The moment it sank in for me just how batshit this administration was going to be (and how little anyone was going to do to stop it) was when he sent out his executive order to “release the water” in California to put out the (already extinguished) wildfires, which involved getting the engineer corps to empty out the reservoirs into floodplains to evaporate pointlessly. And they actually just did it and no one at any point in the chain of command said “wtf no this is idiotic.” That was a certified Great Leap Forward moment.
As a native of Los Angeles this really got to me. Trump live in a fantasy world where facts don't matter and reality bends itself to his will and people who should know better just go along with it. This madness should have dominated the headlines: "Trump's delusions about water prove that he is insane!" But instead the media is still obsessed with Biden being old and having a stutter.
"The actual effect of the tariffs will be to halt the American economic juggernaut, discredit the anti-woke movement, pave the way for a left-wing populist... stop the right’s momentum in other countries, and bring an end to Pax Americana." - Nathan Confas
Thabo Mbeki specifically is a great example to study if you want to understand how this shit works. You might have read it already but the book South Africa's Brave New World is very good on the topic.
I found this to be an interesting read and certainly appreciated the use of citations for a piece of work that obviously took some time to craft. I thought I’d respond to just one part for your consideration and offer a different lens through which to view the predicament of our former allies.
“The MAGA movement has very little in common with modern Western civilisation.”
The term Modern Western Civilization is a popular course title in high schools/universities. It typically traces the evolution of concepts like democracy, voting rights, and free inquiry. In an academic setting this is useful; in terms of modern politics there are so few commonalities between say ancient Athens and any 21st century European country that it doesn’t make sense to think of the countries as one entity (like the term Modern Western Civilization).
Carl Sagan warned exactly where the United States and modern western civilization were heading in 1995 at the end of The Demon-Haunted World:
“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...
The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance”
Things may well mutate in the direction you claim, but there is still time to reverse course. The problem is that if you regard Trump and his supporters as death cultists, you have already lost. The key is to bring those people back from the brink by understanding their concerns and appealing to their better nature.
As a Canadian, the argument I try to make to my American friends is that party names are more confusing than helpful during political realignments. The Democrats are actually the conservatives and the Republicans are now a mix of former conservatives being converted to a Trumpist revolutionary movement. Like all revolutionary movements – it is anti-institutional. Not all revolutionary movements are anti-intellectual, but this one is.
Trump’s adherents are mostly from rural areas (the voting map doesn’t lie) – these are the people who have largely been left out of the prosperity gains of the last 40 years, all while watching the urban class make tremendous financial gains. The people who support Trump largely believe that American institutions have failed them; I don’t think they’re wrong either. The leaders of the Trumpist movement are a different breed – they are largely rich opportunists who seek to become richer and more famous; or people trying to get ahead by joining the party in leadership positions.
Finally someone says what I figured out for a long time: Trumpism is not a fascist movement, but a communist one. Trump (but more generally the American far right) has much more in common with bolshevism than with fascism. When Mussolini took power, the first thing he did was appoint Giovanni Gentile (one of the greatest Italian philosophers in history) to the Ministry of Education, he didn't abolished it like Trump want to do with Department of Education. He also enphasized one of impeartive task of the regime was what he called "taking care of Italian race" (meant as people, racial laws still didn't exist at that time). In one of his speeches he proudly claimed to have closed tens of taverns around Italy in order to avoid people getting drunk and how the regime had eradicated pellagra*. How is comparable with Trump and RFK bringing back measles to life? Is it spreading misinformation about vax and promoting third world treatments the best way to "taking care of the American race"? I seriously doubt that.
Tbc I'm not saying it to make "fascist apology" or whatever. Just to underline how MAGA is even worse than fascism.
Indeed. There is already, in the socio-politics academia, the Horseshoe Theory, that posits that both the extreme left and the extreme right share more in common than we think. However, this theory is mainly about the surface of these movements, that is, the aspects more visible to the general observer, such as the propaganda tactics, the arguments pro and con, and the like. Pavlou's article expands the theory to encompass the entirety of the ideology substrate of each camp. They do not look alike just superficially, but in their ultimate goals as well. Goals which, in my personal opinion, boil down to just grift: be rich on the back of others.
