The Revolt of The Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium

His instincts, too, run counter to the temper of the times. He’s a centralizer in a centrifugal age, for example. He has said that he aspires to a “Jupiterian” presidency—actually to increase the distance between power and the public. ⁴⁵ He chose Versailles Palace, rococo backdrop to the Sun King, for his first important speech. While the Olympian style may have served Charles de Gaulle well, it is unlikely to be taken seriously on Twitter or Facebook. Macron is clearly tempted by the crown of the decaying empire: that is, by the ambition to become the next Angela Merkel. That way, it seems to me, lies perdition.

The odds, in sum, are stacked high against the newly delivered French president growing up to be the savior of the French established order and European democracy. But who can tell? Napoleon is reputed to have said that “impossible is not French”—and one lesson of the foregoing analysis is that it isn’t now, either.

THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING, THE NAZIS ARE HERE, AND EVERYWHERE YOU LOOK THERE’S DONALD TRUMP

As the outcomes of democracy turned increasingly against the elites, the elites with equal intensity worried about the failure of democracy. The tipping point, as we saw, was 2016. To many thoughtful persons, the sight of Donald Trump in the Oval Office signaled the downfall of our political system. The success of right-wing populists in Eastern and Central Europe confirmed the worst fears. Barbarians were not only inside the walls, but in charge of the government.

We have entered a time of extraordinary pessimism concerning the competence, even the legitimacy, of representative democracy. Lamentations of the most extreme kind pour out on a daily basis—here, to offer a random sample, is Henry Giroux’s take on the “failures of American democracy” under Trump:

A dystopian ideology, a kind of nostalgic yearning for older authoritarian relations of power, now shapes and legitimates a mode of governance that generates obscene levels of inequality, expands the ranks of corrupt legislators, places white supremacists and zealous ideologues in positions of power, threatens to jail its opponents, and sanctions an expanding network of state violence both at home and abroad. ⁴⁶

This is how the global elite class and many others interpret what I have called the revolt of the public: as the death of democracy and a descent into authoritarian darkness. The connection between political turmoil and the new information landscape is now broadly understood, but the issue is often framed in terms of social media opening the gates to destructive or undesirable opinions. “It’s the (democracy-poisoning) golden age of free speech,” states an article on social media by Zeynep Tufekci. ⁴⁷

The corollary to democratic despair has been an almost mystical faith in the effectiveness of foreign dictators. Russia’s Vladimir Putin, of all people, has become the hero of conspiracy theories and the deus ex machina of illiberalism. The belief that Russia “hacked” the presidential elections to favor Trump has become entrenched in the media and public opinion: according to one poll, over 50 percent of Americans believe Trump’s dealings with Putin have been either “illegal” or “unethical.” ⁴⁸ The elites have seized on this putative Russian meddling as a weapon in the institutional reaction to the new president. Based on revelations, official and leaked, from the federal bureaucracy, a Special Counsel was appointed in May 2017 to investigate possible crimes committed by candidate Trump or his circle in collusion with Putin.

I’d like to take this dismal vision of the present state of democracy and turn it into an analytical question: Is it, in fact, the case that the struggle between a digitally empowered public and the institutions of the industrial age has promoted the ruin of democracy and “legitimized” the authoritarian impulse, at home and abroad? In looking for answers, my approach is going to be broadbrush and empirical. A government must do something to be considered authoritarian: trample on institutional checks, break the law, abuse established rights. I’m searching for instances of Giroux’s “state violence.” Similarly, dictatorial regimes navigating the current information environment must be shown to be more confident or aggressive in pursuit of their interests or their ideological goals.

My question is apparently about democracy—really about authority—yet I find it clarifying to turn first to the dictatorships. Consider: If taming social media is the fix to the present predicament, shouldn’t North Korea or Cuba be our models for the future? I ask that rhetorically—and with a smile. The Kim and Castro regimes resemble nothing so much as Lenin in his mausoleum, moldering in a mummified version of the twentieth century.

So let me begin, instead, with the most successful and applauded of the dictatorships: China.

China is the poster child of authoritarianism, but we know less than we think about conditions in the country. The material boom that raised millions out of poverty has brought more modern, less tangible anxieties in train. Society is persistently said to be in the grip of a “moral crisis,” in which “hatred prevails over compassion” and money is made “at the cost of other people’s lives”—but, of course, there’s no way to quantify this. ⁴⁹ It is almost certain that the population is Christianizing at a rapid rate—but actual numbers aren’t available. ⁵⁰ We do know that the Communist Party, led by Xi Jinping, is engaged in a ruthless “anti-corruption” campaign that has implicated high-level officials. Here the moral crisis intersects with the political system: when it comes to making money at the cost of human life, the rot starts at the top.

