Spy stories and Trump stories

There were a couple of Russian clandestine-operations type events that made the news this week.

There is this real-life, present-day espionage story reported by Bellingcat, Der Spiegel, The Insider, and La Repubblica: Socialite, Widow, Jeweller, Spy: How a GRU Agent Charmed Her Way Into NATO Circles in Italy 08/25/2022. It's helpful sometimes to see how this stuff works in the real world.

And there's this (Lloyd Green, The FBI’s Mar-a-Lago affidavit paints an unsettling portrait of Trump Guardian 08/26/2022)

As the affidavit [on the search warrent for Mar-a-Lago] hit the docket, reports emerged of a woman posing as a member of the Rothschild family playing golf with Trump and Lindsey Graham while ingratiating herself with Trump’s supporters. Talk about synchronicity.

The incidents are under active investigation in the US and Canada. Her alleged real identity is Inna Yashchyshyn, a Russian-speaking immigrant from Ukraine.

This latest episode stands as a cross between Maria Butina and Inventing Anna. Life imitates life. History can be repetitive. One thing is clear, security is not a primary concern for Trump.

I haven't seen any report that more definitively suggests this person is an actual spy.

On the other hand, this is Inna Yashchyshyn with Trump and Graham (from Trump and the NEW Inventing Anna Mail Online 08/28/2022. If you wanted to insinuate an agent into Trump's orbit, this might be one sort of person you would like to use for that purpose:

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette story is here: Michael Sallah et al, Inventing Anna:The tale of a fake heiress, Mar-a-Lago and an FBI investigation 08/26/2022.

Chris Hayes interviews Post-Gazette's Michael Solom in Report: Woman Posed As Heiress To Infiltrate Mar-a-Lago, Trump Inner Circle 08/27/2022.

Espionage and intelligence-gathering is something countries do. It's not new.

It always requires caution, critical processing of news reports, and attention to sources for people to get some kind of reasonable grasp of what is documented, what is strongly indicated by good evidence, what is speculation, and what is some loony theory that someone like Alex Jones just pulled out of his butt.

Marcy Wheeler at her Emptywheel site has been doing excellent coverage and analysis of intelligence-related stories since the Valerie Plame case. She managed to keep her focus during the "Russiagate" hype, concentrating on the actual evidence as opposed to Rachel Maddow carelessly snarking about how Trump was doing whatever Putin wanted.

Marcy has been following the story of the Trump investigation, e.g., Six Days: Trump's Second Whack Filing Is Too Late 08/272022.

It's certainly looking likely that the Justice Department will be bringing some serous charges against Trump. The Republicans are already performatively losing their minds. (For many of them that state of mind has long since become chronic.) But we can at least reasonably hope that Trump's own espionage-related activities will be publicly documented to a large degree.

We can also hope that both Democrats and the part of the press that hasn't been Murdoch-ized will resist the "Russiagate" temptation to get carried away with speculation about the role Russian spy craft plays in Trump's misdeeds. It's worth remembering that manipulation is also something countries do. And the results can be very serious without being espionage, like the situations investigated by Craig Unger. (David Smith, ‘The perfect target’: Russia cultivated Trump as asset for 40 years – ex-KGB spy Guardian 01/29/2022). Steve O'Keefe at the left website Counterpunch (Fool Us Twice? Book Review: American Kompromat 03/12/2021) sketches briefly the case Unger makes.

Everybody loves a good spy story. But it's always important to pay attention to the actual evidence.

"Radikalisierter Konservatismus” in den USA und Österreich

„Es ist nicht angenehm, in einer Zeit zu leben, in der das Alte untergeht und das Neue noch nicht da ist,“ schreibt die österreichische Politikwissenschafterin Natascha Strobl in ihrem neuem Buch Radikalisierter Konservatismus.Eine Analyse (2021).

Ein abgestumpfter Hegelianer könnte murren, dass sich die menschliche Gesellschaft immer in einem mehr oder weniger solchen Zustand befindet. Aber der besondere Kontext, in dem sie die Beobachtung macht, ist die aktuelle Situation in verschiedenen westlichen Demokratien, in denen traditionell konservative Parteien und politische Fraktionen Politiken und Methoden annehmen, die zuvor für die extreme Rechte charakteristisch waren. Als ihre beiden Paradebeispiele nimmt sie Donald Trump und die Republikanische Partei in den USA, und Sebastian Kurz, Chef der konservativen Österreichischen Volkspartei (ÖVP) und derzeitiger österreichischer Bundeskanzler.

Die beiden politischen Figuren sind keine völlig unabhängigen Beispiele, sondern Teil eines größeren Trends. Sebastian ("Basti") Kurz trat als Wunderwuzzi in die österreichische Landespolitik ein, ein österreichisches Wort, das frühreifen jungen Menschen mit einer Implikation von Arroganz und Anmaßung bedeutet. Aber in Bezug auf seine Persönlichkeit ist Kurz kein bombastischer Gauner wie Trump.

Im Gegenteil, Kurz ist ein starrer Typ. Sein Stil erinnert viel mehr an einen anderen US-Präsidenten, Richard Nixon. Obwohl Nixon der Babygesichtscharme fehlte, der es "Basti" ermöglichte, älteren konservativen Wählern als idealer Schwiegersohn zu erscheinen. Wie Kurz' erste Biografinnen Nina Horaczek und Barbara Tóth 2017 schrieben, "Wenn es ein einziges Wort gibt, das Sebastian Kurz beschreibt, dann das: Kontrolle. Kurz ist die personifizierte Selbstkontrolle. Wenn er auftritt, ist nichts dem Zufall überlassen." (Sebastian Kurz: Osterreichs neues Wunderkind? 2017)

(Da Trump für den größten Teil der Welt eine weitaus vertrautere Figur ist als Kurz, gebe ich am Ende dieses Beitrags eine kurze Skizze von Kurz' Karriere, in der beschrieben wird, wie er zu einem vorbildhaften europäischen Trumpista wurde.)

Strobl analysiert die zeitgenössische Trump-Kurz-Politik vor dem Hintergrund der klassischen Beispiele der Weimarer Republik und der „austrofaschistischen“ Standesstaat Diktatur von 1933-38, angeführt zunächst von Engelbert Dollfuss und dann von Kurt Schuschnigg. Angesichts der inzwischen weit verbreiteten Versuche, authentischen demokratischen Konservatismus und rechten Autoritarismus bzw. Faschismus zu unterscheiden, betont sie den wichtigen Punkt, dass sowohl in Deutschland als auch in Österreich der Sieg der extremen Rechten in Zusammenarbeit mit den konservativen Parteien stattfand. Hitler wurde im Januar 1933 deutscher Kanzler, weil konservativen wie Franz von Papen, Kurt von Schleicher und Präsident Paul von Hindenburg brachte ihn bereitwillig in die Regierung. Wie Strobl feststellt, Hindenburg ging aus "von der Annahme eines kontrollierbaren Faschismus … und glaubte, die NSDAP sei einhegbar [beherrschbar] und würde sich, einmal an der Macht, zu einer normalen Partei wandeln."

Sie liefert auch eine nützliche Skizze der intellektuellen Neuen Rechten/Alt-Right der letzten Jahre sowie ihrer Vorgänger:innen, die "Konservativen Revolution"-Denkern des Europas in den 1920er Jahren. Letzteres zeigte Männer wie Carl Schmitt, Oswald Spengler und Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, wobei letzterer die zweifelhafte Auszeichnung hatte, das Konzept eines deutschen "Dritten Reiches", das die Nazis übernahmen, popularisieren zu haben.

Sechs Schlüsselmerkmale

Sie diskutiert sechs wichtige Elementen des radikalisierten Konservatismus.

Bewusste Verletzung zuvor beachteter Regeln des politischen Lebens, sowohl formell als auch informell

Wir sehen jeden Tag Beispiele mit der trumpifisierten Republikanischen Partei. Ein prominentes Beispiel wäre die Filibuster-Regel des Senats, ein ziemlich obskures Problem für Menschen außerhalb der USA. (Es ist eine Regel des US-Senats, die effektiv verlangt, dass 60 der 100 Senatoren Gesetze genehmigen, obwohl die Verfassung selbst nur eine Mehrheit erfordert.) Was auch immer der angebliche Nutzen einer solchen Regel sein kann, es gibt einen radikalen Unterschied zwischen der Anwendung einmal alle paar Jahre bei wichtigen Gesetzen und ihrer routinemäßigen Verwendung, um eine 60-Stimmen-Mehrheit im 100-köpfigen Senat für eine Vielzahl von Themen zu verlangen. Thomas Mann und Norman Ornstein haben "das Buch geschrieben" darüber, wie ein solcher Bruch etablierter Normen in den USA funktioneirt mit It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided with the New Politics of Extremism (2012). Und der Ansatz der Republikaner ist in den folgenden Jahren immer radikaler geworden.

In Österreich hat Sebastian Kurz einen ähnlichen Ansatz in Bereichen wie staatliche Subventionen für bevorzugte Medien und vor allem bei Versuchen verfolgt, sich zu widersetzen und die Fähigkeit der unabhängigen Justiz und des Parlaments einzuschränken, mögliche rechtliche Verfehlungen zu untersuchen, die für seine Regierung peinlich sein könnten. Strobl zitiert einen besonders eklatanten Fall im Jahr 2021, in dem Finanzminister Gerhard Blümel die Antwort auf einen Gerichtsbeschluss zur Vorlage von Dokumenten so lange verzögerte, dass das österreichische Verfassungsgerichtshof Bundespräsident Alexander Van Der Bellen (Staatsoberhaupt) eine beispiellose Aufforderung schickte, um sicherzustellen, dass die Regierung Kurz der gerichtlichen Anordnung nachgekommen sei. Aber es bedurft der realen Möglichkeit, dass der Präsident die Regierung Kurz überstimmt und der Polizei oder dem Militär befiehlt, die Dokumente zu sichern, damit Kurz und seine politische "Familie" nachgeben würden. Kurz hat die Sache also an den Rand einer schweren Verfassungskrise gebracht.

