The Thomas-Crow Affair

Daylight in the Garden of Evil

Last week, ProPublica revealed that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas had, for years, been the recipient of generous gifts, mostly in the form of lavish vacations and trips, from billionaire Harlan Crow. It turns out now that Crow, a Texas real-estate developer and benefactor of conservative causes, has some rather unusual taste in decor. He has a personal garden full of statues of fallen Communist dictators, including two busts of Nicolae Ceauscescu. This “garden of evil” is apparently supposed to serve as some kind of warning from history. But the Eastern Bloc is not the only totalitarian tendency that gives Crow his collector’s itch. He also apparently has an extensive collection of Nazi memorabilia, including two of Hitler’s paintings and a signed copy of Mein Kampf. The exposure of Crow’s Hitlerian mementos has occasioned a second scandal and the left is gleefully making a lot of hay out of it. Meanwhile, just about the entire Republican party and conservative movement is leaping to defend Crow, saying what a lovely and noble person he is and that the idea he is a Nazi is absurd and slanderous. They are probably right about that: I highly doubt that Crow is a devoted National Socialist. Nonetheless, I think this entire episode is quite revealing in a couple of ways.

Collecting sculptures of dictators and Nazi knick-knacks reveals more than bad taste, which, unfortunately, still cannot be counted as a crime. It is downright creepy. The reason it is creepy is that it shows an unwholesome fascination with power and domination. Crow might earnestly think he is buying this stuff to provide some kind of object lesson about the perils of tyranny, but there is an unavoidable suggestion of idolatry and vulgar power-worship just under the surface. The reason such objects would be impressive and interesting to a person like this and to his guests is that they are almost occult talismans: they are fetish objects, redolent of the power of evil. A certain hocus-pocus attaches to these things that says, “I am competent to handle and own these objects, because I am one of the rulers.” It’s similar to the attitude revealed by Crow’s membership in secret societies like the Bohemian Club: pretensions to membership in the world’s hidden elite.

The belief that by privately owning these objects, rather than giving them to a museum or archive, one is somehow helping the world is pretty dubious. He clearly feels the need to hold these baubles close to his breast. Such are the peccadilloes of the ruling classes: like cult practices, they are both a little bit silly and a little bit sinister.

The other notable and even quite funny thing is the total consensus among conservatives in publicly defending Crow. I haven’t seen them this together on anything since the Kavanaugh hearings. They clearly know who butters their bread. Marco Rubio held a fundraiser at the Crow mansion and now is dutifully returning the favor with stentorian defenses of his patron. Members of the right-wing intelligentsia, surely not all of whom can be direct beneficiaries of Crow, are mounting the barricades for this magnate. Whatever notions they have of their own little missions and independence, these intellectuals know when their real masters are in need, they must come running. The entire movement and party exists to do the political work of this class. Harlan Crow is a member of the regional, closely-held, and family business fraction of capital that has long been the central constituency of the G.O.P. These are the DeVoses, the Uihleins, the Mercers, the Kochs, the Kohlers, the Millikens, and, the Crows, of the world. Justice Thomas, of course, attacks all the things that bedevil these oligarchs, most especially labor unions and federal regulations.

Is this a story about corruption? Well, yes, technically Thomas may have broken some ethics rules. But what this all actually gives us insight into is the real social architecture of right-wing politics: the literal coziness between its business patrons and its operatives. I have no doubt that the Crows and Thomases are genuine friends. Such close personal bonds are just as much the stuff of movements and parties as slogans and ideologies. Class rule rarely needs to descend to crude expedients like bribery or blackmail: they all know, at the end of the day, they are on the same team.