OUCH, new to me -- ‘Red Caesarism’ is rightwing code – and some Republicans are listening
"Here ya go, Hap. Listen to him say it:"
Jason Wilson
Argument for a ‘red Caesar’ to rule US may seem esoteric but conservative thinktank behind idea has connections to Trump
Sun 1 Oct 2023 10.00 EDT Last modified on Wed 4 Oct 2023 12.42 EDT
For the last three years, some on the right have advocated for ‘Caesarism’. Photograph: Panther Media GmbH/Alamy
In June, the rightwing academic Kevin Slack published a book-length polemic claiming that ideas that had emerged from what he called the radical left were now so dominant that the US republic its founders envisioned was effectively at an end.
Slack, a politics professor at the conservative Hillsdale College in Michigan, made conspiratorial and extreme arguments now common on the antidemocratic right, that “transgenderism, anti-white racism, censorship, cronyism … are now the policies of an entire cosmopolitan class that includes much of the entrenched bureaucracy, the military, the media, and government-sponsored corporations”.
In a discussion of possible responses to this conspiracy theory, he wrote that the “New Right now often discusses a Red Caesar, by which it means a leader whose post-Constitutional rule will restore the strength of his people”.
For the last three years, parts of the American right have advocated a theory called Caesarism as an authoritarian solution to the claimed collapse of the US republic in conference rooms, podcasts and the house organs of the extreme right, especially those associated with the Claremont Institute thinktank.
---------- [Insert: A few from a Claremont search:
And, all must understand Trump's supporters don't care about any of Trump psychopathy or his narcissism. They only care about fixing America to more back in their own image. In that sense they dislike democracy, and see themselves as Gods. The conservative movement is rejecting America [...]Freedom against democracy If the extremism of Ellmers’s essay strikes you as similar to what you’ve heard from authoritarian political movements of the past, you’re not alone. P - John Ganz, a perceptive critic of American conservatism, recently wrote that Ellmers’s essay should properly be termed “fascist .. https://johnganz.substack.com/p/the-week-in-fascism .” Excommunicating a large percentage of the population from the body politic, describing once-idyllic society hopelessly corrupted by the forces of change, describing one’s enemies as animals or diseases, invoking the threat of physical force in a political context — these are all historically hallmarks of fascist rhetoric. P - This analysis holds despite the fact that Ellmers speaks in a democratic idiom, portraying himself as a defender of the American democratic tradition against its enemies. Ganz notes that calls to restore “freedom,” “liberty,” and even “democracy” were used by fascist intellectuals and movements in interwar Germany, France, and Italy because they were culturally powerful — a way of recruiting the people to one’s way of thinking by speaking their language. P - “In the US context it also makes sense that the reactionary mind would inevitably mythologize a ‘truer’ version of our republican and democratic traditions as the author does in this piece, because those are the basic symbols of our political tradition,” he writes. “In the French context, many fascist and para-fascist groups declared fealty to the ‘republican’ tradition, which is as nearly predominant in that country as it is in our own.” P - One does not need to go to Europe to see political oppression defended in democratic terms. In 1963, Alabama Gov. George Wallace delivered an inaugural address in Montgomery .. https://digital.archives.alabama.gov/digital/collection/voices/id/2952 , casting the South’s long tradition of oppression of African Americans as integral to southern freedom: ----- Today I have stood, where once Jefferson Davis stood, and took an oath to my people. It is very appropriate then that from this Cradle of the Confederacy, this very Heart of the Great Anglo-Saxon Southland, that today we sound the drum for freedom as have our generations of forebears before us done, time and time again through history. Let us rise to the call of freedom- loving blood that is in us and send our answer to the tyranny that clanks its chains upon the South. In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny . . . and I say . . . segregation today . . . segregation tomorrow . . . segregation forever. ----- Ellmers’s essay is in line with this tradition, identifying freedom as a right that only a certain section of the population deserves. Those outside of it, either because they come from the wrong background or think the wrong way, have no just claim on our political system. When they wield power, it is by definition oppression. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173294212
hap0206, The Constitutionalist -- The Republican Party’s Dangerous Anti-Democratic Turn [...] Segments of the Republican party have been making unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud for years, often in efforts to limit the voting rights of Black Americans .. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/yes-constitution-democracy/616949/ . But the 2020 election is something altogether new. Republicans are indulging a constitutional coup. What else to call it? A soft coup? A stupid coup? Whatever you call it, it is a corrupt effort to sow doubt and confusion in order to overturn the constitutional rules of the game. P - I’m not talking about the lawsuits Trump and other Republicans filed shortly after election night. Candidates ought to be able to bring valid complaints in court where they have a legal right to offer evidence of legal wrongdoing. Even claims that won’t alter the election outcome can be beneficial in making the obscure electoral process transparent. But the suits, nearing forty with only one minor win, have become frivolous. In court, Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani admitted he was not making claims of fraud because he had no evidence of fraud. Trafficking in allegations and theories that will clearly not prevail in courts of law, the