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      Of Hobbits and Tigers: The Unlikely Heroes of Italy’s Radical Right

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      June 23, 1980: After the assassination of magistrate Mario Amato by Italian right-wing terrorists, an anonymous group published a leaflet endorsing the murder:

      “To the members of the ‘Great Fascist Organizations’ we say: Fuck off, you never achieved anything and never will; … you are idiots and sheep. … Our task is to find comrades, if need be, to create them. CREATE ARMED SPONTANEITY. We end this document by telling those who charge us with not being ‘political enough’ that we are not interested in their politics, only in the struggle, and in the struggle, there is precious little room for talking. … To him who needs a hand, we will give it, and it will be bullets for those who go on polluting our youth, preaching wait-and-see and the like.”  

      What distinguishes this flyer from other statements by right-wing terrorists is not its vulgar language or pseudo-sophisticated argument for a palingenetic rebirth of Italy, but rather the fact that it embodies key characteristics that would come to define a new form of right-wing terrorism that emerged and operated in Italy from the mid-1970s until the early 1980s. Although the number of right-wing terrorist attacks massively increased during this period, scholars have traditionally focused on the left-wing terrorism of the Red Brigades or the so-called strategy of tension in the early 1970s that saw the bombing at the Piazza Fontana in Milan in 1969 or the Italicus massacre of 1974.

      The Bologna Attack of 1980: Italy’s Unhealed Wound

      READ MORE

      This new form of terrorism emerged foremost as a youth rebellion against Italy’s “old right” in a situation when they faced further marginalization within Italian society and politics. In the attempt to restore their self-esteem and their damaged masculinity, a younger generation found justification for a “heroic” crusade against the modern world in the texts of the British writer and linguist J.R.R. Tolkien and the Italian philosopher Julius Evola.

      Far From Dead

      In December 1946, the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement (MSI) was created and enjoyed rapid success in regional and national elections. To increase its political influence, the party hierarchy collaborated with the ruling Christian Democrats as early as 1954. However, radicals like Pino Rauti and Stefano Delle Chiaie questioned the party’s legalistic approach and founded extra-parliamentary groups such as New Order (ON) and National Vanguard (AN). Due to their ideological and personnel continuity, these groups linked the 1940s with the terrorist groups of the 1970s, which became involved in what later became known as the strategy of tension.

      Already in 1972, the failure of the strategy of tension was obvious. Rather than leading to a decline of the left, the destabilized public order was exploited by the communist and socialist parties. In the mid-1970s, the political right came under further pressure when right-wing groups such as ON were banned, and left-wing terrorism began to rise. However, right-wing terrorism in Italy was far from dead.

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      In 1976, right-wing terrorists killed State Attorney Vittorio Occorsio, officially launching a new phase that saw nearly 1,200 terrorist acts committed between 1976-1980. Among the victims were members of left-wing organizations, so-called traitors and, for the first time, state officials. The perpetrators of the strategy of tension deliberately avoided attacking representatives of the state, in particular of the security apparatus as they were regarded more as allies than as enemies. But now, they were among the preferred targets of right-wing terrorists.

      The majority of those responsible for these attacks were short-lived groups or individual perpetrators — what people today might call lone wolf terrorists. In addition, we find organizations that existed for a longer time period even if their structure was also informal, including Armed Revolutionary Nuclei and Third Position. But what caused the shift within the right-wing terrorist scene in the mid-1970s?

      To better understand the internal changes and dynamics, we have to look at the socio-political framework, especially the cultural situation within the far-right scene. Since the early 1970s, the growing influence of the left in society, politics and the extremist milieu added to a feeling of marginalization among younger radicals, most of them born after 1955, having no ties to the roots of Italian fascism. To overcome this apparent crisis, they pleaded for a radical change of ideology and tactics.

      Led by nonconformist intellectuals like Marco Tarchi, they accused the MSI of being a corrupt party lacking the energy necessary for a revolution. They criticized the rigid hierarchy that had prevented the youth from becoming more involved and characterized the covert terrorist activities and the coup attempts during the strategy of tension years as both misguided and as the reason for the increasing marginalization of the right.

      The charge against MSI’s establishment was led by the satirical journal The Voice of the Sewer, founded by Tarchi in 1974 in Paris. Heavily influenced by the French New Right, the journal used comics and texts to question the actions of Italy’s “old right” and their obsession with nostalgia and tradition. Tarchi, who would become the leader of the MSI youth group Youth Front, wanted to “rejuvenate” the political and cultural debate within the Italian right by looking to the left for inspiration.

      Middle-Earth in Italy

      The scope of this iteration of Italy’s New Right was first demonstrated at the Campo Hobbit festival in June 1977 in Montesarchio, which was organized by Tarchi’s Youth Front and named after Tolkien’s fantasy novel “The Hobbit.” Despite the party leadership’s opposition, the festival drew over 3,000 people and imbued the younger right-wing extremists with a new feeling of strength toward a hostile society and an anachronistic neo-fascist party. Concrete political objectives were rejected and replaced by abstract values such as courage, heroism and, above all, comradeship.

      For the festival organizers and attendants, Tolkien’s fantasy novels served as a metaphor for their rejection of the modern world and their longing for a future that was better than any historical allegory. They perceived themselves as the heroes of Tolkien imagined Middle-earth, fighting against all odds for the betterment of the contemporary world. As Generoso Simeone, one of the organizers, stated: “Looking to the future, let us evoke from Tolkien’s fairy tales those images that enrich our imagination … We are inhabitants of the mythical Middle-earth, also struggling with dragons, orcs, and other creatures.” To express their attachment to Tolkien’s stories, which were deeply rooted in Germanic and old English legends, the Celtic cross became the new symbol of the Youth Front.

      While festivalgoers were able to purchase a variety of books written by, amongst others, Robert Brasillach, Ezra Pound, Pierre Drieu la Rochelle, Oswald Spengler and Julius Evola, the musical performances were the real attraction given that music was considered the most important and efficient form of expression in right-wing counterculture. One highlight was the performance of the right-wing alternative band Compagnia dell’Anello (Fellowship of the Ring). For the occasion of the festival, several far-right musicians, including Mario Bortoluzzi, joined forces and created the band, which was named after the first book in Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Their most famous song, “Il domani appartiene a noi” (“Tomorrow Will Belong toUs”), was a rallying cry to fight together for freedom and a better tomorrow against the forces of “darkness” and ultimately became the hymn of the neo-fascist Youth Front.

