What Do Fanatical Movements Do After Democracy Rejects Them? They Double Down on Violence
Dec 8
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It’s been a terrible few weeks for the former President of the United States, the Orange Buffoon. So many hammer blows have hit him, it’s hard to keep track. His “organization” — what is this, a mafia? — was found guilty of fraud. The Jan 6th Committee’sgoing to issue criminal referrals. He wasovertaken in the polls by Ron DeSantis, a man who has all the charm of Satan selling you a Tesla. And that’s after — andbecause— he bombed in the midterms, his slate of candidates beingroundly rejected by Americans, his reannoucement bid being met withyawns of indifferenceand scathing laughter.
So. Where does Trumpism go from here? The answer to that question’s simple, and it’s grim, revealing, and will define a great deal about America, and the world, going forward. Now?Now Trumpism becomes terrorism.
I touched on this brieflya week or two back, and as if right on cue…well…you can actually nowsee it happening.In North Carolina, a power substation was shot up,depriving thousands of electricity. Allegedly, apparently, that’s the work of the far right, whowanted to block an LGBTQ event. The police and FBI haven’t verified, but honestly, let’s just be real: it’s not exactly the kind of vandalism teens do for fun, and hillbillies don’t exactly shoot up power stations for target practice. This was a deliberate act of…terror.
Aimed at one of Trumpism’s prime targets, of course. I’ll come back to that shortly. First, let’s discuss the context.
Where does Trumpism go from here? Well, politically, it’s dead. It’s toxic. Just likeeverything the far right touches, Trumpism died an ignoble death.And the way it died is remarkable, too. Americans didn’t just question it at the midterms — they rejected it in sweeping terms. Trumpism died just as it was born — from the bottom up. DC insiders didn’t expect the average American to turn away from Trumpism, and neither did pundits. Americans did that by, and for, themselves.
Why? When they write the history books, the story will probably go like this. When Trumpism arrived, it was something new and fascinating. For the first time, there was a figure from outside the political establishment, who sympathized with — and spoke for — America’s underclass. That means what remained of its once proud working and middle class — because by 2010 or so, the middle class was a minority, and most Americans lived on acarousel of unpayable debt. When the music stopped — they were out in the cold. Hardly surprising then, that most American deeplydistrust political institutions. Trump arrived to prey on this distrust — and began to scapegoat minorities.
For a time, Americans believed him, even if many of them did so hesitantly. This was a new proposition — or at least new in contemporary history, at any rate. It was those bad people who’d caused the fortunes of the middle and working class to implode. Who were they?
You see, as Trump rose to power, now he had todeliver.Deliver what? Deliver some semblance of the dream again. Prosperity, of the post-war kind. It was never going to happen, because of course blaming scapegoats for the woes of the rest isn’t a solution to much of anything — it’s just a tactic to gain power, employed by history’s worst narcissists. And so the circle of scapegoating grew and grew, because when blaming one group didn’t work, soon enough, another had to be found. So America’s scapegoats went from Mexicans to Latinos to their families to their children, to immigrants in general, and then way, way beyond that. Now “real” Americans were on the list, too. The LGBTQ, women, kids of all kinds.
Reading that book? Banned. Think you might be a little different? We’re going to investigate your whole family. You’re a what..a woman? Sorry, you don’t deserve rights. Gay? Oh, you mean you’re a “groomer.” A red line was being crossed now. Trumpism was going after everyone. And it was becoming plainer and plainer to see justwhy. The scapegoating wasn’t doing anything — nothing — to restore the prosperity of the average Joe. And after a while, he or she began to ask: is it really OK to…just hate…all these people? Is itsolvinganything?
And then Jan 6th happened. And this, too, was a self-inflicted disaster for Trumpism.To that point, many people who’d believed Trump’s speeches and his fiery rhetoric might have dismissed it — and often did — as “just” that. Hey, he’s just a passionate guy. He has no filter. He says whatever’s on his mind, and I like it. He doesn’tmeanit, though. He’s not actually going to go out there and…wait, what? He did what? He led a coup attempt on Congress? Where fascist paramilitaries stormed it? And spilled blood in those hallowed halls.
Jesus. Maybe I was wrong. That’s what a lot of American appear to have thought, because after Jan 6th, the tide began to turn decisively against Trumpism. Now, many former true believers appeared to feel something Trump couldn’t. Two things, to be precise: shame, and remorse. I’ve made a mistake. This is going too far. I’m not actually in favor ofanyof this. I think that it’s totally OK for gay people to exist and be married and I think my wife and kids and daughters should have rights and kids of all kinds should be able to read books and whatnot. This is…this is way, waytoo much. I thought he was just being a firebrand — I didn’t think he wasactuallya violent lunatic. And now that I see he is one, well, I’m rethinking my commitment to this whole ugly project. Do I want to be like that guy, the Orange Buffoon? Someone hateful and violent and ignorant? No way.
