Noah Garberg

To get started with the meat of our conversation today, which will be thinking about what’s going on in America after this recent re-election of Trump, I’m curious—in the weeks or months leading up to the election, were you expecting him to win? Were you surprised when it happened?

Todd McGowan

I’m a terrible predictor so I don’t know, I sort of felt like he would win all along. In the last week, I was deceived by that Iowa poll by Ann Selzer, so I thought maybe Kamala would win. But I think we have to look at this election in its global context. So much of the analysis of the American election that looks at the mistakes the Democrats made doesn’t look at the way in which this is a global phenomenon, this trend towards global right-wing populism and movement in the direction of fascism. This is not just in Europe, in the US, it’s everywhere around the world. The only place it’s not triumphant is South America, but it’s even triumphed in some parts like in Argentina. It’s only by a whisker that Bolsonaro wasn’t re-elected in Brazil; in France Marine Le Pen is probably going to be the next president; Putin in Russia; Modi in India; Erdoğan in Turkey. You can just go on down the line—you have to think about Trump in that context. This isn’t just some couple of mistakes made by some party in the US. There’s a global phenomenon we have to pay attention to.

This is where I’m not just not-Marxist; I’m anti-Marxist. The notion that the movement of history is from feudalism to capitalism to communism, I do not think that’s true at all. What we’re seeing is that actually what capitalism leads to is fascism. I think that’s the natural outgrowth because of the structure of capitalist society, the way that fantasy works within capitalism, and the way that the dissatisfaction that it produces gets manifested. I don’t think it manifests itself in a proletarian movement for collective emancipation. I think it much more often manifests itself in some kind of right-wing populist or fascist movement.

What’s fascinating to me is even people that were going to be negatively affected by Trump’s policy, like immigrants who themselves might be deported, are nonetheless supporting Trump. So, it’s a kind of lesson about psychoanalysis and the way that self-interest is not the driving force behind people’s activity and their political choices.

One of the reasons I’ve been kind of disappointed with the leftist response to the election is because it’s so American-focused, so focused on Kamala Harris’s mistakes. With the limited time she had, I think she did a pretty good job, and I’ve seen a lot of people just irate about her campaign, including my neighbor in Burlington, Vermont’s Bernie Sanders. I love Bernie Sanders and almost never disagree with him, but I just don’t think he’s right in this case. Obviously, I agree with his larger point that the Democrats need to embrace the working class, but it has to be a two-way street and I’m not sure that you could say the Democrats clearly abandoned the working class.

NG

Where does that liberal reaction come from then? Is there a desire on the left to ignore that global phenomenon? To think of Trump as this idiosyncratic figure, and if we just excise him everything will be okay?

TM

Yes, I think that’s a big thing, and I think it’s always wrong to think that. It’s always wrong to think “we should have killed Hitler when he was a boy” or something like that. And it’s a very anti-Marxist thinking: it blames this individual for what is really a structural issue. There are certain things about Trump that are idiosyncratic, but they’re also reproducible.

One of them, which is interesting because it’s true of every popular right-wing populist figure, is that what makes them popular is their obscenity. I don’t think the leftist figure should try to duplicate that, but it’s hard to defeat. The obscenity provides a point of identification, and this is why I think the Trump coalition this time was really fascinating. On the one hand, they are for total liberalization, against political correctness, against restrictions on gambling, against marijuana laws, against any kind of restrictions on free speech at all. You can say any kind of obscenity you want, and then on the other hand, they are fundamentalist Christians.

The point is that these things actually do fit together, because their point of identification is with the transgression. This is where Freud is really good in Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921/1922): this point of identification with the leader is the identification with the leader’s ability to transgress. This is part of his overall theory about the role of the primal Father, that the leader has this ability to transgress all the restrictions that govern the people within the group. And so I think that identification with the obscene figure is so politically powerful. I think that is what’s not idiosyncratic.

NG

That echoes some analyses of this I’ve seen from yourself elsewhere. You’ve noted that liberal responses which are a nominalist pointing out of all of these obscenities and explanation of how bad they are actually just fuels that identification.

TM

Absolutely, CNN might as well have been part of the Trump campaign. They enumerated all of Trump’s lies, stating “this time he’s really gone too far”—the going too far is the point, right? That is the nature of the appeal. There’s a kind of absolute embrace of ignorance, of this sacrifice of any kind of knowledge. I think that’s really powerful too because it is part of the obscenity. When you’re being obscene, you’re saying something you know is incorrect, so you get to violate knowledge and that’s part of its power.

