The Day of Rope

 

On August 1, 2023, a grand jury indicted Trump in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on four charges: (1) conspiracy to defraud the United States; (2) obstructing an official proceeding related to the certification of the election results on January 6, 2021; (3) conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding; and (4) conspiracy against rights. The indictment mentioned six unnamed co-conspirators. It is Trump's third indictment and the first indictment against a U.S. president regarding actions while in office.

Of course, Trump thinks he is innocent and, to no surprise, so do his followers. Nevertheless, the criminal charges against Trump, if found guilty, should put him in prison for the rest of his life. But more importantly, getting at the underlying pathology of this disaster is critical. And one of the persons who could best assist in trying to understand the attempted coup is a Frankfurt School scholar, Erich Fromm, who sought to explain the social psychology of Nazi right-wing authoritarianism.

Fromm’s work is full of insights regarding the “mass psychology of fascism”.  For example, in his works, Marx’s Concept of Man, and Escape From Freedom and The Sane Society, Fromm draws on the humanistic work of Karl Marx’s Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts and Thesis on Feuerbach. He also includes insights from Sigmund Freud’s Civilization and It’s Discontents to develop an innovative form of radical theory. Fromm’s work offers powerful insights into the nature of authoritarian nationalism and its relationship to capitalism. The subjective challenges of building an alternative to capitalism and its related mental health challenges is for another time. But meanwhile a look at Trump and his cult followers’ disturbing mindset and underlying sociopathic and psychopathic behavior is in order.

 

So here it is …

The “Make America Great Again” MAGA slogan is nothing new. On the evening of March 21, 1915, President Woodrow Wilson attended a screening of The Birth of a Nation. The “blockbuster” film was based on The Clansman, a novel written by Wilson's good friend Thomas Dixon. As in the novel, the film presented a resurgent view of the South and its glorification of the Ku Klux Klan. Wilson endorsed the film wholeheartedly, only to embolden a KKK white nationalist reign of terror on African Americans. The Klan created a shibboleth to accompany their resurgence and terrorism: “Make America Great Again.”

Ronald Reagan and the Republicans used the theme successfully throughout Reagan’s presidency. Decades later Tea Party Patriots, white nationalists, the alt-right and conservative Republicans proclaim the same MAGA. Only this time the invocation conveys more of an urgency and vitriol. They fear the growth of multiculturalism, socialism and leftists and a country the white majority is becoming a minority.

The leader of the emergent white nationalist movement, the one who gives voice to their fears, is none other than the “billionaire” and star of the reality show The Apprentice, Donald Trump, forty-fifth POTUS. With Mussolini aplomb and stand-up comedy theatrics, Trump has drawn out a subterranean cast of characters. Trump has been successful in using concepts, terms and colloquialisms easily understood by the “deplorables.” In fact, it appears that they enjoy each other’s company and Trump’s political rallies. They have become a fun fest of character assignation and blatant lies about political rivals and their “ridiculous” policy positions.

Trump, acting as a CEO Master of Ceremonies, salutes his “loyal” assistants in the context of “doing a good” and then turns on former assistants, usually if they snipe publicly at Trump. While at rallies Trump has people in the crowd stand for ovations when they participate extemporaneously with favorable shouts. He is at this best when he departs from script to lampoon a political rival. Sometimes his is blunt in his criticism when he describes former security advisor, John Bolton, an idiot.

Preferred Method of Execution

For those at rallies who have showered affection on Trump, when his fan base shouts “I love you” Trump responds in kind, “I love you more.” On the other hand, during his campaigns in 2016 and 2020, Trump had no problem telling people at his rallies to shut up hecklers, or punch them in the mouth, and he would pay their legal fees. Most importantly, Trump knows that as ringmaster of his own circus, media ratings will be high with such theatrics which translates into political exposure and advertising from big business.

