American First, and Trumpism (after the post-mortem)
As I have noted before (recall; and also this post)
called attention to the writings of Samuel Francis as “Trumpism's Prophet: On Samuel Francis’ diabolical vision.” Below, I suggest that Francis is indeed Trumpism’s prophet despite Trump’s deviation from his vision.One of the Francis’ key essays is “Nationalism, Old and New.” This short essay is published in June 1992 in the halcyon period after the end of the Cold War and the Reagan coalition triumphant. While Francis is in no sense a liberal or a progressive, he is not in a victorious mood.
For in his view, neoconservatism just expresses the accommodation with the managerial state by a purportedly conservative intelligentsia — that craved liberal approval and sought jobs in the machinery of government — that has sold out “the Real America, the American Nation” or middle America. For Francis, who draws liberally on James Burnham, the managerial state displaced the old, more bourgeois Protestant elites at the start of twentieth century. More about this below.
What Francis (1947 – 2005), gets right is that the American founding involves a debate between republican virtue (in the Machiavellian sense) and mercantile nationalists (which in our day is re-articulated (recall this post) passionately by Yoram Hazony).* For Francis liberalism is a relative latecomer on the American scene, and only has become dominant in the wake of the managerial revolution of the early twentieth century. While Francis sides with what he calls ‘true American republicanism’ (not the party), he thinks American history has been one long defeat for them (of the anti-Federalist, States’ rights, Southern Agrarianism, and Old Right conservatism of the era between Charles Lindbergh and Jesse Helms kinds).
So, what he proposes, ‘America First,’ is a response to the long history of defeat of Republicanism and the victory of twentieth century managerialism. Francis laments this republican defeat, but rather than proposing a nostalgic return to an agrarian, Jeffersonian virtue with a fondness for regionalism, he proposes a Nth best alternative: America First is a new kind of nationalism. This proposed new nationalism rejects the mercantile ‘common good’ nationalism associated with Hamilton, and it rejects the relative latecomer(s) on the scene, liberal internationalism and progressive liberalism.
Francis quietly inscribes his historiography in James Burnham’s analytic toolbox (with a touch of Gramsci). It is worth quoting the whole key paragraph:
By far the most strategically important effort of an emerging Middle-American counterelite would be a long countermarch through the institutions of the dominant culture—universities, think tanks and foundations, schools, the arts, journalism, organized religion, the professions, labor organizations, and corporations—not only to assert the legitimacy of Middle-American cultural and ethnic identity, norms, and institutions but also to define American society in terms of them. Instead of an ethic of acquisitive individualism, immediate and perpetual gratification, distraction, and dispersion, the new nationalism should assert an ethic of solidarity and sacrifice able to discipline and direct national energy and reinforce national, social, and ethnic bonds of identity. The pseudo-nationalist ethic of the old nationalism that served only as a mask for the pursuit of special interests will be replaced by the social ethic of an authentic nationalism that can summon and harness the genius of a people certain of its identity and its destiny. The myth of the managerial regime that America is merely a philosophical proposition about the equality of all mankind (and therefore includes all mankind) must be replaced by a new myth of the nation as a historically and culturally unique order that commands loyalty, solidarity, and discipline and excludes those who do not or cannot assimilate to its norms and interests. This is the real meaning of “America First”: America must be first not only among other nations but first also among the other (individual or class or sectional) interests of its people. Unless a Middle-American nationalism (or any other sociopolitical movement) can achieve such cultural hegemony through the formulation of an accepted public myth, its political power and economic resources will remain dependent on the cultural power of its adversaries and eventually will succumb to their manipulation as it takes its cues on goals and tactics from its opponents. [Emphasis added]
Francis, thus, accepts Burnham’s claim that America is de facto ruled by “elites that manage modern mass organizations and master the technical skills that allow these organizations to function.” These elites rely on a public myth promulgated by Lincoln that is committed to “the principle of equality,” but that allows the “twin towers of managerial capitalism and managerial government” to flourish in the aftermath of the refounding of the American project by Lincoln.
My interest in Francis is not in the historical narrative, of course. But rather to point out that in Trumpism the old and new nationalism are uneasily cohabitating. So, it’s pretty clear that Trump’s electoral victory, which is part of a larger electoral realignment, is built on a firm assertion of the legitimacy of Middle-American cultural and ethnic identity, norms, and institutions and the will to redefine and reshape American society in terms of them. This accounts for the aggressive stance toward universities and the professions, including medicine. Others have described more eloquently than I could how Trump re-awakened patriarchal whiteness effectively.
However, Trump himself is not a man of shared solidarity and sacrifice whatever its ethnic identity. Intellectually he is quite clearly also deeply invested in bits of the older Hamiltonian nationalism—his fondness for tariffs and his sense that in all exchange and deals there are winners and losers. And this converges with his all too visible tendency to run government as a protection racket where ‘the family’ benefits. This family is now extended to and by the silicon billionaires, the very new managerial elites, who expect a return on their investment by way of nudged government contracts and quietly tolerated monopoly everywhere through the American empire.
And this uneasy alliance of new nationalist Trumpers who wish for an American First cultural renewal and old nationalist Trumpers who expect to benefit on the gravy train also generates opportunities to develop and generate strategic cleavages by public spirited critics of the forthcoming second Trump administration. That means inviting the disassociation of true American First Trumpists (the new nationalists) from Trump’s tendency toward Hamiltonian older nationalists. What this means in practice for liberals, I leave for a future digression or two.
To be continued.
*Here is his account of Hamiltonian nationalism: