IS TRUMP THE SHADOW OF THE UNITED STATES?
THE LORD OF THE FLIES
“Hey, Jack, we are ready!”
It was a formal occasion at Dante’s Cafe, the cozy place where Jack, Pere, and Nicco usually meet to discuss how to write the novel they want to write about our times. They had invited another gentleman to discuss a question Jack had posed on a previous occasion.
They had been commenting on how shocking it was to see the average Americans' calm attitude toward President Donald Trump’s spectacular actions in support of Putin. The last of these actions, and not the worst one, was the shameful attempt to blame Ukraine for the genocidal war Russia is waging against it—an attempt realized in the Oval Office last Friday. There was some stir, granted, but not what you would expect given that Trump was changing sides against the United States in the conflict for the world’s hegemony.
Jack had recalled the question a German military officer and journalist had asked regarding the German support of Hitler’s aggressive stance in the 1930s:
“What was actually that drove us to follow [Hitler] into the abyss like the children in the story of the Pied Piper? The puzzle is not Adolf Hitler. We are the puzzle.” [1]
Americans are in danger of becoming the puzzle for future historians.
Nicco began to speak.
“You ask me for somebody who could come and illuminate that question. I thought of Arnold. He is a very famous historian. He wrote about the birth, growth, and collapse of civilizations. His masterpiece runs for twelve volumes. He graciously accepted the invitation and is sitting to my right.
Arnold was a British gentleman, almost a Victorian. He began to speak.
<“There are three different methods of viewing and presenting the objects of our thought, and among them, the phenomena of human life. The first is the ascertainment and recording of ‘facts’; the second is the elucidation, through a comparative study of the facts ascertained, of general ‘laws’; the third is the artistic re-creation of the facts in the form of ‘fiction’…[The last one] is the only technique that can be employed or is worth employing where the data are innumerable.”>[2]
“Given the complexity of the question, I start with a key piece of fiction, a 2015 German movie called Look Who’s Back.” It is classified as a comedy, but it is a tragedy.[3]
*
“Hitler wakes up In 2014, in a park in Berlin. Thinking he is still in power, he tries to command obedience. People mistake him for a comedian. A journalist and filmmaker, Fabian Sawatzky, meets him and sees an opportunity to become famous by reporting about him. He organizes a tour of Germany for Hitler, who poses as the comedian people thought he was. He becomes an instant success. He gives speeches all over Germany without hiding his true nature. He notices how people start to take him seriously. Gradually, he realizes the conditions are ripe for him and his ideology to return. He begins organizing such a return.
Alarmed, Sawatzki understands what is happening. He thinks Hitler has become unstoppable and decides that killing him is the only way to avoid a repetition of the Nazi tragedy. He takes a gun, looks for Hitler, and finds him surrounded by supporters.
Sawatzki points the gun at him and says,
“You are the one. You are him.”
Hitler answers.
“Have I ever claimed otherwise?”
“History repeats itself! Again, you are trying to hoodwink people with your propaganda…”
“You don’t understand. In 1933 the people wasn’t hoodwinked by propaganda. A Fuhrer was elected whose plans were clearly revealed. The Germans elected me.”
Sawatzki walks Hitler to the rooftop of the building and tells him to stand at the very brink of the terrace. Then he says in an increasingly threatening tone,
“You are a monster.”
Hitler looks surprised.
“Am I? Then you must also condemn those who elected the monster. Were they monsters? They were ordinary people who decided to elect an extraordinary man and entrusted their nation to him. What would you do, Sawatzski? Prohibit elections?”
“No. But I’d stop you!”
Hitler smiles.
“Here you never asked yourself why people followed me? Because, at their core, they’re just like me. They share the same values, and that’s why you won’t shoot.”
Sawatski pulls the trigger. Hit by a bullet, Hitler looks at him, surprised, and falls over the brink to the street many floors below.
Sawatzki walks to the brink and peeks down, trying to localize Hitler’s corpse on the street. He doesn’t find it.
Then, he jumps. He just heard a voice right behind him. Hitler is standing there, very close to him.
