The Long List

 Well, last night's GOP primary debate was another chilling display of the galloping extremism that has engulfed the Republican Party, and once again the news media seems to have missed the main storyline of what actually happened on stage. Much of the attention went to Christie and Haley, who did indeed deliver the best performances by the rules of traditional politics. But clearly, once again, the real protagonist on stage was Vivek Ramaswamy. I say this not because Ramaswamy has a prayer of winning the nomination—he does not; nor is he even trying (he is clearly auditioning instead for the role of Trump lapdog). But he is the one who best represents the views of the absent Trump, as well as the direction in which the overall MAGA movement is plainly headed. 

Two of the most significant moments of the debate both proceeded from Ramaswamy's mouth. Neither has received the attention it is due. The first came when Ramaswamy sought to reverse the GOP's longstanding support of Israel. Many observers seem not to have picked up on this at all. Ramaswamy chooses his words carefully enough on this topic, it would appear, that the significance of it has largely escaped notice. He talks about David Ben-Gurion and says that his position is that of the "true" supporter of Israel, because he is trying to encourage Israeli "self-reliance," so people don't bat an eye. But what he is actually saying is that the U.S. needs to withdraw all financial support of Israel. This is sure to win him the support of disaffected alt-left types online, or even worse segments of opinion (more on that below), but it has little to do with traditional Republican politics. 

The second, and in many ways even more revealing moment came when Ramaswamy used the podium to publicly endorse the "Great Replacement Theory" by name. This is the antisemitic conspiracy theory that inspired the mass shooting of American Jews at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018. It is also the same theory that Elon Musk recently endorsed on X in remarks widely condemned as brazenly antisemitic. Ramaswamy invoking the theory right now, in the wake of the Musk controversy, coupled with his efforts to steer the Republican Party away from supporting Israel, sends a dogwhistle so shrill even the stodgiest of media observers ought to have picked up on it. Ramaswamy, channelling here the emergent views of MAGA bros and alt-right/alt-left Musk-heads online, is coyly winking his endorsement of antisemitism (plus aligning himself with the pro-Putin foreign policy agenda to boot).  

Ramaswamy, as the most Trump-adjacent and MAGA-approved person on the debate stage, is a far better indicator in the primary of the real direction of the Republican Party, and the alarm bells about that fact should be ringing loud. The Trump movement has long flirted with all currents of fascism, conspiracism, and far-right extremism. As they become increasingly brazen in their antisemitism, though, the Neo-Nazi contingent of MAGA seems to be coming uppermost. 

Then we combine this with Trump's recent interview in which he pointedly refused to pledge that he would not abuse his power in office or pursue extra-legal means to persecute his enemies. He also vowed to be a "dictator," though "only on day one." The threat that the potential next president of the United States actually plans to install himself as a far-right authoritarian is now so patent that it has entered mainstream discussion. Even the moderators of last night's debate felt compelled to ask about it. Yet, only Chris Christie had the courage and integrity to use the occasion to explicitly denounce Trump's comments and issue a serious warning about the threat he poses to American democracy. The other candidates equivocated and hedged. Ramaswamy, meanwhile, made a point of raising his hand again, to indicate that he would certainly back Trump if the former president won the primaries. 

Put all these warning signs together, and I start to ponder seriously whether I will need to flee the country at some point in the next few years. I was talking to a friend about this and asking him when he would know that the time had come to leave. We debated whether it would be possible to simply wait out a second Trump term, if he establishes an Orban-style quasi-authoritarian regime. I observed that both of us had enough public information tying us to liberal causes and the Democratic Party that we might eventually be targeted. To be sure, we wouldn't be on a future MAGA dictator's short list of internal enemies (which mostly seems to be made up at this point of people who worked directly for Trump in the recent past and abetted his rise, but who stopped just short of embracing his quest for unconstitutional power—people like Mike Pence and Bill Barr); but we might make the long list. 