      The Hobbit Camps, which took place 1977, 1978, 1980 and 1981, also featured theater, poetry and cabaret shows, art exhibitions as well as debates about issues like ecology, health and housing shortages. By including these traditionally leftist topics, the organizers intended to attract the leftist youth and start a dialogue with their former enemies. Through their engagement and willingness to incorporate these themes and types of events they sought to break out of cultural and social marginalization.

      Their effort to establish contact with their counterparts on the left can also be noted in their leverage of Tolkien’s reputation. In many Western countries, the British writer was associated with leftist student protests, and “The Lord of the Rings” became the “Bible of the hippies.” In Italy, however, his work became associated with the far right thanks to the preface philosopher Elémire Zolla wrote for the first Italian edition in 1970. In contrast to Tolkien, who rejected any deeper contemporaneous meaning of his book, Zolla argued that the myths of “The Lord of the Rings’” represented a perennial philosophy that must be viewed as an outright rejection of the modern world.

      Given Tolkien’s sociopolitical background, Zolla’s interpretation was not too far-fetched. Tolkien was a conservative writer, whose political and social ideas were grounded in a Catholic worldview that developed in opposition to the Anglican Church. He harbored skeptical opinions of economic and technological progress, both for the risk it poses to the human soul and for the damage it causes to its environment. Tolkien rejected socialism, Nazism and American capitalism and saw history as a long defeat. However, he still had hope. He identified among Western culture a strong romantic chivalric tradition of heroism and sacrifice, which would ultimately help to “turn the ship” around.

      Of course, not everyone who loved Tolkien’s fantasy novels or who attended the Hobbit Camps would ultimately turn to terrorism. Those who did would usually look for other texts to justify their path to violence. One of their favorite writers was the Italian philosopher Julius Evola. In particular, his works “Revolt Against the Modern World,” “Orientations” and “Riding the Tiger: A Survival Manual for the Aristocrats of the Soul” became standard reading among the New Right in both Italy and France.

      The Tigers

      Julius Evola, who died in 1974, became a guru-like figure for the radical youth looking for guidance while lost in the mythical lands of Middle-earth. First, Evola never joined a political party despite his well-known affinity with Italian fascists, the National Socialists and members of the Romanian Iron Guard. He called Benito Mussolini’s 1922 March on Rome a “caricature of a revolution” and rejected the Italian fascist regime as too populistic and devoid of any spirituality.

      Consequently, he heavily criticized the MSI’s nostalgia and its failure to create a unique ideology that embraced Evola’s own pagan and spiritual ideas. It was this uneasy relationship between Evola and the MSI that made him an ally of the disorientated radical youth who felt betrayed and abandoned by the party. Nevertheless, the MSI tried to benefit from Evola’s popularity with the younger generation, calling him “our Marcuse (only better).”

      Second, his ideology was abstract and frequently vague. He blended several schools of traditions, including Buddhism, eastern dogmas, Rene Guenon’s traditionalism and concepts of the German Konservative Revolution of the interwar period. This conglomerate of various ideologies and strands of far-right thinking attracted many people who were at odds with the fascist doctrine.

      Third, Evola’s use of myth mirrored Tolkien’s saga of Middle-earth with its eternal fight between good and evil. The similarity between Evola’s philosophy and Tolkien’s novels, which enjoyed immense mainstream popularity, ultimately increased the appeal of Evola’s work among a younger generation of radicals who were in desperate need of a system of cultural references untouched by historical fascism or the MSI.

      Embed from Getty Images

      On the surface, Evola and Tolkien shared another worldview: anti-modernism. It is Evola’s concept of anti-modernism that the terrorists found particularly useful when justifying their acts of violence. In his book “Revolt Against the Modern World,” Evola argues that history was not an evolutionary success story but a devolution from an imagined spiritual and traditional culture to the modern world. While he praises the Knights Templar and the Nazi SS for their efforts to stop further decline into anarchy, he characterizes the Renaissance, the liberal ideas of the French Revolution, and Italy’s postwar economic miracle as “false myths” leading the world into chaos. Moreover, he claims that modernity could never gradually transition into what he considered the “traditional order.” The only way to establish this order — which, according to him, was “outside history” as it has never existed before — was the total destruction of the modern world.

      In his books “Man Standing amid the Ruins” and “Riding the Tiger,” Evola argues that only political detachment — apoliteia — would allow the aristocratic elite to survive in a totally hostile environment. This elite expresses its racial superiority not through biological ideas but through spiritual qualities. Given his complex and seemingly contradictory arguments, his concept of apoliteia was interpreted by right-wingers in two ways. While one group saw it as a call for a complete retreat from all politics, others stated that activity was still possible, even desirable, as long as one’s acts were not influenced by political aims other than the destruction of the current world. For the latter group, absolute withdrawal was treason and achieving supreme spiritual identity was only possible through extreme engagement.

      It should come as no surprise that Italian right-wing terrorists of the late 1970s advocated for the latter. They aimed for the total destruction of the rotten and decaying modern world in order to make way for the new. Terrorist acts — and thus destruction — were regarded as heroic acts, the only way one could achieve spiritual fulfillment. Those who committed such acts were viewed as possessing greater spiritual value and would become part of the avant-garde.

      Debates about political aims and the right means were replaced by existential needs and slogans such as “restoring human values,” “building community” and “creating a new man.” “Evola,” as one right-wing terrorist said, “is a beacon. One of those men, who offers … all reference points necessary to lead a life in a world of ruins.”

      However, such an interpretation necessitated an oversimplification and vulgarization of Evola’s original ideas. What in his doctrine was long, painstaking and by no means linear was reduced to its most literally brutal aspects. Even though Evola did not exclude future action, he stated that “Riding the Tiger” “does not concern the ordinary man of today.” But in their attempts to accelerate the decline and destruction of the modern world, the young right-wing terrorists demonstrated an incomplete grasp of Evola’s core ideas.

