponents don’t understand that reality, and the sociological differences between various kinds of misdirection, they are going to underestimate his appeal and self-righteously underestimate how much they are themselves mistrusted by the public.
Trump specializes in lower-status lies, typically more of the bald-faced sort, namely stating “x” when obviously “not x” is the case. They are proclamations of power, and signals that the opinions of mainstream media and political opponents will be disregarded. The lie needs to be understood as more than just the lie. For one thing, a lot of Americans, especially many Trump supporters, are more comfortable with that style than with the “fancier” lies they believe they are hearing from the establishment. For another, joining the Trump coalition has been made costlier for marginal outsiders and ignoring the Trump coalition is now less likely for committed opponents. In other words, the Trump administration is itself sending loyalty signals to its supporters by burning its bridges with other groups.
These lower-status lies are also a short-run strategy. They represent a belief that a lot can be pushed through fairly quickly, bundled with some obfuscation of the truth, and that long-term credibility does not need to be maintained. Once we get past blaming Trump for various misdeeds, it’s worth taking a moment to admit we should be scared he might be right about that.
So the overall picture is this: The Trump administration trusts neither its own appointees nor its own supporters, and is creating a situation where that lack of trust is reciprocal.”

That is the first thing I have in mind when I talk of incipient totalitarian fascism.  Here is another thing.  “U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to remove the climate change page from its website, two agency employees told Reuters, the latest move by the newly minted leadership to erase ex-President Barack Obama’s climate change initiatives.”  Trump is not merely reversing Obama’s climate change policy.  He is trying to stop government agencies from making public the facts resulting from their standard work.  Trump is taking the first steps to redefine what the government proclaims as simple fact.  It is undertaking, by fiat, to alter reality.

What steps might we expect next?  I anticipate that Trump will issue executive orders abrogating existing civil rights.  If faced with a rebuke from the courts, he will flagrantly defy court orders, daring anyone to stop him.  He will try to use the Capitol police to stop demonstrations against his policies, regardless of whether those demonstrations are legal.  If he gets away with all of this, he may attempt to interfere with local elections, claiming that foreign terrorists are threatening his regime.  Might he even, in four years’ time, declare his re-election a fact before the votes have been cast?  If he has been able to get away with all the other acts undermining democratic procedures in the interim, of course he will.

Why I am I so frightened?  Because I have seen this before in innumerable countries, some of them European countries with educated electorates.

Which leaves one more question:  How do we stop him now, before he grows so powerful that we cannot?  I do not know.  Tomorrow I will struggle with that question.



17 comments:

  1. In the spirit of giving credit where credit is due, Jacob Levy made a similar point as you and Cowen:

    https://niskanencenter.org/blog/authoritarianism-post-truth-politics/

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  2. I am happy to forego credit, in return for a willingness to fight. I will rest my claim to fame on my reading of the Transcendental Analytic. :)

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  3. Enoch says:

    Trump tweeted he will request a huge investigation into voter fraud and then change voting procedures if necessary. We can't let his "investigations" be the only or final word on anything. One thing that should happen is that a consortium of universities and/or private foundations should create a fund for investigations of the sort Trump calls for. They should offer to do it for him (with insistence on strict independence) and, if/when he refuses them, do it anyway and release the results independently. Ideally, there would be more than one group to do this in order to help counter the inevitable "alternative facts" spin the regime will put on it.

    What do you think? How can we get universities and foundations to do something like this?

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  4. Thank you, Paul. I just read Professor Levy's short essay. it is spot on. Now we must find effective ways to counteract this tactic.

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  5. Along the lines of what you have just written is this powerful and convincing statement by Keith Olbermann,
    "Donald Trump Is Not Of Sound Mind And Must Resign."

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/keith-olbermann-donald-trump-is-not-of-sound-mind-and-must-resign_us_58884d96e4b0441a8f71db51?

    Each of us in our respective capacities must sound the alarm.

