What Happened at the RNC?

Originally published on August 26, 2020.

Hannah Arendt wanted desperately for us to know and understand that, "The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi...but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists."

Three deeply disturbing things things stand out to me watching the RNC this week: 1) Trump and his supporters are employing overtly authoritarian themes to rally their supporters, 2) watching and accepting what they are trying to communicate requires the viewer not to question or struggle with the mounds of contradictions inherent in the convention itself, and 3) on the whole, there is barely a show of appealing to anyone outside the Trump base.

In learning and teaching about fascism, I have always found it useful to note that it is a phenomenon ultimately rooted in feelings of humiliation and indignity. Shifting economic and cultural currents undermine an individual's ability to cling to notions of their identity rooted in race, gender, or nation as they've always known them. This triggers a sense of alienation, uncertainty, and despair. While a person may not have any sense for why they feel this way, the feelings themselves are real and can become extremely dangerous when exposed to fascist propaganda.

Fascism is also an inherently reactionary form of politics that, in my mind, has been around historically much longer than it's been named. It has always been deeply skeptical of democratic institutions and has an erotic urge toward hierarchy, control, and violence - particularly violence done in the name of reclaiming a culture of racist patriarchy that its adherents believe is "the way things ought to be." In the past, fascist movements stated this sort of sentiment much more explicitly, and I imagine followers may have been more conscious of these feelings. In politically correct America, the primary impulses remain, but some followers seem to have learned to say, and even believe, that racism, patriarchy, and nationalism are not part of what's driving them.

The RNC, so far, has produced an epic piece of propaganda that seeks to comfort and energize those who prefer a return to the comfortable hierarchies Western Civilization has built itself on.

But the convention does MUCH more than that, because the feelings of humiliation, inadequacy, and indignity here are not only a function of shifting cultural norms. They are also a symptom of a global economy that is increasingly leaving people of all backgrounds to die in the streets. The Trump movement gives people two ways to feel as if they're being heard, and as a result, the sense of participating in a form of politics that's doing something to address their suffering: 1) blaming Democrats for many of their problems, who indeed have played a major role in decreasing people's access to dignified work and reasonable healthcare, and 2) scapegoating those marginalized peoples who have the audacity to live outside the comfortable norms of white supremacy culture.

Of course blaming Democrats and marginalized people is nothing new. These have been dominant themes of political discourse in our country for a long, long time. What's different and radically dangerous here is that something has been added to THE WAY this is being done.

Yes - the RNC 2020 is hashing out many themes that overlap with RNCs of the past. But this year, and indeed with Trump's presidency of the past four years, the real work is in continuing to decrease the viewer's capacity to think and question, and to prepare them to fight as a method for reclaiming their sense of dignity and adequacy.

Political commentators on various news networks like CNN and MSNBC question how Republican speakers could possibly expect the average American to consume their obvious contradictions. "I don't know how they think they're going to win the election if they don't make a more convincing case," they say.

They're missing the point. The RNC is not predominantly about picking up votes or rallying the electorate. It's about priming people for living in society with a radically different type of government. The political commentators are right to notice that the RNC is not really attempting to speak to all of us, but they're wrong when they imagine that by doing so the Republicans are decreasing their chances at maintaining power. That they're not attempting to speak to all of us is what makes this RNC so dangerous. It's setting the stage for violence come November. It's irresponsible for the media not to name this.

One of the most powerful pieces of propaganda ever produced was a 1935 film called Triumph of the Will. Even though it was a Nazi propaganda piece made after numerous political murders by the Nazis, it is still among the most widely admired propaganda films of all time. It's such a powerful film that, according to Wikipedia, you are not allowed to show it in Germany today without providing some educational context to protect against the possibility that it might appeal to dormant fascist sensibilities.

In The Violence of Organized Forgetting, Henry Giroux teaches us that historical memory is among the most potent antidotes to political and ideological terrorism. The problem is that there are forces at work encouraging us, at virtually every opportunity, to forget.

The overt themes of racism, nationalism, militarism, and doublethink make the spectacle of this year's RNC extremely exciting to a great many people hurting from the unchecked whirlwind of economic and cultural change. I suspect viewing it even alters brain chemistry and plays off of the addictive quality of other contemptuous, fear-based media outlets. A healthier society would, like Germany, offer en masse some educational context to viewers for exactly what's going on here, and exactly what it may portend for November.