Donald Trump’s decision to launch of a full-throated declaration of war on the US electoral process this morning paves the way for what may well be a chaotic three months of legal and extra-legal efforts to thwart the result.
“If you count the legal votes I easily win,” the president said, insisting he had won major undecided states by “a lot” and calling for an end to the counting of ballots arriving late. Earlier, he had demanded “STOP THE FRAUD” and “STOP THE VOTE” on Twitter.
While Trump’s tactics and attempt to delegitimise the election as “rigged” were long predicted in the event he was defeated, they confirm that any support for Trump’s tactics now amounts to attacking democracy.
Many on the right appear willing to embrace that chaos. In fact, among the lesser outcomes of this week has been the emergence of many on the right as fully-developed advocates of chaos.
The enthusiasm for Trump in right-wing circles here in Australia has always been driven by similar sentiments to those that animate much of his base in the United States: they love him because he infuriates and enrages the left, and prosecutes culture wars with the same gleeful joy they do.
That’s overridden what used to be core beliefs for the right — fiscal discipline, free trade, foreign military intervention — because culture wars and reflexive oppositionism have replaced any meaningful ideology as the dominant motivator for so many right-wingers.
But that turned out to be merely a gateway to something more extreme: an endorsement of Trump’s attacks on democracy and assault on US democratic institutions.
In the op-ed pages of The Australian, where the likes of Kelly, Sheridan and Kenny queued up to praise Trump’s apparent victory yesterday; in The Australian Financial Review, where reactionaries like John Roskam (following the example of Alexander Downer) have detailed their support for Trump; in the fetid recesses of the Coalition backbench from where the likes of George Christensen have issued forth to declare their expertise in US electoral fraud; from glad-handing ambassador-turned-lobbyist Joe Hockey, Australia’s senior right-wingers have backed Trump’s attempt to derail the legitimate outcome of the election with all the subtlety of a Latin American dictator.
In an excellent analysis in the highly conservative UK Telegraph, that paper’s business editor Ambrose Evans-Pritchard spelt out the implications of this. Noting that Trump’s “allegation of a giant ‘fraud on the American people’ was not an off-the-cuff remark in the heat of the moment … this gambit was pre-planned”, Evans-Pritchard says “a machinery for legal guerrilla warfare has been set in motion across the battleground states and will now cause weeks of havoc. Have markets understood the gravity of what is unfolding?”
Indeed, have Trump’s right-wing supporters here and elsewhere understood, either? Seemingly, they have.
They have embraced the chaos that Trump represents, the deliberate, indeed systematic, well-planned undermining of democratic institutions. Enjoying Trump’s culture warrior politics has simply been a gateway drug to becoming full-fledged cheerleaders of the havoc he intends to wreak on democracy and key institutions.
In doing so, these highly-paid commentators, think tank gurus and politicians have followed a similar trajectory to tens of thousands of radicalised youths and young men online, for whom transgressive internet behaviour, meme-sharing and trolling were gateway drugs to actually embracing white supremacism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and fascism.
The kids came for the jokes and then started believing them. The commentators and politicians came for Trump’s culture wars, and stayed for his assault on democracy and vandalism of institutions. Something in the chaos he revels in is deeply appealing to them.
That this is at odds with the conservative values many of them claim to espouse is one thing. But to reinforce the point made by Evans-Pritchard, havoc and chaos aren’t good for business. In fact, assaulting the key institutions that prop up liberal democracy undermines the basic support systems of capitalism.
If you can attack democracy and insist only the votes for you ought to be counted, and try to appeal it to the court you stacked with partisans, why not take the same approach to, say, property rights? To the enforcement of contracts? To taxation? Once you start enforcing the law in your own interests, the basic mechanisms of capitalism break down.
In short, once you see the law not as a protection for all but a tool for you to exploit, you can guarantee someone else will end up using it to exploit you.
You want chaos? There’s plenty more where that came from.
I tend to think that the commentators lining up to support Trump, in his paranoid, narcissist and unfounded claims, are doing so because they love to portray themselves as rebels and outsiders. This is probably to compensate for their actual positions, which usually demonstrate abject sycophancy, to the real power in society.
For instance, they claim to be silenced by politically correct elites, when in reality, they often have privileged positions in the world’s most powerful media organisation. They also claim that their climate denialism, is truth telling against a massive conspiracy, when in fact, it’s toadying to the interests of some of the most rapacious multinational corporations.
And with both them and Trump, the solutions that they float, also are shams. Instead of offering things like, increased healthcare, better education and well targeted government spending; their solutions are tax cuts to the wealthy, degeneration of government services and slashing corporate regulation. Since democracy is probably at its best, when limiting inequality and abuse of power, it’s no real surprise, that when the crunch comes, these people have no real regard for democratic norms.
