US Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and George Santos showed up in NYC, outside Donald Trump’s arraignment, on this day, April 4, which happens to be the 55th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King.
Here is the key fact that most people on our side—the side for democracy and against authoritarianism—will miss about the spectacle.
I could start by saying “The lying is the point,” which is to say that Trump and Greene and Santos and their supporters don’t really believe what they claim to believe. They know it’s all a lie, that Trump is a liar, and what they are defending, there on the streets, is not so much the content of the lie, it is the act of lying itself.
I believe I know this from having grown up in the 1960s south, where everything that white southerners had to say about Black people—most of it horrendously racist, of course—was not really a matter of belief, but a matter of saying, like a school song or an incantation. The act was to repeat the lies; the purpose of the act was to have the power to be gained by repeating the lies. The falsity of what was being repeated gave the act more power, not less, because it takes a commitment to tell a lie, and the power derived from telling the same lie all together is what has held their version of America together since before its founding. The point of repeating the lie is not to express a mistaken belief, nor to convince anyone that the lie is truth but—much more effectively—to entice and browbeat others to join them in repeating a lie known to be false. This is a necessary feature of a truly brutal society.
That is why the small but dedicated crowd of pro-Trumpers gathered outside the arraignment was yelling “USA! USA!” It is a contentless chant, signifying nothing, and the phrase is equally available to either side, except that in context, as it is chanted at rallies and in stadiums, this is what “USA! USA!” means: We uphold the lie of white racial supremacy, even when we know that it is a lie, because we know the lie, and this group repetition of the lie, is what maintains our political power.
By the way, this is why those who don the trappings of red-staters—such as guys who equip their pickup truck with a gun rack and confederate flag sticker and listen to country music and speak with a drawl—this is why those guys come off as authentic. Almost everything they believe is a lie, and they know that what they believe is a lie. But they are genuine in the sense that they are fully committed to upholding their lies, to the point of never showing any doubt, which is easy for them, because their deeply held emotional commitment to lying effectively crowds out any other thoughts they might have about this subject, or just about any other subject for that matter.
Compare this to the painful-to-witness inauthenticity of characters like David Brooks. Brooks knows, just as well as any gun-toting Trumper does, that the ideology of white supremacy is a lie, but instead repeating this lie in a simple and earnest way, endeavors to find some way to make it palatable—to top the lie with enough refined sugar to make it pass for the truth. For example, when the extreme right targeted “wokeness,”— known and defined by both sides as “…the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them” (to quote an aide to DeSantis)—Brooks recharacterized and redefined “woke” as a tool of elite Democrats. In this way he aims for a middle ground, neither too far left nor too far right, where he can enjoy the power of the lie and the mantle of the truth at the same time. This inauthenticity is why the so called “moderate” right has no political traction at present.
Which brings me to lessons for our side, the side for democracy and against authoritarianism. The Trumpers are making a last stand, or feel they are making a last stand, for the cause of white supremacy and against the cause of equality. Fact is, no one really knows what a post-white America will look like or be like. This uncertainty can make us falter, hedge our bets, step back when we should stand up. And I see it in my cohort, among progressives generally: a desire to return to some kind of imagined normalcy, sometimes a personal flight to safety, or a dismissal of politics or political possibilities.
But we can win only by finding truths and advancing those truths together, and with common fervor. It’s a hard job, but not impossible. Perhaps we can start by each looking at our own fears, our own individual hesitation to be bold and radical in asserting a social justice agenda, and by reassessing our strategy toward most white Americans, who continue to stand firmly for lying and for the lie of white supremacy.
It does no good to tell the truth to a knowing liar. Instead, it is necessary to convince them of the futility of continuing to repeat what they know is a lie.