Fealty to Trump demands a scapegoat: Canada

Since President Trump’s menacing public shaming of President Zelenskyy at the White House last Friday, some Republicans have completely reversed their once-held positions defending Ukraine’s response to Russia’s illegal invasion of their country. How is such a reversal possible?

Yesterday, I introduced the concept of ideology: societal energies of legitimation where the end justifies the means. With ideology, a group of people absolutizes a societal end, legitimates the means needed to bring it about, creates a false enemy that must be destroyed and recruits Messianic forces to implement the end. In certain respects, as a quasi-religious force, ideology is a secular, Enlightenment-dependent parody of the Gospel. 

The MAGA movement (Make America Great Again) has embraced an ideology of identity. Its all-encompassing goal is to return to a utopian “Golden Age” of white male privilege. Any constructive or healing response to our current crisis must first deal decisively with the legitimate grievances of the people who buy into the MAGA ideology. These people often feel abandoned by the forces of global capitalism, by the decision-making that led to the Iraq War, and by the rescue of companies “too big to fail” but not the millions of people who lost their homes in the 2008 fiscal crisis.  

‘Narrative warfare’

But if the return of white male privilege is the goal of MAGA, how is it to be achieved? It requires legitimacy so that society broadly accepts it. Legitimizing a new ideology means redefining fundamental norms and values like truth, honesty, mercy, justice, peace, economic stewardship, love of neighbour and care for creation. Efforts to legitimize MAGA have been successful wherever lies are considered truth (“the election was stolen!”), and when those who illegally perpetrated the violent insurrection on January 6 are hailed as “patriots.” It’s successful when the US Supreme Court grants legal immunity to illegal actions by US presidents. It’s successful when people accept giving white Afrikaners, the most privileged people in South Africa, “refugee status” in the US but intentionally and cruelly seek to make Palestinians from Gaza (who are not white) homeless. 

In his interview in The New York Times, Stephen Bannon states, “Trump understands that to get anything done, you have to make the people understand. And so therefore, constantly, we’re in a battle of narrative. Unrestricted narrative warfare. Everything is narrative.” The narrative is about legitimization. 

Worshipping Trump

But acceptance of a twisted narrative is not enough. The goal can be realized only when social forces are recruited, elevated and granted the freedom and immunity to actually implement the goal. The changes envisioned need to become real – to take on flesh and blood, as it were. Every ideology possesses a powerful incarnational impulse. This is the process of sacralization, of the creation of an idol, a deliverer, a Messianic force or figure. The saviour that MAGA has chosen is Donald Trump. In this respect, Trump is a pawn – even an unwitting pawn. Trump has been elevated into a semi-divine, cult figure. I know of no other social force that can account for the domination that Trump is able to exercise, the extraordinary fealty to Trump to which once powerful businesspeople, politicians, judges and decision-makers succumb. In idolatry, everything narrows down to developing the right relationship, the right exchange, the right transaction, with the idol – in this case, Trump – because he is the instrument for bringing about the MAGA goal. This kind of hypnotic narrowing down involves making sacrifices – sacrificing agency to Trump, including one’s ability to have critical, independent thinking and positions. It requires surrendering one’s independence to him.

The role of an artificial enemy

But it is the final aspect of ideology that brings back the question of whether Trump’s threat to annex Canada is real. Ideologies cannot function without creating a scapegoat – a false, artificial image of the enemy. The illusion is that eliminating the scapegoat will bring about the desired end. In the Nazi ideology, the scapegoat was Jews. In the Russian nationalist ideology, the scapegoat is Ukrainians (they are not actually “human”). In the apartheid ideology, the scapegoat was people of colour. In the Soviet (revolution) ideology, the scapegoat was the bourgeoisie. In the French Revolution ideology, the scapegoats were the nobility and clergy. All of them must be destroyed to achieve the end.

I believe that Trump is creating an ideologically-induced scapegoat image of Canada. That’s why his threats are so real. Trump claims Canada is responsible for hundreds of thousands of American deaths due to fentanyl coming from Canada. In truth, according to U.S. government statistics, less than 1 percent of the fentanyl in the U.S. comes from Canada; in fact, more fentanyl enters Canada from the U.S. than the other way around. But in ideology, truth is merely a barrier to be overcome. Trump has also made the absurd claim that Canada is not a viable country. Despite its absurdity, his claim is powerful because of his Messianic status. 

A spiritual battle

MAGA is a battle for hearts and minds. Bannon proudly (and correctly) states that this is a “spiritual war.” Those who consider Trump’s threat to be only a negotiating ploy miss the insidious power of ideology. They miss the power of religious drives that are hurricane-like energies that can move mountains. And, in so doing, they minimize and are unprepared for an existential threat to the country of Canada.

There is something hideous, even ghastly, in this threat. But tomorrow we will talk about the gift that this threat also represents. That will be our point of departure, as we ask: where does our hope lie? As Christians, and as a country, how can we respond constructively, in a faithful and hope-filled way, to what appears to be a genuine threat to the future of Canada?

Tomorrow we will publish Part III: How can we respond with hope to threats to Canadian sovereignty?