NG

You mentioned your anti-Marxist stance. Your position that capitalism structurally or necessarily degrades into fascism. Along that vein, Trump was not just elected this time, but rather re-elected. Is there some kind of significance, or is there something that’s articulated now with this election that wasn’t there in 2016?

TM

There is this great idea from Hegel that every world historical event has to happen twice. Marx (1852/1951) famously says the first time is tragedy, the second time is farce. Hegel’s point is that Napoleon has to be defeated twice, Caesar has to come back to power twice: the repetition of something solidifies it psychically. In Lacan’s terms, the first time it appears as something real, and then the second time it fits within the symbolic universe.

And I think that’s why people are much more chagrined about this Trump victory, because it assures us that the symbolic universe will be fundamentally differently shaped. I think that’s basically Hegel’s point in the notion of history having to repeat itself. The first event can’t be registered symbolically because it’s a disruption of the prior symbolic system. But in the new event, when it happens again, the system is reconstituted in this new way. I think that’s what we’re living in the midst of.

NG

Absolutely, the notion that “for something to happen once, it has to happen twice.” So, in this trend from capitalism to fascism you’ve been talking about: with this re-election is there something historically necessary about right-wing populism?

TM

I think there is actually. Fascism ultimately fails because it requires an enemy that it both needs and wants to destroy. Hitler can’t ever proclaim total victory over the Jews because then they lose their project, so there’s something absolutely contradictory about that. But that doesn’t mean that it can’t win. There’s something contradictory about capitalism too. Every structure is contradictory. But I think we’re entering into an epoch where the entire world is going to be dominated by right-wing populist movements. That will be the de facto position, and I think it’s going to be the end of the kind of global order we have as the United States radically retreats.

I think in 20 years people are going to be really nostalgic for the time when the US was the world’s top power. I think Trump signals a retreat from that. The US could easily leave NATO; we could completely wall up and become isolationist. Well, you have to give the devil his due: he’s not a warmonger. That’s part of this kind of retreat from the world. I think that will lead the way to more things like invasion of Ukraine. I think Taiwan is probably in jeopardy because of this. Again, I deplore US conduct in certain areas, the Gulf War especially, but I think it’s going to lead to a lot more regional destructiveness and conquest.

NG

I wonder if there’s an awareness of that in popular culture to some extent. Now that, as you said, Trump’s been re-elected and so he finds his rightful place in the symbolic order. There’s a difference I feel that I’ve noticed in liberal reactions from 2016 to now. Back in 2016 it was disbelief or rejection, even a disavowal, “this can’t be happening.” But now it seems to be more of a resigned acceptance.

TM

I think that’s a really good point. And I think, in a way, that’s better. It’s interesting that you don’t hear about any resistance, right? That’s what the thing was in 2016, “we’re going to form the resistance.” And there was that women’s march. There’s no idea of that at all now. It’s more of a reflective taking stock of what our position is and why this has been successful and is there any way to challenge it? Which I’m in favor of.

But it’s difficult, right? Fascism has a certain home-field advantage when it comes to capitalist society, and that’s very tough for any kind of emancipatory project to challenge. To be a universalist, which I think any emancipatory project has to be, it’s always more difficult than the particularist, identitarian project that has a clear enemy. It’s easier to mobilize people’s enjoyment around that particular enemy than it is to identify with this universalist project.

NG

Another point that’s been on my mind now that the election has occurred, there’s this Spinoza quote that I’m sure that you’re familiar with, where he questions “why do people fight for their servitude as stubbornly as though it were their salvation?” (1670/2007), p. xxix). I wonder, is that an accurate assessment of the American political world today?

TM

It’s absolutely true. Isn’t the reason why people fight for their servitude more than their salvation, because there’s a fundamental negativity within subjectivity? I think it’s very difficult for people to avoid their self-destruction. And when it seems like people avoid it, they avoid it in one area only to really do it in another. People that are pretty successful, you’d think they’re not self-destructive, but then there’s all these other things: they can’t sleep, their health is bad, their relationships are self-destructive. I think if we manage to be driven to success in one area, we find all these other ones where we manifest that self-destruction. It is maybe even that in order to be successful, we have to engage in this self-destructive activity.

