No. of Recommendations: 16
Why did MAGA unleash that weird, desperate twaddle about the protests? The reason becomes clearer once you read this:
'CNN has a good rundown of the craziness coming from leading Republicans in advance of No Kings Day 2. Mike Johnson, the speaker of the house, called them “hate America rallies” consisting entirely of the “pro-Hamas wing” and antifa. Scott Bessent, the treasury secretary — remember when people thought he was the adult in the room? — said that the demonstrations would involve “the most unhinged in the Democratic Party.” And Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, attacked the whole Democratic base:
"The Democrat Party’s main constituency are made up of Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens, and violent criminals."
These claims were all self-evidently absurd. So why make them? CNN says that it was a “weird strategy”: Calling grandmothers Hamas terrorists won’t convince anyone who isn’t already deep in the MAGA tank and will backfire as those not in the tank see the disconnect between this rhetoric and the reality of the protests.
But it all makes sense once you realize that what we have been seeing in operation isn’t the Trump administration’s strategy for dealing with its critics. It is, instead, the strategies of individual MAGA apparatchiks for dealing with He Who Must Be Obeyed.
A couple of months ago Henry Farrell had a useful post explaining why people around Trump shower him with ludicrous compliments. Farrell cited work by the political scientist Xavier Marquez, who pointed out that autocracies that build a cult of personality around their leader are subject to “flattery inflation.” Marquez’s examples go all the way back to the Emperor Caligula, but the logic has remained the same over the centuries. (Trump hasn’t yet appointed his favorite horse as consul, but he did make Pete Hegseth secretary of defense war.)
Here’s how it works. The ruler’s lackeys and courtiers believe that they must praise him to the skies, proving their loyalty by offering paeans to his wisdom, character, and golf game. And they must continually up the ante:
How do you show your loyalty? By paying the costs of humiliation. The more grotesquely over the top your praise, the more credible it is as a signal of support for Dear Leader.
Apparatchiks’ willingness to degrade themselves will hurt their reputation with other people. But for exactly that reason, it serves as proof of loyalty to the one man who counts, Donald Trump. The more appalling the self-abasement, the more effectively it will serve this purpose.
What I would argue is that a similar process of self-reinforcement applies to telling lies that serve the autocrat’s ego. Call it “mendacity inflation.” Trump insists that he’s overwhelmingly popular and that only a lunatic fringe disapproves of his presidency. Well, to show loyalty his hangers-on must go further, declaring that grandmothers and parents pushing prams down 7th Avenue are illegal aliens and violent criminals. The humiliating absurdity is a feature, not a bug. Simply lying about demonstrators isn’t enough; to prove their MAGA mettle people in Trump’s orbit must tell lies that are grotesque and ridiculous.
Again, what’s historically odd about this is that while Trump’s personal depravity may match that of historical autocrats, his power doesn’t. Call him Caligula, if you like, but he can’t order Senators — even Republican Senators — to commit suicide. (Dear historians: yes, I know that many of the stories told about Caligula were probably exaggerated.) He’s only able to act as if he has absolute power within a limited enclave, a bubble created by greed and fear.
And on that point, my second question arises: does it matter whether people are out there marching and carrying signs, even if they number in the millions? Well, there is a solid body of research by political scientists like Erica Chenoweth about the effects of civil resistance -- nonviolent shows of opposition to those controlling or attempting to control the government. The clear answer from this research is that demonstrations like No Kings Day can make a big difference. They are a show of the depth and popularity of a movement, reassuring those who are opposed to a nation’s direction that many, many others share that opposition.
Moreover, if a broad cross-section of society is represented in the demonstrations — and the crowds I saw consisted of a mix of seniors, middle-aged liberals, families with children, students and other unthreatening types — they can induce defections from the ruling regime, because the protestors can’t easily be “othered,” portrayed as strange and alien. So protests with a wide base of support can ultimately pierce the regime’s bubble. In fact, in the aftermath of the massive scale and breadth of the demonstrations, the MAGA propaganda machine has gone remarkably quiet, although Mike Johnson has claimed that the demonstrators were all Marxists.
And Trump himself is in denial. From CNN:
The president shows no sign of changing course. He called Saturday’s mass protests a “joke” and described them as “very small, very ineffective.” The people who took part were “whacked out,” Trump said.
“When you look at those people, those are not representative of the people of our country,” he told reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday.
Maybe Trump even believes that. But it was the opposite of the truth.
What the No Kings Day 2 demonstrations showed me is that we continue to be a great nation, despite how Trump and his minions try to separate, divide, gaslight and intimidate us. Saturday’s marches were a giant step towards taking our country back.'
——Actual Economist Paul Krugman
