Everyone has their reasons
Jan-Werner Müller
In the run-up to Trump 2.0, the speed with which former opponents of the once and future president are adapting to his re-election and displaying anticipatory obedience has been greater than anyone could have, well, anticipated. Prominent examples include Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and congressional Democrats who seem to think that performing bipartisanship by loudly declaring their willingness to work with Trump might somehow be rewarded. But nobody likes to think of themselves as an opportunist; everyone wants to tell themselves (and the world) a story to justify their change of tune. As a character remarks in Jean Renoir’s movie La Règle du jeu – among other things, a profound study of the moral collapse of the French Third Republic – ‘there is something appalling on this earth, which is that everyone has their reasons.’
There are different types of reason for capitulating to Trump, and an excellent guide to the typology is the historian Niall Ferguson. As Pankaj Mishra pointed out many years ago, anyone who wants to understand which way the wind is blowing will find Ferguson’s output, both quick and enormous, very instructive. In 2021, Ferguson described Trump as a ‘demagogue and would-be tyrant’. Last month he was dancing to ‘YMCA’ at Mar-a-Lago. A recent interview with the Times gives some insight into how Ferguson and others have learned to stop worrying and love the Donald.
The storming of the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 is the biggest obstacle to any conversion to a pro-Trump position. Consequently, 6 January cannot have been what it seemed to be at the time (and was later confirmed to have been by Jack Smith’s report for the Justice Department). It was apparently not an insurrection aimed at keeping Trump in power; rather, according to Ferguson, ‘we were all treated to a theatrical event with an amateur cast that really one would be stretching the English language to call a coup or even an attempted coup.’ The relatives of those who died as a result of 6 January might take exception to the word ‘theatrical’; and history shows that amateur action can have serious consequences. The main argument, however, is a well-known GOP talking point: because, in the end, there was a transfer of power, all the efforts to steal the election, even the most violent, can be forgotten or trivialised.
‘With the passage of time,’ Ferguson says, ‘one realises that the episode really belongs, along with the George Floyd riots, in a chapter called the Madness of the Pandemic. The lockdowns created an atmosphere of near collective madness. Things were pretty crazy on both sides.’ Ah, ‘both sides’. In one stroke, the insurrection is explained by an irrational Zeitgeist – everyone was doing it! – and the millions who went out on Black Lives Matter demonstrations are treated as pathological cases: you see, everyone – far left, far right – was stir-crazy after such long confinement.
At the time, Ferguson called 6 January a ‘coup, putsch, autogolpe’. But now he looks back on it as a ‘combination of a genuine belief on [Trump’s] part that the election was stolen and a catastrophic failure of policing that doesn’t look entirely accidental’. Never mind that Trump’s own people – from his attorney general, Bill Barr, downwards – were telling him there was no evidence of voter fraud. What matters is that his belief to the contrary, however baseless, was ‘genuine’. Only the police, not the Trumpists, had agency. And there may have been something else going on ‘that doesn’t look entirely accidental’ (a deniable wink to those who suspect the ‘theatrical event’ might have had directors behind the scenes).
Pleading the genius exception in modern democracies is at least as old as Napoleon. Ferguson isn’t economical in his praise for Trump (‘What doesn’t kill him, makes him stronger’), but the greatest garlands are bestowed on Elon Musk, ‘the great colossal figure of our times … Elon’s ability to see not just around corners, but around galaxies, is truly dumbfounding.’ If someone can see around galaxies, it’s only fair that they should also see into all institutions of the state, in the name of achieving more ‘government efficiency’ – without petty concerns about conflicts of interest or old-fashioned worries about the accountability of unelected actors (‘unelected bureaucrats’ are a problem; unelected entrepreneurs are genius).
As Musk well knows, ‘free speech’ justifies everything, including taking free speech away from other people. Zuckerberg, in his genuflection speech, said he’s going to ‘get rid of a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse’. He described the election as a ‘cultural tipping point towards, once again, prioritising speech’. Ferguson agrees, saying that ‘peak woke’ is ‘in the rear-view mirror generally’. Never mind that the margin was close, or that Trump didn’t win more than 50 per cent of the popular vote, or that many of those who voted for him were most concerned about inflation (which has not only come down without Trump’s help, but mysteriously dropped out of ‘mainstream discourse’ too).
Referring back to the presidential election – whose meaning is not objective beyond giving us one winner and one loser – does extra work in quelling any remaining worries about the assault on the US Capitol. ‘The American electorate was collectively smarter than I was,’ Ferguson says, ‘in seeing that 6 January was not quite the earth-shattering event that was presented.’ Vox populi vox justitiae. But citizens, for better or for worse, take cues from elites. And right-wing elites, from senators to Supreme Court justices (not to mention propaganda channels), told people that 6 January hadn’t been a big deal. Voters can be forgiven for thinking that if he really were a would-be tyrant, surely someone would have done something to keep him off the ballot.
‘I’m convinced that whatever impulses he has or has had in the past,’ Ferguson says, ‘the system can contain them as it was designed to.’ Maybe. But it’s a fact that aspiring autocrats are much more dangerous the second time they come to power. They certainly don’t like that the system ‘contained their impulses’ the first time. They will have new people, new ideas – about destroying the ‘deep state’, for instance – and perhaps also new impulses. And, as many historians and social scientists have been saying, the norms and institutions of ‘the system’ are not self-reinforcing. It takes people to do the inconvenient, unpleasant, perhaps outright dangerous work of containment.