strategy is to manufacture the appearance of electoral chaos, which then provides cover for at least three Republican controlled legislatures in the battleground states to appoint presidential electors for Trump.It won’t work given President-elect Biden’s clear wins in several battleground states, but it may well provide a blueprint for those who would undo the results of a close election in the future. [...]Nothing in the Constitution justifies substituting the clear choice of the voters as determined by the various state laws with the choice of the state legislatures. Such a move is at odds with state and federal election law. So, too, is the pressure President Trump and his allies are placing on Republican officials to actively alter the election results. [...]The Republican Party is disowning the American experiment in democratic self-government. And they are empowering the illiberal elements in the Republican Party and conservative circles who are all too willing, in defending Trump, to dispense with the American Constitution. Trump’s tawdry intellectuals started down this path within days of the election. They’ve called for violence in the streets to bring this about. It’s all justified because the alternative—a Biden presidency like the possibility of a Clinton presidency—will, somehow, end America.https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=172365111
The 1776 Report "NOTE to EVERYONE!! This is a dangerous site and individual, ://1776project.org/1776-projects-underway-1 and I'm afraid numerous members on that site have infiltrated this website..." [...]* Charles R. Kesler, professor of Government at Claremont McKenna College and conservative book reviewer * Charlie Kirk, co-founder and director of Turning Point USA [Insert: PragerUf'ing kidding? PRAGERU’S INFLUENCE [...]Founded as a nonprofit by conservative talk radio host Dennis Prager in 2009, PragerU’s “5 Minute Ideas” videos have become an indispensable propaganda device for the right. The videos are hosted by conservative personalities; some, like... https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173065537
* On Jan. 6 Trump’s attorney reportedly told the Pence team its refusal to block the election certification caused the riot [...]Eastman, 61, is a veteran conservative legal activist who clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. A longtime member of the Federalist Society, he has spent much of his legal career fighting same-sex marriage. P - He is a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank based in Upland, Calif., whose leaders stridently defended Eastman from criticism over his role in Trump’s attempt to overturn the election and attacked the media’s coverage of it. P - Eastman was sharply criticized by Democrats in August last year for writing an article for Newsweek that questioned then-Sen. Kamala D. Harris’s eligibility to be vice president on the grounds that her parents were not U.S. citizens when she was born. He said his understanding was that Trump first noticed him arguing against birthright citizenship on Fox News. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=166577611]
The First Amendment in the age of disinformation. "The strange Republican world where the big lie lives on and Trump is fighting to save democracy "We see this so called celebration played out daily in Congress, in society and on these boards. P - Their ideology celebrates faith at the expense of reason and directs them away from attempts to innovate and improve the world around them, which is seen as dangerous because attempts to improve ‘may’ turn out to be destructive.[11] P - The Limits of Dialogue Between Faith and Reason: Russell Kirk, John Stuart Mill, and The Stupid Party" " [...]It’s a fundamentally optimistic vision: Good ideas win. The better argument will prove persuasive. There’s a countertradition, however. It’s alert to the ways in which demagogic leaders or movements can use propaganda, an older term that can be synonymous with disinformation. A crude authoritarian censors free speech. A clever one invokes it to play a trick, twisting facts to turn a mob on a subordinated group and, in the end, silence as well as endanger its members. Looking back at the rise of fascism and the Holocaust in her 1951 book “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” the political philosopher Hannah Arendt focused on the use of propaganda to “make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism.” https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=168932013 ----------
Though on the surface this discussion might seem esoteric, experts who track extremism in the US say that due to their influence on the Republican party, the rightwing intellectuals who espouse these ideas about the attractions of autocracy present a profound threat to American democracy.
Their calls for a “red Caesar” are now only growing louder as Donald Trump .. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/donaldtrump , whose supporters attempted to violently halt the election of Joe Biden in 2020, has assumed dominant frontrunner status in the 2024 Republican nomination race. Trump, who also faces multiple criminal indictments, has spoken openly of attacking the free press in the US and having little regard for American constitutional norms should he win the White House again.
The idea that the US might be redeemed by a Caesar – an authoritarian, rightwing leader – was first broached explicitly by Michael Anton, a Claremont senior fellow and Trump presidential adviser.
Anton has been an influential rightwing intellectual since in 2016 penning The Flight 93 Election, a rightwing essay in which he told conservatives who were squeamish about Trump “charge the cockpit or you die”, referencing one of the hijacked flights of 9/11.
He gave Caesarism a passing mention in that essay, but developed it further in his 2020 book, The Stakes, defining it as a “form of one-man rule: halfway … between monarchy and tyranny”.
The Guardian contacted Anton at his Claremont Institute email address, but received no response.
Anton and others in the Claremont milieu are not simply hypothesizing about the future: their dreams of Caesar arise from their dark view of the US.
