{"id":3512202,"date":"2025-04-16T10:30:13","date_gmt":"2025-04-16T10:30:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/?p=3512202"},"modified":"2025-04-16T10:30:13","modified_gmt":"2025-04-16T10:30:13","slug":"no-more-heroes-or-seeking-strong-gods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/stories\/2025-04-16\/no-more-heroes-or-seeking-strong-gods\/","title":{"rendered":"No more heroes: or, seeking strong gods"},"content":{"rendered":"

I recently read N.S. Lyons\u2019\u00a0interesting essay<\/a>\u00a0\u2018American Strong Gods: Trump and the end of the Long Twentieth Century\u2019. Yeah, apologies \u2013 another Trump piece \u2026 though Lyons casts the net wider. Anyway, his essay is kind of apropos to stuff I\u2019ve been thinking and writing about lately, so I\u2019m going to air it here. I\u2019ll refer also to\u00a0this<\/a>\u00a0recent essay from Perry Anderson. To deal in old political money, Lyons is a writer of the new right, while Anderson is the doyen of a \u2018new left\u2019 that\u2019s no longer all that new \u2013 but a testament at least to his personal staying power in knocking out elegant political essays as he approaches his 90th<\/sup>\u00a0year.<\/p>\n

Lyons\u2019 thesis in essence is that Trump\u2019s second term is an indicator of the end of a \u2018long twentieth century\u2019 that solidified after World War II in the form of the liberal-managerial state, the idea of the open society, globalisation, consumerism, the liberal depoliticization of the public sphere and other such \u2018weak gods\u2019 that replaced the \u2018strong gods\u2019 of communal identity, connection to place, past, family and faith that, in the eyes of the architects of liberal modernism, had caused such mayhem in the wars and genocides of the early twentieth century. With Trump and his ilk, according to Lyons, we\u2019re back in the domain of the strong gods.<\/p>\n

The first part of Lyons\u2019 essay dissects the failure of the liberal-managerial state, the open society and their weak gods quite adroitly. He rightly links its rise to the \u2018never again\u2019 mentality of political elites in respect particularly of fascism after the mayhem of World War II. He doesn\u2019t mention that it was also an attempt to rein in the mayhem caused by the unbridled, robber baron-style capitalism that climaxed disastrously in 1929 and also fed into fascism and global war.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a significant omission, but still \u2026 although my political background is very much identified with the weak god politics of postwar liberal-modernism, I\u2019ve come to reject that worldview and I found much to agree with in Lyons\u2019 critique. I basically agree that \u201cToday\u2019s populism is more than just a reaction against decades of elite betrayal and terrible governance \u2026 it is a deep, suppressed thumotic desire for long-delayed\u00a0action\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n

In my 2023 book\u00a0Saying NO to a Farm-Free Future<\/em>\u00a0I likewise wrote about the way that people are animated by \u2018mysteries and passions\u2019 in ways that managerialist metrics like longevity, low price, high convenience and so on don\u2019t comprehend. The fierce pushback I got on that point from some progressive quarters seems to me indicative of how off the pace that thinking is, and its electoral impotence in the face of figures like Trump.<\/p>\n

So I\u2019m not opposed in principle to the thumotic desire for action. But it does kinda depend on what form that desire takes, and whether populist alternatives to liberal-modernism are truly populist. Here, I found Anderson\u2019s essay helpful. Populism in his view comes in left-wing and right-wing forms, and has three components in total: a critique of oligarchy and elites, a critique of economic inequality, and a critique of immigration. Right-wing populism, says Anderson, typically addresses itself to all three components, which is why it can often look quite radically left-wing on certain political and economic matters. Left-wing populism addresses itself to the first two, but not to the third, which is why \u2013 according to Anderson \u2013 it usually fares less well with electorates than the right-wing version. One point that Anderson makes, although he doesn\u2019t develop it much, is that the global flow of people (immigration) results from the global flow of capital. A coherent critique of the flow of migrants is hard to do without a critique of the flow of money. More generally, Anderson says that a problem with populism \u2013 left and right \u2013 is that it knows what it\u2019s against, but it\u2019s not so clear about what it\u2019s for.<\/p>\n

Turning to Donald Trump, I\u2019d question Lyons\u2019 identification of him with populism. Trump definitely ticks the anti-immigration box of right-wing populism. But is he really a foe of oligarchy and economic inequality? He sometimes speaks that language, but I\u2019m not convinced that\u2019s really what he\u2019s about.<\/p>\n

I think what emerges from the second half of Lyons\u2019 essay is that the direction of travel of Trump\u2019s second administration isn\u2019t a renewal of the old \u2018strong gods\u2019. It\u2019s something older for sure, but not\u00a0that\u00a0<\/em>old. Really, it\u2019s a version of bureaucratic liberal-modernism in its most self-destructive form.<\/p>\n

