To My Readers

Five Years of Unpopular Front

Dear Unpopular Front Readers,

Usually on Sunday, you’d be getting my weekly reading and watching recommendations, but for a couple of reasons, I’m doing something different today. Obviously, the first reason is the horrific killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis by masked Federal agents. But the second reason is that Tuesday, January 27, will mark five years since I started this newsletter. I thought it might be the right time to offer some reflections on what I feel I have and have not accomplished here, and what I hope for it in the future.

I started this newsletter shortly after January 6th, 2021, and the basic premise was that the events of that day marked a significant break in the history of the United States, and that we were entering a new era in which the old verities of American politics were no longer applicable. To my dismay, this was not a universally shared opinion on the left. I believed this new reality posed not just a significant political issue but also an intellectual problem: it was harder and harder for people to judge what was taking place. As the election denial push took shape in December of 2020, I wrote on Twitter:

Being charitable, I think the problem is that this type of politics outrages common sense, so the reaction of sensible people is often to be like “oh, this couldn’t be happening because it’s absurd”, sometimes that judgment will be correct, of course, but sometimes it will not.

I still think the intellectually honest approach to this era and its politics is that it poses real serious challenges to our powers of judgment, and it’s not really that easy to dismiss or encapsulate what’s going on with a phrase

Sometimes it’s actually harder for people with a record of good judgment and discerning critical powers to see what’s going on, because they are relying (correctly in most cases) on common sense to do so much of the work for them.

So, the goal of this substack was therefore to broaden the horizon of imagination and provide more cases to aid in the judgment of the present. My guide in this, as in most things, was Hannah Arendt, particularly her work on Kant. Judgment, according to Arendt and Kant, is a process of applying a general concept to a particular thing. It seems to happen automatically in the mind, and be ordinary, but it is a “mysterious” faculty. Judgment cannot be taught according to rules, but has to be “sharpened” with examples.

The first example I investigated in this newsletter was supplied to me in an email exchange with the historian Robert Paxton on January 6th, where he said how much it reminded him of the riots of February 6, 1934, when far-right paramilitaries menaced France’s parliament. That insight began a long series on the political crises of the French Third Republic, from the Dreyfus Affair up to Vichy. I thought this might expand people’s notion of what fascism’s rise in a democracy could mean beyond the stereotypes and cartoons of Mussolini and Hitler.

But the project of this newsletter goes back quite a bit farther: to five years before that. It was clear to me from the emergence of Trump as a political phenomenon that we were faced with a deep national crisis that might result in catastrophes. I couldn’t yet articulate this; it was at first only a matter of feeling and imagination. In the days after Trump’s victory in 2016, I went almost mad. I envisioned a collapse of American society, the creation of an authoritarian or even totalitarian regime; I saw its cities engulfed in unrest, beset by gangs of thugs and their state allies, essentially pogroms on a vast scale. This did not come to pass. But the types of things I saw in those disorienting days did come to be, but in smaller and more limited ways, in Charlottesville, January 6th, and Minneapolis. I just saw these things being constant and on a mass scale rather than episodic. So, in a sense, the project here is also a personal one. It helps me temper the emotional and imaginative content I spontaneously produce with some grounding in reason and reality, and in communication with others.

I have to say that the reality of the past decade or so has been much less dark than I envisioned, even when it approaches it in outlines, and I think I glimpse the abyss again. I have a much better eye for darkness than light, unfortunately. I constantly have to correct this defect. I did not foresee the resilience and goodness of the American people, how they would fight hard for their freedoms and their neighbors, how they would sacrifice their safety and comfort for those causes. For instance, I did not imagine that Americans could be so enraged by the murder of one man to take to the streets in the millions. But I have also experienced some bitter disappointments: people and institutions I trusted, perhaps naively, becoming corrupted and cowed.

I think ultimately I’ve made very little contribution to changing people’s minds about the present. Unfortunately, events have done the persuading for me, and now some of the ideas and positions I fought for, along with like-minded people, are becoming common sense. I wish very sorely that these opinions had remained the province of isolated eccentrics. I’m proud of my worldly success, such as it is, but I’d gladly trade it for an obscure existence in a happier and more peaceful country.

Since I started this newsletter, I’ve also written a book. That was a tremendously gratifying experience, which I hope to repeat in the not-too-distant future. But this brings me to my current frustration with this project. I started out doing long historical reflections and essays, and now I feel forced to respond constantly to the news. I think my prose and thought have suffered a bit as a result. In the coming year, I hope to return to more considered pieces. As a result, I may slow down a bit with the pace of publishing. I hope you will be patient with me as I try this new approach, but I’m finding that so much of what I want to say is now being said elsewhere, and with more intensity and passion than I’m able to muster. I’m a little tired of repeating myself, and I’d like to find something new to say. I think we will both benefit.

Finally, I want to say thank you, deeply, for supporting me these past five years. This has become my job and my career because of all of you. That part feels miraculous despite all the horrors elsewhere: I never thought I’d make a living from my writing, let alone reach so many interested and engaged readers. That’s a wonderful privilege, and I’m extremely honored and grateful to all of you for providing it to me.

With my heartfelt gratitude,

John