The (forgotten) origins of Trumpism

By zeroing in on European history, Timothy Snyders On Tyranny failed to reckon with

Americas own past. Is this a wise move?

The ghost of the elections past

A mild economic slowdown notwithstanding, Democrats should have entered the 2000
presidential contest liking their chances, as the popular incumbent, five years of strong growth
and a world mostly at peace provided them with significant tailwind. However, Al Gore hit the
campaign trail as a slight underdog and, after a lacklustre campaign, Republicans managed to
clamber their way back into the White House thanks to the Supreme Courts handing down of
the notorious Bush vs. Gore decision. Still reeling from this vexatious loss, American liberal
intellectuals and political scientists latched onto the Southern Evangelical resurgence that
buoyed George W. Bushs candidacy and laid out a number of strategies to stem the tide of
new social conservatism. A new conservatism that had allowed Bush not only to sweep
Southern states that had twice voted for Bill Clinton, but also to win re-election in 2004 by
racking up decisive margins in medium-sized towns and rural areas across Ohio or Iowa. Quite
tellingly, he also came very close in Wisconsin, Michigan or Pennsylvania, the states that made
Trump president in 2016.
A quick glance at the literature produced during the Bush years is further revealing of
the old, deep-seated cracks in the Democratic coalition that bedevilled Hillary Clinton and
paved Trumps way to the presidency. In Whats the matter with Kansas (2004), Thomas
Frank lashed out against New Democrats, warned that the shift from economic to socio-cultural
issues was alienating working and middle-class ethnic whites, and urged the party to adopt to
a new form of left-wing populism to win them back. Along these lines, the self-avowed
redneck liberal journalist Joe Bageant offered in his deeply moving bestseller Deer Hunting
with Jesus (2007) a crude and anecdotal, but yet cogent, explanation as to why poor rural
whites have abandoned the Democratic party in throngs.
However, it was the thesis expounded by John Judis and Ruy Teixeira in The emerging
Democratic majority (2002) that carried the day and, after being apparently vindicated by
Barack Obamas resounding 2008 election victory, laid down the basic strategy of the
Democratic party for the following three or four election cycles. The unstoppable changes in
the nations demographic makeup, so the argument goes, were supposed to guarantee
progressives the upper hand, since the increasing number of non-white minorities as a share of
the overall population would strengthen the Democratic party and more than make up for its
losses among working-class whites. This reassuring vision about the nations demographic
destiny bolstered Democratic confidence and led the partys ruling cadres to downplay its
faltering support among whites, turn a blind eye on the massive voter realignment that came
to a head at the turn of the century, and dismiss its resulting noxious political polarization as
just a little sand in the gears of government. As long as Democrats could secure a larger sliver
of the electorate (or even better, a growing portion of the demographic cake), why bother with
further questions about governance and social cohesion?
 In his still hot off the press work On Tyranny (2017), Timothy Snyder vindicates the
role of past events as a cautionary tale. He relentlessly hammers home the idea that history is
unequivocal in its unmasking of Donald Trump as a potential would-be tyrant threatening to
destroy American democracy. The book essentially expands on Snyders conviction that
Trump is apt to take a leaf or two out of Hitlers and Putins book and happily march down the
authoritarian path. Yet, the reader is prompted to act on this ghastly realisation as a matter of
urgency as if the Trump phenomenon had emerged overnight, materializing out of thin air. Not
the slightest mention to the immediately preceding events is ever made. An omission that not
only takes key insights into the immediate historical causes of the Democratic failure to
decisively vanquish an outrageous, unapologetic, raving populist such as Donald Trump off
the table, but also conceals the already well-established fact that the very nature of American
democracy has always been torn between inclusive and enlightened cosmopolitan liberalism
(represented by Judis and Teixeira) and the American populist, radical and republican tradition
(largely entrenched in Franks and Bageants vision). Moreover, these actors are just an
example of a vast body of literature reflecting this dual character that Snyder fails to even
acknowledge. For a book trumpeting the virtues of history and all Snyders academic acumen,
On Tyranny comes off as an oddly ahistorical essay, Trump seems nothing but a sudden and
baffling throwback to the 1930s, and the thin to non-existent bibliographical apparatus leaves
him largely unexplained. How is it possible to fight something we dont even understand?

