Final thoughts
How we got here, where we're going
Polling day is upon us. But even when the last votes have been counted, the tactics used to garner them will remain. As we anticipate the days ahead, Public Seminar is considering the political power—and pitfalls—of charm, anti-abolitionist rhetoric, and withholding one’s vote. Vote!
Trump’s Charm Offensive
Adam Koehler Brown
Trump is usually charismatic, rather than charming. He maintains a classically Weberian separation from his followers via masculine performances. His “breaks from the routine” and “de-maskings”—Sonnevend’s terms—don’t bring him down to the level of his followers. They are, instead, bombastic and excessive ruptures that could only be carried out by an “exceptional” leader, self-styled as the “only person” who can fix a rigged system. He doesn’t hug people, he hugs the American flag. He greets other world leaders as fellow autocrats, not as friends. Trump isn’t someone you get a beer with; he’s someone you watch on the TV at the bar with your buddies.
The “Prose of Counterinsurgency”
Jochen Schmon
What Ranajit Guha has called the “prose of counterinsurgency” surely comes closest to characterizing the current state of abolitionist struggles within the context of the US presidential election campaign. With this concept, the postcolonial historian describes the strategies by which uprisings against imperial forms of domination have been degraded as nothing but vandalism—a “fanatical rampage” and “pure rioting” against property, the rule of law, and the guardians of civil order.
Voting While Uncommitted
Jeffrey C. Isaac
Although Biden has been deplorably supportive of the IDF, and fecklessly supportive of Netanyahu, he has been sometimes critical, and he has tried, weakly, to exercise a modicum of restraint, in words and deeds, just as he has given at least lip service to the idea of Palestinian self-determination and even a Palestinian state. Netanyahu is playing a despicable long game, and part of his game is to make Biden look weak, because Netanyahu and Trump are ideological soulmates and political allies. And Trump has made very clear that if he is elected president, he will simply green light Netanyahu’s war efforts—efforts that involve not just the destruction and subjection of Gaza but the further repression and dispossession of Palestinians living on the West Bank. Netanyahu seeks to Make Greater Israel Great Again. He is the Israeli Trump, and he knows it, and Trump knows it.