Democracy's 'Shadow'

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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. With us now, Zack Beauchamp, senior correspondent at Vox, where he largely covers right-wing populism and challenges to democracy in the United States and abroad. He has a new book now called The Reactionary Spirit: How America's Most Insidious Political Tradition Swept the World. Zack, we've always appreciated your reporting when you've been on, so congratulations on the book, and welcome back to WNYC.

Zack Beauchamp: Thank you, Brian. I really, really appreciate that.

Brian Lehrer: Right to the subtitle of the book, How America's Most Insidious Political Tradition Swept the World. Is part of your premise that the reactionary spirit is an American export?

Zack Beauchamp: Yes and no. I define the reactionary spirit as the impulse to when faced with a social movement or changes in society through democratic means that threaten the stability of certain social hierarchies. That people who support those hierarchies make a choice to choose the hierarchies over democracy and work to undermine democracy, to protect, keeping things the way that they are. Those hierarchies may be of wealth, race, class, gender, religion, caste.

There are lots of different ways they can be structured. This, I argue, is a perennial feature, a conflict that's in every democracy. Because every society has its hierarchies and it has people who are attached to them and people who are willing to go to extremes to defend them. What I argue in the book is an American export, or at least an American invention that has since gone global, is the way in which the reactionary spirit operates today. That it creates a very particular kind of anti-democratic politics, one that masks itself as democratic and uses democratic seeming language to support and even enact in actual politics, this age-old reactionary spirit.

Brian Lehrer: There's a line between populism which suggests something that a lot of people want, something that's even democratic, versus what elites want, and authoritarianism, which suggests what a few people in power want regardless of what a democratic process would yield. Is that line always clear? How do you explore that in the book with regard to the contemporary reactionary spirit that you're writing about?

Zack Beauchamp: It's an important question because we don't want to say that any party that takes a particular set of right-wing views on policy issues is anti-democratic. That's not the case. Just look at France right now. I personally do not agree at all with the RN, the far-right party there, on the substance of policy issues. When they lost the parliamentary elections, and a shock, actually, they were expected to come in first, and they came in third, they accepted their defeat. They didn't say the election was stolen, they moved on, and are now trying to figure out what to do next as political strategies go.

That, to me, is a hallmark of a party that can be fairly characterized as far right. Their views are pretty extreme, but they also operate within the confines of a democratic system. They accept the rules of the game and democracy. That is not true though for a lot of different parties around the world. Just look over the French-German border, the AfD, Germany's far-right party, participated. There were members of it that participated both in a riot targeting their own congressional building, the Bundestag, and also in a coup attempt to overthrow the German government and replace it with a monarchy.

While those weren't officially sanctioned party actions, they represented factions of the party whose rhetoric from actual party members has gotten increasingly radical over the course of time to the point where the German Intelligence Service has actually put them under surveillance, despite being the second most popular party in the country. That, to me, is one way of distinguishing them, is the radicalness and the willingness to go to extremes, but also you can look at governing records, and that's the most important metric.

In my book, I focus on four case studies: the United States, Israel, Hungary, and India. Very different countries facing very different economic and sociological circumstances. What they share in common is that, in each case, there is a far-right faction that has been motivated by the defense of certain essential social hierarchies and is overseen at the state and the national level, depending on the country we're talking about, the demolition of democratic institutions.

You have to really look at the policy record because the rhetoric will almost always pay lip service to democracy. Even the AfD does that, despite its extremism really showing through. That's the key thing is to take a look at actions, not just words. Saying, "I like democracy," isn't enough because that's how the reactionary spirit hides itself today.

Brian Lehrer: In the context of what you just said, I want to play a clip of J.D. Vance from his convention speech last night. He's making the exact opposite of a populist authoritarian appeal, at least in his explicit words, despite what a lot of other Americans think about Trump and what Vance might represent along with Trump. Listen.

J.D. Vance: My message to my fellow Americans, those watching from across the country, is shouldn't we be governed by a party that is unafraid to debate ideas and come to the best solution? That's the Republican party of the next four years, united in our love for this country and committed to free speech and the open exchange of ideas.

