On the Anti-Racist Economy

By Joshua Briond

In the aftermath of the state-sanctioned executions of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, we have witnessed arguably the largest and most sustained mobilization of protests and political demonstrations across the country in the movement for Black lives. In the midst of an era of drastically increased performative and opportunistic "activism," where "spreading awareness" is prioritized over human lives and dignity—which was helped ushered in by the Shaun King’s of the world—where capital(ism) does what it has done to everything: commodify, celebritize, and corporatize any and everything, by any means necessary. Such has been done for “social justice" rhetoric and activism. We have seen, in real time, Black Lives Matter be co-opted, commodified, watered down, and flat-out defanged in the face of capital, as the simple passivity of the hashtag and movement demands—if you can call it such—has become socially acceptable in the mainstream arena, specifically so in the post-Kaepernick era.

With increasing pressure for bourgeois public figures to “speak out” and “spread awareness” from fans, the sociopolitical moment has forced historically apolitical figures and brands alike to momentarily step outside their bubble of privilege, power, and wealth to release uninspired and bland political statements vaguely condemning violence and pledging their rhetorical support for the Black lives matter movement. Such acts are met with comment sections filled with bleak and dystopian undue and unjust adulation for bare minimum performances of intellectually insulting public political theater—that is yet typical for the celebrity worship present here in the US. As the limits of neoliberal political imagination have once again depicted, in this crucial sociopolitical climate, the best the professional liberal class could offer as a solution to the prevalence of racialized state violence—was not the political interrogation of the white power structure we live under and its constant terror and antagonization to non-white life—but to vote for uninspired Democratic candidates, donate to NGOs and non-profits with zero ties to communities most largely affected by said violence, and read “ally” self-help books, written largely but not exclusively by and for white people.

One of the books in question is Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility. Published the summer of 2018, it went viral during the rise of the protests (stated to have sold at least a million copies in the matter of a few months). Others have grappled with the glaring contradictions and violence inherent to the act of a white person raking in millions under the guise of “anti-racism” and “anti-bias training”—that has been largely proven ineffective; while also charging anywhere from $30,000 to $45,000 on public speaking gigs for corporate conglomerates like Bill Gates and Amazon. So I’m not here to speak on that. Yet, DiAngelo’s public persona and prominence is arguably the perfect depiction of the co-optation of the politics of “anti-racism” into its own industry for corporate diversity initiatives without addressing structural root causes. The issue with books, panels, infographics, and the discourse surrounding race that centers and targets “allies” is that so many of them still fundamentally misunderstand rac[e/ism], whiteness, and anti-Blackness as just a matter of individual feelings, ignorance, and morality—instead of what it is: a structural organizing tool that the US political economy—built on and inseparable from slavery and genocide—necessitates.

“We who were not black before we got here, who were defined as black by the slave trade—have paid for the crisis of leadership in the white community for a long time & have resoundingly, even when we face the worst about our­selves, survived & triumphed over it."

—James Baldwin

How can one be an anti-racist if the historical precedence of race and racialization as a colonial society organizing device and regime isn’t widely understood amongst those who proclaimed to identify or align with anti-racist values? And when the vast majority of this country’s population—including self-proclaimed anti-racists’ understanding of race is wrongly and harmfully understood as that of a biological marking, rather than a sociopolitical tool meticulously and conveniently constructed and manipulated through legislation? As W.E.B. Du Bois, amongst other historians and critical race thinkers have noted: Whiteness, as stated since its historicized legislation, marks power and dominance. Blackness marks the powerless, slave, and dispossessed.

The United States of America, as we know of it, cannot function or exist without the racial regime: whiteness and anti-blackness. The entire economy, politically and otherwise—going all the way back to the cotton industry; which introduced the world to the US as a global imperial-capitalist project—is predicated & sustained through racial violence. The subjugation of imperialized nations and peoples, the dispossessed, and the enslaved, is how America and therefore the American knows that they are free. The coloniality of American freedom and the subjugation of those racialized and colonized nations and peoples cannot be divorced from one another. The entire concept of freedom and democracy—as espoused as principle by the American project—is predicated on the denial of such, of the Other(s).

“Africanism is the vehicle by which the American self knows itself as not enslaved, but free; not repulsive, but desirable; not helpless, but licensed & powerful; not history-less, but historical; not damned, but innocent; not a blind accident of evolution, but a progressive fulfillment of destiny.”

—Toni Morrison

I want to say that when I speak of the “America(n),” I am referring to that of the white. America(n) means white. I would like to also infer that the American, and white identity, ideology, and structure, is founded upon not just the systemic exploitation of the Other, namely the Black or otherwise the slave, the native, the dispossessed, and the colonized—and the moral and political justification of it—but also defined entirely by said positionality of the subjugated. As Toni Morrison has written, “Black slavery enriched the country’s [creative] possibilities. for in that construction of blackness and enslavement could be found not only the not-free but also, with the dramatic polarity created by skin color, the projection of the not—me. The result was a playground for the imagination. What rose up out of collective needs to allay internal fears and to rationalize extemal exploitation was an American Africanism—a fabricated brew of darkness, otherness, alarm, and desire that is uniquely American."

The liberal anti-racist economy is fundamentally unwilling and ill-equipped to grapple with this and racial[ized] contradictions of capital(ism)—the likes of which Black radicals of the Black radical tradition have theorized and highlighted on for decades now. Racism is not just a matter of individual ignorance or feelings that can be changed or eradicated via “understanding,” “diversity and anti-bias training,” “tough conversations,” or a quick fix in morality and finally seeing subjects of its violence as human; as so many prominent “anti-racists” would like to have us believe. The ‘antiracist’ economy, lucrative as may be, is incapable of birthing white ‘anti-racists’ because it refuses to grapple with the inherent racism of the project, or rather regime of race, racialization, capital(ism), and whiteness-as-power, in and of itself. You cannot manufacture solidarity—which a radical anti-racist movement necessitates—on the simple passivity of moral posturing. Solidarity must be built on, not just through shared struggle or basic figurations of empathy, but also on recognizing the humanity of those in which it has been historically denied to and ultimately coming to an understanding and agreement that we are worth fighting for.

“As long as you think you are white, there is no hope for you.” —James Baldwin

To teach white people to be ‘antiracist’ is to teach white people to betray everything that they have ever known about their very existence, the world order, and life itself; it is to quite literally antagonize everything that they are and sense empowerment from. Therefore, you cannot ‘teach’ white people to be ‘antiracist’ through moral and virtue signaling—especially when whiteness itself, as politically constructed, is, has always been, and will always be, immoral. It is why becoming an anti-racist is, or at least should be, a choice one makes through rigorous study of the history of race, racialization, whiteness, and liberation movements, etc. White people cannot be guilted into antiracism—this is why the “spreading awareness” tactic—deployed by Shaun King and his ilk—that bombards people with pornographic visualizations of black terror and death have been largely ineffective but on the contrary quite in fact, historically libidinal—a source of entertainment and collective joy. The politics of moralism has proven futile. You cannot moralize oppression—especially when the source and basis of said oppression is that of capital and whiteness—both of which are categorically immoral.

In a sociopolitical moment where we have seen Donald Trump’s violence exceptionalized; making it out to be unlike anything we have ever seen before—despite his political crimes largely (and simply) being an extension of the order and requirements of the US presidency—by the liberal media apparatus; terroristic political legacies resuscitated, war criminals, regime changers, and COINTELPRO state agents become faces of resistance. All of which depict a moment in which the standard for “good doers,” “morality,” and human rights and social justice advocate is deeper in the gutter than ever before. I’m afraid that the anti-racist economy, the ally industrial complex—as a result of commodification of social justice has ushered in an “anti-racism” and a human right advocacy that is inseparable from the social, political, and economic capital that it often leads to.

