Because I am speaking to an already philosophically-oriented readership in this post, I am afraid it may seem a little “inside baseball.” But for those who are not familiar with the terms used and issues discussed by political philosophers, or are familiar but want to go down the philosophical rabbit hole a little further, you can do so by having a look at my recent book—Analytical Fascism: What Stares Back When One Stares into the De-Enlightenment. The book came out at the end of last year, before Trump’s January 20, 2025 inauguration, but I think it fair to say that the underlying moral views that are motivating every move the Trump administration has made so far are described and explained in that book. Of course, I can only mention a few of the many arguments I presented in that book here, but I will begin with one that might be the most philosophically significant: how Trumpism and liberalism as ideologies have such radically different starting positions that committed members of either group have no common moral language with which to talk to one other.
All systems of morality begin with a description of what philosophers call “the moral subject,” for identifying the moral subject is a prerequisite for coming to a view about how society should be organized and how the benefits and burdens of social cooperation should be organized and distributed. Without a conception of the moral subject, it is simply impossible to make arguments about what political morality may require, because the framework within which moral argument can take place is missing. Without such a framework, one cannot know what counts as a moral argument and what does not, or how much weight to give one moral argument against another.
According to John Rawls, the preeminent liberal political philosopher of the twentieth century, the relevant moral subject is the individual. Liberalism therefore begins with a conception of the person. Under that conception, individuals are said to possess “two moral powers.” The first is a capacity to have a sense of justice that guides them when engaging in social cooperation; the second is a capacity to form and pursue a conception of the personal good, an idea of what ends one, as an individual, should pursue. From this starting point, Rawls and other liberal political philosophers then build their respective conceptions of liberalism as a system of political morality. Of course, the details of these conceptions may differ from one liberal political philosopher to another. But given that they share a common starting point, they are all going to be about facilitating fair terms of social cooperation between individuals and ensuring that every individual is able to pursue any reasonable conception of their personal good free from interference by others.
Like other forms of illiberalism, however, Trumpism does not begin with a conception of the person. It begins with a conception of “the people.” One way of looking at this is to say that under illiberal theories of political morality, the individual is not an autonomous moral end in itself, but rather a component of a larger fundamental organic unit. It is only this larger unit and other similarly composed but competing fundamental organic units that can harbor and pursue moral ends. While thought of as a nontechnical term by liberals, as including everyone within certain geographic boundaries, or all citizens, or at least all those legally entitled to vote, this is not how “the people” are conceived of by illiberals. To the contrary, to be part of the natural, organic unity that conceives of itself as “a people” in the illiberal worldview, one must share the “correct” objective attributes, like race, ethnicity, religion, and so on, as well as the correct ideological views. Indeed, all members of the relevant community are conceived of as identical in all relevant respects. Those who are not are, by definition, outsiders, whom we might tolerate as guests if they respect their place and we feel generous. But if they become troublesome, they forfeit whatever grace they may enjoy as second-class citizens and become an outright enemy, whose existence is intolerable and whose activities if not presence must be suppressed.
Given this conception of the moral subject, Trumpists and other illiberal ideologues see the people, the state, and the leader, like the Holy Trinity, as conceptually one. The liberal idea that a political community contains a plurality of reasonable views is ruled out from the get-go. The concept of reasonable dissent is therefore incoherent. By definition, all dissenters put themselves outside the community, and all outsiders who are “inside the wire” pose an existential, cancerous threat to that community. Hence the speed and seemingly disproportional (to liberal eyes) amount of rhetorical and real extra-judicial force deployed against such people. One does not cure cancer by arguing with it; one excises it from the body of the people as quickly, publicly, and definitively as possible.
Unfortunately, many liberals think that the authoritarian character of the illiberal state and ferocity of the measures taken against those seen as outsiders means that illiberals harbor strong antidemocratic sentiments. And clearly, many illiberals are expressly antidemocratic. But thinking of antidemocratic notions as built into illiberalism is a mistake, resulting from a misunderstanding of both democracy and illiberalism. For while democracy is designed to give effect to “the will of the people,” there is nothing in the concept of democracy that tells us who “the people” are. And depending on how one answers this question, one can arrive at some very different modes of political organization indeed. The more restrictive one’s conception of the people, the more plurality poses a threat to democracy rather than constituting a basic social fact that democracy is there to manage.
Indeed, even outright and unabashed fascists do not necessarily consider themselves anti-democratic. The esteemed Italian “philosopher of fascism,” Giovanni Gentile, claimed that fascism was “the greatest expression of democracy ever invented.” Mussolini himself, on the stage with Hitler in Berlin in 1937, declared Italy and Germany “the greatest and most genuine democracies.” Liberals see such claims as ludicrous, of course, but there is a sense in which they are true. Given a restrictive conception of the people and the view that the leader, the state, and the people, are one, elections are unnecessary—a leader is not selected through something as pedestrian as this. Rather, his identity becomes manifest, much like that of a prophet or religious figure. Any leader so identified necessarily embodies the will of the people—nothing more is required for the leader to know what his people want him to do. Mediating bodies like a legislature simply get in the way of putting the people’s plans in motion.
Not only does this mean the leader is to have unfettered power in an illiberal state, it also means that it is each person’s responsibility in such a state to “work towards the leader.” After all, everyone is of one mind about everything of importance if one is of the people; thus no one should need specific orders. Those who make mistakes will find out soon enough. But those who get it right are sure to be rewarded. By pardons, by nominations for high government positions, by government contracts or largesse, and so on. Violation of the rule of law is not a sign of criminality or abuse of power; it is an indication of the will of the people in motion. Even corruption is not a moral wrong, for what looks like bribery is to be regarded as the payment of tribute legitimately due those in power.
Indeed, in an illiberal community, status is the most important feature of the individual, not rights, and power is a signifier of status. People are identical within the community, but not equal. Every human interaction is a contest to see who can dominate whom. And the strong, the powerful, the rich, and the beautiful are by their nature entitled to subservience from beings of lesser worth, even though all may be members of the people.
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