I think this is Freud’s greatest idea, this idea of death drive or some inherent self-destructiveness to subjectivity, which I think links to Hegel as well. My favorite line in all of Hegel’s work is from the preface to Phenomenology of Spirit, “the life of the Spirit only wins to its truth when it finds itself radically torn asunder” (1807/1977, p. 31). We’re constantly tearing ourselves asunder, and that’s how we find our truth. How do you analyze this situation today without taking that self-destructiveness into account?

There’s something immensely satisfying about that, and Trump manages to make that work for him. He’s constantly doing things that everyone identifies as self-destructive, and yet that becomes the source of his appeal. Without this large working-class base, he would never have been elected. You could say, “Oh, those people were just ignorant.” But that’s way too condescending. I think instead the reality is: “Oh, do we know that this is bad for us? Yes, and that’s why we’re gonna do it.”

NG

Much of your work is focused on figuring out what in politics can be illuminated or revealed through a psychoanalytic lens. Is that the main insight?

TM

I think that is the main insight. So many thinkers of political science and political analysis examine everything through the lens of self-interest. And I just think that misses what to me is the real kernel of why we do what we do. As well as the way that we, through disavowal, put in all these mechanisms in place so that we don’t see what we’re doing. So, we can tell ourselves, “No, I’m acting in a self-interested way.” I can vote for Trump and say, “Trump’s putting it to the experts,” or “Trump’s really putting it to the university elites.” So I clearly don’t say, “Oh, I’m voting for Trump because it’s self-destructive.” No one says that.

It reminds me of the first episode of Mad Men (Weiner & Taylor, 2007). Where this German doctor says, “I was studying with Alfred Adler, and we, from Freud, got this notion of the death drive: maybe we should put the skull and crossbones on the package and say ‘this will kill you’ and that will get people to smoke.” Don Draper responds, “Get out of my office, that’s a terrible idea.” He’s right, of course, because the whole point of the death drive is that it’s unconscious. Consciously you need some kind of fantasy mechanism that tells you that what you’re really doing is pursuing some kind of interest or some kind of goal.

NG

Slavoj Žižek recently put out a piece reflecting on the election results, and he cited some personal communication that he had with yourself. I think it’s another way of articulating exactly the point you’re making here. The quote reads, “one can support the fledging fascist leader in an attitude of total obedience while feeling oneself to be utterly radical, which is a position designed to maximize the enjoyment factor, almost de facto” (McGowan in Žižek, 2024, para. 9). I’m curious to hear a little bit more about what is this enjoyment factor that Trump possesses?

TM

I think it’s what we were talking about earlier, this obscene transgression. Trump licenses this kind of obscenity and this enjoyment of obscenity at the same time. The point of right-wing populism, unlike a leftist position, is that you are capitulating to the social norm. You’re not ultimately violating, you’re obeying whatever imperatives: you’re remaining a capitalist, you’re remaining a good racist, a nationalist. That’s the whole point. On the one hand, you’ve got this obedience, so you can think, “Oh, I belong, I’m conforming.” And there’s a good feeling about conforming. Not if you consciously think to yourself “I’m conforming,” but just the feeling of “I fit in”: I’m wearing the jeans that everybody wears, I have the hairstyle other people have. That feels good, but it’s a double whammy, because you also get the feeling of transgressing at the same time. That’s what I mean by this enjoyment bonus attached to the right-wing populist or the fascist.

I think this is a genuine disadvantage for the Left, because I think the Left doesn’t have either one of those kinds of enjoyment. On the Left, you’re violating the things that would help you fit in. You’re not being nationalistic, you’re not being pro-capitalist, you’re not being racist. And you’re also not getting to be a part of this transgression that’s shared. Instead, you’re kind of avoiding that transgression.

I wrote a book, Enjoyment Right and Left (McGowan, 2022), about how there’s a real primacy of leftist enjoyment. I still think that, but it’s nonetheless less appealing. It may be psychically primary, because my point is that we all are in a state of non-belonging and every enjoyment comes from this position of non-belonging. The rightist gets it indirectly by identifying with the person that they hate, but for the reasons we were just talking about—disavowal and fantasy—it’s easier to take up the rightist position. So I’m very pessimistic about the situation today, incredibly pessimistic.