I’m afraid the anti-racist economy has, ironically enough, failed to create any substantial “allies” or “anti-racists.” But instead created a culture of unadulterated and uncontested political performativity, groomed more benevolent self-aggrandizing white people—who are smarter, more clever than their forebears at disguising such racism; to avoid backlash, consequences, or even the mildest forms of confrontation; just enough to navigate situations with and around subjects of racial oppression without exposing the psychopathy and immorality of structural and ideological whiteness—but not enough to materially and substantially dedicate themselves to and sacrifice their own power and capital towards an anti-capitalist, anti-racist, and anti-imperialist struggle.

I’m afraid that there has been little to no progress, remorse or lessons learned—on the part of individual whites or the white power structure at-large as evidenced by the continuation of the legacy of colonialism, slavery and historicized violence—as the tactics and acts wielded against the initial racially marked and subjugated would serve as a template of what would occur in the centuries to follow—being exported to other racialized and colonized people domestically and across the globe; while still being enacted on the initially marked, i.e., African, Black, and Indigenous subjects.

I’m afraid with the consequences of slavery, which is that of whiteness-as-power, the racial regime and racism that is inherent to it depict white remorselessness on the part of the perpetuators and continued beneficiaries of the historicized economic industry; to paraphrase one of my favorite James Baldwin quotes from 1970: the very sight of black people in white chains and cages—both proverbial or otherwise—houseless, neglected, and structurally subjugated, and terrorized; would struck such anger, such intolerable rage, in the eyes, minds, and bodies of the American people, that they would themselves spontaneously rise up and strike off the manacles. But instead, as we know of it all too well, the existence of said chains, cages, and racial subjugation, is how the American measures their own safety and sense of comfort. It is how they know they are free.

Reopening Schools: We Do Not Have To Descend Into COVID Hell

By Steve Miller, Rosemary Lee and E.B. Shaw

With Corona virus cases spiking across the country, America is on the verge of forcing millions of people into extreme danger. Suddenly, everyone from CEOs, the President, state governors, and the corporate media are calling for schools to open “to save the economy”.

No country has tried to open schools with the virus spreading like here in the US. We are currently in a massive wave of surging cases in 40 states. There are not enough tests or testing. How do you open schools if you can’t test and trace? There’s no way that you can keep a school safe from coronavirus if the virus is raging out of control in the community where the school is located.

Before schools physically re-open, certain principles of public health must be established:

• No re-opening without full scientific best practices. So far, this is seriously lacking.

• No re-opening without dealing with the vast practical hurdles. These steps require more funding, not less. So far, the funding to address these problems does not exist.

• No re-opening without total and complete public transparency. So far, decisions are made behind closed doors. Planning is slapdash and haphazard at best. Teachers, unions and communities must be fully involved as co-equals with politicians in establishing policies.

• Schools should continue to be food centers for the communities, but they should reinstate and expand what government has cut — access to nurses, vision services, mental health and cultural support. Communities need these services now more than ever.

• We cannot fail to hold government accountable for securing public health and public safety. Governments must do what it takes to guarantee childcare in safe ways.. We have no choice here. Public schools are still controlled locally. We must exert our power to protect our children.

We’ve already seen what happens when we use shortcuts and go against public health guidance in reopening. Other countries have been successful in suppressing the level of COVID-19, they have one thing in common — a national coordinated strategy.

The US response to the virus has been fractured, reckless, and incompetent. Rather than the federal government organizing a national coordinated response, it has put corporations in total control.

The government refuses to provide adequate unemployment or health care, thus making families desperate to work.  Many European countries cover 60% to 90% of workers’ wages when they can not work. So do we really have to risk our children and our families so corporations benefit? It really does not have to be this way.

Corporations are demanding their workers return to work so they can make a profit from their investments, but they refuse to provide childcare. So children, teachers and school staff, families and communities, must risk their lives to open schools that could not even guarantee toilet paper before the virus. The only people to benefit from a premature physical opening will be billionaires and politicians of both parties. This is why they tout political reasons to re-open, while ignoring scientific precaution.

These same people, who previously had no trouble closing schools throughout neighborhoods and subjecting children to hours of high-stakes testing at computer screens, now state that keeping children out of school denies them the “emotional, social, and knowledge growth they desperately need.” Suddenly, also, the teachers who were degraded as the worst problem with public schools are now heroic essential fron-tline workers!

Schools are set to open district-by-district across the country while many nail shops, gyms, and bars remain closed. Many schools only use easily contaminated recycled air throughout whole buildings instead of widows that can be opened to bring in fresh air. Taking steps as minimal as social distancing will cost vast amounts. Little things become big problems. Before, a Kindergarten teacher could take the whole class to the bathroom at once. Now a class of 15, that requires 6 feet of spacing, forms a line 90 feet long! And how exactly are bathrooms going to be sanitized?

There are no clear guidelines; planning is confused and hidden from the public; PPE’s are in short supply; school budgets are being slashed even as the costs of adequately dealing with the virus skyrocket. School nurses were virtually eliminated before the virus hit. Now, what exactly is going to happen if a child feels sick?

The gap between school finances, destroyed by the virus, and the greatly increased costs, also caused by the virus, runs into billions. The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) has estimated the funding required to reopen public schools safely is at least $116.5 billion.

Trey Hollingsworth, Indiana Congressman, stated that people dying from the virus is the lesser of two evils to the economy not opening up. CNN reported that Hollingsworth said: “it is always the American government’s position to say, in the choice between the loss of our way of life as Americans and the loss of life, of American lives, we have to always choose the latter.” Lieutenant Governor of Texas, Dan Patrick, announced that old people should welcome re-opening, even if that means they would die.

This corporate class also touts the murderous notion of “herd immunity”, meaning that after 3 million people or so die, the virus cannot spread any more. We have watched health care workers sicken, live in their cars so not to infect their families, and wear plastic bags instead of PPEs. What will happen to school staff?

When policies and political choices set up people to die at “acceptable levels”, it is fair to conclude that this is not an accident. Even before the virus, digital technology has been turning jobs into temp work or no work at all. Corporations are simply not going to spend money to support people they cannot use. In this context, physical re-opening is designed to accept a specific amount of death, to establish toleration of death as a new normal.

Can schools physically re-open now? If so, how?

Hawaii has announced that schools will re-open when no one in the state has tested positive for one month. The Florida Education Commissioner, Richard Corcoran, is the former Speaker of the Florida House and a charter school owner. He demands that Florida open its schools 5 days a week even as Florida COVID cases reach record high levels. Precaution is scrapped for pragmatism.

America’s schools do not meet even the most lenient advice for physical re-opening, which are found on the White House website. Teachers advocate no physical re-opening until no new cases arise in the past 14 days, the time for symptoms to appear. Some districts are beginning to scrap immediate physical re-opening.

Once again, as with the George Floyd rebellion, our character as a people will be tested. Will we stand together, or will our passivity make us complicit in sanctioning unnecessary public death?

Yes, the mental, physical and emotional health of children is critical. No, this cannot be achieved by physical re-opening schools like before. That is impossible. We can find ways to bring young people back together again, but it means letting go of the idea that schools can return to normal. This step requires the imagination and agency of the communities schools serve.

The virus proves that no one is safe unless everyone is safe. The same is true for our schools. For a country founded on genocide, slavery and inequality, the challenge once again is to stand up for the right of quality public education for all.

Everyone now can see the critical and vital importance of public schools to our communities. Even before the virus, schools have been the anchor of the community. Closing public schools is a method of gentrification and community dispossession. Now we see once again that healthy schools create healthy communities and healthy communities create healthy schools.

Teacher unions and parents are advocating that public schools, in these times of COVID, should anchor the communities by expanding the public services they offer.

Immediate and Future Challenges

Whether schools physically open or not, the nature of public education has dramatically changed. Through the Spring, public schools offered online distance learning. As students graduated in June, Zoom Video Communications, Inc announced that it was being used by 100,000 schools globally.

Education has gone from being supported by technology to being dependent on technology and from being corporate-supported to becoming corporate-dependent.