Populism and paranoia: the dark side of the Jeffersonian tradition

This is not to say there is nothing to commend in Snyders work. As a historian
specializing in 20th Century Europe, Snyder aptly draws on historical examples to illustrate
what undoubtedly amounts to a much-needed crash course in democracy 101. Throughout
twenty brief snippets of history and political philosophy, the author managed to put together a
practical survival guide for the Trump era. However, those expecting a well-thought-out essay
or a history book in the fashion of his much-celebrated Bloodlands (2010) might end up
feeling disappointed. Of course, the philosophical and ideological backbone of his work is a
stark defence of individual rationality as a prerequisite not only for democracy, but for human
liberty and dignity. A position intrinsically linked to the denunciation of all authoritarian and
anti-liberal political doctrines as equally inhumane that, in the past century, has been best
embodied in the works of Victor Klemperer and Hannah Arendt.
Both Klemperer and Arendt described the processes whereby totalitarian regimes seek
absolute power by undermining human ability to think. This is achieved chiefly through
gradual rarefaction of language (Klemperer) and political life (Arendt). Snyders best
contribution is perhaps to relate rather abstract insights such as Arendts banality of evil to
an immediate blueprint for action: be as independent-minded as possible, get engaged in public
life, always strive to find out the truth, read books, reject conformity, and remain steadfastly
vigilant and faithful to your own principles and professional ethics. First and foremost, do not
fall for the official rhetoric and be wary if national emergency or the state of exception is ever
called.
All this sounds reassuringly Jeffersonian, but Jeffersonian republicanism is a two-faced
beast: on the one hand, it encourages a responsible citizenry to guard liberty against the
governments irrepressible thirst for power; on the other hand, it also inspired people that
spent the best part of 2010 attending Tea Party meetings, protesting against Obama and waving
signs with Thomas Jeffersons well-known quote The tree of liberty must be refreshed from
time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. The exact same people that unanimously
voted for Donald Trump six year later. To understand this puzzling paradox we might have to
look into what Snyder left out of his book.
However useful to keep the body politic from drifting into a dangerous and complacent
autopilot mode that might indeed debase democracy under a reckless head of state such as
Donald Trump, this same Jeffersonian republican approach to politics nourishing Hannah
Arendts concept of vita activa (active life) is also a fundamental tenet of a basically anti-liberal
strand in the American public sphere that Snyder decided to ignore altogether: what Richard
Hofstadter called The paranoid style in American politics. In his famous 1963 essay,
Hofstadter argued that the American right-wing fringe was not an offspring of European
Fascism (something that Snyder just stops short of explicitly stating about Donald Trump), but
rather a by-product of American history itself. He patiently described the main traits of the
paranoid interpretation of history: first, an pressing fear of impending doom, brought about by
a vast conspiracy brewing in the upper echelons of government. Secondly, a thorough
vilification of the enemy, with whom no conceivable transaction or agreement can be reached.
And finally, a painstaking rationalization procedure involving the piling up of massive amounts
of information (normally circumstantial, if not manufactured, evidence) and factoids, always
disguising some dubious leap of the imagination at some point in the process.
Hofstadter then goes on to trace the long history of this paranoid political attitude that,
as it turns out, encompasses the entire existence of the republic. The Nineteenth Century
witnessed the rise and fall of the anti-Masonic and anti-Catholic movements. The introduction
of the income tax in 1913 was met with denunciation that it was the root of all evil. And, of
course, the onset of the Cold War coincided with McCarthyism, the movement against the
fluoridation of municipal water (a forerunner of the modern anti-vax movement), and the
outrageous claims of the John Birch Society in 1950s about president Eisenhower being
nothing less than a dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy. And this
paranoid streak is still alive and well. Pat Robersons The New World Order (1991)
