Full of contradictions.
Photographer: Steve
Eaton/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Karl Marx and his followers
argued that revolutionaries should disrupt capitalist societies by
"heightening the contradictions." Russia used a version of that
Marxist idea in its efforts to disrupt the 2016 presidential campaign. It
should come as no surprise that the most powerful nation from the former Soviet
Union, whose leaders were schooled in the Marxist tradition, is borrowing
directly from that tradition in its efforts today.
What is more surprising, and
far more important for American politics, is that President Donald Trump is
drawn to a similar strategy.
Marx contended that as the
conditions of workers started to improve, they would cease to be content with
their lot, or to regard their alienation as inevitable. Lenin seized on this
idea and transformed it into a revolutionary strategy. Lenin urged that as
capitalism developed, workers would see, or could be made to see, the
contradictions between the official story of universal freedom and their actual
inability to have real control over their own lives. The job of the communist
revolutionary was to “heighten” or “accelerate” those contradictions. 1
[I am giving a brisk summary of some
famously complex and ambiguous arguments from both Marx and Lenin.]
During the 2016 campaign, Russians
did something very much like that, not to produce a
revolution, but to deepen and intensify social divisions (and to help elect
Donald Trump). Mimicking American voices, they used Facebook to energize and
inflame a diverse assortment of political groups: gay rights supporters,
African-American activists, Texas secessionists and opponents of immigration.
(“America is at risk and we need to protect our country now more than ever,
liberal hogwash aside.”)
Some of their efforts
vigorously defended gun rights. In one ad, a young woman asks: “Why do I have a
gun? Because it’s easier for my family to get me out of jail than out of
cemetery.” They attempted to appeal to Christians with provocative ads quoting
Trump: “We are going to say Merry Christmas again.”
In short, the Russians tried to
foster a sense of grievance and humiliation on all sides. The goal was to
intensify social divisions and to contribute to an atmosphere of mutual
suspicion and anger, even rage, that would ultimately weaken the nation and
make it difficult to govern. Lenin would have been proud.
Even if Hillary Clinton had
won, Russia’s strategy might have proved effective. As a Russian participant in
similar campaigns recently said, “Our goal wasn’t to turn Americans toward Russia” but
instead “to provoke unrest and discontent.”
Which brings us to the White
House. Every president has his own strategy for dealing with periods of acute
difficulty. Franklin
Delano Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan worked to disarm their
opponents with charm, grace and humor. Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton moved to
the center. George H.W. Bush and Barack Obama tried to get down to business and
to do something significant and concrete.
By contrast, Donald Trump
heightens the contradictions. He tries to provoke unrest and discontent, with a
clear intuition that they are his best friends. He creates demons and
scapegoats. That’s also Stephen Bannon’s approach, and it captures what drew
the two men together.
That might be smart politics.
But more fundamentally, it appears to be Trump’s gut instinct, his go-to
approach when cornered or in trouble. In some cases, his statements look
uncomfortably like Russia’s Facebook ads.
The most obvious example is his
long effort, before running for office, to convince Americans that Barack Obama
was not born in the United States. As politician and president, consider his
recent claim that Obama failed to call the families of fallen soldiers; his
focus on whether professional football players are standing for the national
anthem, combined with a threat to revoke the NFL’s tax exemption; his ad
hominem attacks on the Republican establishment; his suggestion that if broadcasters persist in offering “fake
news,” their licenses might be revoked; his contention that Democrats do not
believe in, and want to abolish, the Second Amendment; his renewed emphasis on the importance of saying “Merry
Christmas”; his continuing focus on Hillary Clinton and her supposed crimes.
While Trump’s characteristic
strategy is to intensify social divisions, and to make what divides Americans
as salient and visible as possible, that approach is more often associated with
the left than the right (true to its Marxist origins).
In the United States, Senator Bernie
Sanders has long been drawn to the approach, arguing that the interests of
good, decent ordinary people are sharply opposed to those of powerful and
supposedly evil actors (such as “the banks”). As Sanders’ influence has grown,
the Democratic Party has moved to the left, sometimes with proposals that are rooted less in careful
policy analysis than in a Manichean view of American society.
As the Russians know,
heightening the contradictions is dangerous for the American people. Here’s a
much better idea: E pluribus unum.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial
board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
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