Under the Cover of Chaos

Lawrence Grossberg

Description

Are Donald Trump's irrationality, cruelty, and bombast symptoms of his personality? Is the chaos surrounding him a sign of his incompetence? Are his populism, illiberalism and nationalism just cynical appeals to existing feelings of abandonment, resentment and rage?



Lawrence Grossberg shows that the truth is bigger and more frightening. Locating Trumpism in the long struggle among traditional conservatism, the new right and the reactionary right, he suggests that the chaos is far more significant and strategic ... and dangerous. Taking the arguments of the reactionary right seriously, he projects a possible, nightmarish future: a cultural nationalism governed by a popular corporatocracy.



He lays bare how contemporary political struggles are being shaped by a changing national landscape of moods and feelings, marked by a growing absolutism of judgement and belief, and new forms of anxiety, alienation and narcissism.

Preface

Part I: From Trump to the Conjuncture

1. The Terror and the Beast

2. Telling Stories and Stories Told

3. Other Stories are Possible, and Possibly Even Better

Part II: In Search of the Conjuncture

4. The New Right

5. The Reactionary Right

6. Affective Landscapes

Part III: A Conjunctural Politics

7. Back to the Present: A Reactionary Counter-Modernity

8. Conclusions?

Appendix: Cultural Studies and Conjunctural Analysis

Bibliography

Thanks

Sujets

• Political Process
• Political Ideologies
• Political Science
• Obama
• USA
• United States of America
• América del Norte
• 21st century
• Far-right politics
• Reactionary
• General officer
• Cultural studies
• Politics
• North America
• Democrat
• Capitalism
• Anthropology
• Tea Party
• General
• United States
• États-Unis
• George W. Bush
• Donald Trump
• Barack Obama

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 20 janvier 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781786802705
• Langue: English

Extrait

Under the Cover of Chaos
Under the Cover of Chaos
Trump and the Battle for the American Right
Lawrence Grossberg
First published 2018 by Pluto Press
345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA
www.plutobooks.com
Copyright Lawrence Grossberg 2018
The right of Lawrence Grossberg to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7453 3792 0 Hardback
ISBN 978 0 7453 3791 3 Paperback
ISBN 978 1 7868 0269 9 PDF eBook
ISBN 978 1 7868 0271 2 Kindle eBook
ISBN 978 1 7868 0270 5 EPUB eBook