foreshadowed the militia movement of the 1990s that led to the tragic bombing of the federal
building in Oklahoma City in 1995.
After remaining dormant for a few years, right-wing paranoia then bloomed during the
Obama years: Dick Morris, an embittered former adviser to Bill Clinton, authored an endless
string of paranoid-sounding titles such as Revolt! How to defeat Obama and repeal his
socialist programs (2011), Here come the Black Helicopters (2012), or Power Grab:
Obamas dangerous plan for a one-party nation (2014). Former House speaker Newt Gingrich
made no bones about his feelings towards the Obama administration either in his To save
America: stopping Obamas secular-socialist machine (2010). And let us not forget one of
the most forthright titles in this list: Ann Coulters Demonic: How the liberal mob is
endangering America (2011). Granted, none of these authors measure up to Snyders serious
scholarship, deep understanding of sources and academic prestige, but they are the modern
embodiment of a tradition as American as apple pie that, quite incomprehensibly, he decided
to ignore altogether: the depiction of the president as a would-be king, willing to trample his
enemies and hollow out essential institutions. A tradition than can be traced back to the brutal
1800 presidential campaign between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. Even the probe into
Trumps ties to Russia echoes the accusations of francophilia levelled against the Jeffersonian
party.
Probably influenced by Hannah Arendts definition of the public sphere and her ideas
about the role of personal biography in political life, Snyders recipe to get around this ugly
by-product of Jeffersonian politics is hardly surprising: personal, face-to-face, physical
engagement.1 Avoid the Internet as much as possible. Meet people in the flesh. Snyder is
unequivocal in his judgement: post-truth is pre-fascism, and the stench of hoaxes and fake news
comes chiefly from social media and dishonest propaganda outlets. However, judging from the
remarkable and ambitious analysis of the Tea Party movement undertaken by Theda Skocpol
and Vanesa Williamson in The Tea Party and the remaking of Republican conservatism
(2011), it would be a sorry mistake to look down on the current wave of modern conservatism
as a mere extension of the alt-right weblogs, YouTube channels and radio talk shows.
What Skocpol and Williamson discovered doing their field research was not a
disorderly gaggle of wired, delusional wackos, but a rather vibrant, rationally-organized social
movement that had plenty of healthy interaction at a community level and honestly pictured
itself as the mainstay of true democracy. They whole-heartily believed their movement was of
the utmost importance to protect and defend constitutional liberties in a genuinely Jeffersonian
sense. Moreover, the reactionary coalition that swept the 2010 midterm elections was the first
sign of a growing rapprochement between the official conservative, evangelical and
establishment-friendly Republican Party, and a new wave of anti-establishment populism. It is
probably no coincidence that this taxonomy of the Tea Party movement so urgently adumbrated
by Skocpol and Williamson in 2010 roughly reflects the internal structure of conservatism that
scholars such as Clinton Rossiter or Russell A. Kirk had already pointed out back in the 1950s.
In other words, the coalition that elected Trump was by no means alien to the American
tradition, and Timothy Snyder could not ask for a more engaged, responsible, and alert
citizenry. A citizenry firmly rooted in the American conservative tradition. And yet, they all
pulled together and elected no other than Donald Trump to the White House.2
It would be equally mistaken to assume that the most preposterous populist and
paranoid attitudes are exclusively reactionary or right-wing. Just a few years ago, the razor-
thin margins that decided the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections in Florida and Ohio
inevitably led to accusations of election fraud. David Greenbergs excellent Nixons shadow.
The history of an image (2004) also reminds us of the pervasive, stifling conspiratorial
atmosphere that plagued the Johnson and Nixon presidencies way before Daniel Ellsberg came
forward with the Pentagon papers or Watergate broke out. By mid-1970 it was widely
rumoured in the alternative-left press that Nixon was arranging for covert agents to instigate
an American Reichstag fire in order to call a national emergency, cancel the 1972 presidential