Brian Lehrer: That doesn't sound authoritarian. Did you watch the speech last night and have any reactions generally or to what he's presenting right there?

Zack Beauchamp: I did. There were parts of it that I think do have authoritarian overtones. Most notably, his discussion about how America is not an idea, but rather a specific place is a very clear reference to a certain strain of far-right thinking in the United States. Familiar with the paleoconservative tradition that rejects the founding premises of the United States, that all men are created equal. Setting that--

Brian Lehrer: So different from Ronald Reagan, for example, who always talked about America as an idea. We could play a clip that's been played many times. We're not going to do it right now, but of Reagan saying it is immigration that keeps renewing the United States as the idea that it is. J.D. Vance in the clip you mentioned, which I didn't pull, but I heard it, is saying, "No, the United States is not an idea. Even though we're country of immigrants, it's a peoplehood. It's blood and soil," right?

Zack Beauchamp: Yes. That's right. He's gone much further in other contexts. This is what I mean by democratic mask or by disguising itself. Advocates of anti-democratic policies don't say, "I'm here to destroy democracy." They say, "I'm democracy's truest offender," as Vance did right there, but look at what he's proposed. Vance said explicitly that he wants Trump to clear out the executive branch, fire civil servants, all of them, he said in this radio interview, and replace them with "our people."

He has said that if the Supreme Court tries to stop them, Trump should do what President Andrew Jackson did. When the Supreme Court ordered him, specifically ordered the protection of Native lands from ethnic cleansing in 1830s, and say, the court has made its ruling, now let them enforce it. Basically, he's advocating for a purge of the government, replacing it with their people, and then ignoring legal constraints on this action. That's authoritarian.

It gets worse though. Vance in that comment, that interview, he cites, as a source first thinking on this, a man named Curtis Yarvin, who is a Silicon Valley-based blogger and theorist. Yarvin is an explicit monarchist. Not implicit. I'm not reading into his words. He says, "Democracy is bad. We need to replace it with a CEO/monarch of America." That is Yarvin's worldview. Vance openly says that Yarvin influences him. You can see it on down through his policies.

Again and again, Vance said, for instance, that if he were in Mike Pence's position in 2020, he would have acted on Trump's dictate to overthrow the election. When he says that the America deserves a party that advocates for ideas and speaks openly, what he means is America deserves a party where my ideas triumph and dominate, and the other party listens to what we have to say. It is as pure a mask and a put-on as I've seen from any figure in politics.

Brian Lehrer: Wow. Why do you think J.D. Vance, in particular, or others who espouse those kinds of views, think that that's in the interest of the people who they purport to represent?

Zack Beauchamp: Vance deeply believes, as do many people, by the way, not all defensive hierarchy in a society is purely venal. People who just say, "I got mine, and no one else should get theirs," or, "It's a threat to my wealth that other people do this." I think he believes, as a matter of principle, based on the reporting that I've done on him, talking to people who know him, I've met him myself, that the current American political system is a threat to the wellbeing of the American people. Specifically his narrow definition of who counts as the American people, which is primarily native-born Americans and not the coastal elites that he disdains very explicitly in his writing and his work, who are counted out of the American polity.

He believes that all sorts of changes to American society primarily, though not exclusively, efforts to foster greater inclusion, and as well as economic globalization through trade and immigration, are upending American life. They're upending the way that things used to work, and he thinks that's not possible to change within the confines of the existing system.

You hear a lot of rhetoric about the uniparty in the United States from American reactionaries because they believe the system is fundamentally rigged against them, that the deep state prevents them from taking the actions they need in order to restore American greatness. The only alternative available to them is to seize control of the system, to take extremely aggressive steps to ensure that they can dictate policy without constraint.

You end up starting from a place of things have gotten really bad to I alone can fix it, as Trump famously said, or rather, in the case of Vance, we alone can fix it as long as we have unfettered control.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, who has a question for Zack Beauchamp, senior correspondent at Vox, where he largely covers right-wing populism and challenges to democracy in the United States and abroad? He's got a brand new book called The Reactionary Spirit: How America's Most Insidious Political Tradition Swept the World. 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692. Call or text. Zack, the reactionary spirit in the US historically has arguably had more to do with white backlash to Black people's economic progress than any other factor. Do you address that in the book, or would you put it differently?

