The Authoritarian Radicalization of Trumpist America
Trumpists Made Red States Failing States. Now They Want to Do the Same to The Rest of America
If you haven’t seen this bizarre, nightmarish video by now, you should. At a local school board meeting in Tennessee, parents who wanted masks worn in schools — what few there were — were violently shouted down by parents who were opposed to kids wearing masks. The anti-maskers — Red State Trumpists — were literally apoplectic with rage, screaming at the top of their lungs, so much their voices had gone hoarse, shaking fists, punching the air, needing to be restrained. “We know who you are!!” they shouted.
Imagine facing a mob like that — literally baying for your blood. Fellow parents at your kids school. All because you wanted the kids to be safe. That’s America in 2021.
Alan: The political violence in the United States is almost entirely on the right side of the aisle.
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All this raises a number of question in the minds of sane, thoughtful people. What kinds of parents don’t want their kids to wear masks? And why does the issue of mask-wearing trigger such disproportionate, violent rage in Trumpists? It seems baffling, bewildering. What happened to these people?
What’s happening is that Trumpist America’s getting radicalized. This might not be news to you — still, I wonder if the average sane American really knows what it means. It’s a word thrown around all too casually — “radicalization.” Americans take it for granted now that their neighbours and colleagues — right down to fellow parents at the neighbourhood school — might indeed have been radicalized. It doesn’t have the sinister air of extreme danger it should. So let me try and shed a little light on the issue of radicalization.
Why does the issue of kids wearing masks in school trigger a kind of insane, manic rage in Trumpists? The first thing you might note is that the rage is completely disproportionate. Masks don’t hurt kids — they protect them. Wearing a mask isn’t a big deal — if it was, Asia wouldn’t be doing it long before Covid. So what exactly is going on here? (Alan: Would any anti-masker tell his surgeon to "forget the mask" before removing a brain tumor?)
What’s happening is the confluence of several things. Trumpist Americans have been radicalised into a certain set of beliefs.
The strong should prevail over the weak, and the weak deserve to perish. The strong prove their strength by dominating and subjugating the weak. Any concession to human vulnerability is weakness, and weakness rightly equals death. In Trumpist language, this is being a “loser” or a “sissy” or what have you.
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This is an essentially fascist belief system. It’s Nietzsche for dummies. Nietzsche, proclaiming God dead, went on to argue that the only point of life was exerting one’s “will to power,” gaining power, of a certain kind — a “master morality,” which was opposed to a “slave morality.” The “master,” the ubermensch, was the one who could dominate anyone else, and therefore, he was the moral one, the one under whom everything — and everyone else — was inferior. Power was the purpose of life, and using it to abuse others was the expression of one’s purity and faith and goodness, in a bizarrely perverse twist of thinking.
Alan: By believing that God is always on their side -- and that they are always on God's side -- Trump Cult Christians identify God's will with their personal will, believing this identification imbues them with the infallible ability to pontificate by "divine ordination." In effect, Trump Cult Christians mistake their own radical subjectivity for divine objectivity. And the gates of Hell swing wide.
Alan: Republican presidential candidate, Pat Buchanan, the living American who has served longest as a White House senior staff adviser, observed: “The Republican philosophy might be summarized thus: To hell with principle; what matters is power, and that we have it, and that they do not.” “Where the Right Went Wrong"
and where power predominates, love is lacking.
The one is the shadow of the other."
Carl Jung
Naturally, the Nazis picked up on this wonderfully foolish set of ideas. They declared themselves the ubermensch, the chosen ones, and set about dominating, abusing, and subjugating the weak, which meant anyone different in society. Tied into this set of ideas about purity was a related set of ideas about genetic superiority. You couldn’t really get ill if you were one of the chosen ones after all — you were supposed to be “uber” -- "above” and beyond mundane human concerns. (Alan: Notably, "the chosen ones" were always "white Aryans.") You were strong to the point of being superhuman. Illness was a sign of bad blood, bad hygeine, a lack of virtue, which was in the genes.