      Dissatisfaction With the Modern World

      Tolkien’s popularity among the right-wing youth who felt marginalized in their own country symbolized a deep dissatisfaction with the modern world that was more rooted in a generational conflict than a specific political ideology — not for nothing did they try to transcend the traditional left-and-right divide. Given the many thematic overlaps between Tolkien’s novels and Evola’s philosophy, it was a small step for some radicals to accept Evola’s writings as applicable facts and use them to legitimize their terrorist activities.

      But, what can we learn from a cultural examination of Italy’s right-wing terrorist scene of the late 1970s? How does such an analysis contribute to a deeper understanding of past and present right-wing terrorism as a whole?

      First, Italy’s right-wing terrorist scene is much more diverse than often acknowledged. This might sound trivial. But especially in the public discourse, apodictic and sometimes ill-defined labels such as “fascist” overshadow the complexity of the right-wing extremist scene and its heterogeneous ideology, which often transcends our common understanding of the political left and right.

      Second, right-wing extremism turns to terrorism due to both external and internal dynamics. Analyzing Italian right-wing terrorism highlights the importance of examining the far-right extremist milieu itself, from internal rivalries between different generations to debates about the “right” ideological orientation and tactics.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Third, Tolkien’s world was dominated by male heroes and Evola’s anti-modernist philosophy centered on masculinity, arguing that an elitist group of men would ultimately overcome the materialist decadent modern world and ascend to true spirituality. The promise of a male-dominant, elitist patriarchal society helped to restore self-esteem to young men who felt emasculated by circumstances beyond their control.

      Finally, Evola’s theory offered young radicals who felt marginalized an opportunity to recover their self-esteem and overcome their isolation. Through committing a “terrorist deed” they felt part of a “male” order of “heroic” knights destined to accelerate the destruction of the modern world. I would argue that this behavior shows similarities to what Jeffrey Kaplan defined as “tribalism”— the feeling of belonging to a group even though no direct contact exists between individuals.

      Evola’s work has recently seen a transnational renaissance and has influenced the alt-right movement in the US, the Greek neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party and the Hungarian nationalist Jobbik party. Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s former chief adviser, is also attracted by Evola’s traditionalist and anti-modernist philosophy, his anti-liberal aristocratic elitism, his spiritual racism and his male-dominated worldview. These groups and individuals use Evola’s work to call for a Christian-dominated Western world that must be defended against all immigrants, Muslims in particular.

      Such calls ignore the fact that Evola was highly critical of Christianity and regarded Islam as the more spiritually advanced and thus more traditional religion, a classic example of the cherry-picking also seen during Evola’s initial adoption by Italy’s far-right in the 1970s. Nevertheless, Evola’s growing popularity among the radical right today calls for a deeper understanding of his teachings and philosophy if we want to gain a better understanding of the present transnational right-wing extremist and terrorist scenes.

      *[Fair Observer is a media partner of the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in US Politics

      Infinity culture war: what now for Trump's Hollywood supporters?

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      From actor Jon Voight to Kirstie Alley, Trump’s celebrity fans have declared war on the left – and there is little sign hostilities will end soonOn 11 November, Midnight Cowboy and Coming Home star Jon Voight posted a video on Twitter. “This is our greatest battle since the civil war,” he said, referring to the election results. “The battle of righteousness versus Satan, yes, Satan. Because these leftists are evil, corrupt and they want to tear down this nation.” Voight’s support of President Trump has been full-throated. His video messages promote conspiracy theories about the election and use violent language. Voight is typical of celebrity Maga: from Kirstie Alley to James Woods, Trump’s Hollywood supporters regularly echo the president’s own unvarnished rhetoric. But now Trump’s term is over, how long can this cultural Infinity War last?According to Dallas Sonnier, producer of such films as Dragged Across Concrete and the upcoming Run Hide Fight, “There are more pro-Trump celebrities in Hollywood than the dogmatic gatekeepers and thought police could ever possibly imagine.” In 2016, Kelsey Grammer, star of Frasier, told Desert Island Discs that being conservative in Hollywood felt like having a “target on your back”. Indeed, the same twitchiness had caused Forrest Gump actor Gary Sinise to form The Friends of Abe group in 2004 to provide conservatives with a “safe space” in Hollywood. Continue reading… More

