Things will get worse.
Before I explain my reasons, I wish to make two preliminary points. First, when I started blogging about Donald Trump,* prompted by an editorial by Jason Stanley, in December 2015, I did not expect him to become President (although did not rule it out). But I did quickly grasp that he is an important phenomenon (see here [Dec 2015]; and here [may 2016], a symptom for a wider malaise, a signal of underlying rot that is clearly corroding liberal-democratic institutions. After I saw him destroy his opposition during the South Carolina primary, I stopped underestimating his ability to connect with a sizable part of the American electorate. There is nobody alive, probably, with a better instinctive grasp of how to use the (for profit) modern media logic to his advantage.
Second, I am assuming that we are in the midst of the second, great crisis for liberalism (the first occurred between 1914 and 1945; the second started in 2007). We have been spared great world wars (as of yet), but our liberal, national and international institutions have been found wanting in response to the financial crisis and the series of climate-induced famines/revolutions/civil wars. (To say this is not to deny that central banks did better than in 1929-35, but that sets the bar not very high.) The revival of interest among our youth in illiberal populisms, elite rule, and socialism all reflect this tendency--and who can blame them? I mention this crisis because any tactical diagnosis one offers may well, itself, be part of the larger problem. And so alongside daily politics, there has to be room for more strategic rethinking.
Charlottesville is a skirmish that helps reveal the contour of some of the things to come.
For, it shows that white nationalists (neo-fascists, klansmen, etc.) benefit from confrontation and media attention which recruits the sympathy of their natural supporters and would be allies. Their willingness to show their faces conveys the idea that they are ordinary citizens and this helps them recruit more members--thrill seekers and the earnest alike. (While perhaps few are explicitly drawn to their neonazi and [undoubtedly more] confederate symbolism, one has to be in denial not to recognize the racialized solidarity the nationalists exhibit with each other.) It matters hugely that these confrontations occur in cities and towns where the white nationalists are the underdog--this means they can predictably generate a response and also present themselves as courageous and embattled.
As confrontations escalate -- either through deliberate provocation or through all-to-predictable reaction from those who feel legitimately very threatened or from those that wish to ferment revolution--, the President will play his law-and-order-card alongside white solidarity, and so will aim to impose order that will resonate with fearful (and, alas, servile) citizens. Repeated scenes of street violence nudge people to law and order platforms and leaders. Because the police Stateside is badly trained, and, in many places, itself prone to excessive violence when threatened, we have every reason to expect a strategy of ongoing escalation to generate more scenes of turmoil and chaos. Because in many districts, the badly trained law-enforcement and the executive are not themselves immune from the pull of white nationalism (and their opposition is divided and not grasping the magnitude of the challenges we're facing),** this cycle will repeat on lots of levels.
So, while I have been wrong in my predictions about some events during the last eighteen months, I expect our crisis to deepen.
*For most of them, see here.
+Yes, Charlottesville is in the South, but (a) Virginia has turned blue, and (b) it is a college-town.
**Right now Democrats seem primarily busy re-fighting the presidential primary.
Trump also wins because his equivocating "many sides" dog whistle suddenly makes a hero of any conservative who can manage to condemn Nazism, no matter how many ways they endorse structural and other forms of racism:
https://balkin.blogspot.com/2017/08/defining-racism-downwards.html
Posted by: Gordon | 08/15/2017 at 05:24 AM