Zack Beauchamp: No, I think that's accurate, and it's the centerpiece of the book's chapter on the United States, is arguing that the reactionary spirit in the United States was born in large part as a legacy of slavery. In fact, as the interplay, the contest between the ideas underpinning the slave system, which can be traced back to notions of European feudalism and ideas that there's a world that had an appropriate and set order and that certain people should be on top of the hierarchy and others on the bottom.

The idea is underpinning chattel slavery versus the ideas of the Declaration of Independence and what were in the founding documents of America. That's a common story, but it's often told as one of those two traditions is more American than the other one or more authentically American. My argument is that neither of them is. They both are. They both represent different strains of what it means to understand yourself as an American, what you take the American project to be.

Do you take it to be the United States as an idea, credo nationalism, a belief in human equality and democracy, or do you take it to be a specific place constituted by a specific set of traditions in which certain people have benefited and certain people have not, and that's the way of things? That is, that interplay, the challenge, the threat to that latter view from Black liberation, from anti-slavery movements, from the end of slavery and attempts for Blacks to assert political power in the newly liberated South that ultimately produced Jim Crow, from the civil rights movement.

Every single time that this hierarchy has been threatened, there has been a massive political backlash and restrictions on political freedom. People don't know this very well, but it's not just that slavery was enforced pretty brutally in the South. It's also that abolitionist activity was banned. You could not advocate for abolition in the South without going to prison for a quite lengthy period of time, even sending letters and importing newspapers.

That was during Jim Crow, for instance. You couldn't bring in newspapers from the North, especially Black newspapers were banned for fear they would agitate the Black population. The South itself, under Jim Crow, was essentially a series of authoritarian enclaves, each one governed by a democratic party that couldn't functionally be kicked out of power through the system.

What we have is a long tradition in the United States of defending racial hierarchy via political authoritarianism, not just racial caste laws, but really, outright undeniable anti-democratic activity. I really see the beginning of a return to this tradition or its resurgence in popularity after the egalitarian moves of the latter half of the 20th century beginning after Barack Obama's election, which I think is really an understated turning point in American history.

Brian Lehrer: Without the United States' peculiar institution of slavery, as it's been called, and its ramifications over the centuries here, how does our export of a reactionary spirit apply in places like Hungary or India or Israel, the other case studies in your book?

Zack Beauchamp: Well, in those places, they had homegrown reactionary spirits, their own version of it. Like I said, every country has their own specific hierarchies, and Hungary, much of the reaction was about things similar to how they are in the United States, but especially mass immigration and LGBT activism have become really effective targets of the current governing coalition, as well as George Soros, the Hungarian-American fundraiser or billionaire and philanthropist who just so happens to be Jewish.

In Israel, the hierarchies worth preserving for them are Jewish-Israeli control over all the land between the river and the sea, at least to a certain segment of the Israeli-Jewish population. In India, the hierarchies are primarily about religion, Hindus over Muslims, and caste, upper castes over lower castes. In each case, there's a unique history by which those hierarchies became challenged. There are different ways in which political actors picked up on them in order to turn the public's reactionary sentiments into support for an authoritarian project.

The key similarity and the part that America started and that other countries have picked up on is the way in which they set about building authoritarianism at home. This is a subject of some debate among political scientists and historians, but I think that this model of creating a system that sounds democratic but in actuality subtly rigs the rules such that it's impossible to vote out the sitting party, that started in the Jim Crow South, or at very least, they perfected it.

The political scientists call this competitive authoritarianism. The South built one of the very earliest effective versions of it. Since then, other countries, whether or not they explicitly studied what was happening there or merely just came to similar ideas when facing similar circumstances, built their own versions of the same systems to greater and lesser degrees. Hungary is a perfect example of it.