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      in US Politics

      From A Very Stable Genius to After Trump: 2020 in US politics books

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      A long time ago, in 1883, a future president (Woodrow Wilson, a subject of this year’s reckonings) studied political science at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, in a classroom in which was inscribed the slogan “History is Past Politics, Politics is Present History”, attributed to Sir John Seeley, a Cambridge professor.That was before the era of the made-for-campaign book.Politics books in this election year fell into three broad categories. The ordinary, ranging from “meeting-and-tells” to campaign biographies that outlived their relevance. The interesting, those which made tentative starts at history or contained some important revelations. And the significant, those few whose value should live past this year because they actually changed the narrative – or are simply good or important reads.Perhaps unsurprisingly, the books also fell in descending categories numerically. Carlos Lozada of the Washington Post read 150 books on Donald Trump and the Trump era for his own book, What Were We Thinking. Virtually all readers, however, will be content with simply a “non-zero” number, to quote a Trump campaign lawyer.First, the ephemera and the expected offerings of any election year. Scandals in and out of government; tales of the extended Trump family; attempts at self-justification; books, some entertaining, by correspondents; how-to guides to politics meant to be read and applied before November.The permutations and penumbras of the 2016 campaign continued to produce new books: Peter Strozk’s Compromised is the story of the origin of the investigation into the Trump campaign from one FBI agent’s perspective, strong stuff and persuasive though omitting facts inconvenient to him. Rick Gates’ Wicked Game contains some new inside scoop, but the real stuff presumably went to the Mueller investigation of which Strzok was briefly a part. Donald Trump Jr’s Liberal Privilege had a double mission: to encourage votes for the father in 2020 and perhaps for the son in 2024. American Crisis, New York governor Andrew Cuomo’s early book on the coronavirus outbreak, highlighted his programmatic vision rather than soaring prose, a choice appropriate for the year but quickly forgotten as the pandemic rages on.Second come those books that made one sit up a bit to pay attention: a new insight, important facts revealed; “worth a detour”, in the language of the Michelin guides. Psychologist and presidential niece Mary Trump’s Too Much and Never Enough explained the pain of the Trump family over two generations and how that pain has influenced our national life for ill. David Frum was among the first to predict Trump’s authoritarian dangers. This year, Trumpocalpyse, well-written and insightful as always, focused on the attacks on the rule of law and “white ethnic chauvinism” as hallmarks of Trumpism, whether its supporters are poor or elite. Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, Pulitzer-winning Post reporters, chronicled Trump more deeply and successfully than most in A Very Stable Genius. Trump’s anger at the book showed they hit their target.Stuart Stevens’ It Was All a Lie takes Republican history back a few decades in a punchy mea culpa whose themes will be important in the debate over the future of the GOP. Among the Democrats, a rare good work by a politician, Stacey Abrams’ Our Time Is Now, as well as her triumph in political organizing in Georgia, marks her as an important force.For quality in financial journalism and the importance of its topic, not least to current and future investigations of Trump and the Trump Organization, Dark Towers by David Enrich on Deutsche Bank offers as full an analysis of the bank and its relation to Trump as is likely to be public absent a further court case in New York.Andrew Weissmann, a senior prosecutor with the Mueller investigation, wrote Where Law Ends, a strongly-written account in which he regrets his boss not having pursued further, notably in not issuing a subpoena to Trump and then in not making a formal determination as to whether the president would be charged with obstruction of justice. Weissmann’s frustration is understandable, but readers may judge for themselves how fair or not he is to the pressures and formal restrictions on Mueller himself.There is a subcategory here, of books on foreign and security policy. HR McMaster’s Battlegrounds attempts to explain his working theories (“strategic empathy”) modified for current realities and arguing against American retrenchment and isolation. In The Room Where It Happened, former national security adviser John Bolton told of Trump begging for China’s assistance and wrote that Trump was not “fit for office” – the tale would have been better told to the House impeachment committee. David Rohde’s In Deep demolished the theory of the “deep state”. Barry Gewen delivered a new biography of Henry Kissinger’s life and work. Traitor, by David Rothkopf, sought to chronicle the Trump administration while seeking to reverse its effects and giving a history of American traitors.Finally, the significant – those few books that contributed importantly to the year’s narrative, or that deserve a reading next year.There was another Bob Woodward book, Rage – with tapes. The big news was that Trump was aware of the dangers of Covid-19 yet chose not to publicize them and that Dan Coats, then director of national intelligence, thought Putin had something on Trump. Woodward got the stories others chased. Michael Schmidt’s Donald Trump v the United States is another serious book, with a strong argument of how deeply the attacks on the rule of law by the Trump administration, notably by Trump himself, threaten democracy. Schmidt’s recounting of efforts to prosecute Hillary Clinton and James Comey are sobering, and his revelations on how the Mueller investigation was narrowed to focus on criminality rather than Russian influence in 2016 form a useful corrective to Weissmann.Politics meets history in a few volumes, notably Thomas Frank’s plea against populism, The People, No, contrasting Trump unfavorably with FDR. Peter Baker and Susan Glasser teamed for a masterpiece biography of former secretary of state James Baker, The Man Who Ran Washington, that reminds us what (and whom) the Republican party used to call leadership. It’s a serious book that recalls Baker, Gerald Ford’s campaign manager in 1976, did not challenge the election result because Ford lost the popular vote. It also shows the truth in Seeley’s aphorism about the relation of politics and history, with many insights into one of the best recent practitioners of politics, fondly remembered for his statesmanship at the end of the cold war.Molly Ball’s well-researched and enjoyable biography of Nancy Pelosi makes sense of the most powerful woman in American history. Thomas Rid’s Active Measures, on disinformation and political warfare – Clausewitz for the cyber era – finds fresh urgency in light of recent revelations about major cyberattacks on the US government.Two books merit a final mention. As the Trump administration comes to a close, Ruth Ben-Ghiat analysed Trump’s actions and personality from the comparative perspective of fascist leaders since Mussolini and chillingly noted not only the actions that pointed to authoritarianism, but how deep the danger of going down that path.Strongmen is a vital book and a warning. Ben-Ghiat sees in Trump a “drive to control and exploit everyone and everything for personal gain. The men, women and children he governs have value in his eyes only insofar as they fight his enemies and adulate him publicly. Propaganda lets him monopolize the nation’s attention, and virility comes into play as he poses as the ideal take-charge man.” Dehumanizing rhetoric and actions against immigrants (and even members of Congress) and appointments of people whose motivation was loyalty rather than law has real cost to a political system whose fragility at points is evident. It takes both individual action and courageous will to preserve democracy.On a happier note, Bob Bauer and Jack Goldsmith in After Trump offer a legal, sometimes quite technical roadmap to reform of many norms of government that have been eroded. Some are obvious, others will prove controversial, but let this urgent discussion begin with Congress and the Biden administration.Of which, this year also saw the publication of A Promised Land, the first volume of memoirs from Barack Obama, whom the new president served as vice-president. Well-written despite being policy heavy, at times deeply moving, at others not as detailed as many readers might wish (despite its length), Obama is reflective both about the nature of power and about himself. More, his book serves once again to remind the world of the contrast between him and his successor. He is rightly proud to have written it – and to have written it by hand, to encourage his own deep thoughts about his presidency and the country he was honored, and sometimes troubled, to lead.To learn more about the president to come, Evan Osnos’ Joe Biden: American Dreamer is an excellent place to start: his political skills, life tragedies and conviviality are here in equal measure. Osnos ends with a Biden speech about dispelling America’s “season of darkness” – a fervent hope for the new year ahead. More

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      When Bad Customers Love Your Brand

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      A curious situation concerning Donald Trump’s beloved Proud Boys highlights several novel trends in US culture. A clothing supplier has expressed its consternation because of the public behavior by some of its paying customers. The story demonstrates how the quintessentially American science of branding has reached a new level of sophistication.

      In an article with the title, “LGBT-owned kilt maker denounces kilt-clad Proud Boys,” the BBC reports the disgust of a Virginia kilt company with the fact “that their yellow kilts were worn by the far-right Proud Boys.” Most people would be surprised to learn that there are companies producing kilts in Virginia, but globalization and identity politics have produced all kinds of fascinating examples of what some might indignantly call cultural appropriation. So far, the Scots have not reacted to this incident, possibly because the American idea of cultural appropriation hasn’t yet penetrated their psyches.

