Despite Trump losing his re-election bid, the MAGA tide has not been exhausted, with leaders like Marjorie Taylor Greene continuing the cause. Though the January 6th attack on the capitol and Marjorie Taylor Greene’s formation of the America First Caucus in the Congress both ended in tactical failure, reactionary nationalists have not lost the strategic initiative. Their main advantage is that they grasp key contradictions and are not afraid of division. They lead.
Political leadership is best understood as a verb, so what does it do? First, it clarifies a contradiction. Next, it generates a political line. A line is not merely an opinion. A political line is an orientation which establishes a baseline intent under which actions and positions are initiated and evaluated. Ultimately, political leadership connects the political line to the contradiction in a way that enables conscious forward action.
There is only one world, so who counts within it? This is the fundamental political question of our time. The viability of political leadership today is largely contingent on the ability to ideologically lead on this question and the contradictions inherent to it. Sometimes a contradiction is so fundamental that it becomes explosively divisive -- as was the case with U.S. slavery. We are in such a situation today. Political leadership will be the decisive factor in the struggle.
The Rise of the White Republic
People live and work here, but they are not counted among the people which constitutes the republic -- they are disenfranchised, an externalized proletariat. That’s the fundamental problem, not just for immigrants but for all people who are excluded from full citizenship in society. Reactionary nationalists grasp this contradiction. Their solution is to make citizenship contingent on bowing to white supremacy. The America First Caucus declares, “America is a nation with a border, and a culture, strengthened by a common respect for uniquely Anglo-Saxon political traditions… As such, America’s legal immigration system should be curtailed to those that can contribute not only economically, but have demonstrated respect for this nation’s culture.”
For white nationalists, the living members of society are not the people which constitute the republic, but rather, it is white supremacy that is sovereign. They want white supremacy embedded in the very infrastructure of public life: “The America First Caucus will work towards an infrastructure that reflects the architectural, engineering and aesthetic value that befits the progeny of European architecture.” To achieve this, they want to erase one of the enduring victories of the U.S. Civil War by overturning the 14th amendment: “we must abolish unnaturalized birthright citizenship.” They are fighting for a white republic, much like the Confederates before them.
The process of capitalism has virtually “battered down all Chinese walls.” The massive flows of people, commodities, and capital across borders have brought a myriad of social controversies. The contradictions of this “globalized economic system,” as the America First Caucus put it, have breathed new life into the white republic.
Reactionaries use terms like citizen and republic, but that doesn’t make these concepts reactionary. The fact that they are controversial and divisive is proof that they speak to fundamental contradictions in the society, thus they cannot be ceded to reactionaries. Rather than abandon leadership, it is incumbent upon us to find and hold onto a real point “whatever the cost,” as Alain Badiou urged in The Meaning of Sarkozy.
Lincoln Led with Line
“A house divided among itself, cannot stand.” With these words Abraham Lincoln rose to national prominence, first on his way to the U.S. Senate in 1858 and then the White House two years later. As a political leader, it was Lincoln’s duty to embrace the divisive contradiction -- should slavery exist or not -- and provide a political line which could unify people through solving the division rather than avoiding it. Lincoln's “Divided House” speech met the challenge, saying, “I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.” Lincoln held onto a real point in the face of an ascendant Confederacy.
Lincoln’s position was not self-evident. His opponent in the Senate race, Stephen Douglass, preferred to avoid the fundamental dividing line contradiction of slavery and allow it to be re-litigated state by state as new territories were added to the union. Lincoln rejected this half-measure. He provided a clear arc for people -- particularly the newly formed Republican Party -- to take initiative and confront the contradiction head on.
“I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided.
It will become all one thing or all the other.
Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become lawful in all the States, old as well as new — North as well as South.”
In Lincoln’s time, holding onto a real point meant war. There would be no half measures. Today we face a similar dilemma. Either this nation fully enfranchises everyone living here now, or we have a white republic. The America First Caucus gets the stakes. In the face of this reactionary nationalism, Badiou suggests we hold onto one truth above all others: “There is only one world” and to further insist that the unity of this world no longer be in objects and money but a unity of “living and acting beings, here and now.” Yet, forging political unity in response to these contradictions is difficult. Even the America First Caucus failed.
Lincoln again serves as an example of how to politically lead despite being surrounded by incoherence and division. Many of Lincoln’s generals failed to grasp the line he set, best exemplified by President Lincoln’s response to the Union Army’s failure to destroy the Confederate Army following the Battle of Gettysburg in the U.S. Civil War. Though the army had won the battle, General Meade declined to pursue General Lee and allowed him to escape back across the river and into Confederate-held land.
Following the battle, General Meade sent a self-congratulatory order to his troops, “we have driven the invaders from our soil,” which was then forwarded via telegram to President Lincoln at the War Department. The writer James B. Fry sets the scene:
I saw him read General Meade’s congratulatory order. When he came to the sentence about “driving the invaders from our soil,” an expression of disappointment settled upon his face, his hands dropped upon his knees, and in tones of anguish he exclaimed “Drive the invaders from our soil! My God! Is that all?”
Lincoln’s retort was a dispiriting recognition that General Meade simply did not know what war he was fighting. Though General Meade made a battlefield mistake, his fundamental error was one of political line, which was captured in a simple phrase he used: “our soil.” Lincoln politically understood the entire nation was our soil, including the Confederate-held territory. Thus, Meade’s victory at Gettysburg had not in fact driven the Confederates from our soil. The Confederacy had no right to exist because the states had no right to secede. Thus, the only military objective which could resolve the contradiction between slavery and freedom was the ending of the war through the complete annihilation of Confederate forces throughout the whole country.
Lincoln had staked his leadership on the political line that the nation would either be united in freedom or in slavery, and there could be no half measures. That was the real point of the war. It would not be until Lincoln promoted General Grant, who in turn unleashed General Sherman on his famed March to the Sea, that Lincoln found Generals who politically understood the war they were actually fighting. Lincoln led with a courage matched only by his clarity. He rallied millions to put down the white republic, laying the foundation for citizenship and enfranchisement for millions more. Lincoln would be rewarded with a bullet to the head.
Got to Be Real
Political leadership facilitates coherence and the ability for people to be and act in common. This is why political leaders are attacked, smeared, or killed. Destroying the individual leader is about severing the link between the people and the politics, a dynamic that is embodied by that leader but can never be contained to that individual. This is why Fred Hampton rightfully pointed out, “You can murder a revolutionary, but you can’t murder a revolution.”
Today, political leadership is in crisis at every level of society, leading many to reject leadership altogether and embrace so-called leaderless approaches. “Strong people don’t need strong leaders.” This oft-quoted Ella Baker remark has become a mantra of sorts for self-defined progressive forces. Yet, political leadership is a force, and it cannot be destroyed or reduced to a persona. Besides, reactionaries are not rejecting leadership. They have real leaders responding to real contradictions in the society, providing coherent direction to millions. To have any chance of putting down the white republic, we need a revolutionary political leadership which re-orients us to the real by the millions. No more half-measures. It’s got to be real.