Clearly, the advent of Donald Trump as US President has brought the concept of a Golden Age to the center of US politics. Golden Age politics are, I believe, backward-looking. We see them in history, especially in Europe in the early 20th Century, and again now as many countries fall back on attitudes that prevailed back then. In the United States, however, while politicians often seem backward, their politics and their practices have usually focused on the here and now (what have you done for me lately?) and millenarian apostles who cited a Golden Age were pushed to the margins. Trump has changed all that, at least for now.
The idea of a Golden Age evidently comes from Greek and Roman mythology, and is a time when man accomplished great things, was naturally good and pure, and reason prevailed. It has become over time a metaphor for a time of accomplishment, of a flourishing of art and science, a period (usually understood to be mythical) when men’s affairs have been at a great height, better than periods before or after. In effect, the concept has become mainly a political slogan to be used for political advantage.
It is also, of course, a religious as well as a political metaphor. Readers in Pakistan and the Muslim World will understand this. Religious organizations have picked up the concept to describe a better time, when man was more pure and religiously led societies flourished. It seems that either in religion, politics, or both, the concept of a golden age is widely shared among societies.
As readers will know, the concept of a Muslim Golden Age is alive and well in some of the more scriptural schools of Islam. Some think it lies in the 7th and 8th centuries, while others place it a little later, from the late 8th Century to the invasion of the Mongols and the sacking of Baghdad in the mid-13th, when the arts and sciences of the antique world were not only kept alive but flourished in the Islamic Caliphates of the time. Religious parties are likely to refer to a Golden Age and promise policies that mean a return to at least the virtual reality of that age. Much mythology is involved in the efforts of different groups to extol whichever Golden Age they put up as the ideal, but very little is said, or known, about the lives of the common people who lived in those ancient times. This is particularly toxic in the case of extremist organizations, such as ISIS which use mythological exaggeration of an Islamic Golden Age to attract recruits, a significant proportion of those from the West.
I know of no surveys on this subject, but I imagine European politicians in the 18th and 19th centuries also have used the return to a golden age as political bait. What that golden age could have been, given European history of almost constant warfare, is not clear, although it would not surprise me to learn that some used the period following the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. That treaty not only ended the bloodiest war in European history before the 20th Century but it radically altered the European political landscape, recognizing the concept of national sovereignty and the legal (if not real) inviolability of national borders. Nonetheless, war continued to ravage the European continent. Other Europeans would probably choose the 100-year period after the 1815 Congress of Vienna, during which war between states and the Empires that dominated the political landscape were mostly absent, or confined to struggles for colonial possessions in far-away territories. However, this was a period which also produced serious revolutions throughout Europe. But we know for sure that the European Fascist parties of the 1920s and 30s were deep into Golden Age mythology as they sought office electorally in order to undertake their revolutions. Those Golden Age images were far less pristine than those of the Greeks of Romans, or, in fact, the religious images of Golden Ages, being violently nationalistic and revanchist. And it is the echoes and shadows of those European Golden Age politics that set an undertone for this US election that seems in one part anomalous, and another part very dangerous.
The US election of 2016, while it may not be widely recognized, brought in the politics of the Golden Age in a very important way. This may not be the first time that a golden age has been mentioned in US politics, but I believe it is the first time it has played an important role in a national election. The evidence is in the campaign statements Mr. Trump made while running, and in his inauguration address, as well as his joint address to Congress. Actually, I think that his campaign motto, emblazoned on those red baseball caps, “Make America Great Again” says it all. Clearly in his mind, the trade policies he emphasized as destructive to his core constituency, the currency manipulation he ascribed to China, the deindustrialization he blamed on unfair trade and commercial policies of many trading countries, in particular Mexico, said to his followers that he could and would bring back their Golden Age.