Polarisierung: Wir gegen die Andere

Die Ähnlichkeiten zwischen den Beispielen Trump und Kurz sind hier ziemlich klar, insbesondere mit ihrer Abhängigkeit von fremdenfeindlicher Agitation. “Der radikalisierte Konservatismus hat den Umgang mit Gegner:innen direkt aus dem Playbook des traditionellen Rechtsextremismus übernommen,” schrieb Strobl. Ausländer, Minderheiten, die Linke, der "Deep State", linke Aktivisten und Demonstranten passen alle in dieses Paket.

Hier zählen die Details und die harten Kanten. In der Politik geht es um Konflikte und Unterschiede und Priorisierung. Was wir in den letzten Jahrzehnten in den USA und Europa gesehen haben, ist eine asymmetrische Polarisierung, bei der sich die Konservativen mit der radikalen Rechten zusammenschließen, um rassische und ethnische und verschiedene andere Spaltungen über rechte "Kulturkriegs"-Themen zu fördern, insbesondere Abtreibung und Waffenverbreitung in den USA. Während linke und Mitte-Links-Parteien bei der Schaffung klarer politischer Identitäten zu Themen wie Arbeitnehmervertretung, Frauen- und Minderheitenrechten, Konzentration von Reichtum und Einkommen und Lösung der Klimakrise weit hinten stehen.

Und während die Mainstream-Medien einen oberflächlichen wertfreien Vorwand der Berichterstattung „beider Seiten“ bevorzugen (besonders in der USA), gibt es in der realen Welt einen radikalen Unterschied zwischen, z.B., dem Eintreten für legales und verantwortungsvolles Polizeiverhalten und dem Eintreten dafür, Polizisten weiterhin zu erlauben, schwarze Menschen ohne guten Grund ungestraft zu ermorden (das Hauptthema der Black-Lives-Matter Bewegung). "Polarisierung" ist an sich nie schlecht oder gut. Es kommt immer darauf an, über was man polarisiert und wie die Polarisation stattfindet.

Der Führer

Alle Organisationen benötigen Führung. Einige Organisationen haben effektivere und/oder demokratischere Wege, Führungspersonal auszuwählen als andere. Aber wie Strobl uns erinnert, erfordern rechte autoritäre Bewegungen ein starkes Maß an Verehrung eines Führers, wie bei Mussolini und Hitler. Die Republikanische Partei demonstriert dies derzeit mit einer sektenartigen Ehrfurcht vor Donald Trump als ihrem Führer und sogar als legitimem US-Präsidenten. Die Republican National Convention (nationaler Parteitag) im Jahr 2020 hat sich nicht einmal die Mühe gemacht, ein Standard-Parteiprogramm zu erlassen. Stattdessen verabschiedeten sie eine Resolution, in der sie ihre Unterstützung für ihre Anführer Trump bekräftigten.

Strobl macht auf Kurz' Haltung aufmerksam, nachdem er 2019 durch ein parlamentarisches Misstrauensvotum aus der Kanzlerschaft entfernt und damit eine Neuwahl erzwungen hatte. (Weitere Informationen dazu steht weiter unten.) Er übernahm den Slogan: "Das Parlament hat bestimmt, aber das Volk wird entscheiden!" Wie sie erklärt: "Er stellte seine Anhänger:innen vor die Wahl: »Ich oder das Parlament« und inszenierte sich als direkt vom Volk gewählten Führer, der das intrigante Parlament nicht nötig habe." (Der österreichische Bundespräsident [Staatsoberhaupt] wird direkt gewählt, der Kanzler [Regierungschef] jedoch nicht.)

Kurz betont seit seinem ÖVP-Vorsitz 2017 besonders seine Rolle als Parteichef und legt besonderen Wert auf die Loyalität zu sich selbst. Er ist umgeben von einer eng verbundenen Gruppe sehr konservativer, rechts-katholischer Berater, die sich selbst im Mafia-Stil sogar als "Familie" bezeichnen. Zu seinem engen inneren Kreis gehören Figuren wie: sein Kabinettschef Bernhard Bonelli, Absolvent einer vom Opus Dei geführten Wirtschaftsuniversität in Barcelona, der unter der Woche regelmäßig die Wiener katholische Kirche St. Elisabeth besucht, derzeit Sitz des Großmeisters des „Deutschen Ordens“, und sein politischer Chefstratege Stefan Steiner, dessen politische Hauptmaxime "Law and Borders" lauten soll. Sein wichtigster PR-Spindoktor Gerald Fleischmann bildet eine Ausnahme vom konservativ-katholischen Hintergrund, aber dieser am längsten stehende in Kurz' innerem Kreis "agierte vor allem bei klassischen Kurz-Themen wie Migration und Sicherheit scharf und mit ideologischer Inbrunst". (Klaus Knittelfelder, Inside Türkis: Die neuen Netwerke der Macht, 2020)

Es ist immer riskant für leitende Manager oder führende Politiker, sehr stark von einer eingeschränkten und homogenen Gruppe abhängig zu sein, von der erwartet wird, dass sie ihm gegenüber sykophantische Loyalität zeigt. Sowohl Trump als auch Kurz scheinen unter diesem Problem zu leiden, obwohl Trump zu unberechenbar zu sein scheint, um eine so geschlossene Gruppe enger Berater wie Kurz zu halten. Kurz' innerer Kreis scheint mir auch eine Ähnlichkeit mit Nixon zu sein, die ihn in Gefahr bringt, wichtige, aber unangenehme Informationen nicht rechtzeitig zu hören.

Untergrabung demokratischer Institutionen von innen heraus

Sowohl in den USA als auch in Österreich ist die Unabhängigkeit der Justizinstitutionen ein zentrales Anliegen. Aber die drastischen Beispiele, auf die Strobl verweist, dass Trumps Praxis, sich der Autorität des Kongresses über die Führung selbst von Abteilungen auf Kabinettsebene zu entziehen, reichen viel weiter. Trumps vorsätzliche Sabotage des US-Postdienstes im Jahr 2021 war eines der eklatantesten Beispiele für die krasse Sabotage einer wichtigen öffentlichen Institution mit dem offensichtlichen und antidemokratischen Ziel, den Zugang der Wähler zur Briefwahl im Jahr 2020 zu reduzieren.

Permanenter Wahlkampf

Dies ist ein wichtiger Punkt, obwohl es nicht einfach ist, ihn genau zu definieren. Natürlich haben gewählte Abgeordnete die Pflicht, die öffentlichen Aufgaben ernst zu nehmen. Und viele von ihnen tun dies, trotz des populären Zynismus über ihre Motivationen – ein Zynismus, für den einige gewählte Abgeordnete Grund dafür angeben. Aber es ist auch offensichtlich, dass sie über die Wahlauswirkungen ihres offiziellen Handelns nachdenken werden.

Jedenfalls wenn Politik als Endlose-Wahlkampf geführt wird, leidet nicht nur die Regierungsleistung, sondern auch das Vertrauen in das politische System. Idealerweise sollte es eine klare Unterscheidung zwischen einer Regierungsphase und einer Wahlkampfsphase geben. Wie Strobl erklärt:

Vertreter:innen des radikalisierten Konservatismus wie Donald Trump, Boris Johnson oder Sebastian Kurz arbeiten nun aber gezielt darauf hin, die Unterschiede zwischen diesen Phasen zu verwischen und betreiben Politik im permanenten Wahlkampfmodus. Man ist stets darauf aus, mit spektakulären Aktionen oder sensationellen Versprechungen in den Umfragen kurzfristig ein oder zwei Prozentpunkte hinzuzugewinnen. Das Losen tatsachlicher Probleme gerat in den Hintergrund. Auch die Opposition wird in die ständigen Scharmützel auf Twitter oder Facebook hineingezogen, die mediale Berichterstattung folgt den jeweils neuesten Angriffen, Entgegnungen und Provokationen, der öffentliche Diskurs verkommt zunehmend zu einer einzigen Schlammschlacht.

Jenseits der Realität

In diese Kategorie fällt die mittlerweile allzu bekannte Verbreitung von "alternativen Fakten" und Verschwörungstheorien, die während der COVID-Pandemie wie giftige Blumen aufgeblüht sind.

Letzteres könnte dieses Problem in eine Hegelsche Transformation von „Quantität in Qualität“ geschoben und uns ein grimmig neues Phänomen beschert haben. Impfskepsis ist nicht neu, aber das derzeitige Ausmaß der Hysterie ist wohl beispiellos.

Ich meine, vor ein paar Jahrhunderten haben sich die europäischen Bauern vielleicht vorgestellt, dass Ausbrüche der Pest auf schwarze Magie oder vergiftete Brunnen zurückzuführen sind. Aber zumindest stellten sie fest, dass die Pest selbst das Problem war. Die heutige rechte Besessenheit: "Wir müssen die Menschen stoppen, die sich verschwören, um uns vor dem durch die Pest verursachten Tod zu retten!" ist eine ziemlich bizarre Entwicklung.

