Anarcho-Trumpism: A Thesis

32.

Eight years into the throbbing agony of anticlimactic eschatology, it is perhaps time to reflect on what we’ve learned. First, let us consider QAnon, which I’ll use as a metonym for the larger phenomenon of conspiratorial fascism. Jeff Sharlet has observed that the actual discursive practice of QAnon is fundamentally gnostic in structure and approach—all hidden and implicit truths that must be individually discovered through the meditational contemplation of endless YouTube videos.

This is not surprising—what other form would the intellectual discourse of a nihilistic Ruined Modernism take? For that matter, what other form would an intellectual discourse based on wall to wall falsehoods take? For all the alarm and panic about pervasive misinformation, the fact, as hundreds of thousands of dead COVID truthers can’t actually attest, is that material reality eventually asserts itself. And so of course the intellectual discourse surrounding a mendaciously narcissistic avatar of the twentieth century’s death drive is fundamentally gnostic. No epistemology short of the complete rejection of reality could possibly stay aloft in these circumstances.

All the same, there are core beliefs organizing the apophenic free play—racism and homophobia, for instance. But the biggest anchoring principle within all of it is an absolute and unwavering belief in the man himself. This does not simply extend to the comprehensive writing off of any and all actual bad actions, from grabbing them by the pussy to staging a coup, but to borderline—even outright—deification. This is not an ontological truth per se—there’ve been moments, must sustainedly around COVID vaccines, in which his hold threatened to slip. But it is an ongoing practical truth.

It is in some ways helpful to consider all of this—gnostic ideological forces, warm and sycophantic bodies, vast capital expenditures, and, of course, the rotting void around which they orbit—as a single entity infecting the body politic. In my previous work I focused on the hollowed chasm of the man himself, suggesting that he had offered up his name in what I colorfully referred to as an “architectural black mass” to become a creature of pure image. In many ways this gestalt is the result of that—the creature that his eaten name became. Let us call it Trump, then.

On an ideological level, Trump is simple. When I say ideology, to be clear, I don’t mean the gnostic conspiracy theories that constitute its discourse. Trump is, after all, a creature of reckless falsehoods, and its propaganda, even if sincerely believed by its foot soldiers, does not constitute its actual ideology. Its ideology is far blunter—a crude lust for power, which is in turn conceptualized in binary terms of winners and losers and the former’s blunt domination of the latter. This often has the characteristics of outright sadism, but this is better thought of as a low energy state for Trump as opposed to an intrinsic dimension of it.

The more interesting question is how Trump operates. Here it is useful to consider an anecdote about the man. Back in 1996, he attended a gala for an AIDS charity. He was not invited to this gala, which was for donors to the charity. He simply showed up, strolled through the door, and took a seat that was explicitly reserved for someone else. He appeared in all of the photos, took the stage behind Giuliani for the ribbon cutting ceremony, danced the Macarena with some children, and then left without at any point donating a cent.

This is, notably, the exact logic behind “when you’re a star they let you do it.” And it represents a remarkably cogent insight for him. Consider the notion of “who is allowed at the gala.” There’s a tremendous amount of what we might call rhetorical infrastructure that’s constructing that concept—invitations, nametags, and a coherent narrative of what the event is. But at the end of the day none of these actually govern the question of who is allowed. That comes down not to “the rules,” but to a single moment at the door. All of that rhetorical infrastructure is, at the end of the day, a lie. The real answer to “who is allowed at the gala” is “whoever walks through the door.” And he correctly ascertained that if he simply showed up and attempted to enter he would get away with it—that the initial surprise and confusion and subsequent desire to avoid the sort of scene involved in trying to have him removed would mean he could do what he wanted.

There are no shortage of rhetorics advising how to accomplish this sort of thing effectively—hordes of manosphere self-help sociopaths blathering about “disruption” and “OODA loops.” But what strikes me as more interesting than the mechanics of it is the underlying political philosophy, which amounts to a sort of radical descriptivism. Its central tenet is simply that power operates how it operates. This is not “might makes right,” not least because of its comprehensive disinterest in any notions of right. It’s simply the recognition that the world does not actually operate under a system of laws and rules, but rather on the basis of who, in practice, can get away with what. Rules are at best post facto descriptions of how that generally works out, and at worst lies told for the benefit of those it worked out for.

