Not Without Incident: Questioning Big Brother's Platitudes

The illiberal liberal class foments divide and hostility over issues like racism and transphobia, and the far-right exploits this and posits itself as a contrast to this. This is an inevitable result of the illiberal liberal’s con job. The invisible either need to be made visible through understanding and compassion. Otherwise, they will make themselves visible through loathsome demagogues like Trump and Le Pen.

“In the end, they’re not coming after me. They’re coming after you — and I’m just standing in their way,”[i] – Donald Trump

“Mussolini, Stalin, and Hitler did not just invent their personae; they literally built the organizations of their respective dictatorships. Each system was inseparable from its Führer, or Duce. Inverted totalitarianism follows an entirely different course: the leader is not the architect of the system but its product.”[ii]– Sheldon Wolin

Trump has received yet another indictment, this time for his mishandling of classified documents at his Mara Lago estate. With the unsealing of the indictment, it is evident that the goal is to prevent Trump from re-entering the White House, as not only have other former government officials engaged in similar behavior, but as Glenn Greenwald points out, leaking classified material is routine in Washington.[iii] During the Trump presidency, there were leaks daily on all sorts of matters from his alleged ties to Russia to his eating habits.

The purpose of this indictment, just like with the other cases that have been pursued against Trump, is to stop him and his movement from once again attaining political power. The permanent regime, who is the menace behind the pursuit of Trump, is petrified of him because, as noted in previous posts, he exposes them for who they are. That the orchestrators of the persecution of Trump are nameless and faceless is not discussed enough, if at all, in our media discourse, even in independent media. For example, Tom Slater of Spiked Magazine writes of the second Trump indictment that it is unlikely that Biden is leading a grand scheme to prevent Trump, who will probably be his opponent in 2024, from running in the upcoming presidential election, as “If we’re being honest, such Machiavellian machinations are probably beyond the forgetful, wobbly old fella at this point.”[iv] It may be beyond a decrepit, husky Biden, but Biden is merely the puppet of the permanent regime. Slater gets close to identifying the culprit when he goes on to write that “The problem is more insidious than that. Ever since Trump gave the entire establishment a bloody nose in 2016, it has tried to expel him, like a virus.”[v] The establishment that he refers to here is what I have identified as the permanent regime. It is that regime Trump dealt a blow to with his election in 2016. Instead of wondering why Trump was ever a viable political candidate, the illiberal liberal class is working overtime to silence him and his movement and erase their existence.

Contrary to the many headlines and op-eds pondering the notion, we are not in the post-Trump era, if there was ever a Trump era. Trump is far from finished, politically, and if we are to understand why, collectively, so we can mitigate forces like him, who prey on despair and desperation that is growing under an increasingly authoritarian ruling class that transcends borders, then we must start asking different questions, like, why could Trump win the presidency in 2024, and if he does, who is to blame? To these questions, we must have better answers than, well half of Americans are deplorable, or white supremacy still reigns supreme in America. We must accept that the terms we use in debates relating to Trump and the supposed existential threat he poses to liberal democracy are laughable.

American democracy is long gone, and the rest of the Western world is following suit. In my last post, I argued that what the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin called inverted totalitarianism is now the reality in the US, and that other countries, like Canada, are not far behind. This essay will be a continuation of that case that incorporates the most recent indictment of Trump and the reaction to it from various commentators.

Firstly, there is the issue of US democracy hanging by a thread, liable to snap at any moment. For many, Trump must be brought to justice for the sake of democracy and the rule of law. Andrew Sullivan makes this argument, writing “So I guess, unless Trump withdraws, we are going to have put the country through its ultimate Constitutional stress test.”[vi] He notes the choice that Trump is forcing America to make, not the illiberal liberal class who elevated Trump in the first place in 2016, as revealed in the Clinton emails by Wikileaks, and who spent decades hollowing out the American working class and exploded the military budget and the scope of US empire. That Trump is an option, and for many he is seen as the only option, if the US is to survive, is an indictment of the permanent regime and its chief puppets, like Biden and Obama. Sullivan captures his misplacement of blame when he writes “But Trump just won’t let us move past him, and he has now set up yet another showdown for the soul of the republic in 2024.”, and according to him, Trump is setting up the showdown in 2024, not the illiberal liberal class who excreted him.[vii]

Sullivan also notes that the Democratic party has become culturally radical, and that Trump’s opposition have legitimized him. However, it is not the Democratic party becoming radical that legitimizes Trump, it is their transformation into a carbon copy of the Republican party, turning their back on the working and lower middle classes and being complicit in the rapid globalization that turned what was once America’s center of productivity into a desolate wasteland of despair. Sullivan, like most political commentators and thinkers, refuses to acknowledge this. They do so at our peril.