That is the anomaly. The data I have looked at of voter patterns and the exit polls suggest strongly that his core constituency sees the 1950s and 1960s as its golden age. These voters and their parents benefited from one of the best periods of growth the US has experienced—25 years of solid economic growth, driven by rising productivity of both labour and capital. Globalization and falling productivity slowly took their toll and the economy began to shed the industrial growth and the frothy economy in which this constituency had flourished. And frankly, these were also times of social progress when some felt their golden age was slipping away. Racism, misogyny, intolerance of “the other” played a role in the alienation of the Trump constituency
While this core constituency almost surely sees the 50s and 60s as the golden age they thought Trump would bring back, it is more and more apparent that Trump’s Golden Age is the 1930s. His continued use of the soundbite, “America First” gives this away. That was the slogan of the quasi-fascist right in America, led by Charles Lindberg, who really was a crypto-Nazi. The “deconstruction of the administrative state, so often cited by his chief political advisor, Steve Bannon, clearly refers to a return to things as they were in the 1930s before and without the key historical figure, Franklin Roosevelt. I suspect that many of his supporters would balk at that image, if it were to become clear in their minds.
What would most likely succeed in diverting the attention of his supporters is a security crisis—another terrorist act in the US. James Madison, one of the main authors of the US Constitution, wrote presciently, in 1789, that tyranny “rises on some favorable emergency.” Two hundred years later Trump himself wrote “civil liberties end when an attack on our safety begins.”
Steve Bannon is a believer in Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” thesis. He is believed to hold that war between the West and the Islamic word is inevitable. Historian Timothy Snyder, who has looked closely at the lessons of the 1930s, most recently at the Hitler’s use of the Reichstag fire to seize emergency authoritarian power, points out that Bannon is leading Trump’s efforts to stigmatize and provoke Muslims, the immigration ban order being the prime example. Is it not possible to argue that actions that stigmatize and provoke the Muslims are likely to increase danger of a security incident rather than forestall one, as Trump claims? It is a tried and true method of authoritarians to use a security crisis to seize or increase power. Putin did it. Erdogan is doing it. Both men are leaders Trump says he admires.
The author is a Senior Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC, and a former US diplomat who was Ambassador to Pakistan and Bangladesh
The idea of a Golden Age evidently comes from Greek and Roman mythology, and is a time when man accomplished great things, was naturally good and pure, and reason prevailed. It has become over time a metaphor for a time of accomplishment, of a flourishing of art and science, a period (usually understood to be mythical) when men’s affairs have been at a great height, better than periods before or after. In effect, the concept has become mainly a political slogan to be used for political advantage.
It is also, of course, a religious as well as a political metaphor. Readers in Pakistan and the Muslim World will understand this. Religious organizations have picked up the concept to describe a better time, when man was more pure and religiously led societies flourished. It seems that either in religion, politics, or both, the concept of a golden age is widely shared among societies.
The data I have looked at of voter patterns and exit polls suggests strongly that Trump's core constituency sees the 1950s and 1960s as its golden age. These voters and their parents benefited from one of the best periods of growth the US has experienced
As readers will know, the concept of a Muslim Golden Age is alive and well in some of the more scriptural schools of Islam. Some think it lies in the 7th and 8th centuries, while others place it a little later, from the late 8th Century to the invasion of the Mongols and the sacking of Baghdad in the mid-13th, when the arts and sciences of the antique world were not only kept alive but flourished in the Islamic Caliphates of the time. Religious parties are likely to refer to a Golden Age and promise policies that mean a return to at least the virtual reality of that age. Much mythology is involved in the efforts of different groups to extol whichever Golden Age they put up as the ideal, but very little is said, or known, about the lives of the common people who lived in those ancient times. This is particularly toxic in the case of extremist organizations, such as ISIS which use mythological exaggeration of an Islamic Golden Age to attract recruits, a significant proportion of those from the West.