Corporations like Pearson and Google tout online education as a way of saving money in tough times, but this just leads to private profits for corporations.

The latest vampire is Turnitin.com. Students turn in their essays. The website checks for plagiarism; then it sends it back to you, marked in red where you copied something out of the encyclopedia. But they also offer school districts more advanced options like: grading every paper… or maybe even student surveillance.

Under corporate control, online learning, distance learning and virtual charter schools are a dismal failure. The California Attorney General is investigating the entire virtual charter industry for putting private profit ahead of quality education. The largest virtual charter corporation, K12 Inc, “educates” 120,000 students, making $900 million in revenue, all from taxpayer money earmarked for public education. Only half of online high school students graduate within four years, compared to 84% nationally. The Center for Research on Education Outcomes found that students in virtual charters do so poorly in math and English that it’s as if they didn’t attend school at all.

Most teachers estimate that only about 25% of their students do well in online education. The education model is the same drill & kill, test & fail regime that students could not succeed in even before the virus. Most students have trouble learning through screens since the other vital ways that humans learn are eliminated or reduced. And, of course, how does a family provide enough laptops for every child, much less the expense of connecting through Wi-fi?

Government at every level has invited billionaires, tech corporations, and CEOs to determine what public education will look like as the virus rolls on. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo invited Bill Gates and Google into the state to “re-imagine public education.” In other words, government is systematically replacing elected officials, who are (theoretically) accountable to the people, with private, unaccountable capitalists in a campaign to defund and privatize public schools and debase the purpose of education.

The ethical and moral implications of this corporate effort to terminate the education our children and communities need are highly disturbing. There is little public discussion about this even as government proclaims online learning as the miracle of the age.

US schools at every level are facing a crisis of unprecedented proportions. By the time the 2020-2021 school year is over, corporations and governments – if unopposed – will establish a degraded model that works only for the elite and very few others.

When government can bailout billionaires with trillions of dollars, we see that the money exists to build a system of public education that can build the leaders we need to transform the world.

Teaching today must unleash the marvelous powers and creativity of our collective humanity. Students are the people the world needs today to overcome the challenges of a desperately sick population, a sick society and a sick planet.

Unlike most of the world, where the needs of society were put first, in the US every problem is presented as an individual problem and every solution is presented as an individual solution.

It is the same with public education. Ronald Reagan proclaimed that there was no such thing as “society”, meaning no problems result from society, so you’re on your own. This has been America’s mantra ever since, unless of course it relates to corporate governance.

But now we see, scientifically, that the only solutions that can work must be organized at the national level by government to benefit everyone. Social problems are not individual; the emanate from how society is organized. Social problems require social solutions.

Just as COVID-19 demands a national coordinated strategy, the problems of safely re-opening public schools demand national solutions. Not piecemeal, local, short-term quick fixes. Instead, upgrade our schools by combining a public health approach with a public schools approach.

Steve Miller, Rosemary Lee, and E.B. Shaw are members of the National Public Education Committee of the League of Revolutionaries for a New America

“Trump’s America” IS America

It's important for us to understand that "Trump’s America" IS America. There is no differentiating. As a matter of fact, based on the country's history, Trump is about as "American" as it gets - greedy, racist, classist, misogynistic, corrupt, dominating, controlling, sadistic, elitist.

America is a settler-colonial nation that was built on the backs of Native genocide and African enslavement, continuing into modern times through intricate systems of institutional white supremacy. The founders of this country were elitists and aristocrats who used their wealth to dominate others while arranging a system of immense privilege for those like them. It is a capitalist country that has been built from the toil of the working majority for centuries - masses of people who have received very little (and continue to receive very little) in return. It is an imperialist country that has bombed, colonized, and obstructed democratic movements throughout the global south and middle east for over a century. It is a misogynistic country that waited 150 years before allowing women to vote, confined women to second-class status after, and continues to breed patriarchal values that are dangerous to working women in everyday life.

"Trump's America" IS America.

Trump has continued to oversee the corporate coup started under Reagan and carried forward under the Bushs, Clinton, and Obama - a coup that is merely an inevitable late stage of capitalism, whereas wealth and power have been concentrated into a fusion of corporate governance and creeping fascism.

Trump has continued America's illegal and immoral wars abroad, same as his predecessors.

Trump has continued "starving the beast," following the neoliberal blueprint of the last 40 years by siphoning public funds into private hands.

Trump has continued the mass deportation policies implemented under Obama.

Trump has continued the attack on civil liberties started under W. Bush in the wake of 9/11.

Trump, in his role as president, carries the torch of draconian, racist, classist criminal justice policies created under Reagan.

Trump carries the torch of mass incarceration and austerity policies created under Clinton.

Trump has continued serving Wall St. and his pals/donors in the profit industries, like all of his modern predecessors.

Trump, like all presidents before, SERVES CAPITAL - not people.

He may not be the polished statesman that we've become accustomed to - those who exhibit "stability" and "civility" while acting as the figureheads of systemic brutality - but make no mistake: Trump is as American as it gets. However, "America" is largely a myth in itself, something fed to the masses from above by the wealthy and powerful few who have always demanded our loyalty despite their everyday crimes against us and our class counterparts the world over. Most Americans are despised by those who run the country from their pedestals, those who benefit from its brutality, those who gouge us at every turn, those protected by an ever-thinning, reactionary, "middle-class" buffer.

To rid ourselves of Trump and all he represents, we must rid ourselves of "America" as we know it - the myth, the systems it facilitates (capitalism/imperialism, colonialism, white supremacy, patriarchy), and all of the severity that comes with it. This is a hard truth to accept, especially since it goes against everything we have been conditioned to believe. But it is a truth that must be understood and dealt with if we are to ever win a just world.

All power to the people.

Do Recent Escalations with Iran Stress the Urgency of a Sanders Presidency?

By Jonas Ecke

The recent US assassination of Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s top military commander, was a reminder, if any was needed, of the dangers of US militarism. It also raises the question: Who, in the US, could offer a realistic alternative to this country’s ingrained militaristic path-dependency?

At first sight, Bernie Sanders seems to be the ideal candidate. Whenever Sanders talks international politics on the Democratic primary campaign trail, he urges the US to take on a global role not based on militarism, but on multilateral efforts to address challenges that transcend nation-states, for example persistent extreme poverty and impending planetary extinction.

Of course, we know that speeches on war and peace held by politicians who do not command much political or military might should be taken with more than a grain of salt. This caveat is certainly true for politicians from the Democratic Party, who are more willing to provide rhetorical support for global human rights initiatives, peaceful conflict resolutions, and multilateralism compared to their Republican peers, yet seem unwilling or unable to deliver on these values once in office.

Let us consider the last three Democratic Presidents: Before President Carter armed the Mujahidin in Afghanistan and provided arms for horrendous human rights abuses in East Timor, El Salvador, and elsewhere in the late 1970s and early 80s, candidate Carter promised a new kind of foreign policy centered on unalienable human right norms. Ushered into the White House with promises of a “peace dividend” after the conclusion of the Cold War, President Clinton would deliver weapons into the hands of abusers in Turkey, Indonesia, Columbia, and Israel. These policies were pursued even though the world had become more peaceful as a whole.

And then, of course, there was Obama: An erstwhile critic of the Iraq war and skillful orator whose speeches peaceniks could project their political dreams, President Obama would go on to support proxy fighters in Yemen, Somalia, and Syria, increase the drone strike program tenfold, and join France and other nations in toppling Gadhafi in Libya, contributing to the kind of instability that he decried on the campaign trail. In Obama’s last year in office alone, the US dropped 26,171 bombs.

In early stages of their careers, all of these politicians tried to resonate with vast segments of the US population who want a foreign policy not dictated by weapon merchants and a foreign policy elite that is disconnected from the real costs of war. Once in office, however, every one of them fell short of expectations and/or fell in line with US imperialistic endeavors.