1
I may well be wrong, but Snyders faith in Jeffersonian politics probably seems to betray a heavy influence of
Hannah Arendts The Human Condition (1958). His assumption that both Nazism and Communism during the
1930s and 40s have a fundamental commonality in their rejection of liberalism is a thesis classically expounded
by Brzezinsky and Friedman Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy (1956). Deemed neoliberal in outlook by
their revisionist critics, they famously described the six main features of the totalitarian dictatorship that seem to
loom large in Snyders mind.
2
For all the talk about cross-party voting, it is perhaps worth nothing that the 2016 election remained a largely
partisan affair. According to exit polls, 90 percent of registered Republicans and 89 percent of Democrats voted
for their partys candidate.
election and eventually repeal the Bill of Rights.3 The radicals maintained, right from the start
of Nixons presidency, that his law and order agenda betrayed his authoritarian tendencies
and didnt hesitate to compare to U.S. government to the Third Reich. Nixon, of course, was
regularly caricatured as a modern-day Hitler. Even the most venerable outlets such as The
Nation and The New York Times eventually gave in to this conspiratorial Zeitgeist, ran articles
warning about a presidential dictatorship and explained how Nixon was becoming an
American sovereign whose ousting was imperative for the republics survival. When the
presidents misdemeanours seemed to confirm these fears, eerie buzzes about a possible
military coup that would allow Nixon to suspend the Constitution and hang on to power didnt
only find their way into the musings of reputable progressive columnists, but also caught on
with some government officials. There is no denying that Nixon was an opportunistic,
resentful, and divisive politician that played on peoples worst fears and instincts, but however
reckless and outlandish his Watergate cover up was, it perhaps bears repetition that, in insight,
claims about his dictatorial instincts now ring as overblown, unwarranted, and needlessly
abrasive as the accusations lobbed against John Adams in 1800.
Populism and paranoia are genuine and even legitimate fixtures of American political
life and can be found at every turn throughout history and sprawling across the ideological
spectrum. There is, of course, a significant overlap and positive feedback between them. In his
influential and widely-read The Populist persuasion (1995), Michael Kazin traced a full-
fledged genealogy of the populist movement in the U.S. His account ranges from the farmers
revolt and the free silver coinage movement of the late Nineteenth Century4 to the New lefts
resurgence of the 1960s and the 1990s anti-globalisation movement. Douglas S. Schoen has
recently built on Kazins work to argue how Richard Nixon was in fact instrumental in
capturing the populist movement and funnelling its energy towards conservative goals, thus
laying the basic groundwork of the ensuing Reagan revolution.5
What is more, long-term deep demographic changes also bore heavily upon the
restoration of the grassroots conservative movement. As Lisa McGirr noted in Suburban
Warriors: the origins of the New American Right (2001), new high middle-class cohorts
flooding into Sunbelt suburban enclaves sowed the seeds of the future market-oriented,
conservative Republican Party of Jack Kemp, Pat Buchanan and William F. Buckley. They

3
This story about the cancellation of the 1972 election was quite widespread, and according to Greenberg it first
appeared on April 5 1970 in the Portland Oregonian, and was rapidly picked up by alternative publications such
as Los Angeles Free Press and the Scanlans Montly. It wound up being echoed in The Nation magazine and even
by the daily press. Former White House Counsel John Dean later piled on these schemes with his revelation in
Blind Ambition (1976) that the Nixon administration attempted (and failed) to implement a plan of mass
surveillance (the so-called Houston plan) to crack down on leftist anti-war movements. Of course, inferring
from this that Nixon was intent on turning the United States into a full-fledged authoritarian state is exactly the
typical leap of faith we usually find in the paranoid style as defined by Hofstadter.
4
Its worth noting that these issues, now long forgotten, shaped American politics for about fifty years and
propelled William J. Bryans three presidential bids that, in turn, foreshadowed father Coughlins rather
paranoid rants against the heinous rottenness of modern capitalism in the 1930s. Just a stark reminder of how
our preferred pet issues tend to fade into obscurity, whereas the basic fault lines of political thought can linger
through centuries.
5
In American Maelstrom: 1968 and the politics of division (2016), Schoen offers the most complete account
yet of the 1968 election, which he deems a pivotal juncture in the emergence of this silent majority that returned
conservative politics to the mainstream of American public sphere. However, it is in The Nixon effect. How
Richard Nixons presidency fundamentally changed American politics (2016) where he spelled out a cogent and
complete theory as to how the right wing mastered the U.S. political center. I would restrain myself from citing
Yeats famous poem The Second Coming. Its too much of a clich.
provided the seedbed of Reaganism in the 1960s, just as the Tea Party tilled the ground of
Trumpism five decades later. Yet again, there is plentiful evidence that Trump is not the would-
be fascist purported by Timothy Snyder, but probably the most blatantly, shamelessly genuine,
well-rounded product of the anti-liberal American tradition since Andrew Jackson.

