What is This Beast?
Knowing how to respond effectively to the political situation we find ourselves in now requires clearly understanding the kind of beast we are dealing with. Underestimating or misconstruing the forces at work will be counterproductive.
During Trump 1.0, it was possible to hope this was an aberration, a very unlucky convergence of factors that led to the election of a stupid, megalomaniacal thug. That was true. His re-election also involved further misfortune, especially Joe Biden’s stubborn hubris. But all that happened within a much larger context, the outlines of which are becoming clearer now in Trump 2.0.
The situation is not just about a disgraceful and destructive president. Developments suggest we are living through the end of a world-historic era and the transition into an unknown new order. The international political, security, and trade institutions and relations established after World War II—which, as flawed and problematic as they were, did provide some measure of stability—are now being attacked and undermined. Everyone alive today came to take them for granted. We now see that that assumed permanence was an illusion.
Taking the lead in wrecking the inherited world order are an international group of new-style political despots who flout established norms and rules. Trump is only one of them. John Keane’s The New Despotism, I think, best describes these ascendant regimes.
Keane’s key insight is that the means by which today’s anti-democratic authoritarian leaders rule has evolved from that of the old tyrants to fit conditions in our new world. The old totalitarians—Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pinochet, Trujillo deployed overt terror, violence, lawlessness, mass mobilization, and total ideologies to control their populations and impose power. Today’s new despots have adapted to digital technologies, neoliberal capitalism, and networked mass media. They resort to violence, when necessary, but that is not their preferred style.
The new despots instead create “phantom democracies” through the sophisticated manipulation of online platforms, high-tech surveillance, patronage, electoral intimidation, media manipulation, selective “legal” prosecution of rivals, personality cults, and the cooptation of business interests. This blends authoritarian power with pseudo-democratic, market-driven methods of control.
Where old despots relied on iron-fisted strength to keep power (while democratic politicians view public perceptions of consistency and honesty as assets), the new despots intentionally deploy incessant lies, policy confusion, personnel disruptions, and public gaslighting to diffuse opposition. Middle-class populations are not terrorized into submission but mostly cooperate in voluntary, complicit servitude, preferring order over the instabilities of open, liberal democratic systems. The upper class, lacking moral scruples, is controlled by the new despots through economic patronage. Rather than obliterating democracy through totalitarianism, the new despotism preserves an illusion of democracy, which the majority accept, sometimes enthusiastically.
This new despotic gameplan has won durable political power for many authoritarians around the world. Each deploys their own distinctive version: Putin, Xi, Orbán, Erdoğan, Al Saud, Al Nahyan, and others customize the gameplan for their situations. So does Trump, who leans especially heavily on shameless lies, sadistic humiliations, and policy chaos to dumbfound, destabilize, and immobilize rational opposition. No need to provide a reasonable justification for anything when everyone else’s mind is spinning, sense of reality unhinged, and outrage exhausted.
The point for present purposes is this: insofar as the methods of the new despots have adapted to the present digital-techno-capitalist order, so too will any effective resistance and opposition need to adapt. The “No Kings” protests are important—I have found them personally very uplifting to join. But the term “king” can suggest that we are dealing with an old-style tyrant here. Far from it.
A second importantly instructive analysis of our current political situation in the U.S. is Laura Fields’ Furious Minds: The Making of the Maga New Right. We know that Trump is not a thinker—any ideas that drive his politics are simplistic: anti-immigrant, anti-tariffs, (selective) anti-internationalism, America first. For him, it’s mostly about ego. But Trump is the mere tip of an iceberg of new right-wing ideologies and activists that have deeper ideas and more complex histories and alliances.
After this term expires, Trump will (hopefully) go. But the movement he emboldened and that propelled him to power again will endure and possibly grow stronger. It does no good to flippant dismiss the new right as stupid, mindless, and crass. Fields’ book shows why. Her analysis is learned, fair, and penetrating. I will not summarize its illuminating exposition of what is behind and will succeed Trump. But it is a must-read.
My purpose here is not to offer adequate responses to the anti-democratic forces at work today, much less solutions, strategies, and tactics. My point is simply that, whatever responses oppositional communities of faith develop, they need to be well informed about the nature of the beast they are up against. Projecting old struggles, blueprints, and methods onto novel realities would be a huge mistake. It is worth spending the effort to learn the distinct character of today’s particular pathologies. Keane and Fields are, for those who have not already read them, excellent places to start.