Again, I think it’s because of this larger historical structure that capitalism leads to, because of the way it produces a certain kind of dissatisfaction that doesn’t target the source of the dissatisfaction. It doesn’t target capitalist society because that capitalist fantasy is so strong. To target capitalist society, you have to break out of that fantasy, and no one wants to break out of that fantasy. If you add the fascist dimension, you get to sustain your capitalist fantasy because you have this other reason why you’re not realizing the fantasy. That’s what Trump offers. There’s a certain capitalist fantasy: everybody can have it, so why aren’t you realizing it? Immigrants, experts, vaccines, whatever it is. That’s the power of that fantasy, that I can reach some kind of enjoyment without lack, or excess without lack. As long as that’s operative, there’ll always be some kind of barrier to reaching it, and that’s what fascism brings to the table. It says, “You know why you’re not getting that pure excess? It’s because immigrants, Wall Street, vaccines, Jews,” whatever it is.

NG

Parallel to that, we’ve been talking a lot about enjoyment and the erotics of Trump and his movement. I know this is something that you’ve discussed on your podcast Why Theory—I remember in an episode on fascism (McGowan & Engley, 2022), you noted that the move from authoritarianism to fascism is like going from father to daddy. I was thinking about this during the rallies in the week leading up to the election. Tucker Carlson gave a speech, and he was likening Trump to a stern father to disobedient children. He went on to say, “Dad is coming home. You’ve been a bad girl. You’ve been a bad little girl and you’re going to get a vigorous spanking” (Knowles, 2024). I was thinking to myself: wow this is so grotesquely unsubtle. This is so concerningly on the nose. And, in that quote we referenced from Žižek’s piece, you called Trump a “fledging fascist leader.” So, I’m curious: have we passed the bright line? What is Trump’s relationship to fascism?

TM

Yeah, I know Kamala Harris called him a fascist, and I thought that was fine. The question will be what his relationship to the state is. I think his first regime was a fledging fascist regime, because of certain institutional resistance it faced. The question will be: does that institutional resistance still exist or does it not?

I think it’s part of the problem of Hannah Arendt in this unfortunate book The Origins of Totalitarianism (1973). I think she was wrong there: It’s not the state, this hyper power of the state. It’s about this apparatus set up next to the state, like the Gestapo, the SS, or something that’s not part of the state organization. That’s why I’m a statist, I’m for a deep state, because I think these are the forces in the law that resist that kind of supplementary fascist authority.

It is interesting to me, too, that every fascist regime is suspicious of the state. That’s why I think this war on the so-called “deep state” is so essential not just to Trump, but I think to every kind of right-wing populist or fascist leader around the world. It’s not an accident that the Nazis established the Nazi party, and that’s where the real power lay, and then the state structure was almost this formal thing that was secondary. I think that will be a real test: to what extent does Trump invest himself in the state structures, or does he set up an ersatz structure where the real power lies. I think if that happens, then I would say that he’s no longer fledgling fascist but a real fascist.

NG

I think the perennial question, and the one that critical theory has the hardest time answering, is: where do we go from here? Is there in this moment a renewed hope for some coherent political project on the Left, or has that been crushed?

TM

I think there is, in a couple of ways. First of all, I think that there’s a real anti-identitarian realization on the Left—in the sense of an understanding that we need to be universalist and we need to speak to the working class. Those two things are the biggest signs for hope. I think there’s all kinds of disadvantages for the Left in the contemporary political landscape, but I think the only hope in that situation is to be true to certain leftist ideas. One of them is universality. I’m utterly convinced of it. I don’t think it’s a precedent, and so I feel like that has to be at the fore of what we’re doing.

And then it seems like, at least in the US, there has been more of a movement by relatively mainstream Democrat figures even to say we need to reach out again to the dispossessed working class. So, in that sense, I do feel hopeful.

But I think we’re in store for a good, solid period of right-wing dominance around the world. My hope isn’t the US. My hope is South America. But I’m a little hopeful because of the turn, the realization that the identitarian project so failed the Left, so that hopefully it will be abandoned for good and universality will cease to be a bad name.

We’ll get rid of the Frankfurt School belief that the universal crushes the particular. Let’s just stop thinking that. For me, that’s the job of theory. Theory can’t lay out a road map for what we should do. There’s the great Hegel line, “The owl of Minerva only takes flight at the falling of dusk” (1820/1991, p. 23). Theory can’t tell us what to do, but it can give us some general ideas about what we shouldn’t do. And I think what should be avoided is to be identitarian or particularist.

I think, for one thing, the powerful theoretical reception today of Hegel and psychoanalysis is really, to me, very hopeful. I probably get ten emails a day from people just wanting to talk about psychoanalysis and Hegel, and so that gives me hope.