Your first par particularly impresses as a psychological profile. So many of them surely mama’s boys, following all the rules and being good boys, and hating those damned lefties who grew up and made their own decisions in life. Damned soy latte drinkers.
The culture war anger is truly intriguing, all that energy and anger against a group of people that barely make up a fringe of a fringe of society. Their soy latte drinking, vegan, inner-city, hipster elites makes up a crowd of a few thousand people in Sydney, all living in Newtown or Surry Hills. Not worth the slightest second thought even if you are somehow highly offended by such inoffensive people.
Mostly I suspect it is all about getting old, about that cultural sclerosis that happens to everyone unless you actively fight it by opening yourself up to new ideas, new music and new art. It’s Grandpa Simpson, so perfectly portrayed in that stellar animation, the most astute observers of society.
The old saying that if you’re not a leftie in your 20s you have no heart, and if your not a conservative in your 40s you have no brain, was always dead wrong. The slide to conservatism is the slide into senility and fear. It needs to be fought, do not go gently into that goodnight.
There’s also plenty people “regressing” to progressiveness from a conservative start. Often they look back and wonder why they expanded so much energy being angry for no gain whatsoever.
Almost totally off topic, but if you want an example of someone aging beautifully, check out the new Bootsy Collins album. He’s just about to turn 70, but he’s still making wild music, that the young folk can enjoy.
What? There’s a new Bootsy album!! Why am I wasting my time on Crikey?
Good point, especially true too amongst those astro turfing or pretending to not be of the right nor supporters of Trump by using radical or revolutionary language.
Examples are SpikedOnline (freedom of speech), ZeroHedge (far right libertarian economics), and locally MacroBusiness (populist economics/demographics) where they invest more time and words in criticising the centre right through left, helping move the Overton window to the right (while seldom focusing upn the right).
This dynamic and editorial creates public space, and respectability, for the (white) hard right libertarian and/or nativist MPs/parties to insert themselves; or at least be viewed less negatively vs. the centre/left.
I’m reminded why I am glued to the election. Trump’s successes despite his cheating, lying and corruption (I’m happy to outline many examples of each) sets a poor example for all of our wannabe power hungry greedy politicians. I want to see him and all he stands for go down.
How is it that the LIB/NP get voted in in Australia then? They have so many dirty, underhanded dealings going on that they make it a art form at lies and deception.
Like how the Aus Post CEO spends $20k to thank hard working execs bringing in big contracts, but $250m sports Rory tax payer money heist has no repercussions?
They’re just soooo good at fear, distraction and being master manipulators. Just look at what rose to the top as our ceo and pastor and chief. While abbot was a huge knocker he was just terrible at it and frankly had a wierd personality that made his behavour and his allies appear as bad as they actually were.
While Scotty is a smooth tongued shiester, he controls the discussion and appears familar and harmless to a lot of people (just like that boring boss or colleague you’ve ehad to work with and figure ‘well they could be alot worse’)
I am still looking fot Abbotts mystical island Canadia..Google search cannot find it! As for Sco Mo is about as trustworthy as Brutus was to Ceasar
Lock him up!
Great piece Bernard – sadly I also believe that many in our current executive are also driven by the same thing, they are just slightly more articulate.
Because Trump is such a flawed but charismatic character, he offers people someone to follow without feeling any guilt. He is kind of a Jesus character where people feel all their flaws are forgiven, and lets face it, everyone has flaws. Unfortunately for his followers, his biggest flaw is that he is a conman.
Yes, and we should remember that conman is derived from ‘confidence man’. Which I suspect is one reason, that many people don’t seem to pick up on his relentless untruths. That is, no matter what garbage he spouts, there’s rarely any nervousness, hesitancy or lack of confidence; so some people just assume that what he says is correct. And there’s always plenty of right wing media commentators, with similar personality traits, who will shamelessly back him up and assure any doubters.
Sounds like our Scotty. Just less bluster.
Yes, I think they both benefit greatly from modern media, in that their generally clueless gibbering, can actually be packaged into three second sound bites, that look impressive on the evening news. Those few seconds can seem like the pronouncements of an accomplished leader, to those people who haven’t really been paying attention; but to anyone who watched the whole turgid interview or press conference, most of it sounded like empty bluster.
Trump has been in power for 4 years. If he really thought the electoral process in the USA was open to fraud, he could have done something about. He chose not to, so suck it up Donald.
Actually, he did his level best to make things as fraudulent as possible-by trying to supress the absentee & postal vote.