Most of the arguments in favor of Trump’s prosecution are steeped in anti-Trump hysteria and references to the sacred rule of law. For example, Timothy L. O’Brien, on the swift defense of Trump provided by most of the Republican party leadership, writes “That’s the GOP, and a core part of the party remains loyal to Trump. He and his minions are anarchists, not conservatives, and their allegiance to one another runs deep.”[viii] While he is correct that Trump and his movement is not conservative or even Republican, he is incorrect that they are anarchists. Although a few may be anarchists, anarchism is a distinct ideology, not simply chaos, which is evidently what O’Brien is referring to, and this not only shows that he misunderstands anarchism, but that he sees no viable ideologies beyond liberal/conservative.

O’Brien concludes his article by referring to the few who argue that Trump’s indictment has dangerous implications, and who ask if Trump, then who next, writing “But if those are the questions you’re asking in this particular matter, you’re on the wrong side of the law, civil society and democracy.”[ix] Here O’Brien reveals his dogmatism. Such assertions are authoritarian, as he is arguing that any who would dare make a case that differs from his, or would ask questions that deviate from his dogma, are oppositions to the rule of law, civil society, and democracy. O’Brien and the illiberal liberal ruling class are not just on the wrong side of the rule of law and liberal democracy. They are who they claim to oppose and hate. They are the despots. They do not believe in democracy or the rule of law.

Illiberal liberals speak of democracy with utter disdain, echoing the thoughts of Samuel Huntington, Michel Crozier, and Joji Watanuki, who published a report on democracies in crisis for the Trilateral Commission.[x] They noted that an ‘excess of democracy”’ was leading to the government having less authority, while being more active. Huntington felt that calls for democratic reform in the US would lead to deadlock, and less democracy, not more. He called his present day, 1976, as the ‘Age of Exposure”, where the reality of activist movements and their calls for democratic reforms clashed and resulted in chaos, an ‘excess of democracy’.[xi] We are ourselves in an Age of Exposure, where those who claim to be on the side of the rule of law are not at all interested in justice. The illiberal liberal class has been exposed through its persecution of Trump and his movement.

According to David Faris, Trump “has always been a national security threat”, a sentiment alluded to by Special Counsel Jack Smith, who brought the indictment, in his speech introducing it. Trump, through his careless handling of classified material and brazen obstruction of justice, apparently deserves life in prison.[xii] Faris concludes by writing “More important than his literal incarceration will be the unmistakable message sent to those who would abuse the sacred trust placed in them by the American people: this is how it ends.”[xiii] This is absurd for many reasons; however, the primary reason is that every president in recent memory has abused the ‘sacred trust’ placed in them by the American people. The greatest national security threat the US faces is the permanent regime, not Trump. The notion that Clinton, Bush, and Obama are saintly humanitarians and a total contrast to Trump is a cruel joke.

Both of Trump’s indictments are part of the permanent regime’s war on Trump. Despite what many commentators insist, the case against Trump is purely political, not legal. There is no rule of law in the US. This is not to defend the arguments that the right makes on conservatives being targeted by the security state and the Biden administration, as the ideological conflict at play in the US and West writ large is not between the right and the left, or between liberals and conservatives, it is between Western exceptionalism and those of the underclass that it distracts with silly culture wars and seduces with troughs of worthless commodities.

Those who proclaim that Trump is not above the law, and that anyone who takes a differing argument from them is, as O’Brien says, on the wrong side of law and democracy, are making a case against Trump and his GOP defenders, not a case against the sort of argument that I am making here, that others like Greenwald and Michael Tracy have made.