We might call this position anarcho-trumpism. It is, of course, no more anarchist than anarcho-capitalism, which is to say that there’s a tiny core of anarchist truth perverted within it. Indeed, that central observation is much of why I’ve abandoned having a political philosophy in favor of describing myself as “broadly anarchist.” At the end of the day, the world is never going to be set up along the lines of some manifesto, and so I stopped bothering to create one. Political philosophy is only really useful to science fiction writers—a point I made in the other essay I could have positioned this as a sequel to. We even already know this, at least in some contexts—it’s the underlying realization behind the old saw that a crime punishable by a fine is just something that’s legal for rich people. It’s the mechanism by which law enforcement disproportionately targets minorities. It’s the reason Israeli moralizing about Hamas’s genocidal intent feels instinctively ridiculous—because a nuclear power with a blank check from the US military simply has too much power for a bunch of terrorists in a concentration camp to pose an existential threat to anything beyond its sense of moral superiority. This is basically the anarchist blackpill: the realization that what we call politics has only ever been the chaotic effects of multiple sources of power acting across multiple axes and the stories we tell about them afterwards.

But where I, when faced with that realization, decided that I wanted to be a weirdo on the margins trying to use it as a macro view, anarcho-trumpism decided to pursue the thrill of exerting that power. This is, in effect, what the January 6th coup was—a last hurrah of how when you’re President they let you do it. First it attempted the small-scale—having Mike Pence misbehave within his ceremonial role to cause the proceedings to break down. This failed for the simple reason that Pence is not an anarchist, and so didn’t bite on the underlying act of misbehaving. And so it attempted the larger scale, flooding the Capitol with its footsoldiers to physically disrupt the proceedings. This failed not because it was against the law (indeed, the Supreme Court may yet declare that it wasn’t by reinterpreting the statute used to prosecute the majority of cases) but because Congressional security protected the legislature, and secondarily because some Senate aides had the sense to actively protect the physical ballots.

It is worth pausing to consider what would have happened had Pence done as asked or if the rioters had successfully prevented the proceeding from occurring. Obviously the proceeding to actually declare the President does not simply create power any more than the law caused the coup to fail. It’s a ritual to mark a consensus—a sort of de facto treaty about how power is to be distributed. Had it failed, what would have mattered was ultimately whether that consensus held. If it did, some other ritual would have taken place and the peaceful transfer of power would have still occurred. If it did not, either some alternate consensus would have formed or the situation would have devolved into cruder and cruder exercises of power on the way to civil war.

And there was some real risk of it not holding. The coup was a display of power; had it succeeded, it would have been a considerably larger one. That could easily have upset the balance of power in such a way as to force a realignment. Which is to say that the rituals and the law still matter, if only because people with power say they do and even, as in the case of Mike Pence, believe it. The stories we tell about power are part of its exercise—that’s why writing history is one of the prizes.

This fact clarifies the actual stakes behind prosecuting him, and why his response to these prosecutions is a continuation of his longstanding strategy—his primary goal has not merely been to avoid conviction but to have it made clear that the rule of law simply does not apply to him. Much like it was important (at least to establishment bastions of centrist power) to successfully hold the Congressional ritual after the coup attempt, it is important to successfully obtain judgments against him simply because it demonstrates limits to his power, which in turn diminishes it further.

Why does this matter, though? One oft stated reason is because of the threat to democracy. This is nonsense for two reasons. The first is simply that it makes the absurd claim that the existing American political system is worth preserving, and for that matter that it constitutes a democracy. I won’t bother unpacking this at any great length, because it’s really just a restatement of countless leftist critiques, but come the fuck on. The second, however, is that there’s actually something profoundly democratic about the notion that 40% of the population wanting to burn it all down should be fundamentally unsustainable. The governed, in point of fact, do not appear to consent.

No, the reason it matters is that nothing good can possibly follow from empowering a would-be strongman whose only motivation is asserting dominance over people, often sadistically. His victory would undoubtedly lead to a new configuration of power, but there is no serious case to be made that this configuration would be better than ones attained by driving it out of the political arena entirely. Frankly, there’s little case to be made that it would be better than the status quo. Certainly none of the standing problems with capitalist pseudo-democracy would be alleviated. Many would be made far worse. At the end of the day, neofascist dictators are a bad scene worth expending considerable effort to avoid.

Unfortunately, it’s difficult to muster any confidence in the idea of significant grassroots opposition that might prevent Trump from consolidating power around itself. Fundamentally, if the American left were feeling insurrectiony enough to mount that kind of opposition then there would have been a very different character to the resistance efforts during its first term—a lot fewer pussy hats and a lot more assassination efforts. There’s much to discuss about why American leftism has become so domesticated, but it ultimately falls outside the scope of this essay and/or US Code Title 18, Section 871. The conclusion remains the same, in any case: while opposition and resistance could eventually grow to where it poses an existential threat to an anarcho-Trumpist regime, this would be a long process with much horror to endure before that.

What of the individual level? Here the problem is simply that there’s not much to be done. By and large an individual’s ability to significantly shift the balance of power on the macro level is roughly that of a squirt gun to turn back the tide. There are platitudes I can give about trying not to die or doing what you can, but I’ve ended plenty of essays like that—at that point I might as well tell you to fucking vote. The reality is that there is literally nothing I can do to arrest the rise of Trump. Barring this essay going remarkably viral, there’s probably nothing you can do either.

But perhaps it will. In which case, hello Mr. President. Let’s talk about political tactics.

Much of why he has come so close to facing actual legal consequence is simply that many of the levers of power are currently in the hands of his political enemies, most especially you. This is not to validate his witch hunt rhetoric—I don’t for a moment think that you’ve been working with Merrick Garland or Jack Smith to strategize about the prosecution. What’s happening is more or less the inevitable consequence of staging a failed coup and then turning over power. The point is simply that you have quite a lot of power at the moment. And in the event that you lose re-election—a distinct possibility given that you are historically a bit of a dogshit campaigner—you will still have a window of roughly two months in which you hold that power. (This fact was, notably, how he attempted his coup.)

My suggestion, then, is to use it. Force a trial through and, when he’s convicted, declare him ineligible. Refuse to accept Supreme Court rulings as long as Thomas and Alito are involved. Invoke the Insurrection Act against the ensuing protesters. In short, do anything and everything possible to prevent him from taking office. You will, of course, object that this would make you as bad as him, but that’s nonsense. The problem with the coup wasn’t that it was illiberal—it’s that it was a coup in pursuit of empowering the rotting beast of the twentieth century to devour the future. That’s worth stopping, if you can.

Anyway, it doesn’t even have to be illiberal, not least because “liberalism” is just a story we tell ourselves to pretend the genocide of the indigenous Americans was a holy quest. You can play it as the great statesman at the twilight of his career, announcing that while you are firm that he will not be President again, you’re happy to refuse a second term and step aside for an alternative candidate chosen by Mike Johnson.

Yeah, the reality is that anything remotely like this would spark a civil war, but come on, what do you actually expect? You can read the math on climate change as well as anyone. You know we’re heading to a civil war eventually anyway, if not to collapses that exceed all notion of civility. The only things that can plausibly be described as “good outcomes” play out on the scale of centuries. But this way you’ll get to feel like an Aaron Sorkin character, and isn’t that what you got into politics for?

My point here, at the end of the day, is that if there’s one god-given right we have it’s the one to do what we think is best. We can’t duck the consequences of doing whatever that is, but we get to do it. If there is one thing to respect about Trump, and there isn’t, it’s that it recognizes this fact and behaves accordingly. The problem is just that what it thinks is best is malignant and petty cruelty to benefit a shithead real estate guy, and that he wants to be President and amass vast amounts of personal power. That’s worth stopping. I’d go so far as to say that if you have the ability to stop it you should. The fact that Biden won’t is, in the end, the best argument that he’s just as bad as the other guy.