It is fully updated, this southern playbook, and built an almost impregnable authoritarian state that still holds elections, they don't stuff the ballot box. It seems like a free election, but it's not, for a variety of reasons. Leaders in Israel and India are trying to do the same thing to varying degrees of success.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call. Lamar in lower Manhattan, you're on WNYC with Zack Beauchamp, whose new book is The Reactionary Spirit: How America's Most Insidious Political Tradition Swept the World. Hello, Lamar.

Lamar: Good morning, gentlemen. How are y'all doing? We listened with great interest to the author. Our question is we're aware of the fact that upwards of 80% of the American people are gravely dissatisfied with the current state of affairs of our nation in this trajectory. If that majority of Americans are enthusiastic or prepared to embrace this reactionary spirit, does that justify the democratic legitimacy of the reactionary spirit?

Brian Lehrer: Fundamental question. Lamar, thank you very much, and please call us again. Zack?

Zack Beauchamp: Yes, that was a wonderful question. First, I think that that's a misread of the polling data, I would say. Yes, many people are dissatisfied, but no, there is not a majority for anti-democratic politics in the United States. Poll after poll shows deep public support for democracy's ideas. If you look at polling even inside the Republican Party, there's perhaps a majority of people who support some of Trump's most aggressive actions, but they don't, on the whole, support many elements of his project.

A lot of Republicans are dissatisfied with Donald Trump. Trump is, as the avatar of the modern American reactionary spirit, widely disapproved of among the American population. What's happening right now is that Biden is more unpopular for other reasons, but you also, Lamar, ask a really fundamental question, which is, can destroying democracy ever be democratically legitimate? To that, I say no. There are certain protections that are necessary for a democracy to be a democracy.

If you don't have robust free speech rights, if you don't have robust freedom of association, if the electoral system is shot through with something like extreme gerrymandering, or there are discriminatory campaign finance rules that make it difficult for the parties to compete on an even playing field. All of this is real in Hungary right now, and all of it destroyed people's ability to oust the government. Think of it a little bit as somebody climbing up the ladder, getting to this wonderful place of political power, and then pulling up the ladder after that.

That's not fair. That's not democratic. That's destroying the democratic system after you've seized control over it. That's why I don't think the reactionary spirit can ever be compatible with democracy, because even when it uses democratic needs and competes in democratic elections, its ultimate aim is to make sure that it never loses another one.

Brian Lehrer: Craig in Pleasantville has a relevant follow-up question, I think. Craig, you're on WNYC with Zack Beauchamp. Hello.

Craig: Hi. Thank you so much. Yes, I have a question for Zack. Recognizing that Trump is a convicted felon, my question is, do you think a convicted felon who gets into the White House will leave office when he's supposed to, or do you think a convicted felon will want to make changes and stay in office? The reason I ask is because Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping faced something similar in Russia and China, which put limits on their terms, but changes were made, which gave both of them essentially unlimited terms until the end of their lives.

Brian Lehrer: Craig, I'm so glad you asked that question. In the Biden-Trump debate the other week, Zack, when they asked the question of Trump, do you promise to accept the results of this election if you lose, I was hoping that that question was going to end, do you promise to leave office at the end of your second term as the constitution requires if you are elected in November? I don't know that anybody is asked that question, but Craig is asking that question.

Zack Beauchamp: Yes. I don't know if Trump has been faced with it directly. It is an important question. It is a lot harder to change the rules in the way that Russian and Chinese leaders did because they operate in authoritarian systems, right? In the US, the constitution is almost impossible to amend. The constitution is pretty clear that you can only serve two terms. The real question is whether by the end of the second term, Trump will be able to do what Nayib Bukele did in El Salvador when he was term limited out.

Recently, he just said, I don't care what the constitution says, I'm going to run again, and I dare you to stop me. Bukele was so popular due to his crackdown on crime that had significantly lowered gang violence rates and murder rates that he could get away with, basically, whatever he wanted to, and so he did. He also had a very pliant government. Salvador and democracy is in death rows right now.

