One of the hazards of blogging about politics is that well-laid plans can be totally frustrated by the latest turn of events. No sooner did I get started on a philosophical dissection of the ideas of Donald Trump’s designated big thinker, Steve Bannon, when Bannon was unceremoniously booted off the National Security Council amid reports that his days at the White House might be numbered. That’s put me off philosophy for a time. Immediately, I thought of the Night of the Long Knives.
That’s a Nazi-era reference, which means this is an untypical posting for me, since the Nazis were at most faux-Pagan. I’ll stipulate, incidentally, that the Don isn’t truly a Hitler – though some of his fans seem to wish he were.
When Adolf Hitler became Chancellor in January, 1933, he came to power with a very mixed bag of followers. First were the true believers. The term “Nazi” was short for “National Socialist,” and these took the “Socialist” part seriously, proposing a real social revolution. They weren’t gentle idealists; their chief support base was the SA – the Sturmabteilung, or Storm-Troopers, otherwise known as Brownshirts. They were the brawlers: the unemployed young men who aided the cause by beating up protestors at Nazi rallies and harassing Jews in the streets. They numbered millions, and expected a drastically elevated status in the New Germany.
The leader of this radical faction was the SA Chief, Ernst Röhm, a personal friend of Hitler’s. The Storm Trooper hierarchy was filled with Röhm’s henchmen, but he also had heavy-duty foes, especially the industrialists and army generals who’d reluctantly accepted Hitler only because they considered him to be a bulwark against a Communist revolution. To them, SA radicalism was hardly better than Marxism. Soon, it was clear these diverse elements couldn’t work together.
Hitler had to choose – to either pin his hopes on the street-fighting Brownshirts or on the much more “respectable” business and military interests who’d later joined his government. He opted for the latter, and managed to dispose of the radicals very efficiently. One fine day – June 30, 1934, to be precise – his minions made a list of a few dozen of Röhm’s supporters, along with some other people they didn’t like, arrested them all, and shot every one (including Röhm) that evening. That was the Night of the Long Knives, following which the SA got more docile leadership and all discussion of a social revolution under the Nazis abruptly ceased.
Fast forward to the present. Like Hitler, the Don has a varied set of adherents. First, are the true believers – the alt-right. I’m using this term sort of loosely, to denote the whole range of ultra-conservative grass-roots berserkers who’ve emerged from the shadows over the last few years. You can think of them as Trump’s Brownshirts. They don’t physically mug people in the streets, preferring to virtually assault their enemies online. They like the Don, but they expect him to do those radical things he promised before the election, like build a wall and deport nine million people, and they’ll be very grumpy if he doesn’t deliver. They’re represented in the ranks of the administration by Steve Bannon and his sympathizers.
The Trump regime is otherwise composed of the billionaires, generals, and GOP party hacks who’re actually doing the administrative stuff. Some are timeservers, only seeking power and money for themselves. Others have sincere policy convictions, but these will be of the boilerplate Republican variety, not Trump’s erratic heterodoxy. They probably weren’t for Trump early on, and they’ve no interest in fiery rhetoric or projects that foster confrontation and disturb the masses. Their purposes will best be served by caution and stealth. Mike Pence and the Don’s Chief of Staff, Reince Priebus, embody this perspective – ideological, perhaps, but businesslike: focused on achieving concrete results, not on provoking the base as an end in itself.
My point’s pretty obvious; the true believer’s need for a daily fix of partisan fury will inevitably clash with the realist’s need to seek allies and cut deals. Professionals – like General McMaster, the new NSC head – will have little patience for firebrands. A choice will have to be made, and it’s hard to imagine the Don (or Jared) deciding any differently than Hitler in the 1930s. Administrators are necessary to government, while youthful brawlers and basement-dwelling obsessives aren’t. Trump’s a plutocrat, like his billionaire appointees, and radicalism of any kind really isn’t in his or their interest. There was bound to be a showdown – a Night of the Long Knives – though it came a little earlier than we might’ve expected.
And yet there’s one huge difference between that Nazi precursor and the drama currently unfolding inside the beltway. Trump can demote Bannon, he can fire him, but he can’t have him shot. Whatever happens to Bannon politically, he’ll still be physically alive – from Trump’s standpoint, he’ll be either inside the tent pissing out or outside the tent pissing in. If the SA had had the chance to choose between Hitler and Röhm, who knows what they would’ve done? And how will the orcs of the internet react, if Bannon and Breitbart diverge from Trump?
The alt-right is an indispensable part of Trump’s base, so Bannon won’t be fired, and will continue to have the President’s ear, I predict.
We still need to know about Bannon’s point of view.
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