ONE hundred days! It feels like a hundred years; and one word sums up Trump.2: chaos. Is this personal, tactical or strategic? Those who know Donald Trump describe him as narcissistic, vindictive and attention seeking with the emotional intelligence and concentration of a flea. There is speculation that even his closest political colleagues have no idea about his long-term aims; if any, other than the exercise of power. He is the supreme example of post-modern politics, measured in terms of ratings and visual impact; a long-time admirer of the fake world of wrestling. There is also the possibility, although a remote one, that he might be a Russian asset codenamed Krasnov, recruited in Moscow in 1987 after the Russians identified his serious personality flaws.[1]
But this chaos could be a deliberate tactic engineered by those who have found a suitable figurehead in Trump. It is a classic neo-fascist gambit to ‘flood the zone …’ as Steve Bannon urges. Trump has followed that advice and added his own speciality: multiple states of emergency. The object is not to solve problems, but induce a state of confusion and a sense that major crises requiring short-cut attention from authoritarians are justified. The purpose is to deligitimise the rule of law, which explains attacks on legal firms, courts and the press. The idea is to induce helplessness, cynicism and defeatism; an overall attitude that there is nothing to be done in the face of the ‘will of the people’. This enables the MAGA crowd to press on with its agenda to impose a paternalistic, narrow conformity on American society as the national norm and the re-creation of a mythical past. No wonder the universities are being targeted.[2]
And chaos could also be strategic at the international level, assisting the transactional approach of businesspeople doing deals over other nations’ rights and heritage (Ukraine and Palestine, for instance). Create sufficient uncertainty and others may cave in. The tariff chaos, catnip to Trump’s ego, has made even some of his supporters think twice. And it is, of course, based on lies. The USA is the world’s largest debtor nation, living beyond its means on credit. No other nation has stolen from it and if trade imbalances need correction, they are a matter for civilised negotiation by diplomats, not bullying by a convicted criminal and six-times bankrupted businessman. There is a strong likelihood that the Trump family is benefiting financially.
There could be a vague plan in this global chaos. The European Union (EU) is a particular target of the Trump regime for supposedly ripping off the USA and for its generally liberal values and environmental standards. In George Orwell’s 1984, the world is divided into three geopolitical zones: Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia. The American Monroe Doctrine dates back to the early nineteenth century and delimits the western hemisphere, a more modest version of Oceania, as its own backyard. Trump has been particularly aggressive towards Greenland, Canada, Mexico and Panama suggesting that the doctrine might be in vogue again. And, if so, are Eurasia and Eastasia to be abandoned to Russia and China? Is this the real reason for hostility to the EU? The rules-based international order is truly at an end and those who derided it will soon feel the consequences. It will be replaced by the whims and narcissism of autocrats, the priorities of oligarchs and the malign reach of social media moguls. In other words, the rule of the powerful. It is no exaggeration to say that civilisation is on the line.
If there is a Trumpist doctrine, it is an attempt to set back the clock at least to the fifties where minorities knew their place and the nation was defined by conservative white Christians, nuclear families and secure jobs in factories. That sort of fundamentalist nostalgia never works and the past cannot be recreated. Ask those who voted for Brexit, a mini-version of the MAGA movement. Many of course would argue that they, the true believers, were betrayed by elites. And MAGA and Brexit have this in common too: both are peasants’ revolts, retribution against intellectuals, people able to think for themselves free of dogma, conspiracy theory, and political and religious conformism. That’s why many of Trump’s targets involve people who think and achieve. Right-wing populism hates subtlety and complexity, knowing that simplicity is easy to sell politically.
Trump.2 clearly sees himself as an autocrat in charge of a regime, not a government. After a slow start a broad-based opposition appears to be gathering and there is now a call for civic insurrection. This will need to peak next year in a fashion that alters the composition of Congress or the USA may well become a dictatorship. In the meantime, Americans need to be aware of the losses their country is sustaining internationally: respect, soft power and skills (actual and potential).
Supporters of democracy in southern Africa and eastern European who overthrew apartheid and Russian imperialism forty years ago may have something to offer from which Americans can learn. The idea of civic insurrection is already reminiscent of the United Democratic Front in South Africa in the eighties when a broad umbrella organisation brought together affiliates that shared basic common values and principles. It is vital to abandon old labels and the habits of a lifetime to lay the basis of a common front. With that in place rolling demonstrations, boycotts, civil disobedience and non-violent sabotage become feasible in multi-dimensional opposition.
But there are also opportunities for small groups and individuals, such as those practised behind the Iron Curtain where repression was far more vicious than apartheid’s. Artists, singers and cartoonists wield immense power to get to the truth and ridicule the emptiness of authoritarian populism.[3] At root, as was seen during Brexit, the new politics of the right is anti-intellectual so this is an opportunity for resourceful people to exercise their individual and collective talents in defence of democracy and decency.
Above all, truth must prevail. The Trump.2 regime lies through its teeth as South Africans say. Every opportunity must be taken to identify untruth and it is important for people in high places to be forthright. For example, the Washington regime is white nationalist and there is nothing Christian about it. Churches need to say so.
Zapiro, South Africa’s best-known cartoonist portrays Trump and associates in SS uniforms. That’s fair enough, but Trump is more Mussolini than Hitler; authoritarian before fascist. And if the USA is taken over by a self-perpetuating MAGA dynasty, which is not impossible, it will have turned its revolution on its head and become a monarchy.
● And a word to White House motor-mouth, Karoline Leavitt. She mocked a French politician who suggested, not without reason, that the Statue of Liberty might be returned to France with the cheap taunt that he would be speaking German today had it not been for the Americans.
Fought in the summer of 1940, the Battle of Britain was the first major setback suffered by the Nazis. Had it not been for ‘the Few’, Churchill’s term, Britain would probably have fallen and the invasion that liberated Europe would only have taken place far later, with much greater difficulty and perhaps never at all.
One fifth of Fighter Command’s aircrew were from outside Britain, mainly from the dominions and colonies, in particular Canada and New Zealand. Other notable contributions were from Poland and Czechoslovakia (both had their own squadrons as did the Canadians), Belgium and France.
What about the USA? Their country was studiously neutral while the German-Soviet pact laid waste to eastern Europe egged on by American Nazis and communists. Either ten or eleven Americans flew in the battle; the confusion created by the fact that to avoid loss of citizenship they generally pretended to be Canadians.
The USA discovered the supreme importance of defending liberty only after the Japanese had attacked them. Maybe the Statue of Liberty should indeed be removed.
[1] This possibility was raised by no less than Simon Tisdall, the foreign affairs writer for the Observer and Guardian.
[2] The universities, however, need a dose of introspection. It was here that post-modern theories about relative truth were broadcast to be seized upon by right-wing populists. What goes around comes around.
[3] An irreverent thought. Fascism has in the past been ridiculed by morally correct disrespect. I remember at boarding school in 1960s Britain the following World War II ditty being performed at an end-of-year concert to the tune of Colonel Bogey; a tale of monorchism, microorchidism and anorchism …
Hitler has only one ball,
Goering has two but very small,
Himmler is rather similar,
And Goebbels has none at all
There were more verses and one wonders whether this song could not be adapted for the Trump.2 regime. There are multiple candidates.