Is there reason to believe that Sanders is any different, that he would somehow escape the dangerous ideation that Realpolitik necessitates destructive militarism, if he were given the chance to enter the Oval Office? It’s a question of high relevance as the US might enter into another war in the Middle East.

Sanders’s Track Record on Foreign Policy

Sanders’s political record and election platform, which are explicitly centered around a more peaceful US foreign policy (if this is possible), show a commitment that makes him more likely to abstain from the militarism of his Republican and Democratic predecessors. Not just his words, but his actions – from his time as a protestor of the Vietnam War via his opposition to Reagan’s brutal Nicaraguan proxy war and the 2003 Iraq invasion, to his recent senate resolution to stop US military support for Saudi Arabia’s devastating air campaign in Yemen – give hope that he would steer the path.

Sanders’s famed authenticity and passion do not only shine through when he talks about today’s frivolous levels of economic inequality, but also when it comes to foreign policy. Particularly in his debates with Hillary Clinton in 2016, Sanders delivered lessons on the long history of tragic blowbacks from interventionism and regime change for a younger generation. Referring to Henry Kissinger’s role as a mentor to Hillary Clinton in a debate in Milwaukee, Sanders stated, “I am proud to say that Henry Kissinger is not my friend. I will not take advice from Henry Kissinger.” He then recounted how a military campaign and coup masterminded by Kissinger contributed to the genocide in Cambodia.

All of this is not to say that Sanders is without fault. After all, he is a career senator for an imperialistic state. As such, he has occasionally compromised on foreign policy issues in his long senate career, for example when he approved General James “Mad Dog” Mattis – who directed the bloody campaign against the Iraqi city of Fallujah – in the senate in 2017.  Sanders has also not categorically ruled out the continued use of drones, and moments of pandering to America’s war culture have broken through from time to time. Overall, though, it is safe to assert that Sanders has allowed the courage of his conviction to dictate his foreign policy choices far more often than most others.

If Sanders becomes the 46th president of the United States, his constituents would have to become more educated about foreign affairs and consistently hold him accountable. Herein lies another advantage of Sanders: He is not a politician who seeks to become a technocrat who implements reforms within circles of initiated “experts,” and without much public input. Sanders is spearheading a movement of predominantly, but not only, young US citizens, who have soberly reflected on the many failures of the post-9/11 militarism they have experienced in their lifespan and are committed to continuously engage with the political system. As Noam Chomsky points out, this quality represents an unforgivable sin among the powers that be.

Will It Matter?

Contrary to what his Democrat party detractors – who seem to believe that access to D.C. think tanks, halls of power, and universities equals foreign policy expertise – claim, Sanders has for the most part instinctively arrived at the right decisions on various foreign policy crises from Yemen to Nicaragua. His track record stems from his ability to avoid, in his own words, the “old Washington mindset that judges ‘seriousness’ according to the willingness to use force.” Rather than engaging in futile and immoral military adventures abroad, Sanders promises to finally adequately fund foreign aid programs. These programs only cost a fraction of what’s spent on the military, but could offer shelter, protection, and perhaps even opportunities to the millions who have been displaced by conflicts. As the “severe global funding shortages” for UNHCR, the UN’s refugee agency, epitomize, the displaced have been all but abandoned by an international community that cannot resolve the conflicts that cause the displacement.

If the past few months are prologue, the world will be an even more dangerous place by the time Sanders might take office. In the Middle East, global powers such as the EU, Russia, and the US, as well as regional actors such as the Gulf Council states, Iran, and Turkey, will continue their disastrous strategy of funding violent proxies, both offensive and defensive, as they have already done in Libya, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon. The whole region might be pushed to the brink by the dangerous escalations of Trump and the US “military–industrial–media complex” on Iran.

Recent history suggests that it may not matter who occupies the Oval Office, as the US war machine, its financial benefactors, and its complicit media seem to churn on out of systemic necessity. The nation’s economy has become largely dependent on the arms industry, as weapons remain one of the most exported products from the US. Thus, the only way to keep this market stimulated is by using and recycling munitions, as well as providing weaponry to foreign states. If Sanders attempts to undermine this process, there could be a heavy price to pay. However, if enough Americans back a Sanders presidency by holding its proverbial feet to the fire, a different path may begin to be carved out. At the end of the day, someone must (and will) occupy the office. The most realistic prospect for an urgently necessary de-escalation and the rebuilding of whole societies and bilateral relationships will be having Bernie Sanders at the helm.

Trump's Lost Sons

By Sean Posey

Accused mail bomber Cesar Sayoc reportedly spent much of the past 10 years living in a van in southern Florida. According to those who knew him, he drifted through life - working odd jobs at a pizza shop and a strip club. He seemed to have made little impression on the world.

On the day of his arrest, cable news and social media lit up with images taken of his van. Festooned with the stickers depicting images of President Trump - and his political opponents, who appeared with gun sights superimposed on their faces - the vehicle served as a seemingly made-to-order meme. But who is Sayoc?

During an interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper, Sayoc's family lawyer, Ron Lowy, provided some revealing insight into the man. Sayoc had apparently never been political before Donald Trump descended the escalator at Trump Tower to announce his candidacy in June 2015. After that seminal moment, Sayoc gave himself over to the Trump movement.

Trump has been "reaching out," in Lowy's words, to "outsiders" just like Sayoc, "people who don't fit in, people who are angry at America." Trump is telling these people they "have a place at the table," Lowy explained. "This was someone lost," he said of Sayoc. "He was looking for anything, and he found a father in Trump."

Sayoc is not alone. Most famously, Kanye West adopted Trump as a kind of father figure. In October, West travelled to the Oval Office to meet the President. During a rambling speech to the press, he explained his attraction to Trump and the "Make America Great Again" slogan that so memorably defined the President's campaign.

"I love Hillary," West said. "I love everyone. Right. But the campaign, 'I'm with Her' just didn't make me feel, as a guy, that didn't get to see my dad all the time. Like a guy that could play catch with his son. It was something about when I put this hat on, it made me feel like Superman. You made a Superman," he told Trump.

Many depicted West as a lost soul for having to find a father figure in someone like Trump. But America today is filled with lost boys and men. Most of them, however, are not multi-millionaire rappers.

In previous decades, these are men who would have been working in factories, serving in voluntary associations, starting families or going off to college. Many are, like Sayoc, (described as "a 14-year old in man's body" by Lowy) only marginally attached to the work world.

Since the early 2000s, the labor force participation rate of you men without a bachelor's degree has declined more than any other group . Other disturbing statistics about the plight of American males are a regular feature of articles with headlines like "We're Losing a Whole Generation of Men to Video Games."

These are males who are moving from what should have been a place in mainstream America to the very margins. The decline in church attendance, the disappearance of civic life and the splintering of the family has left many men seeking something beyond even the material. The number of children living with two parents, for example, has declined over 20 percent since 1960. Yet in the past two years stand-in father figures have emerged.

Jordan Peterson, previously an obscure Canadian psychologist, recently rose to fame as a kind of guru for struggling men. He estimates that 90 percent of his 1.5 million YouTube subscribers are male. Part of Peterson's appeal is his broadside against what he terms "cultural Marxism" and politically-correct, postmodern society, which he says ignores the needs of young men. Yet he also mixes the kind of critical guidance that one would expect from a father or a mentor, but it's directed at an audience that perhaps has never heard anyone who they felt really spoke to them. This is also something you can hear from those who identify with Trump and feel he speaks to them.

It's not just Kanye West who has adopted the MAGA hat as a kind of warrior's helmet or mark of American traditionalism. A group known as the Proud Boys, which formed as Trump's campaign took off in 2016, has adopted the MAGA cause. They're causing growing consternation among many on the left as their members engage in street brawls across the country with liberal protesters and members of antifa, a loosely organized group of leftist militants.

The Proud Boys bill themselves as a modern day version of the kinds of clubs and fraternal organizations whose decline Robert Putnam documented in his book Bowling Alone. The Proud Boys are a "men's club," according to founder Gavin McInnes. They have two hard and fast rules for membership: you have to be biologically male and you have to declare yourself a "Western chauvinist."