China’s overseers call their form of government a “people’s democratic dictatorship”: opposites are thus reconciled in a phrase. The dictatorship side of the equation has seduced certain Western intellectuals who despair of democracy: they dream of an enlightened despot with the power to end the current political and informational chaos. ⁵¹ And, to be sure, the Chinese state has erected a massive apparatus of censorship and repression, including an “internet police” said to number in the millions. Controls over politics and media have grown harsher under Xi. Bloggers now receive long prison sentences for criticizing government policies, for example. ⁵² Journalists have been jailed for leaking official documents. ⁵³ High-flying party members have been snared and broken in the purge against corruption.

The question is whether such tactics reflect strength or weakness in the regime. Given the lack of transparency, it’s hard to say. My guess is that the ruling class in China, having long ago abandoned Marx, is straining after some ideal or principle on which to anchor its legitimacy. Xi, for this part, is pretty obviously maneuvering to increase his power at the party’s expense. Hardened repression may just be a factor of the gangster-like nature of the system. Much the same could be said of China’s passive-aggressive geopolitical posture. These moves may reflect internal divisions and doubts.

In any case, the concept of an enlightened dictator, with just-so repression, is a fantasy of the intellectuals. Reality is about bad choices. The regime in China survives on economic prosperity, which demands the free flow of information. But sooner or later, the economy will begin to wobble—should that information be allowed to flow? Xi has already hectored the Chinese media about “properly guiding public opinion,” especially with regard to the economy. ⁵⁴ He sounds, to me, like a politician on the defensive, in spin mode. Every year the Chinese government admits to thousands of “mass incidents” and labor strikes: unlike the rest of us, Xi knows their actual number. Around 700 million of his countrymen are online, and 90 percent access the web through that most subversive of devices, the smartphone. ⁵⁵ China’s elites are riding a tiger and know it. Whatever the future brings to this antiquated power structure, it is no more likely than North Korea or Cuba to provide the escape route from liberal democracy in the twenty-first century.

What, then, of Russia’s Putin, the man who is said to have “a plan for destroying the West,” and who in a prodigious (if conjectural) display of power and cunning has manipulated everything from the US presidential elections to the price of oil? ⁵⁶

In analyzing Putin’s progress, I confess that I’m at a loss on how to proceed. My perception of the reality behind both the man and his country differs radically from the accepted wisdom and much scholarly thinking. The shadow, it seems to me, is wholly out of proportion to the object. The Russian economy is roughly equivalent to Spain’s. GDP per capita has declined in parallel with the oil market, and in 2016 was ranked right below the Caribbean island of Grenada. The Russian population peaked around 1990 and has lost five million since, the result of low birth rates, high abortion rates, and zero immigration. Life expectancy for males compares unfavorably with Rwanda. In a “Putin exodus,” many of Russia’s most talented people have left the country.

Putin commands a large military establishment that includes a nuclear arsenal. He can dispose of the wealth generated by Russian oil. He is, beyond question, a cunning and manipulative man, and he does not wish the US, Europe, or liberal democracy well. But I ask you, good reader, to maintain a sense of scale on the subject. In that spirit, I will press on as follows. The election hacking story— heart of the Putin puzzle—I will put off to a fuller discussion of “fake news” and “post-truth.” Here I intend to stick to my question: Whether the Putin authoritarian style, under current conditions of information—what I have called the Fifth Wave—has grown more powerful, threatening, or seductive, relative to the old democracies.

The Putin style, let it be said, resembles that of a mafia godfather. Putin isn’t Stalin, but the list of people who have died violently after crossing him— billionaires, journalists, political opponents—is impressively long. ⁵⁷ It’s all business, not personal (or ideological): and the sums involved are phenomenal. The hack of an offshore law firm in April 2016 revealed that an old friend of Putin’s, a cellist of modest means, had fronted secret transactions totaling \$2 billion. ⁵⁸

Putin portrays himself in a very different light. He belongs to a class that I would call dictatorships of repudiation: al-Sisi in Egypt, Erdogan in Turkey, and the late Hugo Chávez in Venezuela are members of the club. The common thread is a rhetoric of defiance and renewal. The dictator is transformed from a murderous predator into a solitary hero struggling against overwhelming odds. The villain confronting him is some hodgepodge of globalized malevolence, with the US typically pulling the strings.