Surviving Trump: practical advice for (mostly American) bereaved liberals

There is no denying that Trump is probably one of the most dangerous presidents in the
history of the United States. His ignorance, brutal megalomaniac recklessness, and self-
absorbed, obsessive persecution complex are second to none. Snyder is most probably right in
warning us against him. However, he does it for the wrong reasons and tapping into the wrong
arguments. The first lesson we should learn from Greenbergs work is that Nixons and the
left-wing paranoia were not only mutually reinforcing, but equally damaging to democracy.
The second lesson is that we are not dealing with an external enemy, but with our very own
innate contradictions. Trump came in second, but garnered almost 63 million votes in 2016,
thus becoming the most voted Republican candidate in history. Linking him to threats
apparently unrelated to the American experience doesnt seem the best way to engage his
supporters in a much-needed conversation and understand their motives. The greatest threat to
democracy does not come from the tyrannical instincts of the individual, but from the
dehumanizing process that takes place when we stop talking to each other.
This is why Snyders recommendation of Phillip Roths The plot against America,
coupled with his tossing aside of the entire American anti-liberal tradition, is perhaps too much
of an explosive concoction, bound to inflame the worst instincts in his progressive audience
and doing little service to the cause of protecting democracy. We should perhaps ask ourselves
whether the resistance movement against Trump might be just encouraging an unstoppable
polarizing loop, indefinitely feeding on itself. A hellish polarizing machine set in motion not
by Trump or some shady fascistic elites, but by a genuine, deeply-rooted, all-American non-
liberal tradition. The only way to put a spanner in its works may sound underwhelming: tone
down the outraged calls, avoid overplaying your hand, and listen. However, understandably,
many committed progressives will no doubt object that we might as well roll over and die. How
can we fight polarisation without further widening this political chasm?
Michelle Obama had the only reasonable answer to this catch-22 type of situation:
when they go low, we go high. Paranoia must be met with sanity. Fanaticism must be
confronted with open and sincere discussion. Never assume your principles, beliefs and ideas
are self-evident and need no further explanation. Doubt everything, but above all, keep
doubting yourself. Never give up on your opponents, let alone an entire segment of the
population. Keep an open mind. Listen. And most importantly, do not get dragged into an
outshouting contest. Dont assume that Trumps flat-out lies, distortions and outrageous actions
can ever justify an equally ludicrous response. Democracy isnt about being right, but about
being fair. Both radical and mainstream Democrats are guilty of these sins, and that probably
cost them the 2016 presidential election.6 Fight the good fight, but if things dont turn out your

6
I would not indulge in the reassuring commonplace never underestimate the intelligence of the voters, for the
electorates preference formation is a rather complicated process. I would say instead never underestimate the
importance of an educated, civilized discussion, for intellectual debate certainly makes the weather, albeit in the
long (sometimes very long) run. However, we must bear in mind the influence of educational products such as
way, dont despair. Politics are cyclical and, in the long run, there is not such a thing as winners
and losers in history. There is only a continuous fabric, woven with regular patterns of
interspersed change and continuity. And remember, history doesnt repeat itself, but it does
rhyme. Go and find a good verse.

Milton and Rose Friedmans Free to Choose (1979), or the 1,500 episodes of Firing Line hosted by William F.
Buckley over more than 30 years, in shaping the U.S. public opinion in accordance to market-friendly,
conservative principles.