"I think the Proud Boys, and I think Donald Trump, for the most part, drives people who have been disenfranchised by the public because they don't fit in," said Proud Boy Andrew Bell Ramos during an NBC Left Field story on the group in 2017.

"Most guys my age are basically just interested in sitting at home, masturbating, eating Cheerios and playing video games, smoking weed and trying to avoid responsibility," Ramos explained in another segment on SBS Dateline. The NBC segment shows the Proud Boys bonding over a bonfire, getting tattoos, venerating the role of the housewife, and expounding upon the superiority of the Western world. It isn't your average Knights of Columbus meeting.

"What's it like to be a male chauvinist in 2017? Probably a lot less lonely thanks to these guys," NBC journalist Aurora Almendral somewhat naively explained. They almost assuredly do provide a sense of belonging for some alienated men, but at what cost?

The Southern Poverty Law Center calls the Proud Boys a "hate group." Founder Gavin McInnes has been involved with alt-right websites such as Vdare.com, and a skinhead group called the 211 Bootboys joined the Proud Boys in assaulting protesters after McInnes spoke at the Metropolitan Republican Club in October. "I cannot recommend violence enough," he has said . "It is a really effective way to solve problems."

The Proud Boys are an outgrowth of the alt-right and the land of the "red-pilled." The expression "red-pilled" is borrowed from the imagery of the 1999 film The Matrix. In the film, Neo, the putative hero, is offered the choice of taking either a blue pill or a red pill by the mysterious figure, Morpheus. Though he isn't aware of it, Neo is trapped in a simulation called the matrix.

"You're here because you know something," Morpheus explains. "What you know you can't explain, but you feel it. You've felt it your entire life, that there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad." If Neo takes the blue pill, he returns to his virtual reality life. If he takes the red pill, as Morpheus explains, he'll discover "how deep the rabbit hole goes."

In the film, the matrix is "the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth." Not long after the onslaught the Great Recession, the term "red-pilled" began to be adopted by a very loosely organized group of white nationalists, "men's rights" activists, reactionary conservatives, antifeminists and a host of other groups coalescing in far-right circles on the internet who became collectively known as the alt-right.

To them, the liberal order is the world that has been pulled over their eyes. And for many, it's Trump who is red-pilling more and more of the "normies" among the general public.

A recent analysis of 30,000 Twitter accounts of users who "self-identified as alt-right, or who followed someone who did," found that Trump is "the glue that binds the far right together." And young men (including the Proud Boys) are now an increasing presence at Trump rallies.

"Identity has become the coin of the realm in American culture," writes Angela Nagle , "but one that's not accessible to the heirs of white male hegemony." Although it isn't only white males , as Sayoc, West and others confirm. This is something Trump seems to recognize. His word and deeds are attracting the lost, the damaged and the economically disenfranchised men in America.

These men are searching for meaning and belonging in a country that has long been "Bowling Alone." Some might stop at Jordan Peterson; others will take the red pill. And it's likely that Trump, not Morpheus, will be the one who guides them down the rabbit hole.

Epistemological Apathy and Egomania: The Not-so Mysterious Case of Donald J. Trump and the Implications for American Democracy

By Bryant William Sculos

Over the past several months, there have been a number of articles written exploring how to typologize Donald Trump ideologically. Is he a fascist? Is he a conservative? A populist? A liberal? A sexist racist xenophobe? Some irrational combination of all of them? A cursory look at the comments sections of Internet new sites, the blogosphere, and social media shows that there are a variety of preferred terms used by people responding to the incalculably racist, bigoted, hateful, and often wildly outlandish or incoherent comments and policy proposals of firebrand Republican Presidential candidate Donald J. Trump. Most of these labels, while probably accurate, are vulgar and not worth repeating here, but two of them stand out as potentially having a great deal of accuracy and indeed political significance. Trump is often referred to as either an asshole or a bullshitter (which is equivalent to being "full of shit" for the purposes of this essay), and sometimes he is referred to as both at the same time. Assuming that these "expert" political commentators do not genuinely believe that Donald Trump's body is full of male bovine feces nor that he is an exceptionally large anus, these labels likely refer to more sarcastic idiomatic meanings. What the creative masterminds who use these epithets (again, however accurate they are) likely don't realize is that these terms refer to rather well-defined concepts in contemporary philosophy and sociology, specifically developed by Harry G. Frankfurt and Aaron James respectively.

In their respective books, On Bullshit and Assholes: A Theory, Frankfurt and James offer specific conceptualizations of "bullshit" and "assholes." Taken together, looking at the political campaigning of Donald Trump, it becomes quite obvious that, strictly technically speaking, Donald Trump is a bullshitting asshole. As such, I argue, Trump is not so much unique as he is a manifestation of what our contemporary social condition produces, and as such Trump exists as an extreme caricature of an increasingly cold, narcissistic, self-righteous capitalistic mentality that must be a central concern for all of us as we aim to move beyond the present towards an emancipated and habitable future.

Theorizing Bullshit and Assholes

According to Harry G. Frankfurt (1988), bullshit is an epistemological category that, though not itself a product of modernity, has become a hallmark of it. Bullshit is not a lie. It is a deception based on a complete apathy towards the truth. For the bullshitter, the truth is irrelevant. Beyond the traditional binary of honesty and lying, bullshit is a category of knowledge that is defined by its emphatic disconnect from knowledge itself (125). In order to be honest, one must know the truth (or at least have the intention of speaking what one believes to be the truth). To lie, one must also know the truth. In the case of lying, one needs to have a sense of the truth in order to effectively avoid speaking it. "There are similarities between hot air and excrement, incidentally, which make hot air seem an especially suitable equivalent for bullshit. Just as hot air is speech that has been emptied of all informative content, so excrement is matter from which everything nutritive has been removed" (127).

The question as to what produces bullshit is a complicated one, and for Frankfurt, it could have any number of sources. In all of the examples he gives (any situation where a person is expected to know more than they do, a situation where one could benefit from seeming like they know more than they do, or more academically in the anti-realist or postmodern philosophical critique of Truth), bullshit typically has a social source-but it is a social source that is directly channeled through agents. It is not that the bullshitter does not know that they are full of it; they do. The origins of bullshit lay in the social relations that incentivize and normalize bullshitting (Frankfurt 1988, 132-133).

Aaron James (2012) takes a similar approach to Frankfurt's in his typology of assholes.[i] In his recent book Assholes: A Theory, James explicates various types of assholes, all sharing these basic qualities: [1] systematic enjoyment of special advantages, [2] due to a deep-seated belief in their own superiority, and [3] belief in their own superiority to such a degree that they ignore any potential obligation to justify their special advantages to others (5).

The asshole…sees no need to wait for special circumstances to come his way in the normal course of things. The asshole feels entitled to allow himself special advantages as he pleases systematically, across a wide range of social interactions….He rides people with wearing comments-veiled criticisms, insinuating questions, or awkward allusions to topics not normally discussed in polite company. He is often rude or more often borderline nasty….More important, the asshole gains special advantages from interpersonal relations, not by stroke of continuous luck, but because he regards himself as special….If one is special on one's birthday, the asshole's birthday comes everyday. (James 2012, 15-16)

The asshole is thus a special kind of elitist, but they aren't born that way-though some certainly have psychopathic traits. More relevant to my argument here though, according to James, assholes are created, created by a culture of self-centered hyper-individualism that allows people-and indeed encourages people-to feel that they are superior (James 2010, 88-100). It is the most extreme version of when your Mom told you in grade school 'not to worry about what other people think'. Assholes internalize this sentiment to the extreme, taking it to mean that they deserve respect to the point of servility, simply because of how great they believe they are. For the asshole, there is a complete lack of perspective, self-reflection, and humility. The asshole may feign these traits, but according to James, in most cases they wouldn't even bother. After all, who cares if people think you're an asshole if you know you are better than they are?