“You can’t get rid of me. I am part of you. All of you.”
*
Arnold continued.
“People who closely observed how Hitler and similar populist leaders took control of countries coincide with Hitler’s opinion. Of course, leaders play a crucial role in unifying people around a destructive idea. But they emerge in response to a demand from the people. Albert Speer, Hitler’s Minister of Armaments during most of World War II and witness to Hitler’s political activities, described the dynamics of hatred that filled Hitler’s rallies.
<“Certainly the masses roared to the beat set by Hitler’s and Goebbels’ baton; yet, they were not the true conductors. The mob determined the theme…This was no ardent nationalism. Rather, for a few short hours the personal unhappiness caused by the breakdown of the economy was replaced by a frenzy that demanded victims. And Hitler and Goebbels threw them the victims. By lashing out as their opponents and vilifying the Jews they gave expression and direction to fierce, primal passions.”>[4]
“People are mistaken when they think that mad rulers impose their madness on otherwise sensible societies. Mad societies look for mad rulers to fulfill their madness. Destructiveness becomes legitimate because people ask for it—not against themselves but against those they perceive as enemies.
“William Shirer, who lived through the 1930s in Germany and wrote “Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” observed this popular support in this way:
<” In the background, to be sure, there lurked the terror of the Gestapo and the fear of the concentration camp for those who got out of line or who had been Communists or Socialists or too liberal or too pacifist, or who were Jews. The Blood Purge of June 30, 1934, was a warning of how ruthless the new leaders could be. Yet the Nazi terror in the early years affected the lives of relatively few Germans and a newly arrived observer was somewhat surprised to see that the people of this country did not seem to feel that they were being cowed and held down by an unscrupulous and brutal dictatorship. On the contrary, they supported it with genuine enthusiasm.”>[5]
When Shirer arrived in Germany, Hitler had recently escalated power and was in the process of dismantling the Republic of Weimar. Germany was becoming a dictatorship, and people looked the other way.
THE SHADOW
“Carl Jung introduced the notion of the Shadow in psychology to explain these sudden changes in people’s behavior who then look as if nothing is happening. He defined the Shadow as the ‘hidden or unconscious aspects of oneself, both good and bad, which the ego has either repressed or never recognized…"[6] Of course, evilness is part of the shadow.
The Shadow is a feature of the individual but is also transferred to the collective. This transfer has a profound impact on society’s behavior. As described by Jungian psychologists:
<"Most of us like to keep evil in the shadows. Either we completely deny the reality of evil, which is an increasingly popular postmodern phenomenon, or we try to keep it safely out of mind, detached from our everyday work, family, and recreation. If we do indulge thoughts about it, these are typically restricted to fantasies, fables, or stories, where we can personify evil in archetypal and unequivocal form. Batman has the Joker; Sherlock Holmes has Professor Moriarty; Cinderella has her stepmother; the Fellowship has Sauron. Even in these cases, however, evil is clearly demarcated and kept separate from ourselves and from what we perceive as good and wholesome. This retains our need for distance and detachment, lest we become infected or contaminated with evil if we come in too close contact with it. But it also means that we are surprised when it appears in the form of genocide, 9/11, high school killing sprees, or cruelty to animals, almost as if we had hoped that our denial of its existence, or our willingness to let it have the space of the shadows, would keep it tamed and at bay.">[7]
“Jung says something that seems surprising: that one has to integrate the shadow with the part you show about yourself. If you recognize that you can commit terrible crimes, you can reflect on the consequences and avoid them. If you don’t acknowledge its existence, it comes out as strange explosions that seem to have no roots in the nature of an otherwise civilized society. Hitler was the shadow of the Germany of the early twentieth century, which looked too civilized to do the things they would do a few years later. Trump is the shadow of the United States that is now erupting with amazing force.
There it was, ignored, but active and today it is sprouting.