Not in a virus.
That is precisely where Trumpist America finds itself today. It has subscribed to more or less exactly as the same Nazi ideology of the 1930s. Think about the central idea: I’m one of the chosen ones, therefore I’m strong to the point of being superhuman. Illness is a personal defect, a product of defective blood. It’s something that happens to the weak, who deserve it.
Therefore, you’d better not make my kid wear a mask. It goes against literally everything I believe in. (Alan: The presumption that belief is knowledge is quite likely the crux of evil. By it's nature, "belief is belief" - not knowledge.) My kid isn’t one of the dirty, filthy, vulnerable subhumans. And even if he gets sick — it’s a righteous test of his or her faith and strength. Mask-wearing is for “sissies,” “wimps,” “losers” — subhumans, not people of pure blood and absolute faith, like me and my kids. And if you make them wear masks, then you might make them turn into those kinds of people. You might sap their strength. They might not be superhuman chosen people anymore.
It’s fascism 101. You can see the elements of racism and bigotry in it, too, and you don’t have to look very hard. Covid’s a disease for those dirty, filthy others — in poor countries, and minorities in America, who’ve been especially badly hit. Us? If a few of our kids die, well, so be it. More of theirs will.
Like I said — Fascism 101. All that should begin to answer the question — why are these Trumpist idiots so rabidly opposed to kids wearing masks in schools? It’s a question with a surprisingly deep and nuanced answer, albeit one which can be summed up in one sentence. They’re being radicalised into fascism.
I’ve chosen that example because it’s such a psychologically disturbing one — who thinks wearing masks during a pandemic is a bad thing, a burden, a big deal? You’ve got to be wrong in the head in some profound way. But there are plenty more examples.
If you need them restated, here are a few. The average Trumpist believes the election was “stolen.” They believe that Jan 6th was some kind of tourist jaunt — and if it was indeed a coup, it was justified. They believe in further violence, if democracy doesn’t consent to their demands for a fascist society, which is authoritarianism, by the way. They believe that society should only be ordered one way, and every form of thought and action and even blood and faith should be controlled, monitored and purified — that’s totalitarianism.
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What’s the common thread in that last paragraph? It’s not just that these things are regressive, anti-modern, dangerous, or backwards — though they are. It’s the word “belief.” That is what radicalisation is really about.
The modern person, at least, doesn’t really live that much of their life according to beliefs. The modern person lives according to facts. That’s because beliefs are very dangerous things.
Let me give you a few examples. We don’t educate our kids because we “believe” it’s the right thing to do — we know it’s the smart, just and fair thing to do. Every educated kid is a boon to themselves and the world around them. We invest in public goods — healthcare, education, transport, media, retirement — at least in wise societies like Canada and Europe — not because we “believe” it’s right. But because we know it’s fair, intelligent, and beneficial to all — we know that it vastly improves the quality of life for all of us.
In other words, modern life hinges on a little thing called knowledge. Now, sometimes, that knowledge arrives late — like in the case of climate change, where, unsettlingly, the planet is heating much, much faster than even the worst case predictions. (Alan: The first prediction of global warming due to greenhouse gases dates back to Swedish chemist, Arhennius, in 1896.) But even predictions are a form of knowledge — they’re not just beliefs, but grounded in reason, logic, data, evidence.
Beliefs are fundamentally different. One of the great problems in American life is that beliefs and facts are placed on pedestals of equivalent height. If someone wants to live their life according to their “beliefs,” we’re told, that’s fine.
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And it is — but only to an extent. Because no man or woman is an island. Your beliefs are inevitably going to affect me in some way. If you don’t “believe” in educating your kid properly, well, enough kids like that are going to end up ruining my society, too. Worse, if you “believe” that education consists of teaching your kid things you also “believe” like minorities and gays are going to hell, women are things to be subjugated, animals don’t have souls, abuse is justified, and so on — then how are we going to live together in a modern society at all?
I’ve raised that dynamic because it’s exactly how societies die.