However, with Trump’s recent Covid-19 revelation, and stock market drop, the jury is out on whether or not the media industrial complex will pull the plug on Trump. Revenues from advertising may decline if viewers show displeasure looking at a Covid-19 president on the big screen in their houses. Clearly Trump’s right-wing big show has been profitable for business according to a November 18, 2019 article in Fortune Magazine, by Alan Murray and David Meyer, all of this is in terms of GDP growth. But while productivity of an economy is one thing, wages and purchasing power is another. Yet Trump s able to “sell” the public on a good economy even though the Fed has been bailing out the multinationals by the trillions of dollars.

Underneath this sham is a personality likened to the megalomaniacs of 20^th century Germany, Italy and Spain. This makes no difference to Trump’s followers; they are energized and entertained by Trump’s comical remarks, reminders of his multi-billion dollar “success,” and his lampooning of political rivals in both parties, e.g., Low Energy Jeb (Jeb Bush), Lyin Ted Cruz, Crooked Hillary Clinton, Wild Bill Clinton, Little Marco Rubio, Crazy Bernie Sanders, Shifty Adam Schiff, Mr. Magoo (Jeff Sessions), Mini Mike (Michael Bloomberg), Fake Tough Guy (John Bolton), Nervous Nancy Pelosi and a litany for Sleepy Joe Biden, Sleepy Creepy Joe Biden, Slow Joe Biden, Basement Biden, O’Hiden, and Joe Hiden Biden.

No one indignity is spared, not even Mike Pounce, aka, Mike Pence, Trump’s Vice President.

Mocking insults go to the “Fake News” such as the Clinton News Network (CNN Time Warner), CON-cast (Comcast MSNBC), Amazon WaPo (Jeff Bazos owned Amazon and Washington Post), and Jeff Bazos himself as Jeff Bozo. Media personalities are also a target, Sour Don Lemon, Psycho Joe (Joe Scarborough), Wacky Glenn Beck. Television media programs are not exempt, Deface the Nation (Face the Nation), Meet the Depressed (Meet the Press) and Morning Joke (Morning Joe). Heads of State are made into cartoon characters such as Rocket Man or Little Rocket Man (Kim Jung-un, Supreme Leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea), My Favorite Dictator (Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, President of Egypt) and Animal Assad (Bashar al-Assad, President of Syria).    

 

Der Fuhrer

Trump is admired, for all intents and purposes, by dictators such as Turkey’s Erdogon, Russia’s Putin, Philippine’s Duterte, and Saudi Arabian Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, who the CIA has identified as directly responsible for the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi, Saudi journalist and dissident. Trump’s adoring public could care the least, and have never cared even with his shady alleged criminality in real estate, taxes, relationship to Jeffrey Epstein, impeachment, and sexual manhandling of women. Nor are they concerned about his former staff indicted and sentenced, and countless turnover within his administration.

Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, though enthusiastically supportive of Trump, appears to be guarded with his praise of Trump, especially with the Presidential elections within a month.

Most interesting are conservative Christians and Catholics who not only dismiss Trump’s checkered past and present, but distort and manipulate scripturally comparisons of Trump to Cyrus the Great, a pagan Babylonian king who freed the Jews from captivity in Babylon to reclaim Israel. Point being that God can carry out her/his will in the “unchurched” like Trump, in the same way that God can work through pagan kings like Cyrus the Great to free Israel from captivity and bondage. Cyrus, as their argument goes, is the archetype of the ironic “vessel” (vessel theology) in which God carries out her/his plan of salvation, despite the superficial inconsistencies.

 

Liturgical Procession

For conservative Catholics, as long as Trump is against abortion, anything he does on a personal level or supports as public policy contrary to Catholic social teaching can be justified. Ignored in this form of ethical triumphalism, is the fact that Catholic ethics calls for its faith community to form their consciences on Church teaching (Scripture and Tradition) based on the “continuum of life” ethics. This means that no one single overarching issue should take priority over others, unless one’s conscience directs them in good faith otherwise. Nevertheless, both groups revel in the fact that with three Supreme Court picks, Trump will be able to overturn abortion and follow through on a complete list of conservative and libertarian public policies that the Right have been dreaming of for the last forty years. In all, the vessel theology for conservative Christians appears to be a scriptural form of money laundering while conservative Catholic antiabortion triumphalism appears to be a gaslighting technique, intended as a diversion from other highly import ethical concerns.

