The conditions for tyranny
Ben Wildsmith
I was planning to write about America today. President Biden’s descent into puzzlement is a Shakespearian narrative that will touch us all in some way.
We’re experiencing it as a human tragedy, familiar to many of us who have struggled as family members sank into cognitive decline, but also as a public catastrophe, with stewardship of a military superpower teetering on the brink of incompetence.
There’s more than enough to chew on there, I thought, before opening Twitter/X this morning to find that ‘Civil War’ was the top trending topic.
The language of history lessons is increasingly being applied to current affairs. It is jarring to read news stories that speak of insurrections, and fascism, and pogroms.
For decades these words spoke either of the past or to the frothing discontent of people on the far fringes of the political conversation.
Ugly solutions
Now, in a global situation too complex to comprehend, old and ugly solutions are being repackaged as if trying to fix your laptop with a hammer will turn it into a steam engine.
Awash in a deluge of contradictory, often fabricated, information we have been herded into camps that hold up totems of the past to project authenticity and inspire loyalty.
Here, Labour will sell you a Nye Bevan tea towel whilst deciding how much of the NHS to privatise whilst Boris Johnson invoked Churchill despite palling around with a KGB officer.
In America, much was made of Donald Trump having a portrait of Andrew Jackson in the Oval Office. Jackson is the pin-up of the ‘peasants’ revolt’ strand of US politics.
In this fairytale, the people are sovereign over entrenched elites, whose governance is condemned as self-serving and derived from European corruption. It is fiercely nativist but paradoxically hostile to aboriginal people.
Jackson’s rhetoric against First Americans led to the Trail of Tears and is echoed in Trump’s remarks about Mexican immigrants. In style, it’s folksy, simplistic and bombastic as the situation demands.
It’s appeal to Americans is such that half the nation is willing to believe that a man born into privilege, who lives in a gold tower on Fifth Avenue is somehow a conduit for their grievances.
Pegs
Make America Great Again, along with Take Back Control, and Stop the Boats are pegs upon which people can hang their feelings. People feel got-at, controlled, and diminished by societies that are changing at a rate that leaves no time for reflection or to consider what’s being lost along the way.
A more honest slogan would be ‘Make It Stop’.
As wealth continues to be hoovered up from communities into the offshore accounts of billionaires, blame becomes valuable political currency. Trump, Farage, Le Pen, Orban and the rest have a simple job which is to direct our eyes away from the flow of money outwards and towards the flow of people in.
At the time of writing, there’s no authoritative word on why Donald Trump was shot last night. It doesn’t matter.
Within minutes of the incident, you could follow strands of opinion that led to a Deep State assassination attempt on one hand, or staged fakery on the other.
The all-pervasive confusion of the internet era will offer you a personalised truth dependent on what you’re inclined to click on.
Imagery
What does matter is the imagery. As a blood-stained Trump got to his feet and raised his fist in defiance, he was backed by the US flag and huddled by a group of servicemen. It recalled the iconic, and staged image from Iwo Jima that has stood as a totem of American resolve for 80 years.
If you interrogate patriotism of any sort, you’ll find manipulation and, frequently, outright lies. We already feel something for our nations, if someone is telling us to then they have an agenda.
At Mar-a-Lago, Trump has a team of people planning the agenda for his second term. They are reportedly considering mass deportations, using federal troops to go after migrants, prosecuting Biden, pardoning participants in the January 6th Capitol insurrection, and wholescale replacement of the civil service with political supporters.
Mythology
Last night’s event will dominate the mythology of Trump’s campaign and potential second term.
Trump will be elevated from his position as an avatar of his supporters’ concerns, having been sanctified in blood.
With a partisan Civil Service and immunity from prosecution already granted by the Supreme Court, removing him in 2028 may take more than an election, presuming there is one.
Why Thomas Matthew Crooks caused a trickle of blood to run from Trump’s ear last night will be contested forever.
Whether it’s allowed to swell the Potomac rests with the uncertain capabilities of his frail successor on Pennsylvania Avenue. The world watches.
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Yes, it does look like blood will secure the tyrant a second term. Americans will probably have to learn the hard way to eventually get him out once in. Talk of a future civil war if Trump is reelected is very real. Americans live in dangerous times and consequently so do we.
I’m seeing that taking point a lot but I’m not seeing it play out that way.
That imagery of Trump plays to a voting base that has already decided to vote for him because of his faux patriotism.
That bloody ear can just as easily be a product of a person who has constantly used the threat (and usage) of violence to undermine democracy, plus this follows very shortly after the Heritage Foundation used the threat of violence against “The Left”. It’s a sign of instability that scares centrists.
Very much agree with this piece. Just to add, Gary O’Donoghue reported last night that he overheard a Trump supporter say “They shot first. This is f****** war”. If America succeeds in avoiding civil war it will at the very least now be home to even more radicalised individuals adding to an already febrile society. As Ben explains, this now plays massively into Trump’s martyr narrative. He will use his survival to fuel his ego. His proposals to run a steamroller of cronyism through the American federal beaurocracy is truly terrifying. The potential outcome in Ukraine is chilling. The UK… Read more »
This will make Trump get worse, if that were even possible.
I hear Trumps boot boy from Clacton is dumping his constituents and running over with kisses to ear ‘ole.
I hear MTG got her boots on quick to spew batdropping crazy comments.
Now Canon has thrown out his stealing state secrets. You know, the one where he had the secrets in the lav at his beach hut.
Opps, Trumps running mate is a bit iffy. He called the UK/Uk government islamist country with nukes.
I’m no lover of Trump but I am keen on the truth and journalistic accuracy. Trump’s not planning to go after ‘migrants’, he’s planning to go after illegal immigrants. I’d also suggest that most people can hold more than one idea in their heads at the same time: we are able to watch the outflow of money into billionaires’ bank accounts whilst simultaneously noticing the staggering flow of legal, and illegal, immigration.
We in Wales are lucky that the Statue of Liberty has been there for us for 140 years and the Bill of Rights/Constitution for 100 years before that. The idea of liberty has seen off Communism and Fascism. The battle now is between Liberty and the ideas which don’t seem to include liberty. The opposite of liberty in 2024 is the soft but sinister cancellation and control-freak culture of which Canada has become the worst example. I hope Wales steers away from Canada and towards liberty. The difference between the US and UK in 2024 is that the US (and… Read more »
Very well put.
I don’t believe Trump is standing for American liberty. If anything it’s the opposite, would he relinquish power, at the end of a second term, or not? How would he keep that control? He doesn’t give a toss about the liberty of others, just personal power.
I’m sorry you can’t get in a dizzy about natives of other lands while allowing colonists to use our terms at our expense (terms that are rooted in millennia and that are linked directly to our history). That disgust would be served better if directed towards how we are being treated. For too long have we cared for others rights while not fighting for our own.
Totally agree Riki, we need to reflect and act to create our own self governed, internationalist, egalitarian country.
If your referring to America then it is a nation founded by immigrants. Every American is descended from an immigrant, except for the Indians, they are the natives. The state of Nevada has a geographical area twice that of the UK, but only has a population equal to Wales. Therefore I have no sympathy with Americans complaining about too much immigration.