This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin.
Typeset by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England
Simultaneously printed in the United Kingdom and United States of America
For Stuart Hall and Doreen Massey
Contents
Preface
PART I FROM TRUMP TO THE CONJUNCTURE
1 The Terror and the Beast
2 Telling Stories and Stories Told
3 Other Stories are Possible, and Possibly Even Better
PART II IN SEARCH OF THE CONJUNCTURE
4 The New Right
5 The Reactionary Right
6 Affective Landscapes
PART III A CONJUNCTURAL POLITICS
7 Back to the Present: A Reactionary Counter-modernity
8 Conclusions?
Appendix: Cultural Studies and Conjunctural Analysis
Bibliography
Thanks
Preface
These are dark times and getting darker every day. It never lets up. Significant time has passed since Trump s presidential victory and many people are still in disbelief, asking how did this happen? What does it mean? His presidency has not calmed things down; rather, it has augmented people s uncertainty and anxiety. And this is true not only in the United States. I know that many people around the world are concerned, in deeply visceral ways, about Trump; in each place, the political content and emotional valences of that concern are shaped by their own social context, the distributions of hope and possibility, and the forms of closure and constraint. Still, I want to talk about the U.S., which has once again become, quite literally perhaps, the belly of the beast. There is a real crisis. After all, the political culture and practice of governance is already a disaster, apparently rising to new levels of incompetence, deception, dishonesty, cruelty and greed, a deeply inhumane practice of governance. The combination of a bombastic, egotistical president, Republican control of Congress, and a conservative majority Supreme Court promises devastating consequences for democracy, global stability and peace, environmental recovery, sane economic policies, political freedoms, healthcare, cultural diversity, social justice and the social safety nets that are increasingly necessary.
In the U.S., many who oppose Trump and the Republican agenda are panicked; some of them run around like Chicken Little, screaming it s the end of the world. 1 Others try to find a way to shut out the increasingly absurd realities, but you can t escape it, no matter how hard you try. Politics has once again become the lingua franca of everyday life, and has come to define the mood of the country. Psychologists and pundits offer advice about how to cope with it, and the complex emotions it is soliciting. There is a sense of suspense-as everyone (whatever political position they may occupy) waits for the next shoe to drop. But the suspense is always accompanied by other emotions: fear and anxiety, certainly, but also anger and shock, and often, no small amount of laughter, all wrapped up in a bundle of panic. Even so, there are inevitably different responses, with different valences, to the present situation. But none of these, even from those who choose active resistance, seem able to create an aura or even much of a glimmer of hope.
For some, there is a kind of political despair. We are on the road to fascism or at least totalitarianism, and we are offered all sorts of warnings from history. We argue about whether it is 1984 , or Brave New World , or A Handmaid s Tale . (I prefer Robocop or perhaps the city of Qarth in Game of Thrones .) Or perhaps we have finally reached the final stage of the capitalist victory over democracy and social welfare-the apotheosis of greed.
For others, the situation is even worse, undercutting the very possibility of political reflection and reaction. We are amazed by how low Trump s campaign was willing to go to win. 2 Trump s election (and even his nomination) may even be evidence that the nation is no longer capable of self-government. And the continuing allegiance of his supporters simply exacerbates and legitimates one s sense of hopelessness. There are many allusions to the difficulty of keeping one s sanity, of maintaining one s equilibrium. Nothing seems to make sense. The world seems to be falling into chaos. 3
There has also been an exhilarating explosion of vital and diverse forms of organizing and expressing resistance, even if it all feels rather drained of hope: so many marches, protests, petitions, efforts to defeat one piece of legislation or another, endless emails and fundraising requests, and millions upon millions of dollars spent on local elections turned into national referendums on Trump. A proliferation of organizations, media and campaigns-so many that it is hard to know what they are and to remember which ones one supports.
And yet, paradoxically, at the same time, people continue to live their normal lives, carrying on their business as usual to varying degrees, albeit increasingly living out an intensification of partisan sentiments. One might hope that we could find a more measured response to this contradiction between panic and normalcy and more effective forms of both opposition and popular exhortation.
What binds these responses together is their fixation on the figure of Trump and his presidency, which appears to be a singular-and singularly frightening-event. After all, he is a paranoid, narcissist, racist, misogynist, xenophobe, nationalist, isolationist, nepotist, anti-globalist, pro-global corporatist, ignorant, dissembling, and incompetent billionaire (?) claiming to speak for real Americans. He constructs the media/press not only as his enemy, but as the enemy of the nation, thereby justifying his own efforts to silence and exclude media coverage, but also his not-so-subtle endorsement of violence against journalists. He constantly draws a picture of American carnage, of American decline, even of America as a dark and dangerous place, with little connection to reality. And then he offers empty promises of making America great again, without ever telling us how that is to be measured or accomplished. He is a demagogue, a con artist, the worst sort of emotional predator. He does not appear to understand or care about the Constitution or how government works.
All of this is true, but it does not necessarily tell us how to respond, or how to make sense of what s going on. In fact, this fixation and the panic organized around it may be part of the problem, as it becomes, oxymoronically, a normal, everyday obsession and an ordinary taken-for-granted reality. I have seen many friends (as well as the media) compulsively keeping meticulous records of his lies and absurd claims. I have heard compassionate and intelligent critics demonizing Trump (and the Republicans) with the same kind of absolute negation and hatred that the Tea Parties normalized in their vision of Obama as the devil and liberals as anti-white authoritarians. Such actions out of panic, resulting in demonization and a rush to visions of the enemy as beyond comprehension, redemption or compromise, are, I believe, not the best starting point, however understandable. Panic begets more panic and in the end, it is dysfunctional. I have no doubt that there are similarities between Trump s administration and forms of fascism and totalitarianism, but I do not think they are sufficient yet to warrant the conclusion that Trump is a fascist, or that we are becoming fascist, for many of the practices identified are common to many forms of demagoguery, authoritarianism and populism. Besides, I have heard this too many times before: many leftists were certain that G.W. Bush was a fascist as well. In fact, I will argue, much of what Trump is doing simply continues-albeit also inflates-practices that have become the norm of U.S. politics during the past forty or more years. No doubt Trump is and will continue to be a terrible president. While, at the time of writing, he seems incapable of even forcing the Republican Congressional majority to bend to his will and his demands (e.g., Obamacare, tax cuts, relations with Russia), he continues to operate, often under the radar, to attack all sorts of regulations and regulatory agencies, to defund education and science, and to disrupt the already dangerously small stabilities of international relations. But the U.S. has had more than a few truly bad presidents. And no doubt, we should be afraid of the damage he will do (even beyond the damage already done by various New Right regimes), but we should also remember that we were right to be afraid after the electoral victories of Reagan and Bush, to take only the most recent examples.
On the other hand, wonderful and important as the many acts and organizations of resistance, opposition and alternatives may be, the impact of these important energies has been questionable, and they have been largely unable to transform despair and anger into hope, or opposition into unity. It is disheartening, I must admit, seeing the liberal/left embroiled in many of the same internal debates about tactics that have defined its fragmentation for fifty years: class vs. identity, mo