Illiberal liberal commentators are stuck in the false ideological paradigm of left versus far right. For them all political issues can be fit neatly into this misleading paradigm. The war against Trump is no different, as they do not see it as a war, but as accountability. Trump’s defenders on the right see it as a war on Trump, but within a reductionist right/left ideological binary. Trump himself captures this binary when he declares that his persecution is at the behest of ‘radical left Democrats’. The war is, as noted, between the illiberal liberal ruling class and the underlings who are sacrificed at the altar of unfettered globalism. The faux right/left divide is the work of the illiberal liberal ruling class- it is their elaborate con job.

Conclusion

“Our leaders chose globalization, which they wanted to be a happy thing. It turned out to be a horrible thing,”[xiv]– Marine Le Pen

What is truly astonishing among all the hysteria and panic over Trump’s indictments and what it means for the 2024 presidential election is that there seems to be next to no interest in discovering why people still support Trump. For this to happen, people would need to step outside their political/tribal bubbles. Grand narratives would need to be erased and replaced with understanding and empathy.

Those who voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 and those who continue to support him may have reasons for their support that defy the grand narratives of illiberal liberals, like that it is primarily white supremacy, or it is a fear of the ‘browning of America’. If the journalists of outlets like Politico were to go out and ask Trump supporters, not to ‘own them’ for a ridiculous YouTube compilation, but to understand their anxieties and despair, then America, and collectively the West, could begin to understand the consequences of hyper-globalization and endless war.

The US is not alone in its shift to inverted totalitarianism. We in the rest of the West are not far behind. I have made this point a few times now in different essays, but I would like to elaborate on this a bit further, as for many, in nations like Canada and Australia, the notion that we would elect a demagogue like Trump is laughable. The illiberal liberal class is not only based in the US, and politicians like Justin Trudeau, Emmanuel Macron, and Jacinda Ardern are the embodiment of what they claim to oppose. They are arrogant authoritarians, under the illusion that they alone stand against fascism, and any move they make is to combat hate and the far right.

In France, the same income inequality that is rife in the US runs rampant. Once industrious areas that have been left deindustrialized were the targets of Marine Le Pen’s campaigns in 2017 and 2022. In the 2022 French presidential election she performed much better than she did in 2017, coming much closer to a Trump like upset. The weak dithering Macron, who, though younger, is a neoliberal shell like Biden, will eventually leave power and in his place, a demagogue like Marine Le Pen will likely pick up where she left off. Philippe Bernard writes after the elections, “How can we hope to divert working-class voters from voting for Le Pen when some people on the left spend most of their time and energy on polemics, annoying these very voters, stirring up anxiety and fears without proposing any solutions, and unnecessarily exacerbating divisions?”[xv] His question misses a key issue. That is that the ruling class has incorporated discourse and jargon from the left to present itself as oppositional to the far right, much like the Labor party in the UK and the Liberal party in Canada. Thus, there is no real left in many Western countries anymore, but more importantly, there are no real radicals or dissenters from establishment narratives. However, Bernard is right to point out that issues like political correctness and debates over gender neutral bathrooms, or in his terms, polemics, are annoying for voters who seek a political platform that will mend their economic insecurity and powerlessness. The same people who claim to fight on behalf of powerless minorities are fighting on behalf of the global oligarchy, not the working and lower middle classes.

In 2017, Édouard Louis wrote an op-ed for the New York Times that explained why his father votes for Marine Le Pen, and he argues that although a vote for Le Pen is “tinged with racism and homophobia”, for his father, elections were an opportunity to “fight his sense of invisibility.”[xvi] Louis writes that “My father understood, long before I did, that in the minds of the bourgeoisie — people like the publisher who would turn down my book a few years later — our existence didn’t count and wasn’t real.”[xvii] The book he is referring to is his novel inspired by his working-class upbringing, to which a major publisher in Paris rejected it, noting that the poverty Louis was describing hadn’t existed in France for a century. The feeling that the experiences and the people left behind by globalization are invisible is felt across the developed world. The invisibility that Louis is positing as the primary driver for his vote for Le Pen in France is the same invisibility that drives support for Trump in the Rust Belt and the Appalachians.

