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Donald Trump on the smartphone: Conflicts evoked, issues set, diplomatic efforts torn down
Photo: SAUL LOEB / AFP
Of course, it's pathetic that the big digital corporations are discovering their democratic courage on the last few meters of Trump's presidency and blocking his social media accounts.
Where, to stay in the diction of American politics, he is considered a "lame duck".
Sascha Lobo, arrow to the right
Photo:
Urban Zintel
Born in 1975, is an author and strategy consultant with a focus on the Internet and digital technologies.
In 2019, Kiepenheuer & Witsch published his book “Reality shock: Ten lessons from the present”.
In his debate podcast, Lobo responds to responses to his columns.
The question of whether, how and when to ban Trump has less to do with freedom of expression than his fans would like.
And more about whether political functionaries should be allowed what is obviously forbidden to everyone else.
To recognize this, a simple experiment in June 2020 was enough: an account that simply sent the same tweets as Trump was blocked immediately.
Apart from that, there are always house rules on such platforms that are less often criticized.
Facebook blocks accounts that publish female nipples.
The last time I checked the legal text, nipples were not prohibited.
Although I think it's appropriate, Trump's banning is problematic - because, on the one hand, it came so late, after dozens of violations of the alleged rules.
And on the other hand, according to rules that are subject to little or no democratic control.
That is the real problem: in liberal democracies we need a comprehensible, transparent and sensibly contestable blocking regime.
A competent authority that is in doubt about the terms and conditions of the platforms.
To make things a little more complicated, the ideal scenario in authoritarian states and dictatorships would be exactly the opposite: in case of doubt, the state should not be able to control what should and should not be published, at least in political spheres.
If Trump is banned, a criminal anti-annihilation anti-Semite like the Iranian head of state Khamenei must also be banned.
In politics and business you have to have the courage to view liberal democracy as a superior system.
Trump has offered his supporters a world view
If you look at Twitter's justification for the lockdown ("the danger of igniting further violence"), the truth is that the discussion is structurally different: the one about the impact of social media on society and the world.
Here Donald Trump was the first great of a new type of ruler, the social media leader.
Trump has ruled via Twitter, conjured up conflicts, set issues, tore down diplomatic efforts, insulted and threatened people who were uncomfortable for him, initiated diversionary maneuvers - but above all, he has offered his supporters a world interpretation as effectively as no one before him.
And they found themselves in Trump's grandiose, identity-creating din.
So much so that many of them have slipped away from democracy - in the direction of creeping everyday fascism.
It shows itself in the small, before self-drunk with the big aim like an overthrow.
In a tweet someone was amazed that the Capitol strikers don't even wear corona masks if they would be more difficult for the surveillance cameras to see.
And in a widespread, grotesque video snippet, a young woman complains in an interview that she was sprayed with tear gas.
Just because she set foot in the Capitol.
And why did she do that, she is asked.
Well, a revolution is in progress!
This shows a disturbing self-image of the right-wing subversive: that they do not have to fear any serious consequences.
It is not "stupid" to be photographed grinning at Nancy Pelosi's desk as evidence of the crime committed.
It is an expression of Trumpism that rubbed off on supporters: Donald Trump did not have to bear any responsibility for practically any of his ludicrous lies, nepotisms, corruptions, malice and crimes.
Trump was immune to the consequences, thanks to Mitch McConnell.
Therefore, his followers assumed that this also applied to them.
You have to understand this transference, which at first glance is bizarre, because behind it there is a socially dangerous, pre-fascist loss of reality.
Democracy is not a stable system, it is an idea
In 1995 Umberto Eco wrote about the essence of fascism and diagnosed an irrationalism, a cult of action for the sake of action, and explicitly without thinking beforehand: “Thinking is a form of castration.” If you read the passages in Eco's book “The Eternal Fascism «Reads, his analysis weighs tons like a blueprint on the Washington storm of turmoil: fascism as an» appeal to the frustrated middle classes «, as an» obsession of conspiracy «, as a fight» against the rotten parliamentary regimes «, all of which fit perfectly masked Trump troops.
Democracy is not a stable system, it is first an idea in the mind.
And if too many people do not follow this idea, have no knowledge or intuition for it or do not want to have it - then democracy is threatened.