      Britain’s Commitment to Retaining the Spoils of History

      READ MORE

      Allister Greenbrier, the owner of Verillas, proudly claims that his kilt company is “LGBTQ owned.” It has obviously become important to establish the sexual preferences of the owners of American enterprises. Greenbrier doesn’t require that his customers be LGBTQ, but he objects to the idea that paying customers might wear items from his collection in public while displaying views contrary to the values of his brand. 

      The BBC article explains an important feature of contemporary US culture that may not be evident to anyone not immersed in the culture, including the BBC’s British audience: “Extremist groups in the US often adopt or appropriate items of clothing as quasi-uniforms that indicate their allegiance and make them recognisable to others.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Quasi-uniforms:

      Articles of clothing that, when worn by more than one person at a public event, identify the wearers as belonging to a particular cultural or ideological grouping, thereby creating the impression that the article has become the group’s, and not the manufacturer’s, brand.

      Contextual Note

      For ages, the proverb existed in the English language that clothes don’t make the man. Apart from the fact that if anyone were to cite the proverb today, they would be obliged to make it gender-neutral, the idea behind the proverb appears to have disappeared and been replaced by its opposite. Today, clothes identify. If, in former times, the choice of apparel demonstrated class origins, in our evolved post-sexist society, a person wears the clothes (and body art) that advertise that individual’s social identity.

      The owner of Verillas complained when he realized the Proud Boys were all wearing exactly the same kilts. The fact that it was the same kilt made it a quasi-uniform: “I was appalled, angry and frustrated because they are the opposite of everything our brand stands for.” Had each Proud Boy been wearing a different style kilt, Greenbrier probably would have thought more highly of them, respecting each individual as someone who displayed his personal “values.” It became an existential problem for Greenbrier when the entire group wore the same kilt. In the age of conspiracy theories, people might suspect collusion.

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      The reigning ideology is built on a basic premise of the consumer society, that what an individual does is meant to be an expression of personality and individuality. What a group does expresses allegiance to a worldview. 

      The borderline between a personal statement and wearing a uniform has become so vague that we can now categorize clothes as belonging to one of three categories: personal style, uniform (imposed by an institution) or quasi-uniform (adopted by members with shared identity). Clothing has always sent messages about social status, but now it has become an active vector of meaning in personal strategies of advertising. Behind the idea of quasi-uniform lies the conviction that all people belong to separate and possibly multiple categories of identity, which they are required to display in public. Whether it’s a kilt, a medieval tunic or tattoos, people increasingly feel impelled to wear their brands.

      Like everything else in US culture, at some point, this cultural distinction becomes not just a political or ideological problem, but also an economic one. Greenbrier explains: “I can’t control who buys my product, but if they’re buying our product, they’re putting their money towards a good cause and I think they won’t be too happy when they find out they accidentally bought from a company that’s really fighting for the opposite of what they believe in.” Spending and the way one spends have become central to defining one’s relationships with others.

      Historical Note

      When, at the beginning of the 16th century, Renaissance princes and their courtiers rivaled amongst themselves to put on display their most expensive and sophisticated finery, England’s Lord Chancellor and humanist philosopher Thomas More offered his critique of the role of fashion in his famous work, “Utopia”: “Throughout the island they wear the same sort of clothes without any other distinction except what is necessary to distinguish the two sexes and the married and unmarried. The fashion never alters, and as it is neither disagreeable nor uneasy, so it is suited to the climate, and calculated both for their summers and winters. Every family makes their own clothes.”

      More’s idea of dressing, not to impress, but to carry on one’s life as pragmatically as possible, was actually a sophisticated attempt to reconcile simplicity and the rejection of ostentation with freedom of personal expression. The latter would be the consequence of every family making its own clothes. Clothing would be neither a tool of self-advertising, as it was at the English court, nor a standardized uniform imposed by authority.

      For the following five centuries, the ruling classes and the commercial classes that emerged subsequently in Europe blissfully ignored More’s advice. French King Louis XIV’s court pushed extravagance to an unparalleled extreme, partly as a strategic move to ensure that other aristocrats would follow rather than try to lead, but also to put pressure on their budgets, forcing them to invest in fashion rather than military capacity that might serve to overthrow royal authority. The uprising of La Fronde had made Louis fearful of revolt.

      The bourgeois society that emerged in Europe in the 19th century discovered the value of permanently evolving fashions that stimulated demand over time from the same customers. Fashions themselves, combined with the new capacity for mass industrial production, induced entire populations to adopt conformist behaviors serving to affirm one’s status as a respectable consumer as well as advertise the emerging cultural notion of “being with it” or keeping up with the trends.

      Embed from Getty Images

      In America’s highly conformist consumer culture of the 1950s, the Beatniks initiated the counter-cultural movement and touted the theme of anti-conformism. But when most male beatniks grew long hair and beards, they were sometimes accused of being conformist themselves. With the hippies a decade later, the idea of personal expression based on chosen cultural signs — borrowed from cowboys, Native Americans, Asian religions and other exotic sources — came to dominate people’s ideas about the purpose of clothing as an expression of cultural values and identity.

      The controversy about the kilts demonstrates how deeply ingrained all these contradictory instincts have become. Verillas appears willing to sacrifice revenue to defend the integrity of the brand’s association with one set of social values. That paradoxically appears to contradict the spirit of capitalism, where companies offer the same goods to all comers as they seek to exploit the full potential of the marketplace. But perhaps another principle is at work here, the factor of earned media. A story that can both make the news and serve to define a company’s social or moral identity is far more valuable than paid advertising.

      The Verillas story includes an emotionally charged dramatic component: betrayal by one’s customers. But Verillas’ marketers undoubtedly realize that it serves very effectively to stir curiosity for its products from its targeted market segment. The company designed its image to appeal to proponents of the current vogue of identity culture associated with the left. Using an incident that highlights their opposition to a notorious right-wing movement is well worth sacrificing the income from the sale to bolster their brand identity. That kind of reasoning has become a quasi-uniform bit of marketing wisdom.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Britain’s Commitment to Retaining the Spoils of History

      by

      This past weekend, The Guardian unearthed a story from the past that throws an oblique light on the present. It began with an odd couple and led to the creation of a real one. The odd couple is the American actor George Clooney and the current UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Their conflict aired in public at the time marks the origin of the making of a real couple: Clooney and his future bride, the human rights lawyer Amal Alamuddin.

