Bright Young Things

 Trump has made headlines yet again in recent days for his increasingly unhinged comments. Even as he has maintained his seemingly irresistible climb in the polls, he has meanwhile captured attention not for any campaign promises or conventional politicking, but for another round of bombastically fascistic remarks—many of which have pushed the moral envelope even by his abysmal standards. In recent weeks and months he has: once again described immigrants as "poisoning the blood" of the United States; heaped more praise on authoritarian strongmen from Xi to Putin to Kim Jong Un; endorsed, Duterte-like, the extrajudicial killing of accused shoplifters; and promised to be a dictator on "day one" of his presidency (though supposedly not thereafter) and pointedly declined to rule out abusing his presidential powers to persecute his critics. 

What I want to focus on today, however, is not so much what Trump said, but whom he said it to; for I think it sheds light on a side of the Trump movement that often goes unexamined. To be sure, many of the recent comments were delivered in the usual round of campaign rallies in early-primary states, soft ball interviews with sycophantic right-wing pseudo-journalists, etc. This part of the Trump phenomenon everyone knows: it is often said that he appeals to rural, less-educated whites alarmed at the pace of social change. To see him making a pitch to voters in a rust belt state, therefore, or yammering away on a right-wing call-in show, fits the clichéd image of how he reaches his base. 

But some of Trump's recent "dictator" comments were delivered before a quite different audience: the annual gala of the "New York Young Republicans Club." This group fascinates me, because it showcases the obverse face of MAGA: the one made up of the privileged yet disaffected young. The people at the "Young Republicans" gala were not, after all, the sorts of people you expect at a Trump rally in rural Iowa, say. They are made up instead of an eccentric hodgepodge of social media influencers, erstwhile socialist podcasters turned red-pilled MAGA fans, hipsters-become-proud boys, bored young New York socialites, etc. Defying the media stereotype of the Trump voter, these are young people of immense privilege. More Bret Easton Ellis than brownshirt (or rather, a combination of both). 

One gets the strong impression that these are precisely the same sorts of disaffected rich kids who, fifty years ago, would have been raising money for New Left terrorists and revolutionaries—and would be doing the same today if "radical chic" were still the going thing and had retained its capacity to shock. But with social justice movements going mainstream, the disaffected young have settled on Trump instead. Calls for left-wing "revolution" don't have the same spice they once did; so now they worship Trump as their chosen avatar of destruction. 

I spend so much time describing them because I think they are an equally significant and telling aspect of the Trump movement, alongside his core of stereotyped supporters. Call them the existentialist nihilist wing of MAGA; the people who want to overthrow democracy simply for fun: an errant acte grauit. They are the sort of people who backed George Santos purely for the sake of an elaborate prank. 

It may seem surprising that there would be an avant-garde wing of MAGA as well as a rural arch-traditionalist one; but truth be told, this has always been true of fascist movements. This is part of what gives fascism its dangerous electoral potency. Mussolini, recall, recruited as much from the ranks of intellectuals as from the rural masses and the small business owners. Some of the earliest fascists were Futurist artists, "vorticists," and the like. Fascism, after all, is more than just an extreme form of conservatism. It combines its reactionary impulses with a worship of revolutionary violence for its own sake—the cult of action; the "propaganda of the deed." It is as much Sorel as Maurras; and indeed, it must always forge the unique combination of the two before it can truly become fascism. 

Therefore, it is entirely in keeping with the evolution of fascist movements past that there should be a radical chic contingent of Trumpism, as well as a cultural reactionary one; both can get behind the idea of smashing liberal democracy ("bourgeois democracy," as it was derisively called by the erstwhile left-wing radicals-turned-right-wing fascists in the first half of the twentieth century). Both worship the cult of violence and strength, though from one (the conservative side) it emerges more from a sense of cultural resentment and a desire for vengeance, whereas for the other—the avant-garde wing, the privileged and wealthy young Manhattan socialites who can afford to attend a "Young Republican" gala (where the ticket prices reportedly ranged "from $699 to $30,000")—the appeal seems to simply be to assuage their ennui. They have tried all the party drugs at this point, but nothing gives them the same kick as destroying American democracy. 

What is repulsive about this group is not only that they would consider ruining the lives of countless people in this country,  and around the world, who depend on a functioning American legal and electoral system; it's not just that these privileged youths want to throw our political institutions and Constitution in the toilet just for fun, just "for idleness," as a character says of why he strangles the seagull in Chekhov's play, in one of the drama's most richly-symbolic scenes. (Aplin trans.) No, the worst part about these people is that they imagine that they can unleash these volcanic forces into our society and not get scorched themselves. This is the insight of D.H. Lawrence's poem on the "Latter-Day Sinners," which I've quoted before but which has seldom seemed so on-point. The worst thing about the wealthy young avant-garde fascists is that they seek to call down "the deluge," as Lawrence calls it, but never imagine they themselves might get wet. 

Lawrence's poem seems to describe the interwar generation of "bright young things," but it captures a side of their privileged nihilism that many of their contemporaries missed, and which would only truly blossom into fascism once the latter emerged as an available political option. What Lawrence says he really detests about this cohort, he writes, is not so much that they worship violence and mayhem, but that they worship it for other people. They say, "après-moi, le deluge," but they don't expect the deluge will come in their lifetime, only after them. They expect to be able to unleash the demonic forces of fiery destruction on society, but meanwhile to "go on," as Lawrence puts it, "calmly eating good dinners for the next fifty years." Why should they expect such a "long smooth run," Lawrence asks, for their "paltry little bit of money?" He concludes: "If you are expecting [...] a deluge, you musn't expect it also to wait for your convenience." 

And so we must ask of our New York Young Republicans as well. Why is it that they think they can unleash destruction on American institutions at large, but meanwhile go on attending swanky galas, afford "sequined ball gowns," and pay massive cover charges for the next fifty years? Why should they expect such a long, smooth run, when they are trying to deny the same to everyone else? They worship destruction, but they always assume, it will be someone else who is destroyed. They think they can let the rampaging monster of authoritarianism, ethnic bigotry, violent rhetoric and calls for "dictatorship" off the leash, but that it will never come back around to smash up them or anything they care about. 

But, alas, they are wrong in this. It is in the nature of cults of violence that they do not stop until they have consumed everything and everyone in their path—including their makers and enablers.