Trumpism began to die this way.You could see that even the Big Lies keeping it alive at that stage weren’t really whole-heartedlybelievedin anymore. People who were once keepers of the Trumpist flame would recite them, sure — the election was stolen!! Fraud!! And so forth — but in their eyes, you could see that the spark had gone. They were saying it to fit in now, not because they really had faith in it anymore.
And then along came the series of official hammer blows that began to deconstruct Trumpism. Justice was slow to arrive, to be sure, but when it did, it was brutal.Ringleaders of Jan 6th were tried forsedition— an incredibly serious crime. And the Jan 6th Commission made it meticulously, painstakingly clear to every American what had really happened on Jan 6th. Far from being some kind of rally gone wrong, it was a planned, coordinated, “sophisticated multi-part plan”…to destroy democracy. A classic pattern of soft coup becoming hard coup. That kind of thing sinks into a nation’s collective consciousness. It alters the way that people see history. Norms and moral structures begin to change. So do relationships and ways of thinking. Something that big? An attack on democracy itself? You can pretend to ignore it, but nobody really does. And this thought — it really was an attack on democracy — began to haunt even the everyday Trumpists now, and they seemed to feel the shame and regret Trump couldn’t. And so by the midterms, it was a blowout — Americans turned their back on Trumpism, in a remarkable accomplishment for any democracy, sending it to history’s dustbin.
That brings us to now. What’s left of Trumpism now is a kind of shell.At its top is the GOP, which is still captive to Trump, even though it doesn’t want to be, because he’s cost it three elections and counting. They don’t have much of an alternative at the moment, though, because they’re weak and afraid, which is the kinds of people Trump elevated to begin with, for precisely this reason.And its base is left the last few true believers. They’re hardened, committed, fanatics. The kinds of people for whom violence and brutality and hate aren’t a cause for shame and regret — butthe point.
And in between this, the top and bottom of the shell, is a Great Exodus — the average American who once believed in this outsiders’ movement, against their better judgment, perhaps, fleeing as fast as they can, back to everyday politics in America. I’ll have a little bit of economic conservatism, and a little social liberalism, please, one scoop of each, and don’t overfill the cup on either side. And most of them feel good being back in that place, because it’s, well, sane. Calm. Pleasant. Peaceful. It doesn’t require spending hours a day exhausting yourself by hating some poor innocent person, and then crowing about it to your friends, and everyone has pretend they’re not secretly feeling ashamed of being that kind of person.
Now. This shell is beginning a kind of vicious cycle, if I can mix metaphors a bit. What tends to happen in situations like this goes like this. A fanatical movement is rejected by the mainstream. What was once a silent majority roars. No more. We’ve had enough. We’re going back to normality, thank you very much — no more Big Lies, no more fake slates of electors, no more plots, and definitely no more coups, hate, violence, bigotry. Everyone lives in peace, and we try to better each others’ lot.That’s how this country works.
But the Trumpists — what’s left of them, in the shell — don’t believe that. And so having been politically exiled from the mainstream, never to have power like they once had again, they have just once choice left. They know that the mainstream days are over now. That game is finished. They can’t win their objective democratically — consensually, even if that narrow definition of “consent” involves tricking people with Big Lies and scapegoats and so forth. And so they are going to useforce.
Remember, the true believers left inside the shell of Trumpism at this point are mini-Trumps.They’re incapable of feeling guilt and shame. For them, violence and brutality are righteous, justified, noble, and glorious. You know the type — the kind of sad, lonely guy who goes onto become a member of a “paramilitary” or some such group, whose members are also all sad, lonely guys, and together, they sit around and imagine that they’re on some noble, glorious crusade to save their whole race or nation or what have you. Suddenly, the sad, lonely loser is ahero. At least in his own mind. It’s a powerful drug. Radicalization works this way — a noble purpose is found, by which an imagined existential threat is pre-empted, in order to save the persecuted master race or religion or what have you.
The Trumpists left inside the shell haven’t changed one bit. The average American, remarkably, has.Just a few years ago, there they were, at least many of them, cheering along as Trump made bigoted attacks on women, the LGBTQ, immigrants, minorities. Today? They’re not doing that. If anything, they’re beginning todefend those very groupsfrom encroachment by Trumpist institutions, like the Supreme Court. That’s a remarkable — a momentous — shift in social attitudes. Americans arechanging. You can literally see it happening before your eyes if you watch — I do, in everyday conversations at the cafe or on the street.