For Putin, the enemy is the alliance of the United States and the European democracies. This cabal aims at nothing less than the “disintegration and dismemberment” of Russia. ⁵⁹ “Our opponents want to see us disunited,” he stated in 2007. “Some want to take away and divide everything, and others to plunder. . . . Those who want to confront us need a weak and ill state.” ⁶⁰ Putin began his career as a small cog in the enormous machine that was the Soviet state. He feels the need to explain why Russia was once a superpower, and is one no longer. The specter of decadence and disintegration, of lost glory and greatness, has come to haunt politics in nations far less troubled than Russia: in different contexts, it helped propel Trump and Macron to office. Putin’s account begins with the US-led destruction of the Soviet Union, and ends with the defiant rebirth of Russia.

Between the mafia boss and the restorer of Russian greatness, there’s no intrinsic contradiction. Both lead to the glorification of Putin and the worship of power. Russia’s foreign adventures of the last few years can be parsed either way.

Tough-guy Putin moved into Crimea, Ukraine, and Syria to exploit local weakness and show up the singularly passive Barack Obama. Imperial Putin reasserted historic Russian claims in the Black Sea and eastern Mediterranean. The objective was always to frighten and impress the global elites—to force them to acknowledge the Russian dictator as a world-historical actor. In the dazed aftermath of the US presidential election, this wish was granted with a vengeance.

Despite his self-righteous brutality, Putin retains levels of popularity and support that would be the envy of any American politician. The same is true of al-Sisi and Erdogan, and was true of Chávez to the end. Many factors play into this strange circumstance, including control over the story told by national media. The Russian media, for example, loves to portray the scrawny Putin in the guise of an action hero. ⁶¹ Egypt’s journalists can write without blushing of al-Sisi’s “flawless appearance” and “Herculean strength.” ⁶² Yet much tighter controls over information have done nothing to enhance the image of Xi Jinping and his Chinese Communist Party.

The difference, I think, lies in the relationship to our equivocal moment in history. Putin, al-Sisi, and their kind believe, probably sincerely, that they are engaged in a war to the death against an established order dominated by foreign elites. They aim to slay the dragon of national decadence and bring to an end this unhappy age. To some extent, therefore, they can tap into the explosive political energies released by the revolt of the public: by the rage and despair over the way things stand felt by ordinary people in Russia, Egypt, and elsewhere. Their struggle is the public’s, at least in this sense: the repudiation of the status quo and the desire to abolish it by fair means or foul.

Though aligned with the public’s mood, the dictatorship of repudiation is best understood as a series of national episodes, lacking the ideological coherence to transform itself into a serious rival to liberal democracy. Putin’s justifying crisis in Russia is nothing like that of al-Sisi in Egypt, for example, and neither is available for export. The thrust of repudiation, too, has a retrograde quality. The dictator takes up the burden of hierarchy in modern government. He will be expected to solve social and economic “problems” that he has no clue how to address, and to bring happiness to a hyper-informed and contentious public. Failure can be blamed on the enemy for only so long.

11.3 The dictator as action hero ⁶³

And I insist, once again, on the importance of proportion. The economies of Russia and Egypt often teeter on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Putin, the action hero, is at the mercy of the world commodities market. Al-Sisi, for all his Herculean strength, must go begging for handouts from the Gulf oil kingdoms. A possible future for one or the other might resemble the colossal wreck that is Hugo Chávez’s legacy in Venezuela. Even if the way ahead is less dire, the structural reality of the dictatorship remains unaltered. Authoritarianism exaggerates precisely those elite behaviors that the public is rebelling against— and it can’t repudiate itself. Putin and al-Sisi are doomed to struggle in the coils of a nihilistic age. They are not the masters or exploiters of it. Both men long for a return of the glory days of the Cold War: their future is in the past.

So, I don’t see authoritarian rulers prospering under current conditions. The 2010s bear little resemblance to the 1930s. That is the explicit answer to the “abroad” part of my question. Xi Jinping may flex China’s muscle in Asia, but he knows that war will unleash domestic passions that could blow apart his precariously balanced regime. Vladimir Putin may play great power games on the edges of his rickety empire, but he’s no more likely than Spain to invade Europe. China and Russia don’t pretend to be rival models to democracy: they are, in fact, old-fashioned industrial-age hierarchies intent on looting their own people. Neither has been “legitimized.” The restless public, riding a digital storm, is hostile to every large aggregation of power, regardless of ideology. First to be toppled in this conflict were long-entrenched dictators in the Middle East.

Authoritarianism appears to be advancing because so many elite voices in democratic nations say so. Democracy looks to be dying in darkness for the same reason. The source of despondency is that elite disaster, the election of Trump: and the focus of analysis must now shift to American politics, to answer the “at home” part of my question.