      In 2014, Clooney made a public statement about a controversy that had been raging for decades over the presence in London of what are called the Elgin Marbles or, more properly, the Parthenon Sculptures. These are a collection of ancient Greek statues and carvings removed from the most famous monument of ancient Athens by the Scottish aristocrat, Thomas Bruce, earl of Elgin. 

      This transfer of ancient artwork took place at the beginning of the 19th century, when the Ottoman empire controlled Greece. Lord Elgin was Britain’s ambassador to the Ottoman empire, who clearly was more interested in Greek history and art than the Ottomans themselves. He requested permission to sketch the remains of what had been left in partial ruin and even obtained weakly formulated permission to “to take away any pieces of stone with old inscriptions or figures thereon.” 

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      He employed artists to do the sketching but took on board personally the business of taking away the pieces with inscriptions and figures. As traditional Muslims, the Ottomans were not merely iconoclasts, but aniconists, denouncing the representation of sentient beings. They may have felt relieved that some of the “graven images” were being removed from a territory they controlled. Bruce dutifully collected what interested him and sent them to England, where for nearly two centuries they have been on display in the British Museum.

      While promoting the release of his film “The Monuments Men,” about the Nazi theft of great European artwork, consistent with the theme of the movie Clooney voiced his support for the Greek claim that the artwork should be returned to Athens. Clooney’s remarks drew the attention of London’s mayor at that time, a certain Boris Johnson. Boris felt very strongly that the town over which he presided should be recognized as the rightful owner of the Greek artwork. 

      Summoning up his patented talent for stale puns and personal put-downs, Johnson told The Telegraph: “Someone urgently needs to restore George Clooney’s marbles.” This turned into a public scandal as Johnson went further, accusing Clooney of “advocating nothing less than the Hitlerian agenda for London’s cultural treasures.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Cultural treasures:

      Valuable items produced by one culture that are considered even more valuable when pilfered from their original setting and possessed by another culture, in part because they stand as a symbol of former dominance.

      Contextual Note

      Since those events in 2014, several things have happened. Johnson eventually became Britain’s prime minister, thanks primarily to a series of shambolic episodes surrounding the still ongoing dog-and-pony show Boris put together in 2016, known as Brexit. Clooney married later that year. 

      The actor explained to The Observer that, after Johnson’s outburst, he needed to be briefed on the status of the controversy surrounding the Parthenon marbles. He accordingly arranged to meet the lawyer who was pleading the case for the return of the artwork. The lawyer’s name was Amal Alamuddin. Without Johnson’s denunciation of an American interloper in London’s business, the now happy couple might never have met.

      Embed from Getty Images

      In the same edition of The Guardian, a casual reader could have happened upon another article, with the title “Wealthy MP urged to pay up for his family’s slave trade past,” which is also about the British habit of plundering the riches of other regions of the world in the days of empire. The authors, Paul Lashmar and Jonathan Smith, recount how Richard Drax, the Conservative MP for South Dorset, recently inherited a plantation in Barbados that owed its prosperity in former times to the brutal exploitation of African slaves.

      Modern voices, including the Barbadian historian of slavery, Sir Hilary Beckles, are now demanding “reparatory justice” for the crimes of Drax’s ancestors. Beckles reminded Drax of the historical truth that “Black life mattered only to make millionaires of English enslavers and the Drax family did it longer than any other elite family.” The Guardian notes that Drax recognizes these facts from his family’s past. But like many Britons, he has been taught to think of history as a subject of study that serves primarily to fascinate schoolchildren with inspiring stories of heroism from the past. 

      Serious people, as the MP clearly understands, must focus on the issues of the day. Brexit for instance, which Drax has consistently voted for, as well as aggressive Britain’s military combat operations overseas. After all, all modern combat engaged by Britain, essentially in the Middle East, aims at telling darker-skinned people who’s boss. It’s in his family’s tradition.

      Historical Note

      The Guardian notes that Drax “is probably the wealthiest landowner in the House of Commons, with 5,600 hectares of farmland and woodlands. The estate’s finances are largely opaque to the public gaze and involve at least six trusts and other disconnected financial entities.” With such resources, Drax has had plenty of time to reflect on the logic of history and to develop an understanding of his own position in it, both as the scion of a colonial family and a legislator in a modern democracy.

      Drax explains the state of his understanding: “I am keenly aware of the slave trade in the West Indies, and the role my very distant ancestor played in it is deeply, deeply regrettable, but no one can be held responsible today for what happened many hundreds of years ago. This is a part of the nation’s history, from which we must all learn.” With his repeated “deeply,” Drax appears to echo the Lewis Carroll’s Walrus feasting on the oysters he had earlier befriended.

      I weep for you,’ the Walrus said:

            I deeply sympathize.’