Arguably, both conservative Christians and Catholics might agree on vessel theology and the primacy of abortion in their support of Trump. This would justify their manic identity as both Christian and Republican and Democrats not being much better. Unarguably they both agree that the continuum of life issues such as -

the Church’s preferential option for the poor, the avoidance of environmental extinction, the end to endless wars and global economic domination of the world (PNAC), the elevated status of the military industrial complex, the development of a Space Force, unfettered neoliberal capitalism, increased poverty in the midst of exponential wealth, elite control of government, the threat to democratic freedoms through the new surveillance state, threats to civil liberties and rights in the Patriot Act and the National Defense Authorization Act, extrajudicial murders, secret FISA courts, CIA orchestrated coups in Ecuador and attempted in Venezuela, illegal and harmful economic sanctions placed on Venezuela, racial and class disparities in the criminal justice system, police lawlessness and brutality, economic devastation in all levels of education, neglect of infrastructure development in inner cities, lack of affordable housing and universal health care, capital punishment as justice, nuclear war and the proliferation and the targeting of innocent civilians, nuclear war and the total destruction of the planet, and the corruption of the two major political parties - are of little importance or even sadistically supported or dissented from, relative to the issues.

Yet in all of this, Trump appears to be impervious to the assaults of his political foes. He never lets on that he is bothered by them, at least not in public. Even though he is behind in the polls Trump came off like a brawler. The debate became a hoot and then into a donnybrook which included Trump, Biden and moderator Chris Wallace. Trump took on both simultaneously; Biden putting in a few swings, while Chris Wallace was unable to reign in Trump unhinged. When Biden tried to go on the offensive explaining the advantages of the Green New Deal, Trump asked if Biden supported the GND to which Biden responded in the negative. Trump’s counterpunch to Biden? You just “lost the Left.” Clearly the intensity of Trump was felt and his anger apparent, an anger that reflected a wounded animal.

After the debate the media agreed that the debate was a disaster, but nevertheless concluded that Biden was the marginal winner. Two more debates will tell more. But Trump has some help coming. If Trump can undermine voting, for example in Texas, by having governor Abbott limit ballot drop off ballots one per county as is being discussed, then Trump could very well win Texas and a huge number of electoral votes. And watch conservative governors go to work on this same strategy. Making it difficult to vote has proven to be highly successful for Republicans. Long waits in line, sometimes several hours in predominately poor districts, has proven to frustrate these voters. Suffice it to say, no Republicans in Congress have dissented from this tactic. And no Republicans have dissented at all from Trump’s usurpation of the Republican Party. The exceptions of Jeff Flake, who resigned from the Senate, and House member Justin Amash who is now a Libertarian are few and far between. Others like Bob Corker have resigned quietly. In short, Trump will not be ruled out for a second term.

 

6 Million Were Not Enough

None of this “feels” right, as in reading Upton Sinclair’s, It Can’t Happen Here. Sinclair writes about a fictitious 1930s America where a deceptively polite group of individuals marketing the concept of Americanism takes over the country. It parallels 1930s Nazi Germany, and for that matter, the fascist takeovers of Italy and Spain, all democracies at the time. But the It Can’t Happen Here scenario is not without actual historical context. In fact, during the 1930s a thriving Nazi Party was alive and well in the United States. Footage of a Nazi Party convention at Madison Square Garden, February 20, 1939, with 20,000 people in attendance, reveals a frightful scene of a rabid crowd, gathered under the pretense of a pro-"Americanism" rally, were automaton-like saluting allegiance to a massive image of a George Washington portrait with swastikas on each side. This is not insignificant given the zeitgeist then and the zeitgeist now. Known as the German American Bund, the pro-Hitler organization in the United States promoted Nazi propaganda, combining Nazi imagery with American patriotic history. The largely decentralized Bund, as they were self-described, was active in a number of regions, but attracted support only from a minority of German Americans. The Bund was the most influential of a number of pro-Nazi German groups in the United States in the 1930s; others included the Teutonia Society and Friends of Germany (also known as the Hitler Club). Alongside allied groups, such as the Christian Front, these organizations were virulently anti-semitic.