Taken together, a bullshitting asshole would be a personal who consistently speaks without regard for the truth, in a way that is insulated by an inflated sense of their own worth, entitlement, and superiority. Let us turn to the recent evidence Donald J. Trump has provided us in order to decide if he fits this categorization.

Typologizing Donald Trump

One of the key areas that Donald Trump is clearly bullshitting about-in a purely technical sense-is immigration. Trump has said on a number of occasions that his plan is deport as many illegal aliens present in the United States as can be rounded up and then construct a gigantic wall along the US-Mexico border, regardless of the cost (which he plans to somehow pass on to the Mexican government). Ignoring the fact that he has presented no evidence or speculation about how he would get the Mexican government to pay for this massive construction project nor where the funds for the mass deportation initiative would come from. Trump is completely ignoring the vast evidence (which we have no way of knowing that he is even aware that this evidence exists, due to his apparent apathy towards evidence in general) that tells us that the most common way that people who end up in the US without legal documentation is by overstaying their legally obtained entry visas. Though it is important to note that this is fairly old data, but the Pew study this information comes from makes it clear that more than 40% are not crossing the Rio Grande. If the goal of Trump's immigration plan is anything more than to excite the xenophobic crypto-fascists (who have, in his view, too long been silenced in this country), we can assume the goal is a more secure state and a more open employment market for US laborers, a common neoliberal argument. More recent data suggests that there is currently a reverse migration wave occurring due to the downturn in the US economy, meaning that Mexican immigrants are leaving the US in greater numbers than are entering. Does Donald Trump know this? Does he care whether he knows?

In a related instance of epistemological bullshit, Donald Trump has continued to refuse to acknowledge that Barack Obama is not a Muslim. This is not mere lying, because we can't be sure that Trump neither knowingly believes that Obama isn't a Muslim nor do we have any evidence that Trump cares about whether it is true or false.

We can see this particular brand of bullshit in several recent events: James brings up Trumps earlier leadership of the "Birther" movement when Barack Obama was elected and even when he was running for re-election in 2012, but this tendency, while it has become a more subtle part of Trump's campaign, has not dissipated. When confronted by a supporter during a campaign rally who suggested that getting rid of Muslims was a crucially important issue and explicitly stating that the current President was one of those Muslims, Trump refused to correct the supporter. Trump has continued to refuse to state clearly that he knows Obama is not actually a Muslim.

More recently, Trump has taken multiple positions on a few issues, including abortion and transgender bathroom use. In a matter of forty-eight hours Trump changed his position on abortion at least three times. For most of his public life Trump has been pro-choice, but as he began to drift towards the precipice of reactionary politics, he drastically shifted his position suggesting that abortion should be made illegal and women who have abortions should be legally punished. Apparently he meant the doctors…apparently he meant that states should decide…apparently he has no ungodly idea what he thinks. He doesn't seem to care either, and more fantastically, neither do his millions of supporters-which includes one or two women I believe. On transgender bathroom use, he has also changed his tune, now saying that this issue should be resolved by the states.

Beyond Trump's proclivity for bullshit, he also evinces characteristics of James' asshole typology (something James explicitly states, though he focused narrowly on Trump's "moralizing" about Barack Obama's birth certificate, which makes sense because when the book was written Trump had not ascended to the GOP's top spot) (James 2012, 67).

Towards the beginning of his primary campaign Trump took the bold step of criticizing Senator John McCain's status as a war hero due to surviving as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, because as Trump says he "likes people who weren't captured…." There is certainly a smug superiority to this claim, especially coming from someone who has never served in the military. There was also a refusal to provide justifications-only the rationalization that he was kidding, but the basic premise was accurate.

After that lovely comment, Trump kicked Univision journalist Jorge Ramos out of a briefing because Ramos refused to be silenced by Trump's bloviating. Trump characterized Ramos as being overly-emotional, but kicking a reporter out of a press conference is nearly unheard of for a Presidential candidate. Trump never apologized nor did he say much beyond asserting his completely unjustified authority to remove reporters he doesn't like for whatever reason he wants. This is the epitome of unjustified entitlement and refusal to respond to the concerns of others.

Completely unsurprisingly this wasn't Trump's last contribution to his increasingly well-deserved label "asshole." During the August 7th republican primary debate Trump made a very gentlemanly reference to debate host Megyn Kelly's menstrual cycle with regard to her emotional state when asking him questions. He said "she had blood coming out of whatever." When asked about the clear implication of his comment, Trump accused anyone of thinking that he was talking about her being on her period as having a sick mind (Yan 2015). Again, he immunized himself from any criticism. These example provide evidence for the systematic requirements of James' typology. Trump seems to be the sociological asshole, par excellence.

In the most recent incident of Trump's egomania, in his GOP nomination acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, regarding the many many problems facing America (which of course he wildly exaggerated), he claimed "I alone can fix it." While it very may well be in his power to solve the problems he has invented in his own mind and convinced millions of people are real, the kind of megalomania that is takes to assert that one can solve the problems alone is further evidence of Trump's well-earned asshole status.

These systematic episodes of completely unjustified elitism, condescension, and refusal to subject himself to the complaints of others (including his victims) and pervasive and outright refusal to engage in the now minimally popular practice of "being a good person," Trump evinces nearly all of the traits of James's various typologies of assholes (e.g., the boorish asshole, the smug asshole, the presidential asshole, the corporate asshole, the asshole boss, the self-aggrandizing asshole, and the category where James actually places Trump, "the self-aggrandizing asshole with a thin moral pretext")(James 2012, 37-67).

Why Should We Care About Bullshitting Assholes?

Why does any of this matter? Why does it matter that the nominee for one of the two major parties in the United States is a bullshitting asshole? After all, it is likely that "bullshitting asshole" is a socio-philosophical label that applies to many politicians, so why does it matter? It matters because these categories, however humorous it might be to write an entire essay with them, are politically dangerous and antithetical to democracy. Democracy, especially representative democracy-even one that doesn't work all that well for most people-requires some degree of interpersonal trust among the people and between the people and politicians. People listen when leaders speak, and if we come to realize that these leaders are assholes who don't care about the truth or their constituents, it can either breed apathy or resentment. Apathy or resentment towards the current system can either be turned into further apathy or it can be deployed for extreme political movements. While Occupy Wall Street was certainly a nascent positive example of this, the Tea Party or the recently emboldened Trump-supporting white supremacists (see David Duke) can hardly vouch the same credentials in regard to fighting against injustice. Bullshitting assholes in power are dangerous.

Maybe Trump is a fascist, but it seems to be more immediately problematic that even if he isn't, he's likely to be a very dangerous President (I'd need another whole article to detail the similar, though not identical, dangers of Hillary Rodham Clinton's risk to the poor in the US and around the world given her corporate neoliberal history as well as her hyper-militaristic foreign policy approach-but that's for another time and place).

Bullshit and assholeishness in political leaders are not conducive to democracy, whether we agree with Hardt and Negri (2012) that representation immediately and inherently separates the people from power, or we accept Chomsky's (2013) more moderate position that representation, when done properly, can produce a lot more justice and equality than we are used to at the moment. Chomsky's position is that effective representation can indeed make peoples' lives better while we wait for or work for revolutionary change like Hardt and Negri's autonomist revolution. Bullshitting assholes are a reflection of the ideological structures that undermine both reform and revolution by normalizing a corrupt notion of representation and mystifying the true relations of production and hierarchy that must be the target of revolution.

Thus from this admittedly crude analysis of an admittedly crude figure, there are insights for a twenty-first century democratic-socialist strategy. Combined with the rich resources of Critical Theory, democratic-socialist strategy must begin with a demystifying strategy in service of human emancipation. Furthermore, it must include the practice of pointing out who the bullshitting-assholes are as well as where they come from. While these are certainly pathologies; there's no reason to believe they are naturally occurring.