      With sobs and tears he sorted out

            Those of the largest size. More

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      in US Politics

      After Trump review: a provocative case for reform by Biden and beyond

      by

      At times, the Trump administration has seemed like a wrecking ball, careening from floor to floor of a building being destroyed, observers never quite knowing where the ball will strike next. At others, it has worked stealthily to undermine rules and norms, presumably fearing that, as the great supreme court justice Louis Brandeis wrote, “sunshine is the best of disinfectants”.
      These changes, far beyond politics or differences of opinion on policy, should trouble all those who care about the future of the American republic. Jack Goldsmith and Bob Bauer, veterans of Republican (Bush) and Democratic (Clinton) administrations, are students of the presidency whose scholarship is informed by their service. They have combined to write a field guide to the damage and serious proposals to undo it.
      Presidencies do not exist in a vacuum, and many of the excesses of which the authors complain did not begin in 2017. But Trump upped the stakes: the violations of rules and norms are not merely quantitatively more numerous but qualitatively different. Whether seeking to fire the special counsel investigating him, making money from his businesses or attacking the press, he has made breathtaking changes.
      As the authors write, “Trump has merged the institution of the presidency with his personal interests and has used the former to serve the latter”, attacking “core institutions of American democracy” to an extent no president had before.
      The American constitutional system, unlike the British, is one of enumerated powers. But over 230 years, norms have arisen. Unlike laws of which violations are (usually) clear, norms are “nonlegal principles of appropriate or expected behavior that presidents and other officials tacitly accept and that typically structure their actions”. In an illustration of the great American poet Carl Sandburg’s observation that “The fog comes on little cat feet”, norms “are rarely noticed until they are violated, as the nation has experienced on a weekly and often daily basis during the Trump presidency”.
      Those two axioms – that Trump’s offences are worse than others and that norms can easily be overcome by a determined president – show reform is essential.
      The first section of After Trump deals with the presidency itself: the dangers of foreign influence, conflicts of interest, attacks on the press and abuses of the pardon power.
      Here the reforms – political campaigns reporting foreign contacts, a requirement to disclose the president’s tax returns and criminalizing pardons given to obstruct justice – are generally straightforward. Regarding the press, where Trump has engaged in “virulent, constant attacks” and tried to claim his Twitter account was not a public record even as he happily fired public officials on it, the authors would establish that due process applies to attempted removal of a press pass and make legal changes to deter harassment of or reprisals against the media because “the elevation of this issue clarifies, strengthens, and sets up an apparatus for the enforcement of norms”.
      Goldsmith and Bauer’s second section focuses on technical legal issues, specifically those surrounding special counsels, investigation of the president, and the relationship between the White House and justice department.
      The American constitution is far more rigid that the British but it too has points of subtlety and suppleness. One example is the relationship between the president and an attorney general subordinate to the president but also duty bound to provide impartial justice, even when it concerns the president.
      The issues may seem arcane, but they are vital: “Of the multitude of norms that Donald Trump has broken as president, perhaps none has caused more commentary and consternation than his efforts to defy justice department independence and politicize the department’s enforcement of civil and criminal law.”
      And yet even as the attorney general, William Barr, sought a more lenient sentence for Roger Stone, stood by as Trump fired the US attorney in New York City, and kept up a “running public commentary” on an investigation of the origins of the investigation into the Trump campaign, the authors oppose those actions but remain cautious. They decline to endorse some of the more radical proposals, such as separating the justice department from the executive branch. More

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      Just the Job: Bill Murray biblical reading seeks to bridge US partisan divide

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      Against the backdrop of a pandemic and an acrimonious election, a group of acclaimed actors were on Sunday set to stage an online reading of an appropriate religious text: the Book of Job.Groundhog Day star Bill Murray was cast as Job, the righteous man tested by the loss of his health, home and children.Staged on Zoom, the reading was aimed at Knox county, a Republican-leaning area of Ohio, and designed to spark conversation across spiritual and political divides. The structure of a reading followed by dialogue is a fixture of Theater of War Productions, whose artistic director, Bryan Doerries, went to Kenyon College in Knox county.Theater of War held its first Job reading in Joplin, Missouri, a year after a tornado killed more than 160 there in 2011. The company has performed more than 1,700 readings worldwide, harnessing Greek drama and other resonant texts.By using Job’s story “as a vocabulary for a conversation, the hope is that we can actually engender connection, healing,” Doerries said. “People can hear each other’s truths even if they don’t agree with them.”The cast headlined by Murray featured other noted actors including Frankie Faison and David Strathairn. But Matthew Starr, mayor of the Knox county town of Mount Vernon, was cast as Job’s accuser. The Republican, a supporter of Donald Trump, said he hoped the event could lead to less shouting and more listening.“God does not say that bad things aren’t going to happen but he does tell us, when they do, we’re not alone,” Starr said. “That’s the hope for me, is that we get a chance to lean into our faith, we get a chance to lean into our neighbors, we get a chance to lean into each other, our family, a little bit more.”Knox county, a community of about 62,000, lies about an hour east of the Ohio state capital, Columbus. Most in the county work blue-collar manufacturing jobs. The county is 97% white and voted for Trump by nearly three to one. An exception is Kenyon College, a small liberal arts school outside Mount Vernon. Voters there and in the village of Gambier voted eight to one for Joe Biden.Marc Bragin, Jewish chaplain at Kenyon, said he hoped the reading would help people look beyond their differences. Pastor LJ Harry said he did not believe Knox county is as divided as other places in the US. The police chaplain and pastor at the Apostolic Church of Christ in Mount Vernon said most in the area were united in their support for Trump and for law enforcement.Harry said the biggest point of contention was over mask-wearing, with many resisting Republican governor Mike DeWine’s statewide mandate. He also likened Knox county’s need for healing to that of a patient who has left intensive care but remains in a step-down unit.Harry said the message he hoped people took from the Job reading was that “God has this in control, even though it feels like it’s out of control”.In the biblical tale, God uses Job’s losses to share broader truths about suffering. The story ends with the restoration of what was taken, and more.“Our hope is not that there’s going to be a group hug at the end of the thing,” Doerries said, “or that we’re going to resolve all our political differences, but that we can remind people of our basic humanity: what it requires to live up to basic values such as treating our neighbor as ourselves.” More

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      What next? Three books for America after Trump