Strobl diskutiert auch einen Faktor, der in den USA, Österreich und anderen Ländern am Werk ist, d.h. städtische/ländliche Unterschiede, die Konservative erfolgreich ausnutzen. Dieses Element wird in der US-Politik ausführlich diskutiert, wenn auch zu selten ernsthaft. Stattdessen neigen wir dazu, die abgedroschenen und erschreckenden Artikel zu bekommen, in denen Reporter für großstädtische Nachrichtenagenturen in eine kleine Stadt gehen, um mit Weißen in einem Diner zu sprechen, um sie schimpfen zu hören, dass sie sich nicht fühlen, dass Politiker an der Macht ihnen genug zuhören. In Österreich gibt es die Besonderheit, dass Wien seit über einem Jahrhundert eine besondere Hochburg der Sozialdemokratie ist – so sehr, dass es in der politischen Berichterstattung immer noch routinemäßig als "Rotes Wien" bezeichnet wird, ein Begriff, auf den österreichische Sozialdemokraten immer noch stolz sind.

Hintergrund zur politischen Karriere von Sebastian ("Basti") Kurz

Selbst einige berühmte österreichische Kommentatoren, die Sebastian Kurz' zweifellos erfolgreiche politische Verkaufskunst bewundern, werden unverblümt sagen, dass er keine wirklichen politischen Prinzipien hat. Wenn er sich auf demagogische rechte Themen verlässt, dann eher, weil er sie für sein Machtstreben für nützlich beurteilt, als wegen des ideologischen Fanatismus als solcher. Aber Kurz ist kein dummer Mann, er versteht die realen Konsequenzen dessen, was er befürwortet.

Kurz ist unter führenden österreichischen Politikern insofern ungewöhnlich, als er nie das Studium abgeschlossen hat. Aber das lag gar nicht daran, dass er nur ein durchschnittlicher Arbeiter war. Er war in der Jugendgruppe der ÖVP zu einer Zeit aktiv, als die beiden führenden österreichischen Parteien, die ÖVP und die Sozialdemokratische Partei (SPÖ), unter einer schwachen und konventionellen Führung und einem Mangel an klaren politischen Unterscheidungen litten. Und das eröffnete ihm einige spektakuläre frühe Möglichkeiten.

Kurz wurde mit 24 Jahren Staatssekretär für Integration (d.h. Assimilation von Einwanderern) und mit 27 Jahren Außenminister. Er wurde 2017 mit 31 Jahren Chef der ÖVP, lehnte es aber ab, die Rolle des Vizekanzlers in der SPÖ-ÖVP-Regierungskoalition seines Vorgängers zu übernehmen, und entschied sich stattdessen dafür, die ÖVP aus der Koalitionsregierung zu nehmen und in diesem Jahr Neuwahlen zu erzwingen.

Wie Nina Horaczek und Barbara Tóth 2017 über ihn schrieben, „Kurz versteht es meisterhaft, sich und seine jeweils aktuelle, sinnstiftende Erzählung zu inszenieren und zu verkaufen.“

Das Thema, das er 2017 zur Kanzlerschaft ritt, war die europäische Flüchtlingskrise 2015/16, die ihm erlaubte, krasse fremdenfeindliche und nationalistische Themen aufgreift, die zuvor die Spezialität der rechtsextremen Freiheitlichen Partei (FPÖ) waren, die er Ende 2017 als Juniorpartner in die neue Koalitionsregierung aufgenommen hatte, die ihn mit 32 Jahren zum Kanzler machte.

Kurz' Wunderwuzzi-Image wurde jedoch schnell durch die Possen seines Koalitionspartners getrübt. Es wurde festgestellt, dass verschiedene FPÖ-Persönlichkeiten Dinge sagten, die so eng an die österreichischen Gesetze grenzten, die NS-Propaganda verbieten, dass die Entschuldigung der FPÖ für jeden, dass es sich um einen isolierten Vorfall handelte, dem Ausdruck "Einzelfälle" die ironische Bedeutung von "ganz normal" gab. Nach weniger als 17 Monaten im Amt war Kurz widerwillig gezwungen, seinen verdorbenen Koalitionspartner fallen zu lassen, nachdem sein Vizekanzler und FPÖ-Chef H.C. Strache bei einer Stacheloperation gefilmt wurde, die (möglicherweise zur Erpressung) auf der beliebten spanischen Urlaubsinsel Ibiza stattgefunden hat und mit einer Schauspielerin, die er für die Tochter eines russischen Oligarchen hielt, zwielichtige Geschäfte aushandelte. "Ibiza" ist heute ein Synonym für Skandal und Korruption in der österreichischen Politik geworden. (Siehe: Frederik Obermaier und Bastian Obermayer, Die Ibiza Affäre: Innenansichten eines Skandals, 2019; Florian Klenk, "Ibiza für Einsteiger" Falter 25:2020 17.06.2020)

Er war der erste Kanzler, der durch ein Misstrauensvotum des Parlaments nach der aktuellen österreichischen Verfassung abgesetzt wurde. Bundespräsident Van Der Bellen ernannte mit Österreichs erster Bundeskanzlerin Brigitte Bierlein eine Übergangsregierung, die sechs Monate (2019-2020) dauerte, während eine nationale Neuwahl stattfand, was Kurz' Rückkehr als Kanzler und Chef einer ÖVP-Grünen-Koalition zur Folge hatte.

Seitdem dominiert Covid seine politische Agenda. Wie Strobl beschreibt, gibt er sich gerne als Österreichs Retter aus, also prahlt er regelmäßig damit, wie er Österreich vor der Pandemie – jetzt in ihrer "vierten Welle" im Land – sowie vor übermäßigen Unannehmlichkeiten durch Lockdowns rettet. Er hetzt auch weiterhin gegen verschiedene seiner Lieblingsziele: Einwanderer, Asylbewerber, Afghanen, Umweltschützer, die uns angeblich in die Steinzeit zurückbringen wollen, Arbeitslose und – natürlich! - den "politischen Islam".

„Radicalized Conservatism“ in the US and Austria

“It is not pleasant to live in a time when the Old is fading away and the New is not yet there,” writes Austrian political scientist Natascha Strobl in her new book, Radikalisierter Konservatismus.Eine Analyse [Radicalized Conservatism: An Analysis] (2021). (All translations from the German here are mine.)

A jaded Hegelian might grump that human society is always in more-or-less such a state. But the particular context in which she makes the observation is the current situation in various Western democracies in which traditionally conservative parties and political factions are embracing policies and methods previously distinctive to the far right. She takes as her two prime examples Donald Trump and the Republican Party in the US and Sebastian Kurz, head of the conservative Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) and current Austrian Chancellor.

The two political figures are not entirely independent examples but part of a larger trend. Sebastian (“Basti”) Kurz entered Austrian national politics as a Wunderwuzzi, an Austrian word meaning precocious young person with an implication of arrogance and pretentiousness. But in terms of his personality, Kurz is not a bombastic huckster like Trump.

On the contrary, Kurz is a stiff. His style is much more reminiscent of another US President, Richard Nixon. Although Nixon lacked the baby-faced charm that allowed “Basti” to appear to older conservative voters as the ideal son-in-law. As Kurz’ first biographers Nina Horaczek and Barbara Tóth wrote in 2017, "If there is a single word that Sebastian Kurz describes, it is this: control. In short is the personified self-control. When it occurs, nothing is left to chance.“ (Sebastian Kurz: Osterreichs neues Wunderkind? 2017)

(Since Trump is a far more familiar figure for most of the world than Kurz, I give a quick sketch of Kurz’ career at the end of this post describing how he became a model European Trumpista.)

Strobl analyzes the contemporary Trump-Kurz type politics from the background of the classic examples of the Weimar Republic and the “Austrofascist” dictatorship of 1933-38, headed first by Engelbert Dollfuss and then by Kurt Schuschnigg. In light of the now-widespread attempts to distinguish authentic democratic conservatism and rightwing authoritarianism/fascism, she stresses the important point that in both Germany and Austria, the victory of the far right took place with the cooperation of the conservative parties. Hitler became German Chancellor in January 1933 because conservative leaders like Franz von Papen, Kurt von Schleicher, and President Paul von Hindenburg willingley brought him into the government. As Strobl notes, Hindenburg „proceeded from the assumption of a controllable fascism and believed that the NSDAP [Nazi Party] was containable and that once in power, it would develop into a normal party.“

She also provides a useful sketch of the intellectual New Right/Alt-Right of recent years as well as its predecessor in the “Conservative Revolution” thinkers of Europe in the 1920s. The latter featured characters like Carl Schmitt, Oswald Spengler, and Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, the latter having the dubious distinction of popularizing the concept of a German “Third Reich” which the Nazis adopted.  She discusses six key features of radicalized conservatism

Conscious breaching of previously observed rules of political life, both formal and informal

We see examples every day with the Trumpified Republican Party. One prominent example would be the Senate filibuster rule, a fairly obscure problem to people outside the US. (It is a US Senate rule that effectively requires 60 of the 100 Senators to approve legislation, though the Constitution itself requires only a majority.) Whatever the alleged benefit of such a rule, there is a radical difference between using it once every few years on major pieces of legislation and using it routinely to require a 60-vote majority in the 100-member Senate on a wide range of issues all the time. Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein “wrote the book” on how such breaking of established norms works in the US back in 2012 with It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided with the New Politics of Extremism. And the Republicans’ approach has become constantly more radical in the subsequent years.

In Austria, Sebastian Kurz has taken a similar approach in areas like government subsidies to preferred media outlets and, most seriously, in attempts to resist and restrict the ability of the independent justice system and the Parliament to investigate potential legal wrongdoing that could be embarrassing for his government. Strobl cites a particularly flagrant case in 2021 of Finance Minister Gerhard Blümel delaying response to a court order for production of documents so long that the Austrian Constitutional Court sent an unprecedented request to President Alexander Van Der Bellen (the head of state) to insure that Kurz’ government complied with the legal court order. But it took the real possibility of the President overruling Kurz’ government and ordering the police or the military to secure the documents for Kurz and his political “family” to back down. Kurz pushed matters right up the brink of a serious constitutional crisis, in other words.

