The Fire Next Time

At least we know where we stand.

(counter protestors at a Proud Boy rally, 2017)

THE FIRE NEXT TIME

You remember Donald Trump, right? You probably spent the last four years dreaming of voting him out of office. We wanted a grand, final repudiation. Instead we got an election that resolved only a single thing, the presidency. Almost nothing else was settled convincingly—Trumpism gained ten million votes over last time, and is alive in state houses and both chambers on Capitol Hill. The authoritarian movement in America (and worldwide) is emboldened, even triumphant. 

Joe Biden will take office on January 20th, but the trashing of democratic norms, seeding of racist conspiracies, and lying and looting will continue until then, and long after. We can all enjoy the specter of DJT ranting from Mar-a-Lago in the years to come. But the damage is done. Never before have our elections themselves been sacrificed on the alter of ego, in an openly authoritarian attempt to overthrow our way of life. Despite the election, we have not escaped from what my University of Michigan professor Robert Mickey called the authoritarian spiral. Our democracy will be damaged for a generation to come.

NEW AND IMPROVED 

It is time to relaunch The Authoritarianism Project. In the wake of the 2020 election, I’ll be switching to a biweekly format, lowering the subscription cost, and refocussing the content directly on drafting my book. I may even poll you about changing the name—I hate the word “authoritarianism” on strictly orthographic grounds. So help me name this site (and book!) and focus what is now a 46,000-word rough draft into the story of global strongmen and their domestic analogs. 

My goal remains the same: use this page, with your help, as an open workbook for analyzing news and drafting the story of authoritarian leaders around the world, and what they teach us about ourselves. 

Paid subscribers will continue to get a separate stream of “Behind the Scenes” content. That means visual media, photos and videos, audio versions of articles from my archives, posts of my podcast appearances, and access to draft sections of this book. 

This week’s section is where I introduce Manila, and characterize the Philippines, in about 1,200 words. In the months ahead I will be writing and posting my investigations into the murders there linked to President Duterte. My book will incorporate a grisly tour of the cost an authoritarian leaders takes from his people, in Manila, but also in Rio de Janeiro and right at home in Portland USA. 

MORAL PURITY

The pandemic has overturned some political gospels, including the “purity thesis” of Jonathan Haidt. Conservatives were, Haidt argued, motivated by purity in all its forms, social, political, or medical. In studies they had strong visceral fears of illness, decay, and germs, and wanted pure loyalty, pure social communities, and pure bodies. When Obama was President, an Ebola outbreak in West Africa led to a full Tea Party/FoxNews panic attack, with demonstrators outside the White House demanding a complete lockdown, and chanting “stop the flights.”

Then, y’know, Trump. Suddenly a virus was to be openly embraced, lockdowns were criminal, and part of the herd had to be sacrificed. Dr. Oz suggested on FoxNews that sending kids back to school would “only” kill an additional 2-3% of Americans. Resisting a virus was now portrayed as unmanly. Republicans ripped their masks off and cried “Freedom!” and, “You Can’t Make Me!” That is a teenager’s definition of freedom—“petulant libertarianism,” as Professor Mickey told me. They are only against public health measures because liberals are for them. 

Jonathan Haidt isn’t to blame, not the scientists who measured the gut fears of conservatives. They needed more psychology and less poking with needles. All these experiments proved is that people will believe anything, and organize their entire lives around believing it, rather than endure the pain, shame, and rejection that come from admitting doubts. We knew this. Religion taught us this. Shakespeare showed us this. The vain and fragile ego requires endless ex post facto justifications, which we dress up as logic and evidentiary process. Clinging to power, position, or just survival, is a powerful need.

Elizabeth Drew, writing in the Washington Post, captures the poisoned mood of American rightists:  “What holds them together is not any centralized command structure, but a radical political ideology that is profoundly hostile to democracy and pluralism, and a certain political style that seeks to provoke moral panic, rewards the paranoid and views every partisan conflict as a conflagration, the end of the world.” 

Facts are an impediment to getting what they want, and the ends justifies the means. They feel resentment of their own supposed victimhood—Christmas is under attack, whites are the biggest victims of racism, the election was stolen. This isolated bubble of false information is hardening. Radical conservatives are even deserting FoxNews now—Fox!!!—because it called the election for Biden. Only cult media are good enough—the hilariously bad One America News Network is our North Korean State Television, and President Trump claims he won by citing the Epoch Times, a conspiracy rag published by the Falun Gong cult.

THE NIGHT OF THE LONG KNIVES 

But it’s not funny.  In the wake of the election, White Power militias are arming for Armageddon, and networking and cooperating. They are also purging their movements. Last week, the Proud Boys, Trump’s favorite street brawlers, suffered a coup d’état. Their previous leader, a menacing, right-wing loudmouth who is Hispanic American, was supposed to demonstrate that the Proud Boys were not racist. But he was purged and the Proud Boys website and membership were taken over by an explicitly racist, White Power leadership who denounced “token Negros” in the movement, ranted about European superiority, and incorporated anti-Semitic and National Socialist icons into a new logo. 

So, the actual Nazis are here. 

You have to admit, the election did give us a new sense of clarity, and shows us where the lines are drawn. We are still in trouble, but at least—and at last—we know where everyone stands.