I know of no surveys on this subject, but I imagine European politicians in the 18th and 19th centuries also have used the return to a golden age as political bait. What that golden age could have been, given European history of almost constant warfare, is not clear, although it would not surprise me to learn that some used the period following the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. That treaty not only ended the bloodiest war in European history before the 20th Century but it radically altered the European political landscape, recognizing the concept of national sovereignty and the legal (if not real) inviolability of national borders. Nonetheless, war continued to ravage the European continent. Other Europeans would probably choose the 100-year period after the 1815 Congress of Vienna, during which war between states and the Empires that dominated the political landscape were mostly absent, or confined to struggles for colonial possessions in far-away territories. However, this was a period which also produced serious revolutions throughout Europe. But we know for sure that the European Fascist parties of the 1920s and 30s were deep into Golden Age mythology as they sought office electorally in order to undertake their revolutions. Those Golden Age images were far less pristine than those of the Greeks of Romans, or, in fact, the religious images of Golden Ages, being violently nationalistic and revanchist. And it is the echoes and shadows of those European Golden Age politics that set an undertone for this US election that seems in one part anomalous, and another part very dangerous.
The US election of 2016, while it may not be widely recognized, brought in the politics of the Golden Age in a very important way. This may not be the first time that a golden age has been mentioned in US politics, but I believe it is the first time it has played an important role in a national election. The evidence is in the campaign statements Mr. Trump made while running, and in his inauguration address, as well as his joint address to Congress. Actually, I think that his campaign motto, emblazoned on those red baseball caps, “Make America Great Again” says it all. Clearly in his mind, the trade policies he emphasized as destructive to his core constituency, the currency manipulation he ascribed to China, the deindustrialization he blamed on unfair trade and commercial policies of many trading countries, in particular Mexico, said to his followers that he could and would bring back their Golden Age.
That is the anomaly. The data I have looked at of voter patterns and the exit polls suggest strongly that his core constituency sees the 1950s and 1960s as its golden age. These voters and their parents benefited from one of the best periods of growth the US has experienced—25 years of solid economic growth, driven by rising productivity of both labour and capital. Globalization and falling productivity slowly took their toll and the economy began to shed the industrial growth and the frothy economy in which this constituency had flourished. And frankly, these were also times of social progress when some felt their golden age was slipping away. Racism, misogyny, intolerance of “the other” played a role in the alienation of the Trump constituency
While this core constituency almost surely sees the 50s and 60s as the golden age they thought Trump would bring back, it is more and more apparent that Trump’s Golden Age is the 1930s. His continued use of the soundbite, “America First” gives this away. That was the slogan of the quasi-fascist right in America, led by Charles Lindberg, who really was a crypto-Nazi. The “deconstruction of the administrative state, so often cited by his chief political advisor, Steve Bannon, clearly refers to a return to things as they were in the 1930s before and without the key historical figure, Franklin Roosevelt. I suspect that many of his supporters would balk at that image, if it were to become clear in their minds.
What would most likely succeed in diverting the attention of his supporters is a security crisis—another terrorist act in the US. James Madison, one of the main authors of the US Constitution, wrote presciently, in 1789, that tyranny “rises on some favorable emergency.” Two hundred years later Trump himself wrote “civil liberties end when an attack on our safety begins.”
Steve Bannon is a believer in Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” thesis. He is believed to hold that war between the West and the Islamic word is inevitable. Historian Timothy Snyder, who has looked closely at the lessons of the 1930s, most recently at the Hitler’s use of the Reichstag fire to seize emergency authoritarian power, points out that Bannon is leading Trump’s efforts to stigmatize and provoke Muslims, the immigration ban order being the prime example. Is it not possible to argue that actions that stigmatize and provoke the Muslims are likely to increase danger of a security incident rather than forestall one, as Trump claims? It is a tried and true method of authoritarians to use a security crisis to seize or increase power. Putin did it. Erdogan is doing it. Both men are leaders Trump says he admires.
The author is a Senior Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC, and a former US diplomat who was Ambassador to Pakistan and Bangladesh