Us-against-Them polarization

The similarities here between the Trump and Kurz examples are pretty clear, especially with their reliance on xenophobic agitation. “Radicalized conservatism has taken over its treatment of opponents directly from the playbook of traditional right-wing extremism,” Strobl writes. Foreigners, minorities, the left, the “deep state”, left-leaning activists and protesters, all fit into this package.

Here the details and the hard edges matter. Politics is about conflict and differences and prioritization. What we have seen in recent decades in the US and Europe is asymmetric polarization, with the conservatives coalescing with the radical right to promote racial and ethnic and various other divisions over rightwing “culture war” themes, notably including abortion and gun proliferation in the US. While left and center-left parties are playing catch-up in establishing clear political identities around issues like worker representation, women’s and minority rights, concentration of wealth and income, and solving the climate crisis.

And while mainstream media may prefer a superficial value-free pretense of Both Sides Do It reporting, in the real world there is a radical difference between, for instance, advocating for legal and responsible police conduct and advocating to continue allowing cops to murder black people for no good reason with impunity. “Polarization” is never bad or good in itself. It always matters what the polarization is about and how the polarization takes place.

The Leader

All organizations require leadership. Some organizations have more effective and/or democratic ways of selecting leadership than others. But as Strobl reminds us, rightwing authoritarian movements require a strong degree of adoration of a leader, as with Mussolini and Hitler. The Republican Party demonstrates this currently with a cult-like reverence for Donald Trump as their leader and even as the legitimate US President. The Republican National Convention in 2020 didn’t even bother to enact a standard party platform; instead they passed a resolution asserting their support of Leader Trump.

Strobl calls attention to Kurz’ stance after he was removed from the Chancellorship in 2019 by a parliamentary no-confidence vote, forcing a new election. (See below for more details.) He adopted the slogan: „Das Parlament hat bestimmt, aber das Volk wird entscheiden!“ („Parliament has voted, but the people will decide!“)

As she explains, “He presented his supporters with the choice: ‘Me or the parliament’ and presented himself as a leader directly elected by the people, who did not need the scheming parliament.” (The Austrian President [head of state] is directly elected, but the Chancellor [head of government] is not.)

Kurz since becoming ÖVP leader in 2017 has particularly stressed his role as his role as the leader of the party and puts particular emphasis on loyalty to himself. He is surrounded by a tight-knit group of very conservative, rightwing Catholic advisers, who even refer to themselves Mafia-style as the “family.” His tight inner circle includes characters like: his cabinet head Bernhard Bonelli, graduate of an Opus Dei-run business university in Barcelona who regularly visits the Vienna Catholic Church of Saint Elizabeth during the week, currently the seat of the Grand Master of the "Teutonic Order", and, his chief political strategist Stefan Steiner, whose main political maxim is said to be “Law and Border.” His main PR spin doctor Gerald Fleischmann forms an exception to the conservative Catholic background, but this longest-standing among Kurz’ inner circle “agierte vor allem bei klassischen Kurz-Themen wie Migration und Sicherheit scharf und mit ideologischer Inbrunst.” (Klaus Knittelfelder, Inside Türkis: Die neuen Netwerke der Macht, 2020)

It is always a risk for senior managers or leading politician to be very heavily dependent on a restricted and homogenous group who are expected to display sycophantic loyalty to him. Both Trump and Kurz do seem to suffer from this problem, although Trump seems to be too erratic to keep as cohesive a group of close advisers as Kurz does. Kurz’ inner circle also strikes me as a similarity to Nixon that puts him at risk of not hearing important but unpleasant information on a timely basis.

Undermining democratic institutions from within

In both the US and Austria, the independence of the judicial institutions is a key worry. But the drastic examples Strobl references of Trump’s practice of evading Congressional authority on the leadership of even Cabinet-level departments is one that reaches much further. Trump’s deliberate sabotage of the US Postal Service in 2021 was one of the most blatant example of crassly sabotaging an important public institution with the obvious and anti-democratic goal of reducing the access of voters to mail-in voting in 2020.

Permanent campaigning

This is an important point, though it’s not one easy to define in precise terms. Of course, elected officials have an obligation to take the public duties seriously. And many of them do so, despite popular cynicism about their motivations – a cynicism for which some elected officials provide some reason. But it’s also obvious that they will think about the electoral implications of their official actions.

At the same time, if politics is conducted as a non-stop campaign, not only governance but faith in the political system suffers. Ideally, there should be some clear distinction between a governing phase and a campaigning phase. As Strobl explains:

Representatives of radicalized conservatism like Donald Trump, Boris Johnson or Sebastian Kurz are now working in a focused way to blur the differences between these phases and pursue politics in permanent election campaign mode. They are always keen to gain one or two percentage points in the short-term polls with spectacular actions or sensational promises. Solving actual problems recedes into the background. The opposition is also drawn into the constant skirmishes on Twitter or Facebook, the media coverage follows the latest attacks, replies and provocations, [and] the public discourse increasingly degenerates into a single mud fight.

Beyond reality

In this category falls the now all-too-familiar proliferation of “alternative facts” and conspiracy theories, which have blossomed like toxic flowers during the COVID pandemic. The latter may have pushed this problem into a Hegelian transformation of "quantity into quality" and given us some grimly new phenomenon. Vaccine skepticism isn’t new, but the current level of hysteria is arguably unprecedented.

I mean, a few centuries ago European peasants may have imagined that outbreaks of the plague were due to black magic or poisoned wells. But at least they knew that the plague itself was the problem. Today’s rightwing obsession, “We have to stop the people who are conspiring to save us from being killed by the plague!” is a pretty bizarre development.


Strobl also discusses a factor at work in the US, Austria, and other countries, i.e., urban/rural differences that conservatives successfully exploit. That element is discussed at length in US politics though too rarely in depth. Instead, we tend to get the hackneyed and cringe-worthy articles in which reporters for major metropolitan news outlets go out to some small town to talk to white people in a diner to hear them complain that they don’t feel like politicians in power listen to them enough. In Austria, there is the particular feature that Vienna has for over a century been a particular stronghold of Social Democracy – so much so that it still routinely referred to in political reporting as “Red Vienna”, a term in which Austrian Social Democrats still take pride.

Additional Background on the Political Career of Sebastian (“Basti”) Kurz

Even some major Austrian commentators who admire Sebastian Kurz’ undoubtedly successful political salesmanship will state bluntly that he has no actual political principles. If he relies on demagogic rightwing themes, it’s more because he judges them to be useful for his pursuit of power than because of ideological fanaticism as such. But Kurz is not a dumb man, he understands the real-world consequences of what he advocates.

Kurz is unusual among leading Austrian politicians in that he never finished university. But that was not because he was just a regular working stiff. He was active in the ÖVP’s youth group at a time when both of the two leading Austrian parties, the ÖVP and the Social Democratic Party (SPÖ), were suffering from a weak and conventional leadership and from a lack of clear political distinctions. And that opened some spectacular early opportunities for him.

Kurz became State Secretary for Integration (i.e., assimilation of immigrants) when he was 24 and Foreign Minister at 27. He became head of the ÖVP at 31 in 2017 but declined to take the role as Vice Chancellor in the SPÖ-ÖVP governing coalition his predecessor held, choosing instead to take the ÖVP out of the coalition government, forcing new elections that year.

As Nina Horaczek and Barbara Tóth wrote of him in 2017, “Kurz is masterful at knowing how to stage and sell himself and his current preferred narrative."

The issue he rode to the Chancellorship in 2017 was the 2015-6 European refugee crisis adopting crassly xenophobic and nationalistic themes that had previously been the specialty of the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ), which he included as a junior partner in new coalition government in late 2017 which made him Chancellor at 32.

Kurz’ Wunderwuzzi image was quickly tarnished by the antics of his coalition partner, though. Various FPÖ figures were found to be saying things that bordered so closely on the Austrian laws banning Nazi propaganda that the FPÖ’s excuse for each that it was an isolated incident, gave the phrase “isolated incident” the ironic meaning of “common as dirt.” After less than 17 months in office, Kurz was reluctantly forced to dump his tainted coalition partner after his Vice Chancellor and FPÖ head H.C. Strache was caught on film in a sting operation that may have been intended for blackmail on the popular Spanish vacation island of Ibiza negotiating shady deals with an actress he believed to be the daughter of a Russian oligarch. “Ibiza” is now a synonym for scandal and corruption in Austrian politics. (See: Frederik Obermaier and Bastian Obermayer, Die Ibiza Affäre: Innenansichten eines Skandals, 2019; Florian Klenk, „Ibiza für Einsteiger“ Falter 25:2020 17.06.2020)

He became the first Chancellor to be removed by a no-confidence vote of the Parliament under the current Austrian constitution. President Van Der Bellen appointed a caretaker government – with Austria’s first female Chancellor, Brigitte Bierlein – that served for six months (2019-20) while a new national election was held, the outcome being Kurz’ return as Chancellor and head of an ÖVP-Green coalition.

Since then, COVID has dominated his political agenda. As Strobl describes, he likes to pose as Austria’s Savior, so he periodically brags about how he is saving Austria from the pandemic – now in its “fourth wave” in Austria – as well as from excessive inconveniences of lockdowns. He also continues to agitate against various of his favorite targets: immigrants, asylum seekers, Afghans, environmentalists who want to take us back to the Stone Age, the unemployed, and “political Islam.”