Not that Lyons says this directly. He\u2019s far too enamoured of Trump to do that. But it\u2019s present in his analysis clearly enough. In brief, I think there are three main aspects to this. First, nationalism. Lyons doesn\u2019t offer any analysis of what nationalism is, but like many he seems to assume that it involves the survival into the disenchanted present of ancient tribal passions \u2013 \u2018thumotic desire\u2019 \u2013 rather than involving a carefully curated top-down bureaucratic-modernist project of contemporary centralized states, as brilliantly analysed long ago by Perry Anderson\u2019s\u00a0older brother<\/a>. \u00a0This is nationalism of the kind that\u2019s likely to make, for example, someone from Southern California inclined to feel greater kinship with someone from Maine than with someone from Mexico (which their state used to be part of) for reasons that don\u2019t have much to do with their own self-interest. Trump is an unabashed nationalist? I guess so, in that latter sense \u2013 using the passions generated by the nationalist project of the liberal-modernist state to push an agenda of centralized state interests.<\/p>\n

Second, trade war. As rehearsed\u00a0ad infinitum<\/em>\u00a0by mainstream economists, Trump\u2019s \u2018America first\u2019 tariff policies aren\u2019t going to benefit ordinary US citizens within the existing parameters of the global economy. On the contrary, it\u2019s those ordinary citizens who\u2019ll be picking up the tab. Perhaps\u00a0Joeri Schasfoort\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0explanation for the logic behind the tariffs in terms of US ambitions around economic imperialism makes sense. Economic imperialism aligns closely with political imperialism. Trade wars align closely with actual wars. That said, there\u2019s a good case for keeping capital at home.<\/p>\n

Third, personalist rule. Lyons writes, correctly I think, that Trump is \u201cinstinctual, not actuarial. He is relational, not rationalistic, valuing loyalty and possessing a prickly sense of honor\u201d and that his administration is affirming \u201cthe elected Executive\u2019s direct, personal control over the bureaucracy\u201d. Lyons calls the bureaucracy that Trump\u2019s administration is busy dismantling \u201csheltered\u201d and \u201cproceduralist (i.e. democratically uncontrollable and unaccountable)\u201d. I think that\u2019s fair enough up to a point \u2013 I\u2019m with him on that populist critique. Still, the direct personal control over bureaucracy of an elected Executive is a very thin form of democracy, whereas proceduralism (for example, in the form of an independent judiciary, universities etc.) is thicker. Democracy involves a lot more than people just ticking a ballot form every few years, and those of us who rail at the dead hand of the proceduralist state should probably be careful what we wish for.<\/p>\n

On this personalist front, Lyons cites Mary Harrington\u2019s view that \u201cwe\u2019re watching in real time as figures such as the hero, the king, the warrior, and the pirate; or indeed various types of antihero, all make their return to the public sphere.\u201d Well, are we? If George W. Bush and Tony Blair had agreed to that\u00a0duel<\/a>\u00a0with Mullah Omar back in 2001, I\u2019d have agreed that the politics of the hero, the king and the warrior were returning to the public sphere. But when was the last time a western leader had personalist warrior skin in the game? Here in Britain I\u2019d propose the year 1485, when Richard III became the last British king to die on the battlefield. Maybe in the USA it was later \u2013 perhaps when George Washington and Thomas Hamilton rode in to quell the whiskey rebellion in 1794 and put down a tax revolt so they could further centralise state power.<\/p>\n

If you want me to believe that the king, the warrior and the hero have really returned to the public sphere on the populist side, then I\u2019d have to see Trump at the head of a militia supporting a tax strike by ordinary people, or something along those lines. Harrington\u2019s notion that \u201cElon Musk and his \u2018warband\u2019 of young tech-bros\u201d are battling against \u201cthe destruction of masculine heroism\u201d doesn\u2019t compute. I\u2019d argue rather that the old archetypes of the king, the warrior and the hero are being pressed into service for a modern, centralised, bureaucratic-oligarchic regime that doesn\u2019t care too much about economic inequality and is only opposed to certain elites, not to elites in general. It\u2019s hard to fit this regime into the populist box.<\/p>\n

The funny thing about Lyons\u2019 essay is that even as it convinces me not to succumb to the left-wing kneejerk temptation I\u2019ve fallen for in the past (I don\u2019t like Trump, he\u2019s really right-wing, he must be a fascist!) it also convinces me that the parallels with historical fascism at the level of the wider politics involved are stronger than I previously thought \u2013 viz. the hyper-nationalism of the bureaucratic centralised state, trade war as prelude to actual war, and personalism. Hence, as I said earlier, Trump\u2019s administration looks like a version of early 20th<\/sup>\u00a0century bureaucratic liberal-modernism in its most self-destructive form.<\/p>\n

Fascism of the early 20th<\/sup>\u00a0century variety failed for various reasons, not least that it couldn\u2019t really resolve the contradiction between serving capital and serving the people. It strikes me that the politics of Trump\u2019s present administration, whatever we choose to call it, will fail even more precipitously, in part because it lacks genuine commitment to serving any but a tiny minority of the people that, whatever else you say about them, 20th<\/sup>\u00a0century fascisms did have. Musk as a restorer of masculine heroism? No, he\u2019s just a contemporary version of the 19th<\/sup>\u00a0and 20th<\/sup>\u00a0century robber-baron capitalists, who stole the dignity of countless men (and women).<\/p>\n

