Some Thoughts On The Coming Electoral Spectacle

As this summer comes to a close, and we start to enter into the heart of the electoral spectacle, I want us to take some time to think through what has just happened, and the implications of these shifts going forward. In this discussion I want us to focus, not on the election itself, and the inside baseball of polling, campaign drama, and things like this, but on the strategic implications of recent shifts as viewed through the medium of the election.

Let's begin with the basic reality of the moment, which is that we functionally deposed a president. It is incredibly rare for a president to not run for re-election. With Truman, he had already served half of FDR's last term, and one of his own. With Lyndon Johnson, he had barely started running when he decided that it was time to drop out. What we saw with Biden was unique, a president dropping out half way through an election cycle, and directly because of grassroots pressure. Not only was a president forced to not run for re-election, and to give up a second term, but this also marks a fundamental shift in the relationship between the DNC and who it considers it's base.

The Democratic Party has been based, in the post-WWII era, on being the collection point for the moderate elements of social movements. When movements arise the Democrats often have a complex and contentious relationship with the grassroots. On one hand many Democrats may be a part of movement activity, yet, on the other hand, this often challenges Democratic Party institutions. So, in response, they will pull this counterinsurgency move; moderates will be funded, supported, and brought into circles of power, as long as they abandon the radicals. This then comes to justify the police violence that often follows, in the attempt to eliminate the more radical elements. The result is a bunch of moderate former activists who have been brought into Party apparatuses that they have no control within, and disappear into.

At the same time, they hold the New Deal over our heads. They argue that we need the New Deal, and the programs that followed, so we don't end up living in the misery working people lived in during the first half of the century, and that, if we don't vote for them, then these go away. Its a coercive argument, essentially. They won't do anything to help destroy capitalism, so we are stuck between those that want us to be more comfortable in our exploitation, and those, Conservatives, who don't particularly care. This calculation has kept generations of progressives, Leftists, and other radicals voting Democrat, as the lesser evil, even though they did not really support the DNC actively.

The deposing of Biden was only possible to the degree that people were willing to challenge this calculation, to refuse to support the Democrats, even though they are the force that ensures a more comfortable capitalism. In the Undecided Movement, and other initiatives aimed at refusing to support the Democrats due to various attempts on the DNC's part to marginalize more radical demands, the traditional wager was ended, and that hit enough of a point of concentration to threaten overall electability. Now, this was possible partially due to the fact that the Undecided Movements really sprang forward in Michigan, a swing state, and only needed to really get 4-5% of voters to stay home to make Biden lose. But, at the same time, it confirmed something we have been speculating about for some time. As the DNC moves further and further away from the demands of many of the people that vote Democrat (who want universal healthcare, a ceasefire in Gaza, a smaller military budget, and fewer cops), let alone those of us far more radical than this, the incentive to vote for them as a form of harm reduction also wanes, and that does eventually have a material impact.

The result of pushing Biden out has been an almost explosive outgrowth of energy from a variety of different political sectors, and it is this energy that the Democrats are now trying, ironically, to capitalize on. The enthusiasm emerged, not with Harris, but with Biden dropping out. It is important to keep in mind that Biden being forced to drop out is a direct result of political organizing work, and that the hope generated from him leaving the scene is directly a result of that work. But, almost as soon as he made the announcement, the Democrats began this concerted effort to shift the narrative, to take this enthusiasm generated by deposing their party's candidate against their wishes, and turn it into the engine for their new candidate's campaign. The attempt to dominate this shift in political emotion is one part of how the Harris campaign has formed.

The second is expediency. The Harris campaign is embracing an almost apolitical strategy of expediency. With no time to really campaign based on anything, or to introduce any policy proposals, the Harris campaign has been pushed into this space in which the path of least resistance is always going to be the path forward. From giving up control of their social media, and fostering an internet meme landscape, to embracing literally any support that they receive, regardless of who it is coming from, or what they have done in the past. Get an endorsement from both AOC and Dick Cheney? No need to rationalize that obscene contradiction, its all about good vibes and beating Trump...of course.

The end result has been this reduction of politics entirely to marketing and spectacle. I know, I know, you will all say, "but Tom, politics has always been a spectacle", and sure, yeah, especially in the era of mass politics. But something clearly has changed and we need to figure out a way to articulate that. We, of course, saw the precursors of this move of politics into the spectacular accelerate with Obama and Trump, both candidates that ran campaigns based on ephemeral feelings and generic promises. But, in both cases, they still maintained the idea that they were doing "serious politics", that it was something more than just advertising, media spots, Instagram campaigns, and fundraising. With the Harris campaign, they have just entirely dropped the pretense of doing anything other than marketing.