Louis writes of his father that, “Voting, for him, was a desperate attempt to exist in the eyes of others.”[xviii] For many in what was once the hub of industry in the US, voting for Trump was a desperate attempt to exist, to let Washington know that they exist. Trump’s promises of a coal comeback and a coming resurgence of manufacturing, all false, led people in despair to vote for him out of desperation. They wanted to believe Trump.

The feeling of powerlessness that Louis says his father has been worsened by the illiberal liberal class, who chastise voters and create doom narratives on what would befall France and the world if Le Pen were to win an election. People with no power are blamed, not the globalist elite or the transnational ruling class. Louis captures what must happen to fight the political rise of figures like Le Pen and Trump when he writes that “We have to fight for the powerless, for a language that gives a place to the most invisible people — people like my father.”[xix] To do this, we must work towards understanding and empathy for those who voted for figures like Trump and Le Pen, instead of seeing them as subhuman scum, unworthy of our care and incapable of seeing reason. Such logic is proof of what makes the illiberal liberal ruling class what it is, that they are what they claim their opposition is. They are Manichean in their view of politics, as for them, Trump supporters and those who support candidates they disapprove of are deserving of their suffering and torment. The self-proclaimed enlightened among us, people like Sam Harris and Malcom Gladwell, are as tribal and illiberal as those they claim to be resisting and fighting against.

As Louis writes of his father and his support for Le Pen, he finds her contemptible, but he understands her appeal to people like his father, who feel invisible in the aftermath of globalization. Louis says that he and his father barely speak, that they have grown far apart, and he writes “we are reduced to silence by the pain of having become strangers to each other.”[xx] Stories such as this are heartbreaking and are examples of what the illiberal liberal’s con job does to communities and families, to the forgotten people, the invisible, the losers of globalization. These people should not be seen as strangers, as many of them are the reason why the industrial world is where it is. Above all else, they are human, and thus, deserve at the very least our human empathy,

The illiberal liberal class foments divide and hostility over issues like racism and transphobia, and the far-right exploits this and posits itself as a contrast to this. This is an inevitable result of the illiberal liberal’s con job. The invisible either need to be made visible through understanding and compassion. Otherwise, they will make themselves visible through loathsome demagogues like Trump and Le Pen.

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[i] PBS News. “Trump Gives 1st Public Speech since Federal Indictment to Republicans in Georgia.” PBS NewsHour, June 10, 2023. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/at-gop-conventions-trump-to-give-1st-public-speeches-since-federal-indictment.

[ii] Wolin, Sheldon S. Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017.

[iii] Greenwald, Glenn. “Political Prosecution: Trump Indictment Upends Decades of Lax Classified Docs Precedent.” http://www.youtube.com, June 11, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxbDAF8jGV4&t=13s.

[iv] Slater, Tom. “The Anti-Trump Brigade Is a Menace to Democracy.” http://www.spiked-online.com, June 9, 2023. https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/06/09/the-anti-trump-brigade-is-a-menace-to-democracy/.

[v] Slater. “The Anti-Trump Brigade Is a Menace to Democracy.”

[vi] Sullivan, Andrew. “The Choice Trump Has Forced Us to Make.” The Weekly Dish, June 9, 2023. https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/the-choice-trump-has-forced-us-to?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email.

[vii] Sullivan. “The Choice Trump Has Forced Us to Make.”

[viii] O’Brien, Timothy L. “The Trump Indictment: No One Is above the Law.” Bloomberg.com, June 9, 2023. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-06-09/trump-indictment-republicans-must-choose-to-be-on-the-right-side-of-justice.

[ix] O’Brien. “The Trump Indictment: No One Is above the Law.”

[x] Huntington, Samuel P., Michel Crozier, and Joji Watanuki. The Crisis of Democracy: Report on the Governability of Democracies to the Trilateral Commission. New York University Press, 1975.

[xi] Dalton, Joseph. “Huntington Warns Breakdown due to Excessive Democracy | News | the Harvard Crimson.” http://www.thecrimson.com, March 24, 1976.