Evaluating the "Stupid Coup" (Mark Danner) before Trump is out of office

Joe Conason (Uncovering The #MAGA Plot Against America National Memo 01/17/2021) writes bluntly about the need for accountability for Donald Trump, including for the January 6 assault on the Capitol building by a lynch mob directly incited by Trump himself:

The events of Jan. 6 represented the worst threat to democracy and the rule of law that we have seen in our lifetimes. The violent authoritarian impulse within the Republican right has metastasized under Trump into a potent and very dangerous force. Uncovering the roots of that threat and isolating its sponsors will be a lengthy and complicated process that will involve the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, state and local law enforcement, the attorney general of the District of Columbia, many committees of the House and Senate, and almost certainly a national investigative commission on the order of the 9/11 commission. And there will be trials.

The radicalization of the Republican Party is deep and wide, as Conason notes:

The support structure for the demonstration that turned into an insurrection ranged across the Trumpist movement, encompassing figures like Ginni Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, and Charlie Kirk, who runs the far-right college outfit Turning Point USA and boasts close ties with Donald Trump Jr. Both of them have tried to erase evidence of their organizing efforts.

Joe Conason is not new to these observations. He was warning explicitly about the radical politics and authoritarian tendencies in the Republican Party in his book Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth (2003) and It Can Happen Here: Authoritarian Peril in the Age of Bush (2007). What we currently know as "Trumpism" did not being in the Republican Party with Donald Trump nomination for President in 2016.

Mark Danner also writes about the Capitol riot and its implications, which he witnessed firsthand in ‘Be Ready to Fight’ New York Review of Books 01/14/2021 (02/11/2021 issue). He gives this account of the rally before the assault on the Capitol:

“This isn’t their Republican Party anymore!” Don [Trump] Jr. roared. “This is Donald Trump’s Republican Party!” Preening like a rock star, he extended his hand-mic to the crowd to catch the answering roar. Did the Republicans now gathering at the Capitol hear it? Did Vice President Mike Pence, presiding over the electoral vote certification, hear it? For Don Jr. was shouting out a simple truth that for all its undeniability many in the party had never quite believed or managed to grasp in all its implications. Trump owned them. And as his owner’s prerogative he imposed an unstinting and singular loyalty: not loyalty mostly to him, with some prudently reserved for the Constitution and the law. No. Loyalty entirely to him. Today would be the day of choosing. [italics in original]

Danner quotes from Trump's speech, which may be the most infamous speech in the history of the Presidency:

We’re going to have to fight much harder. And Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us. And if he doesn’t that will be a sad day for our country…. We’re going to walk down, and I’ll be there with you, we’re going to walk down to the Capitol and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them. Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing…. We fight. We fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.

Danner may be a bit too credulous on this point: "Trump reportedly had to be dissuaded from personally leading the march to the Capitol."

No, he didn't. He's a coward An obese, cowardly trust-fund baby who incites others to take physical risks and inflict physical harm on others but is obvious too plain yellow to take any such risk himself. Even though if he had joined the march, he at least would have had massive personal protection from the Secret Service.

But Danner is on the mark with this:

By refusing calls to intervene, he prolonged and protected the coup he had incited. Thankfully, Trump’s disordered, erratic mind has never been given to systematic planning. That he finally lost his bet on the sycophantic unscrupulousness of his vice-president had more to do with a handful of votes in the House of Representatives than with the vaunted truism that ours is “a country of laws, not of men.” Had the Republicans held a bare majority in the House, it is alarmingly easy to imagine the results of the presidential election being overturned.

As it is, the overwhelming majority of House Republicans, even after an attempted coup forced them to scurry abjectly for their lives—and left five people, including a police officer, dead—voted for exactly that, as did eight Republican senators. With his up-thrust fist, young Josh Hawley of Missouri will remain the poster boy of the coup. Both Hawley and Ted Cruz of Texas, highly credentialed lawyers out of Yale and Harvard respectively, like Pence discovered only belatedly that Trump was serious. Like the lowly innkeeper and everyone around him indulging Don Quixote’s conviction that he had arrived at a magical castle, they all humored the president about his chances to overturn the election. After all, as one “senior Republican official” asked a week after the vote, “What is the downside for humoring him for this little bit of time? No one seriously thinks the results will change.” For Hawley and Cruz, voting to overturn an election was merely a way to buff up their political résumés. What could be the downside?

He also makes a stab of thinking about how historians may view what he calls the "Stupid Coup" in the context of recent history:

Our future Suetonius will have work to do, describing these several decades in the life of the “indispensable” nation. The genocides of the 1990s, the “Supreme Court election” of 2000, the attacks of September 11, the war of choice in Iraq, the torture and endless drone assassinations of the “war on terror,” the economic collapse of 2008, the election of Donald Trump, the hundreds of thousands of dead in the Great Pandemic—and, finally, the Stupid Coup. Will Trump seem as striking and unusual to our historian as he does to us? Will he make more sense when viewed against the March on Rome or the Beer Hall Putsch? Or will Trump be seen as the beginning of something and not its ending? [my emphasis]

"Conservatism cannot fail, it can only be failed" (Digby Parton), Christian Right version

It's been typical since 1992 that Republican voters began repudiating former Republican Presidents as soon as they were out of office. Trump, of course, is leaving under far more controversial circumstances than Bush I or Bush II.

Digby Parton has been saying for a long time that in the Republican worldview, "Conservatism cannot fail, it can only be failed." She also notes, "And a conservative can only fail because he is too liberal." Political Religion Hullabaloo 02/20/2006.

(I got a twinge of nostalgia seeing that post again, coming as it does from the days when blogging still had a "insurgent" vibe about it.)

I was reminded of this reading this column by Bonnie Kristian, Humoring the President Was Not Harmless 01/11/2021, in the longtime conservative American evangelical Christianity Today. Kristian points out why someone could think from a conservative Christian religious-political that support of Trump looks regrettable in retrospect:

The madness in Washington last week was not created ex nihilo. It is the due result of five years of humoring deception, of falsely believing that truth could be brought about by lies. It is what happens when you embrace a president who is dishonest in the little things, and the big things, and just about everything. It is what happens when you “call evil good and good evil” for the sake of political convenience or power (Isa. 5:20). It is what happens when warnings about the importance of character are ignored. It is what happens when those who cautioned their fellow evangelicals against backing Trump—because he has lived a very public life of gaudy rapacity, vainglory, cruelty, dishonesty, and lust—are attacked and dismissed as “liberals” or accused of insufficient care for the unborn.

What we saw in Washington last Wednesday is what happens when the president insists he won an election he lost and, instead of telling him and the American people the truth, his allies go along with it. It is what happens when they file lawsuit after lawsuit without a whit of merit, pushing legal claims so bad they are dismissed in court after court, by judge after judge—including judges nominated by Trump himself.

It is what happens when they prioritize power over honesty and cosset mass delusion, even in Jesus’ name. It is what happens after two months of the president and his associates telling millions of disappointed, frightened, angry people that they were cheated, that the foundation of our representative government was undermined, that they really ought to do something about it, that maybe that something should be violent, and that they should “never concede.”

Unfortunately, this article's argument fit fairly easily into the "conservatism cannot fail, it can only be failed" framework.

The Christian Right in the form we know it today first emerged during the Carter Administration and was instrumental in unseating a surprising number of Democratic Senators in 1978 and enthusiastically backed Ronald Reagan in 1980. Voters who identify as white evangelicals are the most important segment of the Republican vote, and have been for decades.

I haven't checked on Bonnie Kristian's public record on politics during the last decade or so. But the fact that people identifying in some way with a Christian Right brand of religion are now saying that, oh, Trump was a sinner with flaws, and, gosh, maybe supporting him enthusiastically wasn't the best idea doesn't actually mean a lot.

Republicans across the board pull this trick as a matter of course when their Republican President loses an election. It's standard procedure.

Another take on this from Michael Brown comes off as much more crassily cynical (Did we sell our souls by voting for Trump? Christian Post 01/14/2021):

Did we sell our souls in doing so? Did we compromise our values in the process?

For many of us, the answer is no, and we don’t need to go on an apology tour for our vote. Even if some of our friends were more prescient than we were, seeing that things would end badly, we acted with sincerity before God and man. And if in the years ahead, our worst fears are realized and our country lurches even further to the far left, we will remember why we voted as we did. [my emphasis]

Then he continues with his own version of "conservatism cannot fail, it can only be failed."

In a two-party system especially, there are many ways that people can plausibly claim they were voting for "the lesser of two evils". But that also makes it easy for people who enthusiastically backed a candidate to claim afterward that they never really thought that much of the person and go on to the next heroic True Conservative who will one day have to be repudiated in a similar way.

"Economic anxiety" as a journalistic placeholder (2 of 2)

Will Bunch takes up the "economic anxiety" trope to mock it in An insurrection of upper-middle class white people Philadelphia Inquirer 01/12/2021.

This Morning Joe segments talks about the affluent profiles of so many of the known Capitol insurrectionists, How Riots Show Trump Supporters Not Just White, Disaffected Americans MSNBC 01/12/2021:

Both the Bunch column and the Morning Joe segment featuring Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough talking with Nikole Hannah-Jones of the New York Times, who tweets as Ida Bae Wells (@nhannahjones), focus on debunking the idea that the most passionate Trump supporters are salt-of-the-earth working-class white folks who are just frustrated by the economy. Hannah-Jones wrote i the first of a tweet thread on 01/11/2021: "Turns out that instead of those endless rural diner profiles, political journalists should have been doing MAGA pieces in board rooms, on military bases, in private jets."

Both reports focus on the Capitol invaders of last week and the revelations that a significant part of the armed Trump mob of Radical Republicans prowling the Capitol seeking to lynch Members of Congress - and even the rightwing theocratic Republican Vice President! - were actually notably affluent Republicans. As Will Bunch puts it:

When fascism finally came to America in the form of an attempted coup to halt our presidential election, it came from lush-green suburbs all across this land, flying business class on Delta or United and staying in four-star hotels with three-martini lobby bars — the better to keep warm after a long day of taking selfies with friendly cops or pummeling the unfriendly ones, chanting “Hang Mike Pence!” and generally standing athwart democracy yelling “Halt!”