“People who are looking at the current events as normal behave like this because somewhere inside their beings, surrounded by darkness, there is the idea that what is happening is correct, but they do not want to say it publicly. It is part of them, and not wanting to recognize it, they become its slaves because, without acknowledging its existence, they cannot weigh these events against the traditions of the United States and make a conscious decision of what they want to do. Instead, according to Jung, they watch what is happening and cannot resist what they see because they have secretly wished for these things.
“Trump is inside many people in the United States—more than we suspect. Otherwise, we would see a more radical rejection of what he is doing.
“Americans are not the only people dominated by their Shadow. This is a feature of human beings that can be observed in all societies. The extreme right is emerging all over the planet, and people are noticing but taking it lightly. So, these reflections are relevant everywhere. Yet, nowhere else are they as important as they are in the United States because of its predominant role in the globe and because these trends are coming to a head there.
THE INEXPLICABLE POWER CHAIN
The worst part of this story is that the forces that have been unleashed will not stop at the things they have done already. To justify their about-face, Trump and his allies will have to adopt the doctrines of hatred now advanced by Putin and accept the hegemony of Putin’s master, Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party. As much as Trump is subservient to Putin, Putin is subservient to Xi Jinping. One of the big mysteries of what is happening is that, while Putin’s submission to Xi Jinping is logical—Russia is not in the league of China, the United States, or the European Union—that of Trump to Putin has no visible explanation. The United States is immensely more powerful than Russia, and it is ceding all its advantages to Russia without any known reason to do it.
Still, even if we don’t know why Trump is doing this, everything seems to indicate that we will see the enactment of the prediction attributed (apparently falsely) to Lenin: “Don’t worry about the capitalists, they will sell us the rope we need to hang them.”
LORD OF THE FLIES
“William Godling hints at what may happen later in his novel Lord of the Flies, which earned him a Nobel Prize.
A large group of schoolboys crash on a deserted island. They are forced to organize themselves to survive. They do it very efficiently but soon face problems derived from internecine power struggles. Rumors circulate that a Beast causes these and other difficulties. The group becomes fearful and paranoid. One of the contenders for power feeds those fears and organizes a group of hunters to kill the Beast. The existence of the Beast becomes essential for his bid for power. They kill a pig, stick its head on a spike, and call it Lord of the Flies—which is Beelzebub in Hebrew, or the Beast.
Simon, an introspective boy, has a vision while walking around the island. The Lord of the Flies finds him alone in the forest and speaks to him.
<“What are you doing out here all alone? Aren’t you afraid of me?...There isn’t anyone to help you. Only me. And I am the Beast…Fancy thinking the Beast is something you can hunt and kill! You knew, didn’t you, I’m part of you?”>[8]
Simon tells the other boys what he has found, but the hunters do not want to hear this as it would erase their growing authority. They convince the rest that Simon is saying this because he is the Beast, leading them into a frenzy that results in Simon's killing.
What better description is there of the trap set by Trump and Vance to sacrifice Zelensky on the altar of Putin in the Oval Office?
THE RAY OF HOPE
“But the United States is not its Shadow. Its Shadow is part of the country, but not all of it, and it does not define its nature, not the nature that has emerged with stunning clarity through its 250 years of existence. Americans must face their shadow, which is glaring with black light through their government’s actions, recognize that the country can lose its democracy and freedoms, and proceed to avoid this terrible outcome.
To realize that they can lose their rights, they have only to listen to what John Adams wrote on June 6, 1826, in response to an invitation to dine with the citizens of his beloved hometown of Quincy, Massachusetts, on the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. In a short letter to the organizing committee, he excused himself on grounds of poor health but then offered this piece of his wisdom about the American Revolution:
<”A Memorable epoch in the annals of the human race; destined, in future history, to form the brightest or the blackest page, according to the use or abuse of those political institutions by which, they shall, in time to come, be Shaped, by the human mind.”>[9]
Like his Founding Brothers and Abraham Lincoln eighty-seven years later, Adams put the responsibility for the outcomes of the new American social order squarely on the shoulders of American citizens. He and his comrades did not pretend to have created a perfect system, a static structure, a utopia that would automatically direct its citizens to do the right thing and attain perfection. Having been conceived, as Lincoln said, in liberty, the entire social order was designed to guarantee precisely the freedom that would allow its citizens to act in good or bad faith, to make mistakes and recover from them, or not. Up to now, many Americans seem to think that accepting that the United States may commit mistakes is treasonous and should be confronted with a straight negative. This is the negation of the Shadow, which helps it to work in the dark for its nefarious purposes.