It all depends on the individual.
If the ten defense ministers still alive had
n't
urged in an alarming joint article that the military should be left out of the electoral squabbles.
If the conservative, heavily Trump-influenced majority in the Supreme Court had
not
dismissed Trump's tangled lawsuit.
Or if the Republican Georgia Home Secretary had
n't
dismissed Trump's push for election rigging.
Then Trump's anti-democracy coup attempt would have had very different prospects of success.
After the storming of parliament, a senior Trump administration official said: “We were wrong.
Trump is a fascist «.
That, too, was said pathetically late by someone who until last week benefited from Trump's ego fascism.
But because fascism - again Eco - preaches "contempt for the weak", its supporters are consequently only ready to move away when the loss of power is foreseeable.
Looking back at one of the moments when you could have guessed it, this irrationalism.
In January 2017, shortly after Trump's "inauguration," the Washington Post conducted a survey on two well-known photographs, namely the inaugurations of Obama and Trump.
Trump voters are asked what can be seen in these photos.
40 percent claim the photo on the left is from Trump.
He finally stated clearly that he had made the greatest inauguration of all time.
I tend not to worry about these people.
Really shocking, on the other hand, are the 15 percent who say: yes, the photo on the right is of Trump - but there are more people on it than on the photo on the left.
Really true.
As early as the beginning of 2017, around one in six Trump voters is ready to follow Trump's claims on social media rather than their own eyes.
Eco again: "However, since a large number of people cannot have a common will, the Führer throws himself up to their interpreter."
Publicly confirming obvious lies has a primarily social function: it is a symbol of putting loyalty to the leader above reality.
Trump's Twitter acts here like a constantly updated guide to the state of denial of reality.
Almost exactly four years later, 45 percent of Republicans think the storming of the Capitol is somehow justified.
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Title: Reality Shock: Ten Lessons from the Present
Editor: Kiepenheuer & Witsch
Number of pages: 400
Author: Lobo, Sascha
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Trumpism is the construction of a world without arguments.
Where only collective narcissism counts, the feeling of superiority, "ethnic elite thinking ...: every citizen belongs to the best people in the world" (Eco).
The reward in Trumpism, however, consists of one of the oldest promises in politics: heroism.
In “fascism, heroism is the norm.
This heroism is closely linked to the cult of death ... the ur-fascist hero ... longs for the heroic death. «Of course not always for himself, sometimes others should just die, but overall it can be a little more death and therefore a little more war "Life is a permanent war".
A (non-representative, non-scientific) survey in a Telegram group of the right-wing Trump militia "Proud Boys" showed that around 75 percent of over 10,000 respondents wanted to see an "all-out war".
"Civil War" was written on many T-shirts of the Capitol strikers who see themselves as heirs of the American Civil War from 1861 onwards.
And want to carry it into the 21st century.
A Trump controlled reality bubble
This construction needs social, but also editorial media that reinforce each other.
"In our future, there is a TV or Internet populism in which the emotional response of a group of selected citizens can be presented and accepted as the› voice of the people ‹" - wrote Umberto Eco back in 1995. But the constitutive element is this direct order from the leader.
In front of the Capitol at the beginning of the storm, journalists report, the rioters had repeatedly looked up what leader Trump was tweeting.
How the crowd judges Trump's words.
And what the "conservative" television stations report.
There was a Trump-controlled reality bubble around the Capitol striker at all times.
Its ingredients were the Republicans' complete turning away from democracy and reality, conservative to right-wing extremist media, and half a dozen social media platforms - which served to maintain the Trump world.
Often in heads that one would have wanted to call "completely normal people" before Trump.
"Fascism will find its audience in this new majority [of the petty bourgeoisie]," writes Eco.
The comedy writer Zack Bornstein tweeted an analytically brilliant peculiarity,
hidden in plain sight,
which illustrates the incredible petty bourgeoisie of the Trump troops.
Just now they were trampling down barriers, knocking over police officers and breaking windows to storm the Capitol.
And now - walk well between the red hanging ropes that mark the visitor routes in the great hall of democracy.
This is America, too,
but no reason for condescension, it might as well be Germany.
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