What else can one think after seeing the photo of Jenna Ryan, real-estate broker from the upscale Dallas exurb of Frisco (also a “conservative” radio talker) posing in front of the private jet that whisked her to the Jan. 6 pro-Trump rally and subsequent storming of the Capitol, where she smiled in front of a window broken by other rioters and tweeted that “if the news doesn’t stop lying about us we’re going to come after their studios next”?

Maybe Ryan is an extreme example, but her compatriots in rushing Capitol Hill on Wednesday included a father of three from another upscale Dallas suburb named Larry Rendall Brock Jr., whose 1989 degree in international relations from the Air Force Academy apparently never taught him that it’s a bad idea to be photographed leaving House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office in a combat helmet, tactical gear, and holding zip-tie handcuffs. [bold in original]

In this post, I won't try to dig too much into the weeds of distinguishing the voting base from the most prominent activists. But it's also important to keep in mind how big Republican donors can simulate grassroots support by funding trips to demonstrations in Washington in "astroturf" operations like we saw with the Tea Party during the Obama-Biden Administration. Showing up to a riot in Washington on a Wednesday doesn't necessarily mean that the rioter is well-heeled personally. Nor does the fact that a miners or a cleaning lady might vote for Trump and the Republicans does not mean that Republican policies benefit them.

Because even the Republicans who don't want to join the Trumpistas in dropping the trappings of democracy and the rule are also committed to government of the people, by the oligarchy, and for the oligarchy.

The use of the "economic anxiety" phrase has taken on a particular ideological edge thanks to the left-vs-right fights in the Democratic Party. (Or left-vs-establishment, if you prefer, or left-vs-center). To use the 2016 and 2020 Presidential primaries as a very visible example, the Sanders campaign stressed the need to disrupt the Trump voting base and to win some of those votes for the Democrats by stressing economic issues like raising the minimum wage and social provisions like Medicare For All.

Sanders has a very solid civil-rights and women's-rights record, going back to his serious activism in the civil rights movement in the 1960. But in 2016 and 2020, establishment Democrats were committed to a neoliberal, very corporate-friendly economic program and hoped to use "identity" issues - more concretely, stress on anti-discrimination measures and celebration of diversity - to attract moderate suburban voters while implicitly assuming that white working-class voters interested in pro-labor measures would have no place to go in a two-way race but to the Democrats. And at least part of that narrative even tried to stigmatize the left's emphasis on economic populism as being in itself racist and sexist, or at minimum a bad-faith distraction from anti-discrimination policies.

Amanda Marcotte is someone who has leaned toward the latter position who has also been serious and carful in her arguments for it. As in this article from 2017: New election analysis: Yes, it really was blatant racism that gave us President Donald Trump Salon 04/19/2017.

The "economic anxiety" trope is also an echo of the "Sister Souljah" strategy of the Bill Clinton in his 1992 Presidential campaign. Which was in some ways the inverse of the establishment Democratic narrative just described from 2016-2020. The idea there was to rely on a rising-tide-lifts-all-boats approach to economic policy to win working-class votes while also pandering at least symbolically to white racism to show the Democratic Party wasn't being controlled by "Jesse Jackson," the worst bogeyman for white supremacists in 1992.

A sad but classic version of that argument was presented by Thomas Edsall with Mary Edsall in their book Chain Reaction: The Impact of Race, Rights, and Taxes on American Politics (1991). A more recent work presents a version of the "economic anxiety" version is Strangers in Their Own Land (2016) by Arlie Russell Hochschild.

My own framework on the angels-dancing-on-the-head-of-a-pin version of the "economic anxiety" narrative is that of course racism, sexism, xenophobia, and authoritarianism are all phenomena that are not purely dependent on immediate economic conditions or class identity. But they also exist within economic systems that both shape them are are shaped by them. The details of "intersectionality" will always present particular complications that will get translated into political rhetoric in a variety of ways.

But journalists using "economic anxiety" as a lazy placeholder for all that creates more fog than light.

"Economic anxiety" as a journalistic placeholder ( 1 of 2)

Katie Couric has a YouTube channel where she has been doing a serious of interesting and serious interviews. Including some very relevant recent ones about Trump with Mary Trump and the former Acting US Solicitor General Neal Katyal. In a recent one, she brings up the effect of "economic anxiety" on making Trump appealing to some voters.

This interview with Stephen Hassan, a respected authority on cults, is also about Trump. It is somewhat oddly titled, since Hassan is a serious and widely recognized expert and director of the anti-cult Director of Freedom of Mind Resource Center, Former Cult Follower Describes How President Trump Has Created a Cult Following. 01/12/2021: 

Hassan has written a book, The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control (2019). In the interview, he talks about how Trump's "very deceptive appeals" have succeeded in producing so many devoted and uncritical followers who are willing to believe imaginary claims coming from him. After 4:5 comes his portion:

Stephen Hassan: But essentially in my research of over 40 years, people are in vulnerable moments in their life where they'll be more receptive to a recruitment message or recruiter. So: death of a loved one, illness, dislocation, losing a job - I mean, seriously, the pandemic - and the economic problems are huge susceptibility factors for the public going forward.

Destabilizing a country [or] a group's economic status is a major technique for doing mind control on people. Because you want to disorient people. You wanna confuse people. You wanna make people search for meaning and hope outside of the existing institutional structures.

So, the susceptibility of people now to look to, well, who knows the solution to the problem of how to make the world a better place now, unfortunately, the human mind responds to certainty. And cult leaders are very good at talking in a way that's very convincing.

[Clip of a Trump speech shown]

This kind of communication, kind of accesses people's emotional brain, not their critical thinking part, but their emotional brain of, "Well, maybe, he seems to sound confident. Maybe he can do something 'cause things are so bad."

Katie Couric: What you're saying is, he preyed on people's economic anxiety? [my italics]

This is an example of a star journalist using "economic anxiety" as a general catch-all phrase for vague discontent.

Because Hassan had just mentioned a variety of events and conditions that could create emotional uncertainty in individuals that might make them more vulnerable to a cultish appeal promising certainty and discouraging critical thinking skills.

Hassan goes on to talk then about the variety of factors that a politician can use to tell people, I'll give your certainly on this issue you care a lot about. He mentions the standard "cultural war" issues of religion, abortion, and guns.

In the second post on this, I'll look at another treatment of the "economic anxiety" trope by columnist Will Bunch. It's had a strange career these last few years.

On Hassan's comments, I would add that this type of observations is helpful. Because as we saw on January 6 when Trump directly incited a mob to invade the Capitol and hunt down Members of Congress to kill them base on genuinely groundless claims of election theft, there is a cultish element to the Trump movement.

On the other hand, we should be careful about any Trump-apologist narrative suggesting that the cultish aspects of the movement absolve him or his violent white supremacist goon squads because it means they didn't know what they were doing. I haven't heard that offered up yet. But someone surely will.

Trump's infamous Georgia call

Trump's bullying, threatening call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is obviously major news from Sunday. The full audio is here: Audio: Here's the full transcript and audio of the call between Trump and Raffenperger Washington Post 01/03/2021.

Allie Bice reports on it in Trump’s pressure on Georgia election officials raises legal questions Politico 01/03/2021.

I just listened to the whole interview. It obviously shows that Trump is a cheap thug. (Gosh! Who knew?) Any Republicans serving in Congress who are actually serious about their oath to support the Constitution should be in front of the TV cameras on Monday demanding an immediate new impeachment and a 25th Amendment removal process by the Vice President and criminal referrals to the Justice Department against Trump.

I'll preface this with the automatic disclaimer for the next four years of, "Yes, Biden and Harris are not-as-bad-as-Trump." But on the Democratic side, today would also be a good day for the President-elect to publicly "embarrass" everyone involved in this clown coup including Republican Senators participating.

Kamala Harris came out late Sunday and said the call was an "bald, bald-faced, bold abuse of power" by Trump, but not calling it a crime or sedition or anything that might "embarrass" the Trumpistas.

.@KamalaHarris on Trump’s call pressuring Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to flip the Georgia election: "It was a bald-faced, bold abuse of power by the president of the United States." #gapol pic.twitter.com/JAwvzfzhUN

— Greg Bluestein (@bluestein) January 3, 2021

Republicans admire abuse of power by Their Side. They think it's "bold", too, and they love it! I don't believe the Republicans in Congress or Republican base voters will see Harris' comment as anything but a gesture of weakness.

Biden himself really needs to address this directly. Today. And with a standalone statement, not a throwaway line in a campaign speech like Harris yesterday.

My own Congresswoman made her position clear:

A mobster would say “find me the votes I need” to win. Oh, forgive me, that’s our President saying that. He is asking an elected official to commit a crime. Why aren’t more people screaming about this corrupt act?

— Jackie Speier (@RepSpeier) January 4, 2021

Further reports:

Greg Bluestein, Trump demands Georgia elections official overturn his defeat in hourlong call Atlanta Journal-Constitution 01/03/2021

Tia Mitchell, Democrats denounce Trump’s call to Raffensperger as criminal, GOP mostly silent Atlanta Journal-Constitution 01/03/2021. Actually, the only Democrat they quote using the word "criminal" in regard to it is ... Democratic Senate Whip Dick Durbin! About the last Senator I would have expected to say that!

