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One sign, waved by someone some­how #Still­With­H­er, reads: “Not my pres­id­ent.” An­oth­er echoes the pop­u­lar chant: “We re­ject the pres­id­ent elect.” Fi­nally, and most ubi­quit­ously: “Love trumps hate.”

Such are the slo­gans seen and heard at anti-Trump ral­lies since elec­tion res­ults rolled in. Call­ing them ri­ots is push­ing it; these are pretty pro­sa­ic af­fairs. I usu­ally don’t put too much stock in the mot­toes and phrases mind­lessly re­peated at rituals of dis­sent, but here the last ex­ample men­tioned at the out­set in­struct­ive. Does love in­deed trump hate? Per­haps. Read­ers of Ma­chiavelli will re­call that there’s an­oth­er sen­ti­ment, however, more power­ful than love or hate: fear. More on this a bit later; for now, let’s ex­am­ine the forms of mo­bil­iz­a­tion that have cropped up in re­sponse to the pro­spect of a Trump pres­id­ency.

Hysterical liberalism and protest politics

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Lib­er­als know that people are angry, so they’ve brought in their ap­poin­ted “com­mu­nity lead­ers,” preach­ers, and vari­ous oth­er “peace­keep­ers” to pre­vent these protests from be­ing any­thing oth­er than im­pot­ent cry-ins. M. Har­lan Hoke was for­tu­nate enough to at­tend a de­mon­stra­tion in Philly or­gan­ized by So­cial­ist Al­tern­at­ive, rather than by dis­gruntled Dems. He com­ments that SAlt at least man­aged to stay on point by fo­cus­ing on val­id eco­nom­ic griev­ances and the need for com­pre­hens­ive so­cial re­form, while also ac­know­ledging the con­cerns of groups frightened by Trump’s in­flam­mat­ory rhet­or­ic on im­mig­ra­tion, re­li­gious dis­crim­in­a­tion, and abor­tion.

Else­where, in the more “spon­tan­eous” marches — quickly com­mand­eered by pro­fes­sion­al act­iv­ists and NGO rep­res­ent­at­ives loy­al to the Demo­crat­ic Party — their pur­pose was much less clear. In a post on his new blog, Im­per­i­um ad In­fin­itum, Hoke ob­serves that “in oth­er cit­ies, the theme of the protests is ba­sic­ally angry ob­li­vi­ous Demo­crats. Their mes­sage is what? Vote Demo­crat in the 2018 and 2020 midterms? Just keep protest­ing Trump?” Protest polit­ics are fairly lim­ited to be­gin with, and I have my cri­ti­cisms even of pop­u­lar front co­ali­tions formed by parties and or­gan­iz­a­tions fur­ther to the left (I’ll get to this later). For now it’s enough to em­phas­ize that lib­er­al­ism is a total dead end.

THE REVOLUTION IS COMING.

— KATY PERRY (@katyperry) November 9, 2016

Woke celebrit­ies like Lena Dun­ham, Beyoncé Knowles, and Aman­da Mar­cotte are also out in force, of course, ex­press­ing their sanc­ti­mo­ni­ous dis­may. Katy Perry is pro­claim­ing open re­volu­tion in widely-shared tweets. But these are un­likely to carry over in­to the real world. Pop sing­er and Ary­an god­dess Taylor Swift has re­mained con­spicu­ously si­lent throughout all of this. Then again, she’s un­wit­tingly be­come the darling Valkyrie of the al­tern­at­ive right, so maybe it’s in her best in­terest to hang back for a bit and see how things play out. Ri­ot grrrl pi­on­eers Le Tigre hope­fully re­gret that cringe-in­du­cing video en­dorse­ment of the would-be Ma­dame Pres­id­ent.

Ber­to­lt Brecht, class-con­scious poet of a by­gone age, knew bet­ter than this. He re­marked in 1937 that “to present Hitler as par­tic­u­larly in­com­pet­ent — as an ab­er­ra­tion, a per­ver­sion, hum­bug, a pe­cu­li­ar patho­lo­gic­al case — while set­ting up oth­er bour­geois politi­cians as mod­els — mod­els of something he has failed to at­tain — is no way to com­bat Hitler.” Al­though the crit­ic­al the­or­ist Theodor Ad­orno of­ten dis­agreed with Brecht, here the two were of one mind: “If an émigré doc­tor says: ‘For me, Ad­olf Hitler is a patho­lo­gic­al case,’ his pro­nounce­ment may be con­firmed by clin­ic­al find­ings, but its in­con­gru­ity with the ob­ject­ive calam­ity vis­ited on the world in the name of that para­noi­ac renders the dia­gnos­is ri­dicu­lous, mere pro­fes­sion­al preen­ing.”