As they have embraced this politics of expediency, combined with this strategy based in capturing and containing "vibes", the result has been a dissolution of anything that can be called politics. Gone are any discussions of core social questions, to the degree that those existed in mainstream politics in the first place. Gone are the concepts of change, justice, and sustainability that drove the liberal and progressive movements. What we have left is a sort of political form, one that anyone can graft anything onto (whether positive or negative and conspiratorial), one that is featureless outside of what it declares itself opposed to (namely Trumpism), and one in which fundamental questions of how we organize our lives are impossible to ask. In many ways it is a mirror image of Trumpism, but accelerated, and with progressive aesthetics. In this sort of shift the political becomes reduced to this completely superficial game, concealing a far greater part of the construction of the dynamics of everyday life than even previously, namely policy and state action.

These shifts, in themselves, are historic, fundamental shifts in the way that politics happens, and in the relationship between resistant movements and mainstream politics, and this has been disorienting for many of us. At the same time, though, it has also been greatly destabilizing for the Trump campaign, and MAGA world as a whole. Remember, for the last 6 years they have been building this vast, complex conspiracy theory about the Biden's, business corruption, bribery, and so on, without much evidence for any of it. Lack of evidence aside, it was an effective narrative, and one that was creating an equalization of horror between Trump and Biden (that if you accept the conspiracy Biden is just as dangerous and horrifying as Trump, if not more). Then, all at once, it all fell away and the entire strategic terrain shifted out from under them.

The result has been a glorious implosion, a sort of collapse into disarray fueled by the inability of the Trump campaign to dominate the pace of the media cycle; and this exposed something fundamental. Trump succeeds in the media to the degree that he does two things. Firstly, he makes huge controversial claims, and that forces him into the spotlight. Then, secondly, he makes a lot of them, which keeps everyone responding to his bullshit, allowing him to completely drive the discussion. To the degree that this is allowed to happen, and everyone collapses into trying to resist individual things he says, he is able to completely control the discussion. What we watched happen, first with Biden dropping out, and then with the debate, was the loss of the ability of that campaign to drive the narrative and the pace of narrative. Something bigger happened, better content was produced, and he has fallen out of the spotlight.

Not being hyperbolic, we can see the signs of this decay in the campaign everywhere. Firstly, there is their public posture. They had been trying to present this vision of masculine strength throughout the campaign, especially after choosing Vance. But, in the last month the campaign has grown quiet, defensive, and possessed by public disagreements and conspiracy theories. This correlates with the shift in the ability to drive the media coverage. Secondly, they are resorting to increasingly extreme narratives in an attempt to take control of the narrative again, and it is not working. We saw this start with Aurora, CO, and the "Venezuelan gangs", which was a clearly racist narrative that was reinforced by support from local politicians. Then we have the even more absurd and somehow more racist demonizing of Haitians in Springfield, OH.

As a result of the inability to control the flow of the discourse, we have watched the Trump campaign make two distinct changes in strategy which could have profound implications going forward. The first is that they have amplified their rhetoric, taken the guardrails off the racism, and pushed narratives in terms of existential threat. That will certainly increase the fervor of his base, but will ultimately eliminate any excuses people may have for voting for Trump if they are not willing to admit full adherence to his program. This is the suburbanites that quietly vote for Trump because of tax policy or something, but who don't want to be considered racists. These people now have no more excuses, as the rhetoric heats up, the position that one is voting for in voting for Trump becomes more clearly defined and repulsive. The other impact of this, though, is an increase in fanaticism among the remainders.

The second shift has been in how they are spending money. Recent fundraising numbers came out for this past quarter, and the Harris campaign outraised Trump 3-1. His donors are tapped out, after years of buying Trump fandom artifacts, joke stocks, cryptocurrencies, NFTs, he has bled them dry. Without some clear push of enthusiasm many of these donors are not going to stretch their budgets to give him money, and that is starting to show. As a result the Trump campaign is doing something that they did in their preparations for January 6th; they are pulling advertising from almost every state and using the money to hire attorneys and to recruit and train "election watchers". The rhetoric around the "stolen election" has also heated up. In the last election this indicated a clear shift away from trying to win the election, and into trying to figure out a way to remain in power in light of losing. The same shift is happening now, except now they would need to seize power, not just assert their continued control, and they are starting to move in this direction weeks earlier than during the last election, where this shift started maybe 6 weeks out.

OK, so what's the punchline here? Why should us, as anarchists, give a flying fuck about any of this?

Well, the simple answer is, we don't get the luxury of existing in a world where these dynamics don't exist, whether we like them or not. We don't get to choose the world that we are born into, we do not get to just decide to opt out of broad political dynamics imposed on us through policing. In Army of Ghosts I wrote about the concept of armed inclusion, the reality that within statism the role of citizen, that who has existence mediated through the state, is imposed as a precondition of the state functioning at all; it is not a voluntary relationship, we are forced within it under arms. So, we may not like that elections happen, or that they have this nasty tendency to dominate all of the oxygen of politics when they occur (I will be writing a piece about the political absorption effects of liberal democracy in the near future), but they are meaningful specifically because we cannot escape their results.

