Trump’s Arendt and Arendt’s Trump
28th February 2021
The term authority has almost vanished from discussion across the whole political spectrum, from the intersectional left to the radical right, in favour of an emphasis on power. Yet the distinction between authority and power is cardinal to the history of Western political thought. As Arendt pointed out, the concept of authority was unknown in the Greek polis, which is why Plato was compelled to reinvent the figure of the despot, or the head of a household, in his attempt to introduce the principle as the polis crumbled. In Rome, by contrast, the prototype for every modern Republic, authority was linked to the conviction of a sacredness of the foundation; hence the figure of the “founding fathers” as represented by a “senate” composed of statesmen who represent authority, but do not have power, which is conceived as an unbridled force.
With the evaporation of authority, aimless power becomes the governing reality, jealously protective of its privileges. The characterisation of Trump as an authoritarian, the improbable chief vector of attack since he first descended through the Rubicon at Trump Tower in June 2015, relates to this dilemma. The key project of his administration consisted of an attempt to reimpose American authority and mythos against a headless coalition of the permanent administration, corporate media, intelligence agencies and miscellaneous well-funded fronts. Lacking any basis for legitimacy itself, what united and defined this force was opposition to the office and the person of the president: ersatz authority as transgressive opposition to authority and the determination to destroy it.
Witch-hunt culture is nothing new.