      by

      On 3 November, a majority of the US electorate voted to eject the president from the White House. Yet Donald Trump still refuses to accept the verdict. Populism’s pretense of devotion to “the will of the people” lies in shambles. Conservatives have demonstrated their readiness to jettison democracy for the sake of clinging to power or appeasing an unhinged man-child.Ominously, Gen Michael Flynn has demanded martial law and suspending the constitution. Elsewhere, one Michigan Republican called for voiding the vote in Wayne county, thereby disenfranchising Detroit. At the same time, the president and his allies remain committed to burnishing the legacy of long-dead Confederate generals, even if means killing a pay increase for US troops.As Thomas Ricks reminds us in First Principles, the paradox of equality melded to racism dates back to the founding. The most famous pronouncement in the Declaration of Independence, “that all men are created equal”, was written by a slave-owner, Thomas Jefferson.A Pulitzer-winning author and military historian, Ricks also observes that one of our two parties has felt perpetually compelled to offer a “home to white supremacists, up to the present day”. First the Democrats, now the Republicans.Case in point: the fight over DC statehood. Back in June, the Arkansas senator Tom Cotton argued that the majority-minority District of Columbia (population 684,000) did not deserve to be a state because it lacked the “well-rounded working class” of Wyoming (population: 577,000).Elsewhere, Mike Pompeo, Trump’s secretary of state, recently tweeted that it was “essential” to “keep Ethiopia on the path to democracy”. The US has seen this movie before, back when the cold war turned hot and the rice paddies of south-east Asia became killing fields.While freedom was supposedly on the march overseas, the home front was markedly different. Black churches were bombed. Martin Luther King was jailed, stabbed, assassinated. John Lewis was beaten in Selma. Others were sent to an early grave.Jon Meacham is a native of Tennessee, a biographer of George HW Bush and now a speechwriter for Joe Biden. In His Truth is Marching On, his new book about the young Lewis, Meacham says “the hypocrisy of an America fighting for liberty abroad while tolerating white supremacy at home” characterised the Vietnam era.And yet as Edmund Fawcett, a self-described “leftwing liberal” and former writer at the Economist, notes in his new book, Conservatism, “although liberal democracy is a child of the left, its growth and health have relied on support from the right.” Half a century ago, Senate Republicans defeated a southern Democratic-led filibuster and enacted the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Those days are gone.He also posits that “when, as now, the right is divided, the haves sleep less easily that government is in safe hands.” Said differently, monied America is not simply about tax cuts. It can even come with a conscience, a reality that troubles both the president and the woke left. Philadelphia’s upscale suburbs made the difference for Biden in Pennsylvania, and possibly the US.Fawcett is keenly aware of the rise of the hard right, of Trumpism in America, of Marine Le Pen in France, UKIP in Great Britain and the AfD in Germany. “The arrival of a new century,” he writes, “scrambled assumptions and shook the conservative center.” These tremors continue. Brexit tethered to a pandemic is expensive – and lethal.Amid America’s winter of political discontent, Ricks, Meacham and Fawcett are well worth reading. Each conveys a message that deserves our attention as we strive to exit, or at least better understand, the morass.The way of CincinnatusSpurred by the seismic shock of the 2016 election, First Principles focuses on America’s first four presidents, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, their education and outlooks. In Ricks’ view, ancient Greece and Rome influenced these men more than contemporary religion.“Christianity simply did not loom as large in colonial America as it would a century later,” Ricks writes, “or indeed does now.” The Declaration of Independence summons the Creator and Nature’s God but Jesus does not appear. The constitution refers to religion but is silent as to a deity.Between Greece and Rome, Ricks contends the latter held sway over the early presidents, with the exception of Jefferson. In the run-up to and aftermath of the revolutionary war, Rome came to exemplify republicanism, civic virtue and stoicism, as well as a cautionary tale of decline and tyranny. It came as little surprise that Washington would lead the new nation. More remarkable was the fact that he did not seize power and instead stepped down voluntarily. Cincinnatus, the citizen-soldier, was the paragon, Caesar the anathema.Even so, it is Jefferson, Greece and the epicurean notion of happiness that mark our Fourth of July celebrations. America’s Declaration of Independence hinged on a country dedicated to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”, instead of John Locke’s formulation of government existing explicitly to protect property. Importantly, for Jefferson happiness was about more than just the right to party. Rather, it spoke to a general tranquility and the possibility of a common purpose.His subtle shift in wording was seismic: the landless could no longer be so easily marginalized or subordinated. A single phrase would help incubate the seeds of Jacksonian democracy. “America works best when it gives people the freedom to tap their own energies and exploit their talents,” Ricks concludes.‘The way of Jesus’Under the subtitle John Lewis and the Power of Hope, Meacham covers the first 28 years of the civil rights leader’s life, from his birth in 1940 to the murders of Dr King and Robert Kennedy in 1968. It is practically a hagiography, portraying Lewis as saint and hero – and yet imperfect.As a boy, Lewis preached to the chickens on the family farm. Later he attended American Baptist College in Nashville, Tennessee. He was ordained as a minister but instead of settling into a pulpit, he took up the cross and threw his body and soul into the civil rights movement.In Meacham’s telling, Lewis “rejected the tragedy of life and history” and “embraced the possibilities of realizing a joyful ideal”. The late congressman “seemed to walk with Jesus himself”, making the cause of the poor, the downtrodden and the oppressed his own.Meacham’s religious tenor is organic. He is a believing Christian who discounts a wholly secular public square. Instead, he observes that “one way to a nation where equality before the law and before God is more universal, is the way of King and of Lewis. Which is also the way of Jesus.”Unlike Ricks, Meacham sees the constitution as a distinctly Calvinist document. It is “theological and assumes our sinfulness and that we will do the wrong thing far more often than the right thing”. He adds: “We have done everything since then to prove them right.”Fittingly, Meacham gives Lewis the final say in the book’s “afterword”, in which the congressman plays off the text of the Gospel of John, proclaiming that America’s “moral compass comes from God, is of God, and is seen through God”.More hauntingly, Lewis writes: “And God so loved the world that he gave us countless men and women who lost their homes and their jobs for the right to vote” and the “children of freedom who their lives in a bombing in Birmingham and three young men who were killed in Mississippi”.In other words, Christ’s Passion can be relived and reimagined; suffering can bring redemption in this world. Those who bled and died were more than just historic figures.The way of Weimar?If anyone needs further reminder of the American right’s apparent discomfort with universal suffrage, Fawcett offers a telling examination of extreme libertarianism and populism. He recalls the work of Jason Brennan, a Georgetown business school professor who complains of “ignorant majorities” and their capacity to “thwart” economic growth.Unmentioned is Palantir’s Peter Thiel and his infamous 2009 take: that women and minorities have mucked things up. Thiel has since partnered with the Trump administration, and holds a passel of government contracts.Back then, he wrote: “Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women – two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians – have rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron.”Fawcett also calls our attention to the tension between populism and participatory democracy. His characterizations are borne out by the last gasps of Trump’s presidency. He asserts that “populists are ill at ease with multi-party competition” and “indifferent or hostile to countervailing powers within the state or society”.Here, Fawcett is dead on. Trump’s campaign cries of “lock her up”, branding the press as “the enemy of the people” and bashing the “deep state” are cut from the same cloth.The final paragraphs of Conservatism pose these questions regarding the center-right: “Do they side with the hard right and leave liberal democracy to the mercies of uncontrolled markets and national populism? Or do they look for allies with whom to rebuild a shaken center?”If the response of Republican congressional leadership to Trump is a case study, the answer is discouraging. The other day, Mitch McConnell stood sobbing in the Senate over a colleague’s pending departure but had nothing to say about the president’s destructive behavior. Weimar is not an abstract. In the end, guardrails don’t always withstand the stress. More