So, with that in mind, the political landscape has fundamentally shifted out form under our feet, as, at least partially, a result of the striking success of street resistance over the past year. In that shifting landscape we have watched the enthusiasm dynamic completely flip around. Those that were approaching this situation with a sense of dread have become energized, while those supporting Trump have grown bored, are leaving rallies early, or not showing up at all, and are definitely not giving him money like they used to. In the This Is America podcast episode with we did with Vicky Osterweil, we pointed out how this feeling of hope, this positivity in American politics, in itself is not horrible, and points to the sense that something different is possible. But, in its current form it performs the same task as groups like the PSL, taking radical enthusiasm and containing it within structures wholly dependent on liberal democracy and reformism. For as amazing as it feels for politics to not be typified by avoiding doom, we also are presented with the incredible danger that is presented by that energy being able to be subsumed within the DNC machine.

We have also watched politics become increasingly incoherent, as vibes have replaced anything that even approaches a clear position on almost anything. This dynamic had existed in the Obama and Trump campaigns as well, but the Harris campaign is engaging in a sort of unapologetic spectacle, with full knowledge of what they are doing. The result has been a sort of levelling of differences, where fundamental political conflicts are being sidelined in favor of some vague, generic, popular-frontism. All political questions are being subsumed to the question of Trumpism, and that has obscured core questions such as the core of where Trumpism emerges from, the fundamental donnection between Trumpism and the founding ideas of the American political project, or the impacts of policing and capitalism on everyday life. Now, we are all being called to accept some undefined conservative politics of increasing police and perpetuating capitalist globalization, coupled with progressive talking points around abortion and a smattering of other "issues", as the only possible alternative to Trumpism, and are being asked to do that without inquiring too carefully as to what Harris is even proposing.

Finally, as I mentioned earlier, the collapse of the Trump campaign is going to have some incredibly large impacts on MAGA as a whole. We see this in the infighting, and the tendency of that space to destroy any possible successor to Trump, with Tucker and Ron DeSantis being the most recent, as grifters compete for the scraps of a dying movement. We are seeing this in the increase in rhetorical excesses, both from the stage and the crowd. We are seeing this in the escalating absurdity of the conspiracies that are being constructed to explain away any possible phenomenon. It is a movement that is collapsing internally, and undergoing a shift that tends to happen to extremist movements when they fall from grace.

During the collapse of the Klan in the 1920s we saw the rise of more smaller and extreme groups like the Black Legion. In the collapse of the movement to preserve segregation we saw the rise of Neo-Nazis, conspiracy theorists, and militias, which were less numerous than the segregationist Citizen's Councils, but also more extreme. There is even a parallel to be drawn to what happened to the alt-right after we pushed them off the streets, and many either quit or became accelerationists. We are watching a similar process of decay play out within wider MAGA world.

Now, don't get me wrong, that does not mean this is over; far from it. What this does mean, though, is that coming out of this election, which Trump seems increasingly likely to lose, we are going to see a different MAGA movement. It will be a MAGA movement that is more militant, more violent, more organized, and more willing to act, but that is a fraction of the size that it is today. Other elements of this movement will be picked off and incorporated into the mainstream Republican Party that emerges from this crash.

For us, this entails a number of fundamental shifts. Firstly, we are going to need to figure out how to respond to the DNC dominating this rise of political energy. Between the DNC forcing this energy into voting and the PSL driving it into the dead end of pointless marches and appeals to politicians, we have a struggle ahead of us. To preserve the radical possibilities of politics that we have unleashed over the years means breaking with these forces of recuperation, and acting directly in opposition to them, rather than considering them allies, which unfortunately many anarchists still do. We have to differentiate, point out what is fundamentally different with anarchist politics, and how that is in conflict with the reformist world of both the PSL and the DNC.

Secondly, we are going to need to prepare ourselves for a rise in political violence, but in a form different from what we have been seeing. As this movement becomes smaller, more extreme, and more isolated (we are already seeing moves within the RNC to position for an overthrow of Trumpism if he loses), it is also likely to produce small-scale acute instances of random violence. A lot of right wing violence we have seen has been social violence, done more or less in public; this takes the form both of the marches done to intimidate communities, as well as in the form of mass shootings. But, as the far-right has experienced repression this has also shifted.

Very much like what happened to us coming out of the Green Scare and the following rounds of repression, many dropped out, but those of us that were left came out of that experience different people, far more serious, far more focused, and far more skilled tactically and strategically. Accelerationists have undergone a similar shift. In response to the infiltration of their networks the groups that have survived are now far more security conscious, less likely to engage in unfocused random violence, and far more likely to be capable of something like downing part of the power grid.

For as much as this moment in American political history points to ecstatic levels of energy, and some level of hope for the future, these shifts have also entailed some profound implications that we are just starting to really understand and see the impacts of. As these dynamics continue to play out, through the election and beyond it, we need to be monitoring these changes in our landscape, and consistently adapt to the changes in those conditions. This is a time for experimentation, for finding our way through a different situation, and very much not a time to sit back on our laurels, our assumed approaches, and our areas of comfort.