This is absolute sophistry and word salad. Virtually every successful 20th communist movement from the Soviets to China to Cuba embarked on widespread literacy campaigns as a day 1 priority and built systems of universal public education where they didn’t previously exist.
Great article. I have been saying for years that Trumpism most resembles Maoism. I studied Chinese history in college and spent some years in Taiwan and China.
Here's the other part, it's Maoist because it is essentially a peasant revolt with a strong anti-intellectual component. It draws strength from the widespread belief that the opposition is both corrupt and ineffectual. This is how nominally non-MAGA Republicans have aided and abetted the MAGA movement, by crushing sensible otherwise bipartisan reforms.
In practice, the Trumpists seek to destroy most American institutions like the Cultural Revolution sought to destroy Chinese culture.
It's a very serious threat and demands a very disciplined response if we are not to be destroyed by it, truly.
I agree with all your points. One point that wasn't made is the supreme irony of the MAGA manliness and self-denial ideology is that Trump has never suffered from any kind of physical hardship greater than attending a military school for spoiled rich boys. He denies himself no physical pleasure or luxury, reveling in gluttony and lust, wears heavy makeup and hairspray, has never worked with his soft baby hands or even shopped for groceries.
The best leaders, whether political, military or spiritual --- even Jesus himself --- have always shared the sacrifices they demand of their followers, up to and including to the sacrifice of their lives for the greater good. Trump demands that his followers sacrifice themselves to poverty, violence and preventable diseases for HIS benefit alone.
Trump makes a case for being the "chosen one" by boasting about surviving an assassination attempt, but never mentions the man who took a bullet meant for Trump while trying to shelter his own family. That man was the real hero of the day.
How do Trump's followers justify this cognitive dissonance?
Trump held a moment of silence for Comperatore, whom he called "a hero to all of us." Yet even as he honored the late firefighter, Trump appeared to make an off-the-cuff quip while talking about his widow’s grief.
The GOP presidential nominee told the crowd that a friend of his had given Comperatore's family a $1 million check, and he also made reference to money donated to the family's GoFundMe.
"But you know what? Corey's wife said, 'I'd rather have my husband,'” Trump said.
“Isn’t that good? I know a lot of wives that would not say that — I’m sorry," he continued, as the crowd laughed. "They would not say that."
The hardcore MAGA folks support Trump because he is smashing the people that they hate and as long as he continues doing that they will support him. Ordinary Trump voters who ignored his blatantly undemocratic rhetoric for whatever reason not so much.
“I believe that the central motivating force behind the movement is a rejection of the Enlightenment and liberal modernity. … Its motivating essence is simple: ‘‘Burn anything I can’t understand.’’
Yes, and this rejection is fundamentally child-like. The vast majority of commentators make the mistake of assuming that there is genuine suffering of some kind going on among the MAGA crowd. But, in general, there is not. Quite the opposite. Most of them are so materially comfortable as to be bored out of their minds.
The absence of any real struggle leaves these adult-aged people with the minds of children. And that makes them extremely susceptible to the culture war insanity that Trump and his team serve up.
The moment it sank in for me just how batshit this administration was going to be (and how little anyone was going to do to stop it) was when he sent out his executive order to “release the water” in California to put out the (already extinguished) wildfires, which involved getting the engineer corps to empty out the reservoirs into floodplains to evaporate pointlessly. And they actually just did it and no one at any point in the chain of command said “wtf no this is idiotic.” That was a certified Great Leap Forward moment.
As a native of Los Angeles this really got to me. Trump live in a fantasy world where facts don't matter and reality bends itself to his will and people who should know better just go along with it. This madness should have dominated the headlines: "Trump's delusions about water prove that he is insane!" But instead the media is still obsessed with Biden being old and having a stutter.