[xii] Faris, David. “Trump Deserves to Live out His Life in Prison. Here’s Why.” Newsweek, June 9, 2023. https://www.newsweek.com/trump-deserves-live-out-his-life-prison-heres-why-opinion-1805640.

[xiii] Faris. “Trump Deserves to Live out His Life in Prison. Here’s Why.”

[xiv] Vinocur, Nicholas. “Marine Le Pen Makes Globalization the Enemy.” POLITICO. POLITICO, February 5, 2017. https://www.politico.eu/article/marine-le-pen-globalization-campaign-launch-french-politics-news-lyon-islam/.

[xv] Bernard, Philippe. “‘How Can We Divert Working-Class Voters from Voting for Le Pen When the Left Is Annoying These Very Voters?’” Le Monde.fr, September 22, 2022. https://www.lemonde.fr/en/opinion/article/2022/09/22/how-can-we-divert-working-class-voters-from-voting-for-le-pen-when-the-left-is-busy-with-polemics_5997894_23.html.

[xvi] Louis, Édouard. “Opinion | Why My Father Votes for Le Pen.” The New York Times, May 4, 2017, sec. Opinion. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/04/opinion/sunday/why-my-father-votes-for-marine-le-pen.html.

[xvii] Louis. “Opinion | Why My Father Votes for Le Pen.”

[xviii] Louis. “Opinion | Why My Father Votes for Le Pen.”

[xix] Louis. “Opinion | Why My Father Votes for Le Pen.”

[xx] Louis. “Opinion | Why My Father Votes for Le Pen.”

References

Bernard, Philippe. “‘How Can We Divert Working-Class Voters from Voting for Le Pen When the Left Is Annoying These Very Voters?’” Le Monde.fr, September 22, 2022. https://www.lemonde.fr/en/opinion/article/2022/09/22/how-can-we-divert-working-class-voters-from-voting-for-le-pen-when-the-left-is-busy-with-polemics_5997894_23.html.

Dalton, Joseph. “Huntington Warns Breakdown due to Excessive Democracy | News | the Harvard Crimson.” http://www.thecrimson.com, March 24, 1976. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1976/3/24/huntington-warns-breakdown-due-to-excessive/?print=1.

Faris, David. “Trump Deserves to Live out His Life in Prison. Here’s Why.” Newsweek, June 9, 2023. https://www.newsweek.com/trump-deserves-live-out-his-life-prison-heres-why-opinion-1805640.

Greenwald, Glenn. “Political Prosecution: Trump Indictment Upends Decades of Lax Classified Docs Precedent.” http://www.youtube.com, June 11, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxbDAF8jGV4&t=13s.

Huntington, Samuel P., Michel Crozier, and Joji Watanuki. The Crisis of Democracy: Report on the Governability of Democracies to the Trilateral Commission. New York University Press, 1975.

Louis, Édouard. “Opinion | Why My Father Votes for Le Pen.” The New York Times, May 4, 2017, sec. Opinion. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/04/opinion/sunday/why-my-father-votes-for-marine-le-pen.html.

O’Brien, Timothy L. “The Trump Indictment: No One Is above the Law.” Bloomberg.com, June 9, 2023. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-06-09/trump-indictment-republicans-must-choose-to-be-on-the-right-side-of-justice.

PBS News. “Trump Gives 1st Public Speech since Federal Indictment to Republicans in Georgia.” PBS NewsHour, June 10, 2023. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/at-gop-conventions-trump-to-give-1st-public-speeches-since-federal-indictment.

Slater, Tom. “The Anti-Trump Brigade Is a Menace to Democracy.” http://www.spiked-online.com, June 9, 2023. https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/06/09/the-anti-trump-brigade-is-a-menace-to-democracy/.

Sullivan, Andrew. “The Choice Trump Has Forced Us to Make.” The Weekly Dish, June 9, 2023. https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/the-choice-trump-has-forced-us-to?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email.

Vinocur, Nicholas. “Marine Le Pen Makes Globalization the Enemy.” POLITICO. POLITICO, February 5, 2017. https://www.politico.eu/article/marine-le-pen-globalization-campaign-launch-french-politics-news-lyon-islam/.

Wolin, Sheldon S. Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017.