Won’t somebody please think of the children?

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Mean­while, polit­ic­al pun­dits have weighed in with their usu­al heavy-handed mor­al­ist­ic out­rage. Sarah Kendzi­or, for ex­ample, hy­per­bol­ic­ally de­clares the out­come of the pres­id­en­tial race to be a fas­cist’s vic­tory and a mor­al loss. Anna Khachiy­an acidly points out that “as a mor­al fraud (read: woke-tod­dler­ist, lib­er­al Mc­Ca­rythite, and gen­er­al shit­bitch), Kendzi­or is per­haps uniquely qual­i­fied among us to write about mat­ters of mor­al loss.” Com­ment­at­ors sound genu­inely up­set voters didn’t listen to the me­dia fact-check­ers, poll­sters, and policy wonks. A few al­most seem to be scold­ing people for not vot­ing the way they pre­dicted. It feels as if we’re be­ing brow­beaten by a bunch of civics nerds.

The most naus­eat­ing re­frain heard this en­tire post­mortem is Demo­crat­ic Party ap­par­at­chiks com­plain­ing about how they have to tell their lousy kids that a sex­ist bully is go­ing to be the next pres­id­ent. Like Maude Flanders cat­er­waul­ing: “Won’t some­body please think of the chil­dren?” I can maybe see where chil­dren of un­doc­u­men­ted im­mig­rants, whose par­ents might get de­por­ted, stand in need of some re­as­sur­ance. But this has noth­ing to do with set­ting a bad ex­ample, as Clin­ton’s cam­paign com­mer­cial “Role Mod­els” sug­ges­ted. Usu­ally self-right­eous fin­ger-wag­ging and mor­al op­pro­bri­um are the prop­er do­main of con­ser­vat­ives.

Kids are way weirder and more ni­hil­ist­ic than people give them cred­it, any­how. Gran­ted, my vis­ion of child­hood in its nat­ur­al state comes from Lord of the Flies, but the cruelty of chil­dren can scarcely be ex­ag­ger­ated.

Pat­ron­iz­ing people or ap­peal­ing to their de­cency is just as point­less as in­vok­ing the in­no­cence and naïveté of chil­dren. Dur­ing the Re­pub­lic­an primar­ies, you could hear Ly­in’ Ted plead­ing with Trump sup­port­ers along sim­il­ar lines, only in whole­some evan­gel­ic­al guise: “We’re bet­ter than this.” No we’re not. “Facts mat­ter.” They clearly don’t. “God bless you.” Rot in hell.

Scaremongering and traumatization

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More than any­thing else, fear is what drove the 2016 cam­paign. Both sides sought to use fear this last elect­or­al cycle to mo­bil­ize their base, by con­trast. Eight years ago it was “hope,” a neb­u­lous prom­ise of “change,” or else it was just empty af­firm­a­tion: “Yes we can!” Trump sub­lim­ated the eco­nom­ic anxi­et­ies of the masses, their per­en­ni­al fear of free­dom, in­to a fear of out­siders and oth­ers; Clin­ton offered noth­ing ex­cept fear of Trump.

Hon­es­tly, though many de­mon­stra­tions these past few days have been little more than pub­lic tan­trums, the trauma we’ve wit­nessed on the part of some protest­ors “triggered” by Trump’s un­ex­pec­ted elec­tion is real. It’s dif­fi­cult for me to sym­path­ize with any­one feel­ing trau­mat­ized now who just last week was #Ready­ForHil­lary, but here again they are the vic­tim of the Demo­crats’ ir­re­spons­ible fear-mon­ger­ing. So here’s Hoke again:

A lot of the psy­cho­lo­gic­al trauma people are go­ing through doesn’t ne­ces­sar­ily res­ult of the real­ity of Trump’s fas­cism, but Demo­crat­ic Party pro­pa­ganda of Trump’s fas­cism, so we have a lot of young people who are be­ing caused deep psy­cho­lo­gic­al suf­fer­ing right now over an in­tense fear of re­pres­sion which will last, like maybe one week of elec­tion day Trump vic­tory en­thu­si­asm, in­stead of four years, and hon­es­tly I hold the Clin­ton camp re­spons­ible for this ir­re­spons­ible per­cep­tion. It’s hor­rif­ic emo­tion­al ma­nip­u­la­tion in­to mak­ing people think things will be a lot worse than they ac­tu­ally will be for the sake of scar­ing people in­to vot­ing Clin­ton and the ef­fect is to take already vul­ner­able pop­u­la­tions and ter­ri­fy them more than they really need to be ter­ri­fied.

