What Happened?

 I talked last time about how Wilhelm Reich's diagnosis of the psychology of fascism still rings true in the Trump era, and I stand by it. But even more than the answers that Reich provides (to the question, that is, of what explains the rise of fascism) I find that his way of posing the question resonates with our time. In a sense, after all, Reich was asking the same question Hillary Clinton famously did, after unexpectedly losing the 2016 election by a hair: "What Happened?"

I'm talking here about the first, 1933 edition of the book—not so much the later sections that Reich added in 1942, which partake more of his usual sexual mumbo-jumbo (and which I confess I haven't finished yet). By 1942, obviously, the United States had entered the war, and the ultimate victory of democracy seemed a bit more assured. The 1933 sections—by contrast—were written fresh on the heels of Hitler's seizure of power, and therefore with much more urgency. 

It's that same feeling of urgency and disbelief and baffled confusion that speaks to our time. The Left, after all, has always regarded itself as the vanguard of history. It has positioned itself as the party of the future—the direction in which things are going. And especially in the 1930s, the Left saw itself as the party of the masses. They were the ones promising to end hunger and injustice. They were the party of the proletariat. How could they lose under genuinely democratic conditions? 

We felt the same way in 2016. The Democratic coalition could not fail. It represented the concerns of women, young people, working class people, members of racial and religious minorities, LGBTQ+ people... put them all together, and you had a stable and irreversible electoral majority. "Demography is destiny" and all that. And yet, here we are—eight years later—and Trump has only improved his margins among Black and Hispanic and Gen Z voters since then. What gives? 

The Left of Reich's generation was forced to confront the question: why had the masses decided to vote against their self interest? Why, in the midst of a world economic crisis that ought to have confirmed the warnings of the Left and pushed the masses into the arms of the socialist parties, had they opted instead for a blatantly reactionary political movement? And today, the Left confronts a similar riddle: why is Trump yet again gaining electoral ground among exactly the groups who would seem to have the best reasons to oppose him? 

Reich argued that the Left's usual strategies for counterattack were feeble and unavailing, because they failed to take account of the frankly irrational dimension of politics. Convinced that they stood for the masses' true class interests, the Left could think of nothing better to do than to try to repeat that same argument. "We'll point out all the reasons our policies will fill their bellies." Reich observes that one of their slogans in this era promised simply to "end hunger and cold." 

In other words, the Left tried to defeat the emotional appeal of fascism and reactionary politics by the use of mere "soup-logic and dumpling-reason," to borrow Heine's phrase. The fascists pitched themselves to people at the level of mysticism—and the Left responded by appeals to rational self-interest. "A vote for us means more food on your plate." As if people could live by bread alone. As if the masses, just like all of us, did not want bread and roses...

Or else, the Left would respond by trying to convince the workers that they had been hoodwinked—to point out the lies and hypocrisies of the fascists. This too, Reich argued, would inevitably be unavailing. If the task was to "undeceive the proletariat," he writes, "this could not have been done [...] solely by constantly impressing on them the objective economic and political situation, and certainly not by constantly exposing the frauds that had been practiced on them." (Higgins trans.)

This is very reminiscent of the situation we confront today. Democrats are constantly scratching their heads over why some Black and Hispanic and blue collar voters are siding with Trump, even as he runs a blatantly racist campaign, vows to carry out mass deportations (which historically have tended to sweep up U.S. citizens of Hispanic descent too)—and also promises more tax cuts for the rich and a regressive tariff scheme that would shift the tax burden to the working class. 

Unable to explain it, Democrats tend to simply push the "rational self-interest" argument harder. They say: we will bring down insulin prices! We will defend health care! (Soup-logic and dumpling-reason again.) Or else, they try to shame people for not falling into line and recognizing their own best interest. The worst example of this genre recently came from Obama—who apparently decided that accusing Black men of sexism would somehow make them more likely to vote for Harris. 

To Reich's point, they are arguing against fascism on entirely the wrong terrain. They are confronting a movement that appeals to humanity's irrational instincts with a set of rational arguments. They are therefore having an entirely separate conversation—and are bound to lose, so long as they do so. By neglecting to confront fascism on its own home turf—the deeper unconscious aspects of the human soul—they effectively cede the terrain. 

Reich's analysis of the content of that unconscious political terrain is certainly not the final word on the subject—his book is too chock-full of his own eccentric sexual hobbyhorses for that. But he is surely correct that a political movement that appeals solely to "rational self-interest" cannot hope to compete with an alternative that invokes the mystical specters of duty, honor, sacrifice, the nation, the family, the mother, the hearth, etc. Man is too much a moral animal for that. 

And so, the Left needs to take the argument into the moral domain. It's not hard to do! Liberals and leftists have profound moral convictions of their own. Many of our deepest moral values are directly threatened by the rise of fascism. You'd therefore think that it wouldn't be hard to wage a campaign against fascism with moral arguments. Yet, in both the 1930s and today, the Left has been afraid to do so. Perhaps they fear their morality is not widely enough shared. 

In the final weeks of the election, Kamala Harris has started to shift on this point. She is increasingly making a moral appeal—pointing to the fact that Trump's own closest political associates—the people who have had an up-front window into the workings of his mind—describe him as a fascist who has contempt for American democracy, the rule of law, and the Constitutional order. Harris, that is, has started to sound more like Biden, talking about the "soul of America" being at stake. 

I recognize that doing so flies in the face of the Matt Yglesias–style advice. He argues that liberal politicians should confine their arguments solely to abortion and drug prices—no matter how incongruous this seems when their opponent from the other party is openly vowing to tear down and fundamentally remake core institutions of a functioning democracy, such as the independence of federal prosecutors, and to deploy the military against U.S. citizens. 

In other words, Ygelsias is arguing for the same approach the Left took in Reich's era. He argues they should make their appeal on the grounds that their policies will end hunger and cold. They should invoke the demands of "soup-logic and dumpling-reason," in short. They should say: we will lower drug prices; we will lower gas prices; we will put more money in your pocket. A vote for us means more food on your table! As Brecht put it: give us grub and keep your morality!

But I have to think that Harris is actually right to shift the argument onto moral terrain. Why? Because people are actually moral creatures. The appeal to sacrifice means more to them than the appeal to gratification. The question, therefore, is what people should sacrifice for? That is where the two parties' vision truly differs. Trump's vision is of a nationalistic conception of America defined by ethnicity. The Democrats' is of one defined, by contrast, by democracy, the Constitution, and the rule of law. 

If I truly thought that none of this was at stake, after all—that instead, this election was just about bread and pocket-change—I would have stayed home. It's because I know it's about more than that that I cast my ballot in early voting. I voted not because I want gratification, but because I think that the constitutional order is worth protecting... And I have to think that most Americans—if the choice were presented to them in these terms, with these high stakes—would feel the same way!