[ad_1]
In the 1990s, American anthropologist Lisa Wedeen traveled to Syria, which was then ruled by dictator Hafez Assad. It was a brutal regime and at the same time strange. Anyone who deviates from expectations disappeared in torture cells for months, years, decades without the relatives receiving any information. At the same time, the streets and squares were filled with patriotic posters with ridiculous and pompous praise of the regime. For example, Hafez Assad was hailed as “the greatest chemist in the world” (he had a degree in chemistry).
Wedeen was struck by the fact that sensible and private-minded people repeated the mindless and blatantly absurd slogans of the regime.
“The moment you leave home, you ask yourself: what does the regime want?” declared a Syrian for Wedeen “. It will be a battle over who can praise the regime the most and best. People compete with each other … it becomes their own language.”
Lisa Wedeen drew the conclusion that in the tributes people were expected to pour out on the Assad regime, the absurd was the point. “The power of the regime is based on its ability to shape national fictions and make people say things they would not otherwise have said,” he wrote in the study “Ambiguities of domination”. Obedience makes people complicit; it entangles them in relationships of domination that reinforce themselves, making it more difficult for them to see themselves only as victims of the whims of the state. The goal was not to create a genuine conviction, the conviction would only be a consequence, what Lisa Wedeen calls politics “as if.
I’ve been reminded of Assad’s ‘as if’ after the US election, when Donald Trump continued to insist that the presidential election he lost be annulled due to massive electoral fraud. It is a request, unsupported by any evidence, that in its radical ambition to undermine confidence in American democracy is as absurd as it is worrying.
What is Trump looking for? when do you make these ridiculous accusations? Do you really think the elections should be reversed? Does it just lay the groundwork for a future story about the victim, a narrative that you can later gain support for, that can make you the star of the conspiracy media ecosystem? Or is the absurdity of his claim aimed at the Republican elites? After all, this is a test for them and a difficult dilemma: if they play, they will be tainted by their lies, if they don’t play, they have betrayed Trump and he can turn his constituency against them.
It was telling that in the first hours after Trump made his unsubstantiated claims, few prominent Republicans responded. But when the Trump family began to accuse them of treason, it was seen how high-ranking senators, including Senate Leader Mitch McConnell, slipped into acknowledging Trump’s fictions and acted “as if” his claims were credible. They may have in mind the important January elections in Georgia, where it is decided who takes control of the Senate, and they fear alienating Trump’s main voters.
But they may be on their way to cast hooks? Republicans also have another dilemma, a dilemma that political parties face when they lose an election by a narrow margin. In a way, it is easier to know what to do after a great loss. So it is obvious that what is required is a major cleanup and a change in strategy.
But if you make a good decision and just lose, it can be difficult to decide what to keep and what to throw away. Which parts of the strategy were successful and which were counterproductive? Did Republicans fare well thanks to Trump, or could they have done better without him? Did the voters vote for them because of their politically incorrect rhetoric and rampant denial of the facts, or did their lies and insults hinder the willingness to vote Republican?
Did people who like his economic policies, which theoretically any Republican candidate could endorse, abstain from voting because they personally perceive him as repulsive? Or did he get votes from people who might never have voted Republican otherwise?
Something similar happened in Britain when Labor 2017 lost the election by a narrow margin. Was the party close to winning because it attracted a broad coalition of voters who were outraged by Brexit? Or was the party popular because of its increasingly leftist economic policies? What was the correct choice, ideological flexibility or ideological rigidity? The party decided that it had to become ideologically purer and left-wing, and immediately collapsed in the next election.
Does that mean that it could be wrong for Republicans to play Trump’s “as if”? Early opinion polls show that 67 percent of those who say they are Trump voters like the way he relates to the election result, and 47 percent even believe he won.
But how do other would-be Republican voters, those who respect American institutions and the electoral process, believe in fair play and think that one should admit defeat with dignity? Will they feel alienated from their behavior and then vote against their own party, or at least abstain from voting? Recent opinion polls show that 80 percent of Americans believe Biden won the election and ignore Trump’s refusal to admit defeat.
And the more Trump Attack the American democratic processes the more democrats and independent voters are motivated to vote. After all, the United States is not Hafez Assad’s Syria, no voter needs to get up in the morning to think about what the regime expects of them. But top Republicans, like the folks at Wedeen’s “Domination Ambiguities,” have pleaded guilty. This may also be Trump’s goal: If he falls, they should be caught up in the case, entangled in their fantasies.
Translation from English: Per Svensson
Read more:
Jamaica Kincaid – I’ve lived in a snow globe, now someone finally crushed it
Zeynep Tufekci: Don’t be under any illusions that Trumpism is dead