Capitalism and other instantiations of oppressive hierarchy like racism, sexism, heterosexism and others continue to exist primarily because most people fail to see their continued functioning (even as they experience them), and when they do acknowledge these oppressions, they locate those instances in individual behavior and not the social structure. While we can still focus on individual manifestations of bullshitting and assholeishness, we must also being to see them as structural characteristics as well: systemic bullshit and assholeish systems.

While we should be concerned about the social roots and political reproduction of these traits, we need to remember that for those of us that are even somewhat aware of these things: Individual behavior matters. Trump shows us that. Individuals matter, not because if we simply change a few people the world would be entirely different, but rather because in a hyperindividualistic society, even if we accept that solidarity-based collective action is the only avenue for systemic change, individual still need to decide to get involved (though this use of the term decision here is not to imply this is a choice made "outside" or "beyond" ideological social conditioning). Individuals are also sources of persuasion. They can inspire and drive mobilization. It is not just about us making our choice to get involved (or not), but also our capacity and indeed moral responsibility to persuade others to join us.

Additionally, scholars on the Left should be interested in individuals. In their social contexts, individuals provide avenues for critical scholars and social critics an opportunity to point to the social origins of individual behaviors and societal norms. Why is Trump an asshole? Why is he so full of shit? Why are politicians so often assholes? Why are they so often full of shit? What produces, and indeed encourages, incentivizes, and normalizes, these characteristics? What is the relationship between people who possess this characteristics and the social, economic, and political context from which they emerge and inhabit? What makes Trump, Trump, and why should we care so much?

What makes Trump well, Trump, is not that he is unique but rather that he is a caricature of the latent beliefs and urges that contemporary neoliberal capitalism encourages. Trump is the embodiment of the alienated cruelty, apathetic reified epistemology, and insulated self-centered elitism that characterizes a nearly purified form of a capitalistic mentality; a mentality that identifies success with being a bullshitting asshole who has a lot of money.

We live in world where being a bullshitting asshole is increasingly the norm, whether we're talking about Trump, Ben Carson, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Kim Kardashian, or anyone on a show that begins with "Real Housewives of…"(not to say that these examples all fit this typology in identically egregious or dangerous ways). Maybe the past was just as bad for different reasons. Maybe it was exactly the same, but that is irrelevant. What matters is that we pick up our shovels and extricate the bullshit from our politics, and perhaps the shovel could even be useful to deal with the assholes too-though I think simply raising more compassionate people who are driven by more (or something completely other) than profit and fame would be more humane that pitchforks, torches, and shovels aimed at our plutocratic elites. A society long built on and by bullshit and assholes will not be just; nor will it be sustainable. We are thus left with a choice: we can either organize with and vote for (and probably be or become over time) bullshitting assholes or we can choose to care about truth, honesty, one another, and the world we inhabit-but it is impossible to do both.

The real problem is not that there are people like Trump who embody something akin to the Platonic Form or Weberian ideal-type of a bullshitting asshole, but rather that everyday people are increasingly encouraged to get closer and closer to that character-type, often times just to make a living (or so they are led to believe). Though Trump has yet to attempt to co-opt their music, Green Day may have preemptively written the best slogan for Trump's campaign: "Nice guys finish last [and most Mexicans are drug-smuggling rapists]." We need not-and should not-accept this conclusion. Let us hope and act in a way that moves the truth a bit closer to "Bullshitting assholes finish last." Whether there is or will be a dialectical moment soon where people notice, name, and reject the bullshit and the assholes and build a mass resistance to them and the systems that (re)produce them remains to be seen, but the continued normalization-and indeed glorification-of assholeishness and bullshit does not bode well for that goal.

Bryant William Sculos is a contributing writer with The Hampton Institute and a Ph.D. candidate in political theory at Florida International University, whose research uses Critical Theory as a basis to explore the relationship between capitalism, democracy, and global justice. His work has been published in New Political Science, Class, Race and Corporate Power, Political Studies Review, Marx & Philosophy Review of Books, and New Politics. Bryant is also an at-large member of Socialist Alternative-CWI in the US. He can be reached at bscul005@fiu.edu .

References

Frankfurt, Harry G. 1988. "On Bullshit" in The Importance of What We Care About. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

James, Aaron. 2012. Assholes: A Theory. New York: Doubleday.

Hardt, Michael and Negri, Antonio. 2012. Declaration. New York: Argo Navis.

Chomsky, Noam. 2013. On Anarchism. New York. The New Press.

Notes

Though this article was written prior, while it was under revision, Fareed Zakaria released a brief editorial making the claim that Trump mirrored Harry Frankfurt's concept of "bullshit." His short analysis can be read here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-unbearable-stench-of-trumps-bs/2016/08/04/aa5d2798-5a6e-11e6-831d-0324760ca856_story.html?utm_term=.8db96bc6e9d0

In fact, James cites Frankfurt's essay on bullshit as an inspiration for writing a book about such a controversial and crude concept.

Trumph of the Will: Taking Donald Trump's Fascism Seriously

By Justin C. Mueller

The GOP presidential candidacy of Donald Trump has been seen by many as a hilarious farce. How could this former reality TV star, a multiply-bankrupt billionaire, an all of a sudden family-values champion with four failed marriages, whose official politics have shifted loudly with the political winds NOT be seen as a ridiculous indictment of the spectacle of American electoral politics? As some have noted, his very appeal to some people is in his willingness to say things that normal politicians just don't usually say… at least, out loud. As several commentators have observed, however, Trump is simply not funny any more. What has changed?

Some have alluded to the eerily fascist-like character of his rhetoric and policies. Many people may consider this to be a ridiculous, hyperbolic, or unthinkable comparison. After all, Hitler killed millions. While Trump may have destroyed communities through his business practices, such a comparison must be wildly inappropriate, or even disrespectful to the victims of early 20th century fascism. In internet culture, this common sense manifests itself in the idea of Godwin's Law, which argues that "as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1". The implication of this is that such comparisons are toxic, abused and overused rhetorically, and intended more to de-legitimize an opponent rather than say anything of worth. While comparisons to fascism can certainly be over-used in rhetoric, they are under-used in actual analysis. Fascism, and Hitler in particular, have generally been treated as exhausted signifiers of the kind described by Roland Barthes - drained of metaphorical, conceptual, and descriptive utility. Simultaneously, Hitler in particular has become too mythical and distant of a figure, ensconced firmly within Western national mythologies regarding the moral status of World War II.

It is a fundamental mistake (really more of an ideological maneuver) to imagine that early 20th century fascists were an exceptional evil, emerging out of nothing and returning to that nothing, and that no useful comparisons can be made with them. The politics of Trump and his cousins, Le Pen and the National Front in France, the Golden Dawn in Greece, UKIP (as well as the BNP) in the UK, and a slew of others can show us otherwise. Read the transcripts of Hitler's early speeches and then listen to Trump's speeches, as well as his initial reactions to finding out that he is inspiring white racists to assault brown-skinned immigrants. There are differences in historically specific circumstances, of course, but they are appealing to common themes and fears. They are also using similar mechanisms for rhetorically constructing who is the dangerous and corrupting "problem" that needs to be "solved" (even if their targets differ). Trump is a fascist, even if only a fascist out of electoral convenience.

The Anatomy of Trump's Fascism

Robert O. Paxton, the esteemed scholar of fascism, provides us with a synthesized anatomy of key characteristics of different fascisms. While fascism is - somewhat ironically - not a strictly unified ideology as some imagine, it is a distinct kind of political project and mode of doing politics, and different fascisms have family resemblances with each other. In spite of diverse local expressions (anti-semitism, for instance, is by no means a uniting prerequisite among fascists), they share common themes and priorities that are intelligible and not limited simply to those early 20th century movements, people, and organizations who self-identified as fascists. Fascists need not wear the conspicuous symbols of German Nazis, such as the Swastika, or goose step in jackboots. These were symbols designed to inspire, energize, and even reassure a different national audience at a different time. Paxton warns us that an "authentic American fascism" would not adopt these alien trappings, but instead display "the Stars and Stripes (or Stars and Bars) and Christian crosses. No fascist salute, but mass recitations of the pledge of allegiance. These symbols contain no whiff of fascism in themselves, of course, but an American fascism would transform them into obligatory litmus tests for detecting the internal enemy" (p.202).