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  6. You talk about lying and Jacob Levy makes reference to the notion of bullshit, as developed in Frankfurt's little classic, but I think there's a better notion that describes what president Dump and his minions are up to. They're maintaining kayfabe. (I prefer not to use his real name; his name is his brand and his brand is the source of his wealth.)

    It should not be forgotten that Dump is a member of the WWE Hall of Fame.

    He's a natural at maintaining kayfabe, to the point that I don't think he even knows he's doing it. He really thinks that the show he's putting on is entirely real, and anything that he says on the show is part of the show (and hence real and true in the context of the show) simply by virtue of his having said it.

    Alongside all the mid-century authorities on totalitarianism (to which list Wilhelm Reich should probably be added) another book that should be consulted to understand the Dumpism phenomenon is Daniel Boorstin's 1962 book The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-events in America.

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  7. Keith Olbermann always seemed like the liberal-democrat version of Bill O'Reilly.

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  8. I don't know if this has been covered everywhere. At least 6 media workers have been charged with felonies after being arrested covering the protests against Trump's inauguration (the biggest since that of Ramses 2).

    https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/jan/24/journalists-charged-felonies-trump-inauguration-unrest

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  9. You just praised the Jeb Lund piece with these words This was published two weeks ago. Read it. It is true.

    Lund, among other things, writes that

    Logging onto social media to announce that you feel terrified and heartsick just vindicates these people. Your fearful tingling sensation tells them that it's working. Friends on your side of the ideological fence see the hopelessness and feel a pang of
    empathy. But any attempt at broader entreaty to the people inspiring this feeling is founded on a mistake.


    You do see a contradiction between what you write in this post and have been writing for a long time and what Lund tells you not to do, right?

    What gives?

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  10. Sigh. All of us continue to learn as long as we are alive. We need now to think about what concretely we can do. Nobody is perfect, least of all me. Tomorrow I shall start talking about concrete steps.

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  11. I'm feeling pretty helpless. Athens GA is already a pretty progressive little city, with mostly liberal and progressive citizens. So there's not A LOT to be done in the city. Ugh.

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  12. This scene from Shakespeare’s Richard III is apposite. Richard of Gloucester eliminates a potential opponent, Lord Hastings (who, he has discovered, would not agree to the deposition of Richard’s nephew Edward V in favor of Richard himself.) He does this by accusing him before the Council of collusion in witchcraft. But what needs to be understood is that in the context of the story the claim is obviously false. In the tetralogy it has been made abundantly clear that Richard has had withered arm for many years, perhaps form birth. It therefore cannot be the product of recent witchcraft practiced by the Queen and Hasting’s mistress Jane Shore. The councilors who follow Richard’s injunction

    The rest, that love me, rise and follow me.

    are being strong-armed into displaying their loyalty by acquiescing in an obvious falsehood.


    Gloucester
    I pray you all, tell me what they deserve
    That do conspire my death with devilish plots
    Of damned witchcraft, and that have prevail’d
    Upon my body with their hellish charms?

    Hastings
    The tender love I bear your grace, my lord,
    Makes me most forward in this noble presence
    To doom the offenders, whatsoever they be
    I say, my lord, they have deserved death.

    Gloucester
    Then be your eyes the witness of this ill:
    See how I am bewitch’d; behold mine arm
    Is, like a blasted sapling, wither’d up:
    And this is Edward’s wife, that monstrous witch,
    Consorted with that harlot strumpet Shore,
    That by their witchcraft thus have marked me.

    Hastings
    If they have done this thing, my gracious lord—

    Gloucester
    'If ' thou protector of this damned strumpet—
    Tellest thou me of ‘ifs’? Thou art a traitor:
    Off with his head! Now, by Saint Paul I swear,
    I will not dine until I see the same.
    Lovel and Ratcliff, look that it be done:
    The rest, that love me, rise and follow me.


    Exeunt all but Hastings, Ratcliff, and Lovel

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  13. The point is underlined in a subsequent scene in which a scrivener muses on the executions of Hastings et al. Note in particular the lines between the asterisks. Everybody knows the claims are bogus but everybody has to accept them as true.