If Joeri Schasfoort is right that Trump\u2019s tariff wars are about rebooting what remains of the Bretton Woods agreement into a 21st<\/sup>\u00a0century version that tilts the odds more in favour of the USA, I think this too will fail. Bretton Woods was a sweet and self-interested deal for the US at a time when most other countries in the world had weak bargaining positions. Even so, it was actuated by a certain degree of internationalism and long-term \u2018pay it forward\u2019 thinking. Today, the US is weaker, other countries are stronger, and Trump\u2019s version of \u2018screw you\u2019 nationalism will hole it below the waterline \u2013 except perhaps in the case of various economically small-time countries along with the odd larger player cursed with delusional politics, such as Britain. Possibly people in the US genuinely think their country has been hard done by through its international commitments. If so, I suspect they\u2019re about to collide uncomfortably with reality.<\/p>\n

But for all that, it\u2019s not as if any other political doctrine across the spectrum of traditional politics, from communism to neoliberalism or conventional conservatism, has good answers for how to keep the global economic juggernaut on the road without its contradictions ultimately tearing it apart. One domain of those contradictions \u2013 mentioned neither by N.S. Lyons nor Perry Anderson \u2013 is the staple fare of this blog: energy futures, material futures, climate change, land and water security \u2026 and ultimately real human community, as opposed to the blandishments of central-state ideologies like nationalism.<\/p>\n

When Anderson says populism is defined more by what it\u2019s against than what it\u2019s for, this isn\u2019t really true of my favoured brand of populism \u2013 agrarian populism, which is for localism, local community and local agrarianism keyed to a sustainable ecological base. The problem with agrarian populism is that it has no mainstream political traction, because for so long now modernist culture has been lost in its dreamlands of economic \u2018development\u2019, urbanisation and high-energy techno-fixing.<\/p>\n

Therefore, if our political future is an agrarian populist one, it\u2019s hard to see how that can happen without a very nasty bump, at best.<\/p>\n

Yet here is where I believe there\u2019s scope for a new kind of hero to make their appearance in the public sphere. Not the king or the warrior, but the farmer or the householder \u2013 as I discussed in\u00a0this post<\/a>\u00a0some time ago, and in my book\u00a0A Small Farm Future\u00a0<\/em>(as well, in a different way, as in my forthcoming book\u00a0Finding Light in a Dark Age<\/em>).<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll expand on that point in a future post. For now, I\u2019ll just say that people of all kinds \u2013 including those who are sympathetic to agrarian populism, localism, householding and small farming \u2013 are too easily dismissive of its capacities to humble the power of kings and warriors, especially ersatz modern ones. Let\u2019s not take these self-proclaimed heroes and warriors too seriously. People who don\u2019t know the first thing about how to take care of themselves materially and are dependent on others to provide for their needs aren\u2019t heroes. They\u2019re helpless children.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll concede that the most obvious route for channelling the thumotic desire for long-delayed action and masculine heroism in the MAGA heartlands may not be learning how to grow a garden. Nevertheless,\u00a0history teaches us<\/a>\u00a0that this is sometimes where grandiose dreams of imperial greatness fetch up. But I want to press the point more positively. There are plenty of historical models for the heroic householder, male as well as female. It\u2019s just that we tend to forget or ignore them nowadays. I discuss this in my forthcoming book. Hopefully, I\u2019ll discuss it in a forthcoming post here too.<\/p>\n

Indigenous lifeways manifested in local ecological connection \u2013 for example, in gardening \u2013 often involve such models, and indigeneity figures in a lot of contemporary \u2018progressive\u2019 thinking about routes out of the present impasse. It was mentioned, for instance, in Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor\u2019s\u00a0recent critique<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a0The Guardian\u00a0<\/em>of what they call the \u2018death drive\u2019 of administrations like Trump\u2019s. Unfortunately, when you try to articulate the idea of widespread modern local ecological connection, it tends to invite ridicule, or even comparisons with Nazism, from \u2018progressives\u2019 too \u2013 not least from other\u00a0Guardian\u00a0<\/em>writers wedded to their own alienated techno-fixing death drives.<\/p>\n

I discuss briefly in my forthcoming book some of the different modalities of bottom-up indigenous local ecological connection which \u2013 again, in old political money \u2013 has both left-wing and right-wing manifestations, and I talk about the \u2018strong gods\u2019 of those kinds of localism (although I don\u2019t use that phrase specifically). I suspect these various strong god localisms will be humanity\u2019s long-term destiny, but unfortunately it looks like we\u2019re going to have to endure a lot of false strong god-mongering from the political right, but also the political left \u2013 both seemingly incapable of extricating themselves from the death throes of the centralised liberal-modernist state \u2013 before anybody gets to embrace them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Let\u2019s not take these self-proclaimed heroes and warriors too seriously. People who don\u2019t know the first thing about how to take care of themselves materially and are dependent on others to provide for their needs aren\u2019t heroes. They\u2019re helpless children.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128238,"featured_media":3512214,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[79719,213531,79720],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3512202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-foodwater","category-food-water-featured","category-society"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3512202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3512202"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3512202\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3512216,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3512202\/revisions\/3512216"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3512214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3512202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3512202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3512202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}