 

Adolf’s Film Debut

The "Big Apple" Nazi Convention

When Trump ran for office and was elected president there was a perception of a fascist coup and the appearance would have been cemented, had not Trump been talked down from a military parade on his inauguration. Now the perception is reality. During the debate Tuesday, Trump would not agree to a peaceful transition if he was voted out of office. The rationale was that with the mail in ballots and scattered locations to drop off ballots voter fraud would result which did not obligate him to relinquish the Office of the President, Moreover, when Chris Wallace asked Trump if he would denounce the Proud Boys, Trump instead told the Proud Boys and other alt-right groups to “stand back and standby” implying that their help might be needed. Thus, Trump refused to unequivocally condemn white supremacists and far-right groups who have responded to ongoing protests against police brutality and racial injustice, instead pinning the blame for violent clashes on the "left wing." Antifa is just as bad even though FBI reports indicate the direct opposite as reported to congressional committees by Director Christopher Wray. The perception of fascism is now reality. The mask is off and the façade of a democratic society has been exposed.

Most disturbing is the fictional account of the Antifascists (Antifa) as a violent leftist terrorist group. Nothing could be farther from the truth. In an internal memorandum, FBI Director Christopher Wray, found no evidence of Antifa’s involvement in national unrest, specifically with the George Floyd protests and riots as falsely reported by The Nation, June 2, 2020. The Washington Field Office memo states that “no intelligence indicating Antifa involvement” was initiated during the protests, as erroneously stated from Trump, Attorney General Barr, and various right-wing news outlets such as FOX News. On June 12, 2020, the New York Times in “Federal Arrests Show No Sign That Antifa Plotted Protests,” cleared Antifa and on June 22, 2020, the New York Times, “41 Cities, Many Sources: How False Antifa Rumors Spread Locally,” described how propaganda against Antifa was spread through the media community, most likely form conservative politicians and political action committees. The attempt was to falsely blame the uprising on an orchestrated group such as Antifa, according to Glenn Kirschner, former FBI, counterintelligence. Blaming a “left-wing” group was a ruse created to gaslight the public and divert attention from the “right-wing” police tactics condoned by the Trump administration.

Various media outlets and activist groups have documented the rise of alt-right white nationalist groups. The PBS News Hour, as reported by Kenya Downs (October 21, 2016), identified the growing attraction to rightist groups. The Southern Poverty Law Center compiled a report, “White Nationalist,” (https://www.splcenter.org/7-15-20/), in which they report that the MAGA have attracted the alt-right such as neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, Proud Boys, Boogaloo Bois, neo-Confederates, Racist-Skinheads, Christian Identity. The weirdest and most dangerous, arguably, appear to be the Q-Anon. They allege that a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles running a global child sex-trafficking ring is plotting against President Trump. They warn that a "day of reckoning" is at hand involving the mass arrest of journalists and politicians. In no uncertain terms, Q-Anon’s “day of reckoning” is aimed at liberals the Left, code for socialists, anarchists, antifa, and communists.

None of these rightest groups have foresworn the use of violence or vigilante tactics, nor have they ruled out the use of violence against local and federal government. The Boogaloo Bois and their movement have even called for a “Second Civil War” and the “Order of the Nine Angels,” a Satanic neo-Nazi group in England and the United States, “deifies” Adolf Hitler as the head of their Order. What has proven to be most disturbing is that hate groups have increased 55% since Trump’s campaign and presidency, noted by Jason Wilson of The Guardian, March 18, 2020.

So, if the alt-right White Nationalists have surfaced within society, could it be possible that they have also emerged within the rank and file?

Ed Martin

Tubac, Arizona

Long Beach, California