Donald Trump as Scapegoat

An interview with CSS's Joshua Mitchell

Why is former President Donald Trump rising in the polls? Why hasn’t Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis gained, despite support across the center-right? And could either of them do a thing to actually combat the identity politics gripping our nation and subverting our national character? Common Sense Society senior fellow and Georgetown University professor Dr. Joshua Mitchell sat down with French newspaper Le Figaro’s Laure Mandeville this summer to make sense of some of these crucial (and complex) issues. We’ve translated their conversation for the benefit of our English and American readers, but you can find the original French here. I think you will enjoy.

Christopher Bedford
—
Executive Editor
Common Sense Society

Donald Trump as Scapegoat

For Joshua Mitchell, American intellectual and professor of political theory at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., Trump’s indictment must be understood in the American political context, which now defines itself by categories of “identity politics.”

For the identitarian left, “the former American president is the scapegoat that must be purged to cleanse the sins of the political community,” says Mitchell, who in his book American Awakening develops the idea of modern politics as a religious struggle. "This is an old Puritan theme that goes back to the witches of Salem and remains in the DNA of the American psyche," he notes. In contrast, Trump is, for the right, an "innocent victim" figure, a symbol  behind whom the right can rally, which explains the lightning rise in his popularity since the start of the legal proceedings.

Pulling the country out of a “death spiral,” Mitchell believes, will require Black America’s rebellion against identitarianism, or a common external danger. 

INTERVIEW BY Laure Mandevie.

LE FIGARO: 

What does the indictment of former President Donald Trump tell us about American politics?

MITCHELL: 

 Trump ignores the rules. That's why no one is surprised he had classified documents in his possession. For at least half of America, it's not at all clear he had any malicious intent; maybe he just decided to collect these documents as mementos of his presidency, because he's a narcissist.

Is he guilty of having committed certain offenses? Of course, and that troubles me. But I'm more concerned with the symbolism of this whole thing and how it affects the American psyche and politics.

Donald Trump speaks to CPAC attendees in 2011. Gage Skidmore/Flickr.

On the left, there are those who say: “we know he is a dirty rotten crook, he has no business in American politics.” And there's another faction who don't care at all whether this case is true and just want him out of the picture. On the right, the “Never Trumpers” rejoice, but for other conservatives, it is different. It must be understood that the country is living in the age of identity politics. This means that America is consumed by the idea of purity and stain; it is obsessed with the idea of purging our republic of black spots. It's an old Puritan theme. And from this point of view, for the left, Trump represents the darkness that must be erased, the scapegoat that must be purged to purify the political community.

The sins of the community are put on his back, the idea is that the world will be clean if evil is purged. This Puritan belief that dates back to the Salem witch trials and is forever ingrained in the American psyche. We see this in Descartes and Pascal and in Jonathan Edwards’s 1741 sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” which addressed an America desperate for salvation.

We must understand Donald Trump and the right’s reaction of the right in this context. Trump's popularity has increased significantly since the lawsuits were launched, because the right is aware that Trump has become the scapegoat. He's proof that the left wants to purge everything impure, whether it's him, dirty fossil fuels, "the dirty white man" or " impure Christianity." One cannot understand America today without grasping these religious categories.

Many on the right, myself included, dream of seeing Trump leave the stage. But now we also see him as the key figure that proves the left is ready to purge everyone who doesn't fit with its vision of America's purity. And that is too much! This is why Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s chances of becoming the right-wing candidate are now reduced to nothing. It's over for him. It is now certain that Trump will win the Republican presidential nomination and possibly the general election as well. The best way to defeat Trump would have been to ignore him, because the American people (who harbor an instinctive distrust of power and always support outsiders) conclude that he is an "innocent victim" each time he is attacked. This “innocent victims” category is central in America. On the left, the “innocent victims” are black people, and increasingly transgender people.

FIGARO: But Trump is not an innocent victim. He broke the rules. The United States, despite its puritanical categories which you rightly note, has always been a country of laws as well. Does the law no longer matter?

MITCHELL: This is precisely the problem of the era of identities. The rule of law does not lead to justice in this era, because it is a “white” law. The identitarian approach sees a justice that is more important than the law. The devaluation of the law, first on the left, and now also on the right, is accelerating.