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On August 11, 2017, white nationalists gathered in Charlottesville, Virginia, for a “Unite the Right” march against the planned removal of Confederate monuments. Among the unsavory ultras involved were neo-Nazis associated with the Daily Stormer website, the neo-Confederate League of the South, and elements of the KKK. In the spirit of Nuremberg, a torchlight parade was expected—but it was a bring-your-own-torch party. “Each person should bring their own torches which can be bought from a local Wal-Mart, Lowes, Home Depot, etc.,” were the helpful instructions of the organizers. “Tikki [sic] Torches are fine.” ⁶⁴

Crowd sizes are difficult to reconstruct, but the protesters probably numbered in the hundreds. A somewhat larger crowd of counter-protesters included anti-racist church and progressive groups, but also hardened street fighters of the Workers World Party, Black Lives Matter, and Redneck Revolt. On the night of August 11, an impromptu tiki torch parade took place without serious incident. On the next day, however, clashes involving the white nationalists and their opponents began early and continued into the afternoon. Police from half a dozen jurisdictions likely outnumbered both groups, but were kept out of harm’s way. At 1:41 p.m., a neo-fascist sympathizer, all of 20 years of age, drove his Dodge Challenger into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing a young woman and injuring many more. As always in this visual age, the entire horror was caught

on video and propagated on the web.

On the same day, President Trump offered a rambling assessment of the incident that included the following:

We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides, many sides. It’s been going on for a long time in our country. . . . Above all else, we must remember this truth: no matter our color, creed, religion, or political party, we are all Americans first. ⁶⁵

The almost universal interpretation of the president’s confused statement was that he had placed the victims of Charlottesville on the same footing with the murderer, and given “a wink and a nod to white supremacists.” ⁶⁶ Trump poured gasoline on the fire by insisting, a few days later, that not all protesters had been “neo-Nazis and white nationalists,” and included “some very fine people on both sides.” ⁶⁷

It was a decisive moment for those who believed American democracy had died on Election Day. Donald Trump, president of the United States, was now openly the creature of white supremacists and Nazis. Wrote Ta-Nehisi Coates: “His ideology is white supremacy, in all its truculent and sanctimonious power.” ⁶⁸ Wrote Bob Burnett: “Trump now owns white supremacy.” ⁶⁹ Tweeted Jemele Hill: “Trump is a white supremacist who has largely surrounded himself w/other white supremacists.” ⁷⁰ The “tens of millions” of Trump supporters were “white supremacists by default”—or, alternatively, were being “recruited” by neo-Nazi propaganda. ⁷¹

For a time, elite news media became enamored of that rare and vanishing species: the American Nazi. The New York Times told the story of “The Voice of Hate in America’s Heartland,” about a young man soon to be married who happens to be “the Nazi sympathizer next door, polite and low-key at a time the old boundaries of accepted political activity can seem alarmingly in flux.” Naturally, Donald Trump “helped open a space for people like him.” ⁷² Almost simultaneously, The Atlantic published “The Making of an American Nazi,” focused on one of the more revolting contributors to the Daily Stormer. Trump’s name features 39 times, as in, illustratively: “[H]is writing taps into some of the same anxieties and resentments that helped carry Trump to the presidency— chiefly a perceived loss of status among white men.” ⁷³

If Russia and Putin were the hidden hand that delivered the impossible Trump to power, the Nazis, in the fevered mind of the elites, represented the monstrous outcome of this manipulation.

Books lamenting the decline and fall of our political system, authored by scholars, pundits, and pure disaster-mongers, saturated the market: How Democracy Dies; Broken: Can the Senate Save Itself and the Country?; Can It Happen Here? Authoritarianism in America; The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is Endangered; Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Russia’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump; The Road to Unfreedom; and, of course, Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic. These books were all published in 2018. A vast number of earlier titles could be cited.

What is one to make of such a fantastic outpouring of pessimism? I would note, first of all, that it’s largely elite-driven. Millions share the sentiment—but the elites own the institutional microphones, and make the loud noise. If Trump poses an existential threat to elite authority—if he is perceived as posing such a threat—it isn’t hard to imagine those who have managed and personified our ruling institutions for so long as projecting the threat onto the system. Democracy from that perspective means rule by the best. Authoritarianism looks like a barbarian invasion.

A second observation is that we had heard all this before. Trump was Hitler before he was inaugurated. From the first, the call was for a resistance on the model of Nazi-occupied France. Charlottesville and similar incidents, for the elites, were a confirmation, not a revelation: Trump, barbarian in the White House, has merely lived up to expectations.

This seems like an appropriate time to return to my analytical question, extracted from the cries of anguish about American democracy. Briefly: Is the US now an authoritarian dictatorship? If not, is it slouching toward that goal? Is Donald Trump a tweeting version of Hitler, Mussolini, or the Grand Wizard of the KKK? Can we cite empirical evidence of Giroux’s accusations—that the new administration has sought to “jail its opponents” and engaged in “state violence?”