We then started to compete for who had the more serious rap sheet of political crimes against Trumpism. When my friend said he had already been doxed at one point by a far-right group accusing him (bogusly) of being a member of "Antifa," I felt jilted. I should be on anyone's list of liberal enemies. If fascists and Neo-Nazis don't think of me as one of their foes, then I clearly must be doing something wrong. I was reminded of Bertolt Brecht's poem about the book-burnings in Nuremberg. Upon seeing that his own works were not included on the list of proscribed volumes to be committed to the flames, he was outraged. "Haven't I always reported the truth?" he writes, "and here you are, treating me like a liar!" (Burch trans.) I feel the same way. If MAGA fascists don't think I'm a member of "Antifa" at this point, or include me on a long list of people to persecute, once they are finished with the former members of Trump's own first administration, I will feel I failed sufficiently to tell the truth about them. 

Another friend I spoke to about all of this was disappointed in me for even thinking of leaving the country. If I didn't stay and fight, he asked, who would? If we can't defend liberal democracy here, in this country, so central to the history and development of that political system in the modern world, how does it have a chance anywhere? Plus, hadn't I been preparing all my life for just such a struggle against fascism as this? 

I confessed he had a point; but I was tired. I had spent the four years of Trump's first administration protesting against him, as a full-time member of the professional resistance (I worked for a progressive human rights NGO, after all). And by the end of it, I wasn't sure I had actually helped anything. Maybe all my advocacy had just seemed shrill and annoying. Perhaps it had only served to alienate people from the left; maybe I had somehow perversely managed to strengthen the very forces in American life I was trying to combat. When Trump was finally out of office in 2020, therefore, I was ready to be done with it. I had served my time in the trenches, and now I felt free. My life could be about anything, now! It didn't have to be sacrificed to the Resistance. My life had been handed back to me after all. I could do with it anything I wanted!

My friend told me that people don't get to pick and choose their causes like that. For people who really have a cause, he said, "the cause chooses them." He went on: "Don't you think most people in history who actually had to fight for something wished they didn't have to fight for it? Don't you think they wished that circumstances were different and it had never happened to them? That they wished they had lived in a different time?" 

I had to admit he had a good point. There are of course people who go seeking for martyrdom; who crave struggle and sacrifice. But maybe, my friend seemed to be saying, they are not the ones who are actually useful to the cause when it matters. Maybe they are not the ones truly called when circumstances actually demand it. Maybe the people who really have a cause to serve are not the ones who go looking for it; they are the ones whom the cause finds on its own. 

Shortly thereafter, I was reading a book of Umberto Eco's essays, Travels in Hyperreality, and I found he makes this same point most eloquently. Many of his essays in the book were written in response to the political context of Italy during the 1970s and '80s—a time when left-wing "Red Brigades" were staging terrorist bombings, kidnappings, and assassinations. Eco, though plainly a man of the left, was profoundly dismayed by this turn of the student radical movement toward nihilistic violence. In one of his essays, he calls on people to resist the allure of "sacrifice" and "martyrdom"; to cease this worship of the need for courage and struggle, because it so often serves as a mere channel for the human impulse toward violence. It constructs a false reality for itself in which violence is the only solution, not because that is the true state of affairs, but because it craves an outlet for this ugly human impulse toward self-righteous cruelty. 

After warning against the cult of self-sacrifice, violence, and martyrdom, however, Eco concedes that there are indeed real heroes in history—people who took a stand at great personal risk to themselves to resist fascism and injustice. Courage is a real quantity, therefore, that actually needs to be valued. But, of the people who showed this courage when it counted—of these "real heroes"—Eco says of them precisely what my friend told me about people who are chosen by a cause: "Real heroes are impelled by circumstances; they never choose because, if they could, they would choose not to be heroes." He goes on: "The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else [....] He suffers and keeps his mouth shut; if anything, others then exploit him, making him a myth, while he, the man worthy of esteem, was only a poor creature who reacted with dignity and courage to an event bigger than he was." (Weaver trans.)

So maybe I don't have to feel bad about my own impulse to be an "honest coward"; my desire for relief from struggling, my wish for Trump to merely go away so that I could resume a normal life that was no longer defined by politics. Such is merely, according to Eco, what everyone wishes—at least those who demonstrate real courage, rather than the false courage of people who go seeking after struggle and martyrdom in a quest to find meaning through violence. 

But Eco also suggests that my friend is right too: I should stay and fight. Because so it is with everyone who has a real cause to perform in history: they don't choose the cause; the cause chooses them. They are "impelled by circumstances," against their will. They are "heroes by mistake," when they'd much rather be safe at home in a comfortable retirement and not having to worry about the politicians and the dictators and the book-burnings.