“In his book about the Holocaust, Zygmunt Bauman pushed us to recognize a terrible truth:
<”The most frightening news brought about the Holocaust and by what we learned of its perpetrators was not the likelihood that ‘this’ could be done to us, but the idea that we could do it.”>[10]
“It has become commonplace to say that comparisons between our days and the 1930s are gross exaggerations. But turning to support a dictator committing genocide and blaming the victim for it makes the comparison reasonable and is clear evidence of a betrayal of the principles that gave birth to the United States. Blame the victims and kill them? The United States? Putin and Xi Jinping will not stop there. Will the United States accompany them in their future savagery?
“For their own sake and the entire world, Americans must reflect on Adams’ words, face their Shadow, recognize that bad things may happen in the United States, and organize themselves to prevent them.”
…..
Manuel Hinds is a Fellow at The Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise at Johns Hopkins University. He shared the Manhattan Institute's 2010 Hayek Prize. He has worked in 35 countries as a division chief and then as a consultant to the World Bank. He was the Whitney H. Shepardson Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. His website is manuelhinds.com
[1] Heinrich Jarecke in Mythos Hitler: Ein Nachruf, in Kriegsende in Deutschland, Hamburg, 2005, p. 223. Quoted in Kershaw, Ian, The End: The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler’s Germany, 1944-1945, The Penguin Press, New York, 2011, pp. 9.
[2] Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History, Abridgement in two volumes by D. C. Somervell, Volume 1, Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford, 1957, pp. 46.
[3] Look who’s Back, directed by David Wnendt, based on Timus Werner’s 2012 novel https://www.google.com/search?q=look+who%27s+back+where+to+watch&client=safari&sca_esv=3a00b5f4c73ad6fb&rls=en&ei=2_DAZ_v-MImMxc8PppmF8QQ&ved=0ahUKEwi72NfZ_OSLAxUJRvEDHaZMIU4Q4dUDCBA&uact=5&oq=look+who%27s+back+where+to+watch&gs_lp=Egxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAiHmxvb2sgd2hvJ3MgYmFjayB3aGVyZSB0byB3YXRjaDIGEAAYBxgeMgsQABiABBiRAhiKBTIGEAAYBxgeMgYQABgHGB4yBhAAGAcYHjILEAAYgAQYkQIYigUyBRAAGIAEMgUQABiABDIFEAAYgAQyBRAAGIAESJQ2UKQWWLgrcAN4AZABAJgBeKABvwWqAQM0LjO4AQPIAQD4AQGYAgegApYEwgIKEAAYsAMY1gQYR8ICBxAAGIAEGA3CAgYQABgNGB6YAwCIBgGQBgiSBwM0LjOgB69J&sclient=gws-wiz-serp#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:0f36ccb7,vid:oG083ygLCHE,st:0
[4] Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich, Macmillan, New York, 1970, pp. 17.
[5] William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Fawcett Crest, New York, 1992, pp. 320.
[6] Sharp, D. in Jung Lexicon: A primer of terms and concepts, 1991, https://pacifica.libguides.com/Jung/shadow
[7] Steven A. Rogers and Debora A. Lowe, Evil in the Shadow: What Carl Jung can teach us about evil, in Harold Ellens (Ed), Explaining Evil, 2011, quoted in https://pacifica.libguides.com/Jung/shadow
[8] William Golding, Lord of the Flies, London, A Perigee Book, Penguin, 1954, pp. 200.
[9] Letter from John Adams to John Whitney, 7 June 1826, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-8023
[10] Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, Cambridge, UK, 19989, Kindle Edition, pp. 152.