"The actual effect of the tariffs will be to halt the American economic juggernaut, discredit the anti-woke movement, pave the way for a left-wing populist... stop the right’s momentum in other countries, and bring an end to Pax Americana." - Nathan Confas
He wrote a great article on this subject
This is good.
Could @quillette or @thefreepress take this one?
It deserves unrestricted release
This is a great idea, we must petition Claire!
@Claire Lehmann if you pass by…
The Free Press readers are 90-95% MAGA.
Quillette had its moment and blew it, sadly.
Thabo Mbeki specifically is a great example to study if you want to understand how this shit works. You might have read it already but the book South Africa's Brave New World is very good on the topic.
It's legitimately so sad. 350,000 dead. That's what happens when you put people like RFK Jr into power
I found this to be an interesting read and certainly appreciated the use of citations for a piece of work that obviously took some time to craft. I thought I’d respond to just one part for your consideration and offer a different lens through which to view the predicament of our former allies.
“The MAGA movement has very little in common with modern Western civilisation.”
The term Modern Western Civilization is a popular course title in high schools/universities. It typically traces the evolution of concepts like democracy, voting rights, and free inquiry. In an academic setting this is useful; in terms of modern politics there are so few commonalities between say ancient Athens and any 21st century European country that it doesn’t make sense to think of the countries as one entity (like the term Modern Western Civilization).
Carl Sagan warned exactly where the United States and modern western civilization were heading in 1995 at the end of The Demon-Haunted World:
“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...
The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance”
Things may well mutate in the direction you claim, but there is still time to reverse course. The problem is that if you regard Trump and his supporters as death cultists, you have already lost. The key is to bring those people back from the brink by understanding their concerns and appealing to their better nature.
As a Canadian, the argument I try to make to my American friends is that party names are more confusing than helpful during political realignments. The Democrats are actually the conservatives and the Republicans are now a mix of former conservatives being converted to a Trumpist revolutionary movement. Like all revolutionary movements – it is anti-institutional. Not all revolutionary movements are anti-intellectual, but this one is.
Trump’s adherents are mostly from rural areas (the voting map doesn’t lie) – these are the people who have largely been left out of the prosperity gains of the last 40 years, all while watching the urban class make tremendous financial gains. The people who support Trump largely believe that American institutions have failed them; I don’t think they’re wrong either. The leaders of the Trumpist movement are a different breed – they are largely rich opportunists who seek to become richer and more famous; or people trying to get ahead by joining the party in leadership positions.
Finally someone says what I figured out for a long time: Trumpism is not a fascist movement, but a communist one. Trump (but more generally the American far right) has much more in common with bolshevism than with fascism. When Mussolini took power, the first thing he did was appoint Giovanni Gentile (one of the greatest Italian philosophers in history) to the Ministry of Education, he didn't abolished it like Trump want to do with Department of Education. He also enphasized one of impeartive task of the regime was what he called "taking care of Italian race" (meant as people, racial laws still didn't exist at that time). In one of his speeches he proudly claimed to have closed tens of taverns around Italy in order to avoid people getting drunk and how the regime had eradicated pellagra*. How is comparable with Trump and RFK bringing back measles to life? Is it spreading misinformation about vax and promoting third world treatments the best way to "taking care of the American race"? I seriously doubt that.
Tbc I'm not saying it to make "fascist apology" or whatever. Just to underline how MAGA is even worse than fascism.
*https://bibliotecafascista.blogspot.com/2012/03/speech-of-ascension-may-26-1927.html
Indeed. There is already, in the socio-politics academia, the Horseshoe Theory, that posits that both the extreme left and the extreme right share more in common than we think. However, this theory is mainly about the surface of these movements, that is, the aspects more visible to the general observer, such as the propaganda tactics, the arguments pro and con, and the like. Pavlou's article expands the theory to encompass the entirety of the ideology substrate of each camp. They do not look alike just superficially, but in their ultimate goals as well. Goals which, in my personal opinion, boil down to just grift: be rich on the back of others.