The average American is changing because like normal people of all kinds, they’re capable of feeling guilt and remorse and shame. And many of them feel that — or at least appear to — for Trumpism’s excesses. Hence, the punishment in the midterms, and the furious defense of women’s rights around the country, and the widespread derision of the Supreme Court. But the Trumpistsinsidethe shell are different. They’re the dregs. The ones whose minds are broken or were basically lunatics to begin with or have locked out any return to being a normal human being.
If you think I’m kidding or exaggerating, go ahead and take a look at who’s left that proudly supports Trump.Not many people — and those who are are almost all off the charts fanatics. Guys like publishers of Neo Nazi magazines and heads of aforementioned paramilitaries, hate groups, billionaires who think hate is perfectly cool. These are all people who are out there still attacking Trumpism’s old targets.
Where it all goes from here is obvious, creepy, disturbing — and yet, in a sense, perhaps the best possible scenario, too. Trumpism’s been reduced to a shell of fanatical true believers. These guysreallybelieve in violence. Let me say it again, differently. These guys reallybelievein violence. For them, it’s always been perfectly justified. So democratic politics didn’t work? So what? These are the guys who never believed much in itanyways.
So from here, there’ll probably be something very much like the classic escalation a fanatical movement mounts when it finds itself thwarted by democracy. It begins to target the fundamental institutions and critical infrastructure of a peaceful society.Things like power stations. Or schools. Or nightclubs where minorities congregate. The point of all these things is to terrorize. To intimidate. To say to society at large, “you thought you were done with us? Think again. We won’t take no for an answer. We will not allow these kinds of freedoms to exist.”
Freedoms like what? Well, it should be obvious. Gay people shouldn’t exist, women shouldn’t have bodily autonomy, kids shouldn’t be able to read books unless they’re on a pre-approved list, religion should guide the state, and life should be an exercise in moral piety crossed with maniacal dedication to the “master race,” because that’s how salvation is to be achieved, both in this life and the next. Freedom? Doesn’t matter. Just an impediment to more important things, like salvation and domination and power and control.
Wherever and whenever these freedoms are exercised, the Trumpists will probably mount attacks of various kinds. To understand this very simply, just think about the Islamic world. You might not know it, but places like Kabul were onceliberalandlearned. Women went to university in jeans, and you could buy a beer at the bar. What happened? What happened is that the fanatics started targeting exactly the institutions that enacted the freedoms they hated — they’d bomb schools, attack universities, torch nightclubs, and so forth. And pretty soon, people grew afraid of going to such places. Bang.That’s how you rip a society apart.
I’m not saying that Americans willreactthe same way. They won’t. But the Trumpists are likely to do what every fanatical movement which finds it can’t win democratically does — it’ll violently attack the freedoms it hates wherever they’re enacted most.
And so America’s in for something very much like a guerrilla terror campaign, by the far right, on steroids.Think of the substation being shot up and thousands losing power — right after a massacre at a gay club — as not just the pattern, but the pattern ofescalation.
Now. Americans are likely to react to that withdisgust. Revulsion. And anger. They already are, after all. It’s not going to lure them back to Trumpism, more violence, because January 6th is what began the process of alenation in the first place for many. And so a vicious spiral is likely to set in: the more the Trumpists terrorize society, the more society will react in revulsion and disgust, instead of being won over, the more Trumpism will shrink and faster, leaving an ever more hardened and dwindling base of fanatics who are increasingly desperate, simmering with rage, and ready to do evenmoreviolence.
That’s a classic pattern, too — it’s how fanatical movements can burn out.Society rejects them, and they can’t handle it, so they flame out in a widening gyres of extremism and violence, until, at last, there’s nobody but the handful of absolute lunatics left — the martyrs and their handlers, really. This is where Trumpism’s headed.
Is that bad news for America? Sure it is. But it’s not theworstnews. The worst news would be if America hadn’t rejected Trumpism, because then, these very luantics — the ones who are now shooting up substations and nightclubs — these kinds of violent, bigoted fanatics would be literally stalking the halls of power. That would have been a far, far worse outcome.
Still, America going to have brace itself now.The last few weeks have been a visceral example. It’s not a prediction — it’s happening right before your eyes. Where does Trumpism go from here? It becomes terrorism.
UmairDecember 2022