Stephen Collinson, Trump's bid to steal Georgia exposes GOP election ruse CNN 01/04/2021

John Bowden, Trump asked Georgia secretary of state to 'find' 11.7k ballots, recalculate election result The Hill 01/03/2021

Nathan Layne, Georgia election guardian Raffensperger faces heat as Trump contests defeat Reuters 01/04/2021

Martin Pengelly in New York and Richard Luscombe, 'I just want 11,780 votes': Trump pressed Georgia to overturn Biden victory Guardian 01/03/2021

State of the Presidential transition on Christmas Eve

The politics of the COVID relief bill are changing quickly now that Congress is scrambling to respond to Trump's last-minute veto threat during his last minute scramble to attempt to pull off his clown coup. David Dayen has a breakdown of th stte of play as of 1272372020, Miracle on Pennsylvania Avenue The American Prospect:

The politics, then, argue for higher payments. It was Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans who kept them artificially low. Now here comes Trump asking for them to be nearly tripled. It’s amazing that he waited until after losing the election to flash the old-time populism and wedge both parties, but here we are. And then came the moment where Mitch McConnell’s head blew up like in Scanners.

As soon as Trump posted that video, I suggested that the House pass a one-page bill, increasing the checks from $600 to $2,000. Much to my delight in seeing that political instincts in the Democratic Party aren’t totally dead, about 10 minutes later, Nancy Pelosi suggested the same thing, saying she would offer unanimous consent to amend the bill. Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) even wrote the amendment. (I gave it a name: the $2,000 Does Offer Long-Lasting Available Relief or $2,000 DOLLAR, Act.) Eventually, Chuck Schumer got on board as well. Joe Biden hasn’t said anything, but he was on the record for seeking more money when he became president. So the Democratic leadership beat him to it, and called Trump’s bluff.

David Sirota and Andrew Perez mention (in a salty tone) Joe Biden's publicly quiet but privately active role in the negotiations over the relief bill (Where In The World Is Kamala Harris? Daily Poster 12/23/2020):

[P]resident-elect Joe Biden, seems to have completely checked out of the current debate, after helping create a debacle.

He reportedly convinced congressional Democrats to get steamrolled by Mitch McConnell and agree to provide just $600 in direct aid — which Georgia Democratic senate candidate Jon Ossoff rightly called “a joke.” Biden has vaguely promised to push more aid in 2021, but he is not weighing in forcefully on the budget showdown that is unfolding right now. An austerian to the core, Biden took a dump in the middle of the process, and is now running away from the mess he helped create.

Here's the New York Times letting us know that Biden played a decisive role in compelling Democrats "to pull back on their demands" and helping Mitch McConnell cut the stimulus bill in half. https://t.co/1GLR950tlD pic.twitter.com/XfmgFwxTI9

— David Sirota (@davidsirota) December 22, 2020

This conflict over the stimulus bill and the responses to Trump's clown coup provide early insight into the political strategies of the two parties for the upcoming Biden-Harris Presidency.

David Dayen is also feeling salty about Biden on Christmas Eve:

The link to that December 16 article is here.

Biden during the transition has been offering a conciliatory, "bipartisan" posture, in other words. That was painfully obvious in his December 22 speech and press conference, in his role in the relief bill negotiations, and in his pointed refusal to use the threat of Executive action to force Republicans to support legislation. But he has been willing to continue to directly attack Trump.

Biden, "bipartisanship" and the COVID relief bill

President-elect Joe Biden gave a pre-Christmas message and took press questions at the end. He sounded good on the cybersecurity mega-breach. And sounded serious and sympathetic on the pandemic. Biden Delivers Remarks On Wilmington NBC News 12/22/2020:

But, at just after 3:40 he says, "In this election, the American people made it clear, they want us to reach across the aisle and work together on matters of national concern to get something done." Words that translate to Republicans as, "We surrender!"

This after the Republicans' appalling, months-long obstructionism on the COVID relief bill. That kind of phrases from Biden encourage Republican intransigence, period.

But Trump took some brief timeout from frantically plotting in his desperate clown coup to call for higher individual relief payment, which lets him do a bit of "populist" posturing. After Biden was just praising the high-minded bipartisanship of the relief bill. (Kelly Hooper, rump takes aim at Covid stimulus bill, raising specter of veto Politico 12/22/2020)

While Trump did not directly threaten to veto the bill, his message raised the possibility that he might do so.

In a video tweeted by the president Tuesday evening, Trump delivered a four-minute speech listing his many grievances with the bill — which would send much-needed aid to Americans struggling amid the pandemic. Trump specifically criticized the relief package for including “wasteful spending” on issues unrelated to Covid-19, only providing $600 to individuals and families, and not giving enough emergency aid to small businesses.

“For example, among the more than 5,000 pages in this bill, which nobody in Congress has read because of its length and complexity, it’s called the Covid relief bill, but it has almost nothing to do with Covid,” Trump said.

As is often the case with Trump, his latest intervention may be more due to blundering than to any well-though-out strategy. But Trump does have a demagogue's instinct, even though he may have actually lost his mind in the last few days. And with Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck Schumer all accepting the bill and praising it as a great breakthrough, Trump's complaining about it when he did is consistent with the strategy that Republicans ran against Obama in his first year in office on economic recovery: insist on watering down his legislative proposals with deals they don't honor, and then blame him for not only the inadequate results of the programs but also for unpopular aspects of the program that look like crony capitalism.

The relief bill is the warm-up round for this strategy against the Biden-Harris Administration. In this case, Biden stepped right into the messaging trap the Republicans laid for him. Even if Trump's kinda-sorta veto threat was not something coordinated with Mitch McConnell.

In the question period of his appearance, Biden did give Bernie Sanders credit for getting direct aid back into the relief bill. But he also mentioned the bipartisanship trope even there. But good on him for recognizing publicly recognizing Bernie's role.

The Back-to-Brunch Liberals can legitimately be relieved to see a presentation from the President-elect that actually sounded Presidential. But no amount of repeating "bipartisan" will deal with the political nihilism of today's Republican Party. On the other hand, mainstream pundits loo-oove this kind of thing. Here's columnist Doyle McManus gushing about it: "the bill had one important virtue: It was a genuine compromise, a species rarely seen in Washington. Even more intriguing, it was based partly on the work of a bipartisan cabal of centrist senators who bolted from their parties’ dug-in positions and took matters into their own hands to get something done." (After COVID deal, Biden’s quest for bipartisanship looks a little less naive Los Angeles Times 12/23/2020. my emphasis)

But Biden's line about ending up "with two million people standing on our border" was nails-on-the-blackboard centrist Mugmump triangulating. He's got to fix the immigration process, beginning with getting the kids out of cages and reunited with their parents.

Corey Robin, thought-provoking as ever - and Trump's hysteria against the Democratic Party

Ana Kasparian and Nando Vila in their Weekends podcast for Jacobin interviewed the historian Corey Robin in their weekend segment, Trumpism After Trump with Corey Robin 12/05/2020 (his interview begins just after 56:40:

Corey Robin is someone I have found to be consistently provocative in a constructive way.

I tweeted a dissent from one of Robin's points about Thomas Jefferson:

I don‘t how we can meaningfully project the fascism concept into the late 18th or early 19th century. TJ may not have possessed saintly (or even bourgeois) moral consistency. But how we can write him out of the history of democracy without indulging some Charles Beard fantasy?

— brucemillerca (@brucemillerca) December 5, 2020

Robin in the Weekends interview mentions that his entered left politics via the labor movement. I was also involved in labor issues and organizing in my early 20s and have always throught that a strong labor movement - including effective unions, just to be clear! - so it was interesting to hear Corey Robin mention that as part of the grounding of his political perspective.

Having spent decades on the left side of the political spectrum, I do periodically feel the need to define myself in relation to current left positions and controversies. Because, hey, it wouldn't be the left if we weren't fighting over what are the True Left positions.

The Weekends interview is one I found useful without necessarily being in total agreement with all the points he makes. I did a four-part review of his best-known book starting here, Corey Robin’s "The Reactionary Mind" (2011): (1 of 4): classical liberalism in the US 01/09/2012. That one goes into more detail on the topic of the tweet above, which is how to understand the Revolutionary generation in the US while not falling into the problems of Charles Beard's capital-p Progressive analysis of the American Revolution and the politics of the Constitution.

It starts off with his own story of a strange interaction he had with Neera Tanden, Biden's pick to head his Office and Management and Budget. He then gives a broad overview of the development of the present-day Republican Movement Conservatism. He talks about the relatively dominance of an increasingly conservative mainstream narrative after the re-election of Richard Nixon in 1972. "Their real achievement was to transform the Democratic Party," he says, referring to how the Democratic Party in response to the rising strength of Movement Conservatism embraced a neoliberal ideology that contributed heavily to the vast increase in wealth and income inequality over the last 40 years in the US. It also left them with a political message that blurred any distinct political branding for the Democratic Party.

It produced the current situation of chronic asymmetric political polarization that Andrew Hacker argues became particularly dominant beginning with the so-called Gingrich Revolution of 1994. In his book with Paul Pierson, Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy (2005), they describe a situation that to a large extent still exists today, only hyper-charged with even more of the money-in-politics problem they identify here:

Although the two parties have both become more cohesive, there remains considerable truth to the old Will Rogers joke about the Democratic Party’s basic organizational deficiencies. (“I am not a member of any organized political party; I’m a Democrat.”) In crucial areas, from fundraising to congressional leadership to the fervor of the base, the Democratic Party is both less centralized and less networked than the contemporary Republican Party. Individual Democrats, when they have enjoyed power at all, have much more jealously hoarded their autonomy than have the Republican rank and file—a reality on display repeatedly in Clinton’s two terms. Moreover, big money is a strong unifying force for Republicans, but it introduces considerable cross-pressures for Democrats. Important elements of the standard Democratic agenda, especially on economic issues, coexist awkwardly with the realities of contemporary political finance, which require that Democrats seek support from deep-pocketed business contributors. As we will see in the Conclusion, there are exceptions to these generalizations. But they are just that: exceptions. Democrats still have a hard time escaping the Tower of Babel. [my emphasis]

Fortunately, since there have been positive developments for the left along with setbacks, including some of the changes in public opinion and activism that Robin goes on to discuss (along with important historical reflection on the left and the courts in US history). Not least of those is the emergence a much stronger independent left media environment that was still metaphorically in the toddler stage in 2005. The Weekends show is a good example.