Simple folks may think that Trump is ignorant, prejudiced, an agent of chaos etc. Smart observers see method in the madness. The ‘madman theory’, a term supposedly coined by Richard Nixon, really is a thing in the study of international relations: if you come across as unpredictable, or outright irrational, your foreign adversaries will treat you with caution or make concessions (whereas people on the inside also know that, if matters get out of hand, ‘the system’ will contain you). Scholars disagree as to whether simulating madness truly works. As Daniel Drezner has pointed out, there is little evidence that Trump’s different threats concerning North and South Korea yielded much. But the madman theory comes in handy for anyone wanting to make excuses for a strongman: even the most outlandish behaviour might be a move in a game of six-dimensional chess. In any case, Trump’s willing chessmen are lined up and ready for his opening gambit next week.
Comments
-
17 January 2025
at
1:06pm
hry
says:
One feels somewhat that the professor is back on solid ground when critiquing other academics, as opposed to the rather shaky pre- and post-election attempts to understand the common Trump voter.
-
24 January 2025
at
4:55pm
Stuart
says:
@
hry
I don't think Pence or Pelosi would have called January 6 'symbolic' had the rioters found them, dragged them outside and hanged them. But you know, potatoes potatos
-
21 January 2025
at
9:37am
Ruth Dyson
says:
https://open.substack.com/pub/alexmassie/p/through-a-glass-darkly-trump-redux?r=jxe9o&utm_medium=ios
-
22 January 2025
at
9:28am
Mick Mooney
says:
Trump is Andy Warhol in office, given the keys to America, and what did Andy say to do with his art, he said to sell it, and Trump will sell America for the best price he can get. So don’t fret too much, Jan-Werner, it is only nuclear-tipped, acid camp and compared to the Clintons, Blair, Bono and Bush, the world is safe.
-
22 January 2025
at
6:24pm
Walter10065
says:
Trump is a blithering idiot, “Being There” plus “1984.” This just in, a press conference with three software CEOs talking projects underway and inspiring forward visions while Trump brags he made it happen & babbles nonsense about China. Senile Don is such an easy mark just give him credit & you’re in. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cnbcs-fast-money/id215529509?i=1000684915509
-
22 January 2025
at
7:29pm
prwhalley
says:
@
Walter10065
Unfortunately, he's a mean, vindictive and bigoted blithering idiot with the power and intention to seriously, maybe fatally, hurt a lot of people and families.
-
22 January 2025
at
7:20pm
stephen petty
says:
Fergusson is an enjoyable read and under the scintillating style there is slippery character, quicksand instead of bedrock. Your article captured it.
-
22 January 2025
at
7:28pm
steve kay
says:
Oh dear, how one might wish that below the headline was “Do not read this piece whilst eating your pasta.” Fergusson’s writing has always been bad enough, but the possibility of him dressed as a lumberjack or wearing spray on trousers, leather cap and bath house moustache whilst dancing to YMCA provokes serious indigestion.
-
22 January 2025
at
7:47pm
David Ascher
says:
Trump has been an ignoramus, a buffoon, a showman of the lowest order, a liar, and a useful tool for the reinvigorated racists, xenophobes, misogynists, and the reactionary elites who have been dreaming of an end to the income tax (when their powers started to weaken), and a return to the days when America was great - for plutocrats.
-
23 January 2025
at
1:06am
Graucho
says:
During the siege of Leningrad as it was then called, the inhabitants took their furniture apart to eat the glue, yet Captain Bonespurs thinks that threats of tariffs and sanctions will force Putin to negotiate a just peace to end his war in the Ukraine. I am minded of the headline in the Daily Mash when the U.K. imposed sanctions on them several years back.
-
24 January 2025
at
1:50pm
Michael Taylor
says:
Ferguson makes the mistake (odd for a historian) of assuming that, as January 6 didn't end in a coup, it was never intended as one (just "symbolic"). But the threats to Pence and Pelosi were real enough -- they got clear. It was a mess, but the incompetence doesn't excuse the intention.
-
30 January 2025
at
1:41pm
Bernard Berlin
says:
Hogwash! And what would have happened if this minor incident had succeeded? It is not hard to imagine Trump staying in office until he was pulled out by the millions, myself included, who do care.
Read moreRE. Jan 6—Prof. Muller implies that the American voter didn't care bout Jan. 6 because they were "taking cues from elites", but then omits to mention that one-half of the American party duopoly and all of the liberal media very much cared about Jan 6 and expended massive effort getting the voting public to care about it as well. Without getting into the import and meaning of 1/6 too much (it pains me to agree with Ferguson but I do think he has a point that the coup was more symbolic than a genuine threat to the functioning of American government), we must be critical about both why the Democrats chose this as their campaign focus and why it failed so badly. One of the chief attractions of a campaign focused on "saving democracy" for the Democrats is that they don't have to focus on any of the material-economic issues that reveal an unbridgeable gap between their (slipping away) voter base of working people and the party's oligarchic funders (the class to which the politicians belong, or at the minimum aspire to join when they switch jobs).
Strangely similar
Anybody who says this idiot knows what he's doing is lying or very very gullible. Anybody who says they think this totally disgusting man is going to make anything better for anyone other than himself and those who "suggest" to him what to do and whom to appoint, has no idea what they're talking about, or they're lying.
I only hope to see something like "The Man Who Would Be King" replayed in modern dress.
"Russia fears Bovril shortage"