Protesters in London September 2022. Alisdare Hickson/Flickr.

Again, this has to be understood on a theological level. There is human justice and another cosmic justice in which the identitarians believe. Why are Joe Biden and his family not being prosecuted for their corruption cases in Ukraine? Because the left thinks that under Joe Biden the justice of identity politics will be implemented, which is more important than the rule of law.

This social disease is very dangerous, as predicted by Alexis de Tocqueville, who called for separating politics from religion. If you separate them, you understand that God’s cosmic justice won’t come until the end of time. In the meantime, we have the rule of law, which is imperfect. But I repeat: we are living in a new American moment, of which Donald Trump is the epicenter: on the right he is an innocent victim, and on the left he is a scapegoat to be purged.

FIGARO: Does what you describe mean that the question of the dangerousness of his behavior during the January 6 assault, or the irresponsibility of his positions on Putin's war in Ukraine are not taken into account? Why not go for a more rational candidate, like DeSantis, who also fights on the wokeism front?

MITCHELL: Remember “Flight 93,” the article by Michael Anton in 2016 where he compared America to a plane about to crash? He argued that yes, Trump is full of flaws, and yes, he may have broken the law, but we are in a perilous moment where identity politics is destroying the foundations of our republic, our families, our churches, and all our institutions. This means that Republicans, in full knowledge that Trump is an impostor, will rally behind him.

I'll be the first to admit that the religious categories we use of victims and scapegoats don't help us to see clearly the rest of the world and its perils. But you asked a specific question: why not DeSantis? Conservatives perceive that DeSantis has a more rational personality and that explains the initial, clear enthusiasm around his candidacy. But since Trump's indictment, he can't compete on a symbolic level, he's not the innocent victim that Trump has become from their point of view. Look at the polls, he is 36 percent behind! It will be Trump.

FIGARO: Who is responsible for the chain of events that led to this moment you call identity politics?

MITCHELL: After World War II, the G.I.s came back and they lived their lives, going to church on Sundays and living a traditional life. Things fell apart in the 1960s.

The churches were always the country’s backbone, especially the Protestant churches. But they veered to the left, stopped speaking of sin and fault, whereas this is the essential category in America. They were concerned exclusively with God’s love. But talking about sin and purity is in the D.N.A. of our country. These issues have therefore migrated to politics.

This is why we truly can speak of a religious movement when we speak of  identity politics. This is the new Sunday morning liturgy: denouncing the white man, the Christian man. And this also happens in Europe, especially in Protestant countries like Germany, the Netherlands and the Nordic countries, which are haunted by sin. These countries are no longer able to find a theological answer to their obsession with purity.

FIGARO: Defenders of these movements respond that there is real discrimination against minorities.

MITCHELL: Of course. But you should know that in all the big cities of America, the identity movements led to the arrival, at the head of the town halls, of black elites who turned out to be as catastrophic as the previous white elites. Instead of acknowledging their patent failure, these African-American elites denounced systemic racism. This leads to the fact today, in universities for example, that whites, in order to advance, must recognize their "white privileges!"

A Black Lives Matter Rally in 2020. David Geitgey Sierralupe/Flickr.

Racism exists in every society; the question is how it can be dispelled. There, there are two approaches: Tocqueville’s says that working with your neighbor makes combating prejudice possible; the other approach is the Christian approach, that of repentance and forgiveness. But these two approaches no longer work, because the identitarian approach refuses forgiveness.

In my university, the professors affirm that we are all guilty of systemic racism. I reply that if this is the case, the university executives must immediately resign. And then I ask them for proof. But they don't provide it, even though they are social scientists who are supposed to believe in empirical evidence. Most of my colleagues, including those on the left, are terrified and say privately that they are afraid of being "canceled" by identitarians.

But I must say that I am often disappointed by the American intellectual right because it is incapable of thinking about what is happening on the left. They talk about “the free market” and tradition, invoking monetary debt and the debt we owe our fathers. But they are not concerned with the profounder subject of the spiritual debt we owe to the victims. The left understands that the question of guilt is the deepest spring buried in ourselves. This is why it is so successful today and has managed to take control of all the major institutions. But they bring an erroneous racial answer to this problem.

FIGARO: Politically, won't the resolution of this crisis come from black and Hispanic minorities who reject these racial boxes and want to be treated as citizens?

