The conditions for tyranny

Ben Wildsmith

I was planning to write about America today. President Biden’s descent into puzzlement is a Shakespearian narrative that will touch us all in some way.

We’re experiencing it as a human tragedy, familiar to many of us who have struggled as family members sank into cognitive decline, but also as a public catastrophe, with stewardship of a military superpower teetering on the brink of incompetence.

There’s more than enough to chew on there, I thought, before opening Twitter/X this morning to find that ‘Civil War’ was the top trending topic.

The language of history lessons is increasingly being applied to current affairs. It is jarring to read news stories that speak of insurrections, and fascism, and pogroms.

For decades these words spoke either of the past or to the frothing discontent of people on the far fringes of the political conversation.

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Ugly solutions

Now, in a global situation too complex to comprehend, old and ugly solutions are being repackaged as if trying to fix your laptop with a hammer will turn it into a steam engine.

Awash in a deluge of contradictory, often fabricated, information we have been herded into camps that hold up totems of the past to project authenticity and inspire loyalty.

Here, Labour will sell you a Nye Bevan tea towel whilst deciding how much of the NHS to privatise whilst Boris Johnson invoked Churchill despite palling around with a KGB officer.

In America, much was made of Donald Trump having a portrait of Andrew Jackson in the Oval Office. Jackson is the pin-up of the ‘peasants’ revolt’ strand of US politics.

In this fairytale, the people are sovereign over entrenched elites, whose governance is condemned as self-serving and derived from European corruption. It is fiercely nativist but paradoxically hostile to aboriginal people.

Jackson’s rhetoric against First Americans led to the Trail of Tears and is echoed in Trump’s remarks about Mexican immigrants. In style, it’s folksy, simplistic and bombastic as the situation demands.

It’s appeal to Americans is such that half the nation is willing to believe that a man born into privilege, who lives in a gold tower on Fifth Avenue is somehow a conduit for their grievances.

Pegs

Make America Great Again, along with Take Back Control, and Stop the Boats are pegs upon which people can hang their feelings. People feel got-at, controlled, and diminished by societies that are changing at a rate that leaves no time for reflection or to consider what’s being lost along the way.

A more honest slogan would be ‘Make It Stop’.

As wealth continues to be hoovered up from communities into the offshore accounts of billionaires, blame becomes valuable political currency. Trump, Farage, Le Pen, Orban and the rest have a simple job which is to direct our eyes away from the flow of money outwards and towards the flow of people in.

At the time of writing, there’s no authoritative word on why Donald Trump was shot last night. It doesn’t matter.

Within minutes of the incident, you could follow strands of opinion that led to a Deep State assassination attempt on one hand, or staged fakery on the other.

The all-pervasive confusion of the internet era will offer you a personalised truth dependent on what you’re inclined to click on.

Imagery

What does matter is the imagery. As a blood-stained Trump got to his feet and raised his fist in defiance, he was backed by the US flag and huddled by a group of servicemen. It recalled the iconic, and staged image from Iwo Jima that has stood as a totem of American resolve for 80 years.

If you interrogate patriotism of any sort, you’ll find manipulation and, frequently, outright lies. We already feel something for our nations, if someone is telling us to then they have an agenda.

At Mar-a-Lago, Trump has a team of people planning the agenda for his second term. They are reportedly considering mass deportations, using federal troops to go after migrants, prosecuting Biden, pardoning participants in the January 6th Capitol insurrection, and wholescale replacement of the civil service with political supporters.

Mythology

Last night’s event will dominate the mythology of Trump’s campaign and potential second term.

Trump will be elevated from his position as an avatar of his supporters’ concerns, having been sanctified in blood.

With a partisan Civil Service and immunity from prosecution already granted by the Supreme Court, removing him in 2028 may take more than an election, presuming there is one.

Why Thomas Matthew Crooks caused a trickle of blood to run from Trump’s ear last night will be contested forever.

Whether it’s allowed to swell the Potomac rests with the uncertain capabilities of his frail successor on Pennsylvania Avenue. The world watches.