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Where else in the world do you see this process of radicalisation happening? Afghanistan. There, too, people “believe” that women should wear veils and not be educated and never be seen in public and art is bad and you shouldn’t take vaccines and masks are signs of weakness. They teach their kids all that. Their kids become the Taliban, and the idea of living in modern society goes out the window. The violent men with guns who believe their way is the best way, the only righteous and pious and true way, arrive, and violently subjugate and abuse the rest.
Remember Nietzsche, purity, will, “masters,” and “slaves”? Now do you see (the nature of) radicalisation?
Let me connect all those dots.
Radicalization is best thought of as a regression to pre-modern forms of life. Medieval forms of social and political order, culture, norms, values, relationships, behaviour thinking. It’s the replacement of forms of life based on knowledge, with those based on beliefs. Beliefs are things we hope to be true. Facts, which make up knowledge, are things which we know to be true — crucially, even if we don’t want them to be.
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Alan: I will add that "True Believers" must contradict unwanted knowledge because it's the only way to remain "True Believers." Admit an "unwanted Truth" and Humpty Faithful falls from his wall. Several years ago, I backed a "true believer" into an inescapable corner, and after a brief pause, tossed my documented argument by saying: "I don't believe that."
So beliefs and knowledge aren’t nearly the same thing. Knowledge might not be purely objective, but it isn’t nearly as subjective as beliefs.
Beliefs are things which can be manipulated by demagogues. They run rampant through societies like viruses of stupidity, folly and hatred. Spread as forms of collective delusion and mania through mobs. Like the one threatening their fellow parents in Kentucky.
Please don’t imagine that I’m putting “knowledge” on an impregnable pedestal. It too should be questioned and debated and challenged and rethought. Indeed, that’s the point of knowledge, at least when the idea of it is well understood. Knowledge is never infallible — that’s the point of it. Beliefs, though, are made to be infallible, which is why they’re such dangerous things.
Let me make one final point.
So who’s radicalising Trumpist America? Well, obviously, Trump is. And obviously, too, the hateful beliefs which still gird the rage of Red States are leftovers of a racism and bigotry, a backwards way of life, which never really went much of anywhere. But there’s a third party, probably, too.
Alan: Hatred's apogee is reached in the self-righteous, self-satisfied and often smiling-if-not-giddy infliction of cruelty.
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Who put Trump in the White House — to literally fulfil a mission of “social turmoil” through radicalization? Who designed “mind viruses” to infect America and radicalise it, elevating Trump to power, disinformation and misinfo campaigns on Facebook and so forth? Russia did. That much we know. Do you think Russia just…stopped? Probably not. The likelihood is there are still plenty of psy-ops at work radicalising Trumpist America — Facebook campaigns, microtargeted ads, Fox News hosts like Tucker Carlson who now openly pal around with Putin’s cronies like Orban. You don’t have to look very hard to see Russia’s hand at work in the ongoing radicalisation of Trumpist America. After all — who benefits most?
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In a larger sense though, the who doesn’t matter. And Russia’s just playing its own game, very very smartly. Only the outcome matters.
That outcome is this.
America’s closest parallel right now isn’t other modern societies like Canada and Europe. Those societies do have their radicalised elements. But by and large, they’re at the fringes, well away from majoritarian power. They don’t have the capability to plunge entire states like Florida and Texas into chaos. Their extremists and fanatics are kept in check by healthy institutions. America’s very, very different. Its closest parallel right now is a place like Afghanistan. Places where the fanatical elements of society aren’t kept in check — but have the ability to push everything and everyone else to the breaking point. Through intimidation, harassment, outright violence. Because, well, they believe flatly crazy things. (Emphasis mine.)
The radicalization of Trumpist America has made it a failed state. It’s a place where Red States are now Plague Belts — full of mobs of parents who violently abuse other parents for wanting kids to wear masks. But that radicalisation isn’t going anywhere. It’s getting worse, not better. And that is an ill augury for the future, my friend.
Umair
August 2021
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Emails will be sent to alanarchibaldo@gmail.com.
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