Welcome to Vichy America

After the Fall

First of all, the big question on everybody’s mind: did he or didn’t he? Was that really a Hitlergruß or just merely an awkward gesture of gratitude from the famously maladroit Musk? Here we have a preview of the next four (maybe more?) years—and an encapsulation of the past ten—we have actions that appear manifestly fascist but—maybe—if you squint or turn your head sideways, it’s something else. The cynics are going to say, “Come on, don’t be ridiculous.” This has been their refrain for the last decade: “Don’t be ridiculous. Don’t be hysterical.” But how ridiculous is it really to wonder? This is not coming out of nowhere: everything happens in a context. Musk has turned Twitter into a Nazi playground and repeatedly signaled sympathy to the far right. He’s also an idiot asshole jerk who would do that for a lark, as a troll. To get everybody riled up and then to deny it. So it would make sense for him to do that. It really wouldn’t be that crazy.

If you want an analogy for the present state of America it’s perhaps not an out-and-out fascist regime, but a Vichy regime. It’s partly fascist but mostly just a reactionary and defeatist catch-all. It’s a regime born of capitulation and of defeat: of the slow and then sudden collapse of the longstanding institutions of a great democracy whose defenders turned out to be senile and unable to cope with or understand modern politics. It’s a regime of born exhaustion, nihilism, and cynicism: the loss of faith in the old verities of the republic. A regime of national humiliation pretending to be a regime of restoration of national honor. It claims to be at once a national revolution and a national restoration. It’s a hybrid regime: a coalition that includes the fascist far right, of course, but also technocratic modernizers who might have once called themselves liberals, the big industrialists, and old social conservatives. Even some disaffected socialists and leftists for whom liberalism was always the main enemy want to give it the benefit of the doubt. It’s a regime of collaboration and sympathy: the #resistance may have dominated the political style of the first Trump administration, but now, as Trump says, everyone wants to be his friend.

People are quickly discovering what they once professed to find unacceptable might not be so bad. And it will be felt as a relief. No longer will they have to echo bien-pensant hypocrisies, they can engage in frank, honest assertions of their self-interest. Maybe refugees are not so welcome here after all. In this house, maybe we believe in nothing but our property values. “Plutot Trump que le Wokisme” seems to be the slogan of the center-right that once whinged about the Constitution and our sacred norms. It will be a regime of bad faith: it will attract all those who do one thing while pretending to do another. Afterward, when the full shame of the situation is revealed, the collaborators will claim to have been secret resistants.

There is revisionist history going on that claims the no-holds-barred opposition to Trump in his first term was counterproductive and set up his return the second time. At the same time, many of the same people say that Trump was and will be a weak president. But weakness is tested by resistance. The mass mobilizations of the early Trump period, the Women’s March, and the demonstrations against the Muslim ban showed an angry and aroused public, willing to push back. The fusillades the media launched against him may turn out to have been their last hurrah: they spent all their ammunition and credibility, and now are cowed and compliant, unsure of what to do. As France collapsed in the face of the German onslaught, Churchill asked General Gamelin, “Où est la masse de manoeuvre?” Where is the strategic reserve? Churchill recalled the heroic mobilization of the population in WWI. Gamelin’s replied, “Aucune!” There is none. That seems to be the position of anti-Trumpism at the moment: It has exhausted its reserves. But perhaps, they are merely re-forming and developing new strategies to replace old ones. In The Prison Notebooks, Gramsci wrote that sometimes an apparent breakthrough in politics can be deceiving and that there often remains another line of defense:

The superstructures of civil society are like the trench-systems of modern warfare. In war it would sometimes happen that a fierce artillery attack seemed to have destroyed the enemy's entire defensive system, whereas in fact it had only destroyed the outer perimeter; and at the moment of their advance and attack the the assailants would find themselves confronted by a line of defence which was still effective. The same thing happens in politics…. A crisis cannot give the attacking forces the ability to organise with lightning speed in time and in space ; still less can it endow them with fighting spirit. Similarly, the defenders are not demoralised, nor do they abandon their positions, even among the ruins, nor do they lose faith in their own strength or their own future.

We will find out very quickly what lines in civil society still hold. And people will grow exhausted from this too and miss the old days. Another quote, this time from Irène Némirovsky, “The French grew tired of the Republic as if she were an old wife. For them, the dictatorship was a brief affair, adultery. But they intended to cheat on their wife, not to kill her. Now they realize that she is dead, their Republic, their freedom. They are mourning her.” People will come to regret their dalliance with Trump, who is not a lover, but something else altogether.