Is there some ob­ject­ive real­ity to people be­hav­ing in big­oted ways around a Trump vic­tory? Yeah, but let’s be real: in­creased white na­tion­al­ist and big­oted vi­ol­en­ce was already hap­pen­ing un­der Obama, be­fore Trump, as a res­ult of re­ces­sion­ary eco­nom­ic hard­ship. Let’s be clear about what this is. I’m really not okay with see­ing so many of my friends melt down and think their world is about to end be­cause they’re wo­men or gay or people of col­or just be­cause that’s what the Demo­crats told them. The Demo­crats had a ma­jor in­vest­ment in telling them that, to sell them and oth­er guilty lib­er­als on the sup­posed ne­ces­sity of elect­ing the biggest cor­por­ate, im­per­i­al­ist piece of shit the party ever nom­in­ated. Demo­crat­ic Party iden­tity polit­ics is thus re­spons­ible for trau­mat­iz­ing and sew­ing pan­ic among people it was sup­posed to rep­res­ent. We should in­stead be spread­ing real­ist­ic and meas­ured ex­pect­a­tions, back­ing each oth­er up with sol­id­ar­ity and con­fid­en­ce.

Cer­tainly, if someone is vis­ibly up­set, try to talk to them and see if there’s any­thing you can do. Most of the time, however, the people most threatened by the le­gis­la­tion prom­ised by Trump would rather you be will­ing to fight along­side them than apo­lo­gize or com­mis­er­ate. “Why do Amer­ic­ans think that polit­ics is about shar­ing emo­tions?” in­quired one for­eign com­rade. “Re­volu­tion is not about feels, but about piti­less de­struc­tion.” He mocked the no­tion by call­ing the Rhode Is­land wo­man hand­ing out free hugs as “a brave re­volu­tion­ary,” un­aware that polit­ic­al or­gan­izers in Port­land and Wash­ing­ton, D.C. ac­tu­ally staged mass “hug-ins.”

Fear and self-loathing on the campaign trail 2016

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Even so-called “hard left” parties have suc­cumbed to this sac­char­ine sen­ti­ment­al­ity. One con­trib­ut­or to an art­icle on res­ist­ance in So­cial­ist Work­er in­dic­ates that “people are cry­ing at my wife’s job. There’s a guy on my corner of­fer­ing free hugs. Please, every­one be good to your­self: take a walk, take that free hug. Drink a lot of wa­ter. In these dis­cus­sions, it helps to re­mem­ber Howard Zinn, who said, ‘It mat­ters less who is sit­ting in the White House; it mat­ters who is sit­ting in’.” As if Trump and Trump­ism will ever be de­feated by sit-ins and protest polit­ics. Right now I’m just hop­ing this isn’t just a re­peat of the anti-Bush move­ment ten years ago.

White guilt is point­less. Over the last few days, my so­cial me­dia feed has been swamped with lib­er­als and even pro­fessed Marx­ists ex­press­ing their heart­felt con­dol­ences and shame at the vari­ous priv­ileges they en­joy or are per­ceived to en­joy. Re­minds me of when Susan Sontag, in one of her weak­er mo­ments, dubbed the white race “the can­cer of hu­man his­tory.” As if non-whites were them­selves in­cap­able of at­ro­cit­ies or gen­o­cide. Does it really need to be poin­ted out that this is little more than a lib­er­al piety? Vir­tue-sig­nal­ing polit­ics, as the alt-right sadly (but ac­cur­ately) call them?



Ima­gine be­ing this poor wo­man sit­ting in the break­room, drink­ing a cof­fee, en­joy­ing your Bo­ston creme (a small beacon of light in a world gone to shit). Sud­denly, the of­fice soft­boy slides in next to you and clasps your hand. “Fatima,” he says, “YOU’RE WEL­COME in Amer­ica.” Grin­ning to him­self, he gets up and re­turns to his desk, to tweet about his not at all ran­dom, en­tirely pre­med­it­ated act of kind­ness. Or else Muslims be­ing her­ded onto trucks by Trump storm­troop­ers as white people trip over each oth­er to shout, “I’m sorry for my priv­ilege!!” louder than the oth­ers, while the doors shut and they drive away.