After a careful comparative analysis, Paxton defines fascism as

a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.(p.218)

Fascism is fueled not simply by elite manipulation, but by a variety of "mobilizing passions" spread through a critical mass of a populace (p.219). The overwhelmingly white, less educated (and thus more economically vulnerable), immigrant averse, confederate flag-supporting, "traditional" values-espousing nationalists who think that conditions of poverty for the Black community is mostly their own fault feel a chord struck when Trump speaks. They see themselves genuinely as victims, of precarious economic conditions, the perceptions of waning national ascendance, demographic marginalization, cultural change, and distant federal elites meddling in their way of life. Trump plays on all of these grievances with his promise to "Make America Great Again".

Offering a sympathetic producerist narrative to these aggrieved souls, Trump will attack immigrants as murderers, welfare parasites, rapists, and drug dealers, while also slamming hedge fund managers as undeserving of their wealth and Ford motors for having operations in Mexico. He dismisses global warming concerns by calling it a Chinese plot to undermine U.S. economic competitiveness. He emptily notes his "understanding" of why Black Americans distrust police, while doubling down on the necessity of police being "tougher"on "crime" and having no tolerance for movements like Black Lives Matter (even hinting that he would fight disruptive protesters himself). He retroactively opposes earlier US involvement in Iraq, since the Iraq war is apparently Bad now among conservatives… likely less because of the mass murder and devastation of the Iraqi people, and more because it has produced a sense of national military impotence and made something Complicated. Except, he also supports a new occupation of Iraq in order to fight ISIS, and/or maybe also Iran (are they different? Who cares, really?), and either taking out or simply taking "the oil fields", which will mean (in a striking paraphrase of one of the original rationalizations for the 2003 invasion) that "We're going to have so much money". With the nuclear deal with Iran, he would be "tough, so tough" and make a deal that is "100 times better". How? Unimportant! He would be tough, like We can be again (he describes himself as "the most militaristic person there is", of course).

In Trumpian rhetoric, every supposed geopolitical "threat" from Mexico to China is "laughing at us", and "killing us economically" (yes, Mexico). The "American Dream is dead", and "We don't have victories any more". Rather than being the long-time victims of military intervention, coups, and debilitating sanctions by a hegemonic U.S. government, Trump's Iran and "the Persians generally" are devious, master negotiators, diplomatically pillaging the hapless United States. The victimhood of his audience and their feelings of anxiety and resentment are constantly affirmed in heavy-handed fashion. In the same breath, he declares that the immigrants being sent to the U.S. "are not their best" and "are not you" (aw shucks, Donald), reaffirming the out-group's alien and dangerous character, the legitimacy of his audience's fears, and the audience's real, occluded worth. The need to purge, remove defiling elements, and erect armor against out-group forces become primary concerns as a means of restoring group well-being.

This sense of victimhood also provides justification for extraordinary measures to be used against the assailing or corrupting forces. Rights, practicality, legality, and consideration of the needs or well-being of those outside of the group are minimized or dispensed with entirely. For Trump, the U.S. government should have invaded Mexico instead of Iraq, should build an impregnable border wall across the entire Southern border in spite of the billions it will cost (and make Mexico pay for it), and should have a mass deportation of all 11million undocumented immigrants - literally rounding up millions of brown people around the country and forcing them onto buses and out of the country (but in a "very humane" way because Trump is a "great manager").

While Trump is also not entirely guilty by association, it pays to look at who affirms his politics as being in line with their own. White nationalists have supported Trump's stance on immigration (even though he has semi-officially declined their support). The two white Bostonians from Southie who brutally beat and urinated on a Latino homeless man said that "Donald Trump was right-all these illegals need to be deported". The Donald's initial response was a tepid distancing, while at the same time saying that his supporters are just "very passionate" people. The failure of the normal way of doing politics to prevent the group's decline requires extraordinary measures in order to secure the group's rightful place of dominance, prevent challengers, and purge undesirable elements. Much like the 20th century fascists, Trump is posing as a leader who wants to shake up the flaccid, impotent status quo in order to unify and secure the group's strength and respectability (at least, the "true" members of it). He is seen as "independent", a strong-arm who knows how to "get things done", and as less "bought" and corrupted by ineffectual, normal electoral politics precisely because of his wealth.

We can certainly question how much Trump really means anything he says. In his The Art of the Deal, he is quite explicit in his defense of using strategic hyperbole, deception, and whatever tools are at hand in order to win. Hitler and Mussolini were true believers in ways that seem more genuine than Trump. In his own way, though, Trump - the con-man billionaire and former reality TV show star - is embodying other aspects of fascism's distinctiveness, namely its instrumental, fluid, and sometimes oppositional relationship with rationality, logic, and truth, and its marked lack of concern with building systematic philosophical justification for its policies and doctrine. Logical coherence or justification are often besides the point for fascists (something Mussolini delighted in taunting liberals, conservatives, and socialists alike with). Programs and policies can be cobbled together with little heed paid to whether they are actionable or coherent, and changed just as easily. What is important is the emotional effect of a statement, a policy, a ritual, an aesthetic, in energizing and tempering the pertinent mass of people into a cohesive national body with a renewed sense of primacy, moral certainty, the expression of a unified will, and sense of purpose and even destiny. Fascist truth is whatever brings about this transformation.

There is an deep, affective dimension to Trump's candidacy that appeals to a mostly-white, racist, xenophobic demographic who feel impotent, but who also hold deep resentment against outsiders and those who seem to embody the destruction of a mythic homogeneous community in which they can feel at ease. They long for security and certainty, and feel their world slipping away, lost from within through traitors ("liberals", "cultural Marxists", teachers, etc.), and under attack from without by China, and Mexican murder-rapist-druglords who simultaneously want to steal American jobs and do nothing but make "anchor babies" and collect welfare. He represents a big middle-finger to highly choreographed traditional politicians and the electoral theater (something that also elevated the appeal of early 20th century fascists), but also to empathy, thinking critically about social complexity, about consequences of one's actions, and about privilege and inequality. He embodies the renewal of a kind of leveling simplicity of the world: certainty about right and wrong, friends and enemies, the recovery of a "lost" (white) golden age, and theatrically exaggerated "common sense" policies that legitimize this demographic's varied resentments, fears, and frustrations. We may question Trump's authenticity, but if the politics he is cultivating to ground his support base is a functional equivalent of fascism, resting on the same mobilizing passions, then this line of concern seems immaterial.

Trump is not funny any more, because Trump is a fascist, and the "humor" of a fascist is to "punch down" on the already marginalized and oppressed while at the same time claiming victimhood. I am not saying that Trump and his ilk would kill tens of millions and lead to another world war. We are in different historical conditions now than those of the interwar period. You don't need to successfully ignite a world war, acquire authority, or even kill many people in order to be a fascist. He is having a measurable effect, however, and will continue to even if he fails to win the primary or get elected. His militaristic and anti-immigrant talk is becoming infectious, shifting the Overton Window and leading to an escalation in the violent rhetoric and proposed policies of the already impressive authoritarianism and racism fueling the energetic base of the GOP. We can laugh at the absurdity of building 20 ft border walls with sentry turrets, underground electric fences, armed drone patrols, moats with sharks bearing lasers on their heads, or whatever stage of hysterical social hypochondria we are at, but a material consequence of this rhetoric will be more dead brown people for as long as we tolerate it. There is a large, angry, racist, xenophobic, reactionary-populist segment of the American populace, and they are taking Trump very seriously as a signal allowing them to embody their cretinous innermost selves.

This commentary originally appeared on Justin's blog.