The Eternal Return of Unenlightened Despotism
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Version 0 of 1. Whatever else it does, the Trump campaign will test the willingness of the American electorate to support a candidate who asserts his right to run roughshod over the Constitution and flout traditional constraints on the exercise of power. Will voters fall in line behind a man who declares “I am your voice” and “I am the law and order candidate,” a man who looks more than 30 million television viewers in the eye as he says Trump is the candidate of the massive and unruly rally, seemingly always on the edge of violence, the candidate who dismisses critics and opponents as weak losers and who whips up mass audiences via Twitter, the 21st century counterpart to the Depression-era radio rants of Father Coughlin and Charles Lindbergh — the aviator-turned-isolationist who brought us the original America First movement. Trump’s entire campaign is premised on the primal assault of an in-group against an out-group. More brazenly than any major party presidential contender in American history, he promises voters the comfort, security and even happiness that autocratic leaders claim they can provide. He has based his presidential bid on the yearning for authoritarian leadership that he believes animates a majority of the voting public. Who are Trump’s followers? Matthew MacWilliams, in a chapter of the forthcoming book, “Why Irrational Politics Appeals,” writes that those who support Trump stand out because of two variables: “authoritarianism and a personalized fear of terrorism.” MacWilliams, a doctoral candidate in political science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, goes on to argue in a companion essay that: It is instead “the rise of American authoritarianism – America’s Authoritarian Spring.” As the world knows, Trump set out to tap voters’ fears in his acceptance speech at the Republican convention on July 21st, arguing that 2016 is There is a striking array of statistical data linking Trump to voters disposed to believe in the value of authoritarian control. Robert P. Jones, the C.E.O. of the Public Religion Research Institute, wrote in an email responding to my inquiry: The P.R.R.I. survey measured the authoritarian leanings of voters versus the autonomous leaning of voters by using a series of questions that ask what values parents seek to instill in their children. The survey found that P.R.R.I. ranked respondents on a scale of highly autonomous, autonomous, mixed, authoritarian and highly authoritarian: Most notably, according to P.R.R.I., The accompanying chart shows the distribution of authoritarian versus autonomous values across the entire population. The basic finding — that a solid majority values respect and good behavior more than creativity and independence — helps to explain why Trump has continued to be competitive so far. The autocratic character of his bid is also revealed in his espousal of conspiracy theories, his speculation about “rigged” elections, once and future, as well as in his fundamental rejection of deliberative processes. Trump’s convention speech was specifically geared to more authoritarian-friendly voters: According to the P.R.R.I. survey, 57 percent of “high authoritarians” worry that they or a family member will be a victim of terrorism compared to 24 percent of those “who have a highly autonomous orientation”; 62 percent of high authoritarians agree that “American culture and way of life has mostly changed for the worse since the 1950s,” compared to 22 percent of “high autonomous” individuals. While Trump does much better among those who favor authoritarianism than among those who do not, he must extend his support beyond this constituency. That is why his basic message of fear and threat is crucial to his bid. “Ordinary citizens who feel their safety is threatened will tend to support relatively ‘authoritarian’ policies perceived as helping to ensure public safety,” Marc J. Hetherington and Elizabeth Suhay, political scientists at Vanderbilt and American Universities respectively, write in their 2011 essay “Authoritarianism, Threat, and Americans’ Support for the War on Terror” in the American Journal of Political Science. Among those with low levels of authoritarian response to the child-rearing test battery and those “who perceived little threat from terrorism, 37 percent favored media censorship,” Hetherington and Suhay report. “But for low authoritarians who perceived significant threat, that percentage nearly doubled, to 68 percent.” Similarly, 26 percent of low authoritarians who did not perceive much threat from terrorism supported the use of force over diplomacy. But among those who felt a significant threat from terrorism but who also ranked low in authoritarian leanings, 49 percent favored force. In other words, insofar as Trump can elevate the level of anxiety — about terrorism, immigrants and crime, for example — the larger the number of voters who will be drawn to his brand of autocratic leadership. The accompanying chart demonstrates how fear of terrorist attack undermines the principled opposition to censorship of those committed to autonomy and creativity. As their fear of attack rises, their opposition to censorship steadily declines. MacWilliams expands upon the Hetherington-Suhay findings, demonstrating that In his acceptance speech, Trump made a clear case for authoritarian leadership, as he attempted to convince a majority of voters that “the recent images of violence in our streets and the chaos in our communities” revealed an America where Seen in this light, it is Trump’s portrayal of America as vulnerable to threat from within and without that the sunny Democratic convention sought to rebut. On July 27, President Obama led the chorus: Obama might as well have been saying that those who prize autonomy need not be drawn to authoritarian solutions out of fear. Hillary Clinton in her own acceptance speech, rejected Trump’s invocation of dread — his effort to amass support for the concentration of power in the White House — and called him out by name: Preliminary evidence suggests that in the contest between Trump’s pessimistic appeal for autocracy and Clinton’s counter claim that “we will all work together so we can all rise together,” Clinton came out ahead. Gallup surveys conducted immediately after the Republican and Democratic conventions showed that voters by 45 percent to 41 percent were more likely to support Clinton and still less likely to support Trump (51 to 36 percent). The list of Republican defectors, which has grown recently, signals the party’s deepening alarm about its candidate’s own alarmism. Nonetheless, in the aftermath of the contagion of barbarity that has flourished during this year’s election cycle — from Paris and San Bernardino to Nice, Rouen, Munich, Baton Rouge, Dallas and Orlando — it is hard to hold the line against fear-mongering. When nearly 7 out of every 10 voters believe the country is on the wrong track, there is clear potential for a candidate like Trump who focuses on the dark side — if only he could get his campaign moving on the right track. At the same time, the data suggest that the optimism of Hillary Clinton and the Democrats risks sounding dissonant, if not elitist, in a country that is clearly apprehensive. The election may be moving in Clinton’s direction, but her current lead is not guaranteed to stand. Both campaigns are highly vulnerable to events — those that are intentionally orchestrated and those that appear out of nowhere. |