MITCHELL: You are right and I am working on these issues with black activist Bob Woodson. For me, only black America can end this era of identity politics, because identity politics was born from the real, profound wound of racism against black people. It was then theorized that the fight for civil rights extended to the rights of women, homosexuals, transgender peoples, etc. But the problem is that if you say that blacks are all innocent victims, you will, as is happening in California, announce that they do not need to be on time or do math. In short, they become entitled to a regime of exceptions because of racism.

As Woodson says, we are seeing a generation of young black people emerging with no discipline or sense of responsibility. Black conservatives are up in arms against these practices. They say this policy is racism.

FIGARO: Maybe that will produce a conservative black candidate who wins the presidency? Could the candidacy of Tim Scott, a black senator from South Carolina, play this role?

MITCHELL: I'm not sure. To win in 2024, the Republicans must have a candidate capable of clear discourse on the transgender question, which has become the central front of identity politics. For the moment, only DeSantis and Trump hold this discourse.

Donald Trump at a 2020 rally in Arizona. Gage Skidmore/Flickr.

People have become convinced that they can lose everything, that the state could impose things on them that they absolutely refuse, such as denying the difference between men and women. Daily stories emerge of children being taken away from their parents because they object to undergoing hormone treatment for sex reassignment! This is getting crazy.

When feminists emerged, America embraced the movement, with conservatives continuing their lives on their side. Then there was the issue of gay marriage and—with great reservations—-society decided that if gay people wanted the protection of marriage, that was OK. But with trans people, we are in a different process, because we can literally be accused of thought crime if we publicly defend the idea that men are men and women are women! We don't leave people alone. Instead of accommodating society as it is constructed, the transgender movement wants to destroy its foundations.

FIGARO: Coming back to Trump, could the concern you describe lead the nation to justify the arrival of undemocratic power?

MITCHELL: I have been telling my students for forty years that the greatest weakness of democracy is that it can easily decay and become a one-man tyranny. It's in Plato and in Tocqueville; it's a deep problem.

FIGARO: American observers always invoke the idea that only an external danger can bring America together. But Putin's war against Ukraine is ongoing and unity is far from being achieved around Biden.

MITCHELL: The Democratic Party is at a very similar moment to the Republican Party’s 2016 moment. By that I mean the older generation that still rules the Democratic camp—-Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer—-are leaving the scene. It’s the Cold War generation, which understood Putinism’s dangers. They compromised with identity politics, but Pelosi is a real politician, who knows the art of compromise and pokes at the identitarian left.

Left-wing and right-wing gangs clash in the streets of Portland. Old White Truck/Flickr.

What is worrying for Europe is that this old guard is almost gone. As long as they are in power, we will have support for Europe and opposition to Putin. But my concern is the aftermath. I am not at all sure that the new Democratic Party will support NATO and Europe. On the Republican side, we still have the equivalents of Pelosi and Biden: Mitt Romney, Lindsay Graham, etc. But the concern is the succession. There are two rising groups. One is in continuity with the Reaganites and supports Ukraine. But they must fight against another conservative group, the famous MAGA group, who see Democratic foreign policy as a form of wokism abroad. The latter group is up against Kamala Harris's recent trip to Africa, where she lectured on transgender people. They think this woke ideology is opening up an avenue for China and Russia in Africa and elsewhere, and that it is good for us. This group sees in Putin a man who attacked neoliberalism and woke politics. They therefore see him as an ally, without understanding that Putin is an existential threat. The Republican Party is therefore cut in two. Some no longer want to engage abroad, and not even in NATO. And the others, while acknowledging a form of sickness in our State Department and the military becoming woke, refuse to underestimate the perils.

FIGARO: So you are not at all sure that America will remain involved in Europe?

MITCHELL: Identity politics is anti-Western, which means that even though the current Democratic Party is ruled by people who understand Europe’s importance, the younger generation wants to destroy everything European in America. The rule of law, tradition, the idea of the nation-state. They reject European "whiteness" as a poison. Even though I criticize their domestic politics, I personally thank heaven that we still have Biden and Pelosi, because they understand that the Cold War is not over.

Dr. Joshua Mitchell is a senior fellow at Common Sense Society and a professor of political theory at Georgetown University.