    Scene VI. The same.
    Enter a Scrivener, with a paper in his hand
    Scrivener
    This is the indictment of the good Lord Hastings;
    Which in a set hand fairly is engross’d,
    That it may be this day read over in Paul’s.
    And mark how well the sequel hangs together:
    Eleven hours I spent to write it over,
    For yesternight by Catesby was it brought me;
    The precedent was full as long a-doing:
    And yet within these five hours lived Lord Hastings,
    Untainted, unexamined, free, at liberty
    *Here’s a good world the while! Why who’s so gross,
    That seeth not this palpable device?
    Yet who’s so blind, but says he sees it not?*
    Bad is the world; and all will come to nought,
    When such bad dealings must be seen in thought.

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  14. A few months back people were circulating the following passage from Sartre's Anti-Semite and Jew (1944), pointing out how dead-on it was when applied to the alt-right:

    "Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past."

    One way you know the T***p administration is rotten to the core is that his most fervent followers are pretty much the worst people on earth.

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  15. Professor Wolff, thank you for this analysis, original or not. I'm eager to hear what you have to say in your follow-up post. For some time I've been trying to get clear in my mind what the best way would be to fight Trump and his regime. I've concluded that there isn't any one strategy or set of tactics that will do the trick. We can't know ahead of time what will work against Trump and his regime. Our situation is unprecedented. A friend recently pointed me to an article written by a Venezuelian, who had some interesting things to say, but ultimately our situation in the United States is unique to us. Therefore, we need to be creative and take an experimental approach. That is, we need lots of people trying lots of things, and we'll just have to see what works.

    Do we need legal organizations filing lawsuits? Yes, we do. Do we need fighting Democrats in Congress to speak out and take action? Yes. Do we need Party activists to win territory precinct-by-precinct, district-by-district? Yes. Do we need activists willing to campaign outside of their bastions of liberalism? Yes, we do. Do we need to donate money to causes. Yes--a variety of them. Do we need people to form new organizations or join existing ones? Yep. Do we need to engage in coalition-building? Absolutely. Do we need to write letters and call members of Congress? You bet. Do we need to organize and participate in marches and demonstrations? Yes. Do we need to commit acts of civil disobedience? For some of us, it may come to that. The only thing that is guaranteed not to work is to do nothing.

    I also believe that it's important that we have lots of leaders leading us in lots of different activities. If we have lots of leaders, then it will be more difficult for the powers-that-be to take out our leadership (by discrediting them, jailing them, or otherwise). We also need to do things that are enjoyable and sustainable, and we need to keep our spirits up. Beyond that, much is out of our hands. We'll just have to hope like hell that we succeed.

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  16. I do find some of this speculation hyperbolic. Trump hasn't got a militia, or anything remotely like a militia. His most passionate supporters are mostly older and live in scattered rural and semi-urban locales far from the seats of financial and political power; that hardly make them viable storm troopers. Fascism requires the connivance of a large minority of civil society - especially its youth - I just don't see it.

    Neither do I see even passive support for him from big capital (which Hitler won over quite easily in the age of competitive national capital by promising to turn foreign rival companies into the suppliers of German firms). Contemporary big capital is transnational and globalist in inclinations - it favors 'global governance', higher rates of immigration and 'liberal' interventions of various kinds. I just don't see how it would ever align with a despotic Trump regime busy putting up walls.

    Perhaps Trump is pioneering some kind of kitsch fascism. No doubt it will hurt many vulnerable people and create chaos of various kinds of bureaucratic systems. But the 1930's comparison seems wrong to me - and likely to play into the hands of Trump.

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  17. Well, I hope you are right. I do not see at all how it plays into Trump's hand, and if enough popular opposition is mobilised, perhaps we can take back the House in 2018, which would, by itself, I think, put paid to any ambitions he, or Bannon, might have. I will be delighted in a few years to acknowledge that you were right and I was wrong. Meanwhile, what are you doing?

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