Anton wrote the scene-setting essay in Up From Conservatism, an anthology of essays published this year and edited by the executive director of Claremont’s Center for the American Way of Life, Arthur Milikh.
Michael Anton, a former adviser to President Trump, described Caesarism as a ‘form of one-man rule: halfway … between monarchy and tyranny’. Photograph: Pablo Martínez Monsiváis/AP
In that essay Anton writes baldly that “the United States peaked around 1965”, and that Americans are ruled by “a network of unelected bureaucrats … corporate-tech-finance senior management, ‘experts’ who set the boundaries of acceptable opinion, and media figures who police those boundaries”.
His diagnosis of US social and cultural life unfolds under a series of subheadings that are almost comical in their disillusionment: “The universities have become evil”, “Our economy is fake”, “The people are corrupt”, “Our civilization has lost the will to live”.
Damon Linker, a senior lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania and an author of several books on the American right, was early in noticing the extreme right’s drift towards Caesarism.
Linker told the Guardian that Anton and others in the Claremont milieu “have convinced themselves thoroughly that the current order is decadent, corrupt and far removed from the proper, admirable origins of American government”.
Linker said their current view is related to a long-held position among Claremont scholars that “democracy as they understand has been supplanted by bureaucrats and entrenched executive branch departments”.
“The fact that Trump lost in 2020 has just radicalized a lot of these people – it occurred to them that they might not win a proper election again,” he said.
“That would mean that – excuse the language – they’re shit out of luck unless there’s some other path to power. That’s where Caesarism comes in.”
"If Trump wins in 2024, does he listen to people like Michael Anton about the need to perhaps cancel the next election? Damon Linker
Linker said that the danger in such ideas is not that the American people will actively choose a dictatorship, but more in how they might shape the rightwing response to a future emergency.
“If Trump wins in 2024, what does the opposition do, and how does he respond?” Linker speculated. “Does he send in the troops? Does that lead to bigger protests?
“If he then declares martial law, do these ideas prepare people in the Republican party to say, ‘Well, we need law and order’?” Linker asked.
“Does Trump then listen to people like Michael Anton and his friends about the need to perhaps cancel the next election?”
Underlining this danger is the fact that Caesarism has won converts beyond Claremont as a solution to perceived decadence and the declining electoral appeal of far-right ideas.
Charles Haywood, a former industrialist the Guardian exposed last month .. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/22/charles-haywood-claremont-institute-sacr-far-right .. as the founder of a secretive fraternal lodge and a would-be warlord, wrote in 2021 .. https://archive.ph/VCrxb .. that “I like, if not love, the idea of Red Caesar” since “Caesarism, and its time-legitimated successor, monarchy, is a natural, realism-based system, under which a civilization can flourish”.
The idea has been lodged in the broader sphere of conservative debate in the rightwing writer Stephen Wolfe’s book The Case for Christian Nationalism, in which he proposes a “Christian prince” whose rule would be “a measured and theocratic Caesarism”, and might perhaps be installed by “a just revolution” against secular rule.
It's the party, the GOP. McConnell gave America Trump's SCOTUS. The Heritage Foundation gave America political Trump. Trump's lie of being an outsider has been one of his most disingenuous, dangerous and successful lies. "SPECULATION: The horrible thing is the scrotus is cherry picking cases and it is obvious." Project 2025: How Trump Win Would Imperil Worker Organizing Gains Under Biden's NLRB https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=174683803] ----------
Caesarism and other antidemocratic ideas bemuse many observers, including some with whom they might otherwise share common ground.
Thomas Merrill is a political theorist and an associate professor at American University in Washington DC, who has written critically on the Claremont Institute, but from a broadly conservative perspective.
“We’re cousins,” he said of Claremont intellectuals in a telephone conversation, “and sometimes you have to ask your cousin, what the hell are you doing?”
He said that the authoritarian drift exhibited in work like Anton’s was an example of “the Claremont guys shooting themselves in the foot”. For Merrill, while he agrees that the ideas are dangerous, he thinks they have an air of compensatory fantasy.
“They’re selling a very dark picture of the world to conservative donors without going out and doing the hard work of democratic politics.”
For Linker, the author and lecturer, a far-right dictatorship remains “a tail-end, worst-case scenario”, but one that is more realistic in the US now than it has been for many decades.
“Thirty years ago, if I told you that a bunch of billionaires and intellectuals on the right are waiting in the wings to impose a dictatorship on the United States, you would have said that I was insane,” he said.
“But it’s no longer insane. It’s now real. There are those people out there,” Linker added. “The question is: will they get their chance.”
This article was amended on 2 October 2023. Michael Anton was an adviser to President Trump, but not “national security adviser” as a previous picture caption said.
I've never heard of the concept called ‘Red Caesarism’ before, yet we have heaps on the board with references to the far-right intellectuals of Claremont College .. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claremont_Institute .
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