On Political Contingency
On the eve of Donald Trump’s second inauguration as President of the United States of America, it is worth recalling Joseph Proudhon’s claim that “The fecundity of the unexpected far exceeds the statesman’s prudence.” Hannah Arendt was fond of citing Proudhon’s “passing remark.” Human events, by definition Arendt writes, “are occurrences that interrupt routine processes and routine procedures.” The effort to predict the future depends on “projections of present automatic processes and procedures, that is, of occurrences that are likely to come to pass if men do not act and if nothing unexpected happens.” For Arendt, “every action, for better or worse,... necessarily destroys the whole pattern in whose frame the prediction moves.” In other words, predicting human events forgets that human action is inherently unpredictable.
Is the election of President Trump, as Andrew Coyne writes, “a crisis like no other in our lifetimes,” one that has delivered the United States “into the hands of a gangster, whose sole purpose in running, besides staying out of jail, is to seek revenge on his enemies”? Or, as David Masci argues, is “America once again on the brink of another second act,” a “national renewal.” For Masci, the country is revived economically, leading the world in technology, and “shifting away from socially harmful ideas like equity and back to sounder ones like merit.”
Within Trump’s MAGA coalition, there is a battle brewing between a newly empowered brand of corporate and technological elites who, like Curtis Yarvin, want to end democracy and bring about a government run by a CEO, and uncompromising nationalist-populists like Steve Bannon who have “declared war” on Elon Musk “and by extension the whole set of tech barons who had gained such influence in the Trump sphere. I will have Elon Musk run out of here by inauguration Day,” Bannon said in an interview, reported by James Pogue.
I’ve mentioned before that one of the best books I’ve read recently is Timothy Ryback’s Takeover: Htler’s Final Rise To Power. Relying exclusively on primary sources, Ryback traces the chaotic, unexpected, and shocking events that led to Hitler’s being appointed Chancellor of Germany in January, 1933. Ryback shows how unlikely Hitler’s ascent to power was. Even was he was appointed Chancellor, however, Hitler was constrained by a divided government that would frustrate his ambitions for total power.
As Ryback shows in a recent essay that recounts the 53 days between Hitler’s rise to Chancellor and his destruction of German Democracy, none of this was foreordained. “We have come to perceive Hitler’s appointment as chancellor as part of an inexorable rise to power,” Ryback writes. The truth is otherwise. As Ryback argues, there were numerous moments when Hitler’s rise to power was nearly halted or reversed. “Hitler’s ascendancy to chancellor and his smashing of the constitutional guardrails once he got there, I have come to realize, are stories of political contingency rather than historical inevitability.” Ryback writes:
"Over the eight months before appointing Hitler as chancellor, Hindenberg had dispatched three others—Heinrich Brüning, Papen, and Schleicher—from the role, exercising his constitutional authority embedded in Article 53. And his disdain for Hitler was common knowledge. The previous August, he had declared publicly that, “for the sake of God, my conscience, and the country,” he would never appoint Hitler as chancellor. Privately, Hindenburg had quipped that if he were to appoint Hitler to any position, it would be as postmaster general, “so he can lick me from behind on my stamps.” In January, Hindenburg finally agreed to appoint Hitler, but with great reluctance—and on the condition that he never be left alone in a room with his new chancellor. By late February, the question on everyone’s mind was, as Forward put it, how much longer would the aging field marshal put up with his Bohemian corporal?
That Forward article appeared on Saturday morning, February 25, under the headline “How Long?” Two days later, on Monday evening, shortly before 9 p.m., the Reichstag erupted in flames, sheafs of fire collapsing the glass dome of the plenary hall and illuminating the night sky over Berlin. Witnesses recall seeing the fire from villages 40 miles away. The image of the seat of German parliamentary democracy going up in flames sent a collective shock across the country. The Communists blamed the National Socialists. The National Socialists blamed the Communists. A 23-year-old Dutch Communist, Marinus van der Lubbe, was caught in flagrante, but the Berlin fire chief, Walter Gempp, who supervised the firefighting operation, saw evidence of potential Nazi involvement.
When Hitler convened his cabinet to discuss the crisis the next morning, he declared that the fire was clearly part of a Communist coup attempt. Göring detailed Communist plans for further arson attacks on public buildings, as well as for the poisoning of public kitchens and the kidnapping of the children and wives of prominent officials. Interior Minister Frick presented a draft decree suspending civil liberties, permitting searches and seizures, and curbing states’ rights during a national emergency.
Papen expressed concern that the proposed draft “could meet with resistance,” especially from “southern states,” by which he meant Bavaria, which was second only to Prussia in size and power. Perhaps, Papen suggested, the proposed measures should be discussed with state governments to assure “an amicable agreement,” otherwise the measures could be seen as the usurpation of states’ rights. Ultimately, only one word was added to suggest contingencies for suspending a state’s rights. Hindenburg signed the decree into law that afternoon.
Put into effect just a week before the March elections, the emergency decree gave Hitler tremendous power to intimidate—and imprison—the political opposition. The Communist Party was banned (as Hitler had wanted since his first cabinet meeting), and members of the opposition press were arrested, their newspapers shut down. Göring had already been doing this for the past month, but the courts had invariably ordered the release of detained people. With the decree in effect, the courts could not intervene. Thousands of Communists and Social Democrats were rounded up.
On Sunday morning, March 5, one week after the Reichstag fire, German voters went to the polls. “No stranger election has perhaps ever been held in a civilized country,” Frederick Birchall wrote that day in The New York Times. Birchall expressed his dismay at the apparent willingness of Germans to submit to authoritarian rule when they had the opportunity for a democratic alternative. “In any American or Anglo-Saxon community the response would be immediate and overwhelming,” he wrote."
We would all do well to remember the contingency of politics. Donald Trump assumes office for the second time, uniquely unpopular. Americans view him more negatively than any other president about to take office in the last 70 years.” At the same time, there is a sense amongst many that the corruption and malaise of American politics needs to change. According to a New York Times poll, nearly 90 percent of Americans support deporting illegal immigrants with criminal records. Over 60 percent support deporting those who came to the United States illegally over the last four years. But only 34 percent support deporting the Dreamers, those who arrived in the United States as children and have lived their whole lives here. Nearly three quarters of Americans are against the President pursuing legal charges against his perceived enemies. And 60 percent believe that the United States’ unique practice of birthright citizenship enshrined in the 14th Amendment should be upheld.
It does seem that the country is in for major political and cultural changes. Some will be welcomed and others feared. But it is not at all a fait accompli what those changes will be or how far they will go. What Arendt reminds us is that violence and power are not the same. “Power is never the property of an individual; it belongs to a group and remains in existence only so long as the group keeps together.” The broad coalition of people who voted for Trump is not a homogenous unit and it does not unanimously answer to the President’s demands.
The situation today is less one of power run amok than of a crisis of power.
The profound cynicism and skepticism surrounding our political, cultural, academic, and social institutions is what has given rise to multiple movements all aimed at weakening or destroying the state and established institutions. It is much easier to destroy such institutions than it is to build them again. And yet, without a consensus on how to reconstitute the institutions of the country, there is also a profound conservatism that may well support the continued existence of our institutions, even if in weakened form. While the breakdown of power does create a revolutionary situation, “this situation need not lead to a revolution.” It can, of course, lead to a counter revolution or a dictatorship. But just as likely, even more likely, revolutionary situations “end in total anticlimax; it need not lead to anything.”