Notes On Now

Cruelty

A lecture by Paul Gilroy led me to read At the Mind’s Limits by Jean Amery. It includes an account of how he was captured and tortured by the Gestapo before being sent to a concentration camp. Amery insists that “torture was the essence of National Socialism”. Many states have tortured people, he writes, but a Nazi had “to torture, destroy, in order to be great” and “achieve his full identity”.

It led me to ask: what is the equivalent essence of Trumpism?’ It isn’t yet full-scale fascism, and it doesn’t permit torture, so what is its essence? The answer is cruelty.

Trump and his followers more than delight in the pain, trauma, and humiliation they inflict. Of course, other regimes can be cruel. But with Trumpism cruelty is not gratuitous or occasional – it is a built-in expression of its essence. It thrills the dopamine of white supremacy, as it echoes the cruelty of slavery and Jim Crow that is the taproot of Trumpism.

Amnesty’s Elaine van der Schaft tells me that in 2019 it had already identified cruelty as one of the four elements of Trumpism, along with racism, sexism, and hate. It did so again in its recent report, ‘USA: Chaos and Cruelty’ – something I discovered thanks to its splendid placard held up during last month’s demonstration against Trump’s grotesque state visit.