For anyone who panics at the thought of any association of Democrats with an avowedly "democratic socialist" media like Jacobin's print and online operations, I would suggest that it's time to get real about what the Republican Party of 2020 is. Their Dear Leader Trump - whose defeat in November's election most Republicans in Congress still refuse to publicly acknowledge - spoke Saturday in Georgia, telling his public COVID superspreader rally attendees that the Democratic Party led by Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, and Nancy Pelosi is "the lunatic radical left." He said, "Very simply, you will decide whether your children grow up in a socialist country or whether they will grow up in a free country. And I will tell you this: socialist is just the beginning for these people. These people want to go further than socialism, they want to go into a Communistic form of government. And I have no doubt about it." (after 11:15 in the video of the entire speech, full of flatly false claims, from NBC News, Trump Holds Rally In Georgia Ahead Of Senate Runoff Election 12/05/2020.)

He proceeds to describe the two Democratic Senate candidates, centrist Jon Ossoff and center-left African-American minister Rafael Warnock this way: "radical John Ossoff and Rafael Warnock. Ossoff and Warnock are the two most extreme, far-left liberal Senate candidates in the history of our country."

In urging Georgia Republicans to participate in the dual Senate election in January, the Dear Leader said (after 46:15), "If you don't vote, the socialists and the communists win." (Evan Semones, 'Don’t listen to my friends': Trump encourages Georgia Republicans to vote Politico 12/05/2020)

So, no, Republicans are not going to stop calling Democrats socialists and communists. There are only two ways Democratic candidates can avoid that. They can decide not to run for office. Or they can become Republicans. Otherwise, they're going to call you a commie.

Conservatives have been attacking their opponents as "socialists" since, oh, 1865 or so, as Heather Cox Richardson explains in Marx is Not Around the Corner Moyers on Democracy 10/28/2020.

Trump's loss to Biden - a reprieve for democracy, but the Republican Party is still a Trumpist authoritarian party

"Trump is unusual, but the Republican Party has been preparing the way by becoming the voter-suppression party. They’ve become a party which is about a minority bullying a majority." - Timothy Snyder

Shalini Randeria and Timothy Snyder discuss Democracy in question: A Trumpian blip or a fundamental flaw in American democracy Eurozine 11/25/2020. The discussion was on a podcast of 10/08/2020, the month before the Presidential eleciton, sponsore by the Institute for Human Science (IWM) in Vienna.

Snyder analyzes Trumpism as "sadopopulism," which he describes here in this way:

Sadopopulism is a type of populism where people actually don’t get anything other than pain. In populism, the assumption is, ‘I, the leader, and you the people are against some elite’, and the policy is, ‘I’m going to transfer some of the wealth of that elite to you, the people’. The critique of populism is then usually, ‘the elite is mythical’ or ‘the elite is an ethnic minority and they’re being oppressed’. But Mr. Trump is not a populist in that sense. He isn’t transferring wealth from any kind of elite to the people. On the contrary, he’s transferring wealth from the people to the already existing elite. He’s not giving people greater chances to pursue happiness. He’s actually doing the opposite: he’s creating more pain in the system. And he’s very good at persuading people that it’s good, it’s ok for them to be hurt as long as others are hurting more. [my emphasis]

In in the following comments, I think he may give Trump a bit too much credit for not using militarism in a way that is typical of classic fascists like Mussolini. But it's an important analysis of Trump and fascism:

Trump clearly draws from a fascist toolbox, consciously, half consciously, unconsciously. One can debate how much it matters that his father was in the Ku Klux Klan and whether he knew or not that ‘America first’ could be used as a fascist slogan when he chose it for his presidential campaign slogan. Who knows? But he certainly uses fascist rhetorical tricks ­ the ‘us’ and ‘them’ ­ the quick slogans, the rallies.

So, let me try to put this carefully. I think it’s impossible to talk sensibly about Mr. Trump without invoking the history of fascism. That said, when pressed, I’ve tried to use phrases like, ‘not even a fascist’, meaning I think he does some but not all of the things a fascist would do. I think they are enough to bring down a republic, but do not include redistribution and war.

Mussolini fought wars in Ethiopia. He joined in Hitler’s wars in Europe: although little known, tens of thousands of Italian soldiers died around Stalingrad. Trump does not like war. He’s afraid of physical violence and is less of a militarist than previous American presidents have been. He does not want to control the world and does not have the tools of redistribution and military expansion. [my emphasis]

Snyder in this interview is addressing primarily Trump's political style, and he has some important insights. He doesn't talk in this interview about the sociology of Trumpism. So, no magic answers here to the "economic anxiety"-vs.-"liberal identity politics" argument that will be going on for quite a while.

The quotes here are from the article's edited transcript.

The ritual post-election discussion of the Christian Right and conservative white Christians in US politics

Here we have Emma Green writing on The Evangelical Reckoning Begins The Atlantic 11/15/2020.

And here are Daniel "Pastor Dan" Schultz and Chrissy Stroop discussing Cherry Picking in the God Gap: A Post-Election Conversation on the Religious Vote and the Battle to Spin It Religion Dispatches 11/13/2020.

Articles on the topic have been a post-election ritual since 1978 or so, when the Christian Right as we know it emerged as a significant influence in American politics, attacking prominent Democrats as "anti-family" allegedly because of their support of abortion rights. And the ritual conversation typically turns around the notion that if Democrats would just oppose abortion rights and not be so picky about not providing public funds to racially segregated schools and colleges that operated with some kind of church imprimatur.

The main result over decades has been that the Democratic candidates spent much of that time repeating various versions of the formula, "I'm personally opposed to abortion (thus adopting the basic Republican/Christian Right framing of the issues) but I support a woman's right to choose." Jerry Brown is the only one I ever hear deliver a similar line convincingly without sounding like he was hedging his support of abortion rights. Hillary Clinton for years used the formula that she thought abortion should be "safe, legal, and rare," achieving the usual result of accepting Republican framing while coming off as hedging her position on legal abortion. To her credit, in her 2016 Presidential campaign, she straightforwardly defended a woman's right to abortion.

Chrissy and Pastor Dan discuss the current state of play of the question. The latter observes, "We’ll see different numbers floating around (there are as many measures of evangelicals as there are demographers), but preliminary indications are that the white evangelical vote for the GOP dipped little, if at all."

At this point, I'm hesitant to make sweeping judgments about changes in the behavior of subgroups of the electorate from the exit polls because of the (for the US) unusually large turnout of eligible voters for the November election. And apparently the Republicans had a better get-out-the-vote ground game nationwide than the Democrats did in 2020.But based on the polling for the last four years on Trump's support among white evangelicals, it would be a notable surprise to find that their actual voting behavior showed any significant shift toward the Democrats.

Chrissy calls particular attention to the lazy habits of the corporate media in covering the intersection of religion and politics:

And yes, I think that good religion journalism ought to be covering mainline and progressive as well as authoritarian Christianity, even though I believe we agree that there should not be, and cannot be, a “religious Left” in the same sense that there is a “religious Right” in this country. Journalists need to stop looking at white Christianity through rose-colored glasses, and when it comes to coverage of Christianity and politics, we need both greater diversity of representation and more nuance..

Of course, as a religious none and the ex-evangelical founder of the loosely organized #EmptyThePews movement, I think good religion journalism needs to cover youth secularization and include the perspectives of those who have left high-control religious traditions like evangelicalism. I also agree with you that we should be hearing a lot more about Black young people’s attitudes toward religion and secularism and the current generation’s relationship to the Black Church.

Emma Green's article is based around an interview with a megachurch pastor, Andy Stanley, who decided not to be a cheerleader for Donald Trump this year. He worries that Christian Right support for Republicans and for Donald Trump in particular is damaging the "evangelical" brand.

Green's article is an example of an effort by a reporter to get beyond the lazy media clichés about the Christian Right. But I think the key thing to understand about the Christian Right is that is a political trend based heavily on conservative cultural attitudes, including particularly white supremacist and patriarchal attitudes, with a strong authoritarian streak. Even under Trump, they remain as an important and highly visible component of Republican Party politics. That may change over time if the trend away from conservative evangelical churches continues. But there doesn't seem to be a significant reason to assume so right now.

The Democratic Party's politics are not only compatible with conservative Christians theological beliefs. But there is certainly no inevitability that someone taking the story of the Good Samaritan as a serious moral and spiritual example would be attracted to the kind of ugly bigotry and cruelty that Trump's politics have so prominently featured. In fact, it's a valid Christian theological question how such a person could not actively oppose it.

There is a "religious left" in the US. And has been, even before the terms "left" and "right" came into use in the French Revolutionary Parliament of the late 18th century. But Chrissy Stoop is correct in saying that it's unrealistic to expect a Religious Left in the US politics that would be an obvious parallel to the Christian Right. Because the Christian Right is an authoritarian movement that is, at best, less than comfortable with liberal democratic values. The religious left as we have know it in civil-rights, antiwar, and other social reform movements is very unlikely to present their case as authoritarian claim to know the explicit will of God.

A comparison of the sanctimonious authoritarian Christian Right devotee, Vice President Mike Pence, with the Rev. William Barber would provide copious evidence of the difference in their approach.