Whether Trump could do that would depend pretty heavily on the degree to which the Supreme Court had been captured by loyalists by that point. At the end of the second term, we just can't say. I don't know if Trump would want to do that. He might. I mean, he certainly hinted at it semi-jokingly, but you can never really tell how serious he's being. All of which is a long way of saying I don't know, but it is not at all crazy to worry about it given the circumstances we're facing.

Brian Lehrer: I want to end with you with a few minutes on the last chapter of your book called How Reactionaries Lose. Listeners, even if you don't have the patience to read a book-length book, I recommend the last chapter of Zack's book, at very least, How Reactionaries Lose. One section of that chapter is called Democracy's Antibodies. Briefly, what are some of democracy's antibodies that are relevant in the United States with everything else you've just been describing?

Zack Beauchamp: I think one thing to note about the reactionary use of democratic language is that it is both a strength that allows them to compete in societies where most people support democracy and a point of vulnerability. Because when their actual objective actions contradict their rhetoric, and then you have a point of vulnerability to attack them, you can say, "Look, you claim to stand for democracy, but look what you're doing. You're doing something that nobody thinks is really democratic, and that no one could plausibly defend as being democratic. How can you do this?How can you say that you stand for democracy and still take these kinds of actions?"

That line of attack works. It works because it can help mobilize a coalition of people who might not always agree on policy issues, but agree that it's worth protecting democracy. We saw that in Brazil where the recent presidential election where they had an elected authoritarian, Jair Bolsonaro, who wanted to win a second term. His center right opponent allied with the left wing opponent. These two people could not be further apart on policy issues, but they both agreed that Bolsonaro posts an existential threat to democracy.

The margin of support that the left wing candidate ended up winning by, Lula is his name, he won with just enough given over by the supporters of the central right candidate. This broad spectrum alliance may very well have saved Brazilian democracy. I believe that's an object lesson for the United States, because it's very clear that there's deep support for democracy in this country, and that we can mobilize people across ideological lines to oppose anti-democratic candidates wherever they are in the ballot.

It worked in the 2022 midterms. It can work again. It just requires believing in democracy enough to actually campaign on it, and not try to do this thing where you avoid the central issue of the election and say that we only need to talk about pocket book issues. Pocket book issues are important, but they also work better when they're linked to a general sense that society is under attack and that this thing that you all really value is worth fighting and preserving.

Brian Lehrer: Finally, another section of that final chapter is called When Reactionary Errors Lead to Democratic Victories. Want to give us an example?

Zack Beauchamp: Yes. There are two good ones. One is last year's major protests in Israel where the government came out with this plan to overhaul the judiciary in ways that would give the prime minister unbelievable amounts of power and most likely immunize him from his current corruption prosecution. That galvanized the largest protest movement in Israeli history, which had previously been pretty quiescent about the threat to democracy in their country, but came alive because this proposal was so radical.

They overstepped. The radicalism coming from the authoritarian camp inside Israel, the reactionary camp, motivated an extraordinary public backlash, one that that ended up defeating the judicial overhaul. Almost none of it passed, and the part that did was struck down by the Supreme Court. In the US, the 2022 midterms have a variety of different examples, especially on the state level.

You saw a number of different candidates who had openly aligned themselves with Trump's big lie about the 2020 election, and said pretty extreme stuff about American elections. They were running for governor in a number of different key states and for Secretary of State, which had supervisory powers over elections. Guess what? In competitive elections, that is to say not deep red states, they lost every single time. The data that I've seen suggests that that defeat can be partially, not entirely, but partially attributed to the positions they took on American democracy.

I talked to some of the democratic strategists who beat these kinds of candidates. What they said pretty consistently was, by emphasizing the importance of democracy, the sanctity of the ballot, my belief that everyone should be able to vote and have their voice heard, they really persuaded a lot of voters who might not be in ideological alignment with the Democratic Party, but care about protecting democracy from the people who might threaten it.

Brian Lehrer: Zack Beauchamp, senior correspondent at Vox, where he largely covers right wing populism and challenges to democracy in the United States and abroad. His new book is called The Reactionary Spirit: How America's Most Insidious Political Tradition Swept the World. Thank you so much for this conversation.

Zack Beauchamp: Thank you very much, Brian. I really appreciated it.

 

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