This is absolute sophistry and word salad. Virtually every successful 20th communist movement from the Soviets to China to Cuba embarked on widespread literacy campaigns as a day 1 priority and built systems of universal public education where they didn’t previously exist.
Great article. I have been saying for years that Trumpism most resembles Maoism. I studied Chinese history in college and spent some years in Taiwan and China.
Here's the other part, it's Maoist because it is essentially a peasant revolt with a strong anti-intellectual component. It draws strength from the widespread belief that the opposition is both corrupt and ineffectual. This is how nominally non-MAGA Republicans have aided and abetted the MAGA movement, by crushing sensible otherwise bipartisan reforms.
In practice, the Trumpists seek to destroy most American institutions like the Cultural Revolution sought to destroy Chinese culture.
It's a very serious threat and demands a very disciplined response if we are not to be destroyed by it, truly.
Brilliant, sobering, and horrifying. Well writ.
Thank you so much Tom. Wish we were in a better place lol
Having come here from a link in a Bulwark newsletter, I'm hooked. Excellent writing, history, and cultural education. couldn't ask for anything more!
Thank you. So kind :)
Huey Li did a similar discussion but focused more on DOGE - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wJhj0yJsF0&t=322s
Trump talks a lot about raping people.
Why IS that, anyway?
Truly the most damning collection of Trump atrocities in the most damming frame yet. Thank you!!
Thank you so much!
I agree with all your points. One point that wasn't made is the supreme irony of the MAGA manliness and self-denial ideology is that Trump has never suffered from any kind of physical hardship greater than attending a military school for spoiled rich boys. He denies himself no physical pleasure or luxury, reveling in gluttony and lust, wears heavy makeup and hairspray, has never worked with his soft baby hands or even shopped for groceries.
The best leaders, whether political, military or spiritual --- even Jesus himself --- have always shared the sacrifices they demand of their followers, up to and including to the sacrifice of their lives for the greater good. Trump demands that his followers sacrifice themselves to poverty, violence and preventable diseases for HIS benefit alone.
Trump makes a case for being the "chosen one" by boasting about surviving an assassination attempt, but never mentions the man who took a bullet meant for Trump while trying to shelter his own family. That man was the real hero of the day.
How do Trump's followers justify this cognitive dissonance?
They can't. Cognitive dissonance is the whole point.
Very well said.
For some additional context:
https://www.msnbc.com/top-stories/latest/trump-corey-comperatore-widow-rcna164738
Trump held a moment of silence for Comperatore, whom he called "a hero to all of us." Yet even as he honored the late firefighter, Trump appeared to make an off-the-cuff quip while talking about his widow’s grief.
The GOP presidential nominee told the crowd that a friend of his had given Comperatore's family a $1 million check, and he also made reference to money donated to the family's GoFundMe.
"But you know what? Corey's wife said, 'I'd rather have my husband,'” Trump said.
“Isn’t that good? I know a lot of wives that would not say that — I’m sorry," he continued, as the crowd laughed. "They would not say that."
The hardcore MAGA folks support Trump because he is smashing the people that they hate and as long as he continues doing that they will support him. Ordinary Trump voters who ignored his blatantly undemocratic rhetoric for whatever reason not so much.
Compelling argument. Does this mean Roy Cohn is the Eternal Chairman?
“I believe that the central motivating force behind the movement is a rejection of the Enlightenment and liberal modernity. … Its motivating essence is simple: ‘‘Burn anything I can’t understand.’’
Yes, and this rejection is fundamentally child-like. The vast majority of commentators make the mistake of assuming that there is genuine suffering of some kind going on among the MAGA crowd. But, in general, there is not. Quite the opposite. Most of them are so materially comfortable as to be bored out of their minds.
The absence of any real struggle leaves these adult-aged people with the minds of children. And that makes them extremely susceptible to the culture war insanity that Trump and his team serve up.