Race, Truth, and Meaning: Sartre on the Psychology of Prejudice, and the Legacy of Trump,Part Five: Movements for a New Self: New Identities
In this series, we have been discussing the success of racist ideology in terms of the psychological appeal it has: it is a malignant and deceptive way of fulfilling the very human need for a sense of meaning and the choice of a personal identity that will fulfill that need. This analysis is based on Jean-Paul Sartre’s reflections on French anti-Semitism during World War II, and how these ideas can help us make sense of the way that Donald Trump’s message appeals to the far right. In this last installment, I will offer, in broad strokes, some basic ideas about the way in which a political movement might be able to counteract these tendencies.
If everything that we’ve said so far is right, then what that suggests is that if the Left — the voices of equality, including opposition to racism and other oppressions — wants to win people over, then our movement has to give people an alternative sense of identity. If a sense of meaning is central to human life, then it makes sense for it to be central to political life, too. And if we’re seeing a racialized politics providing the sense of meaning that can come from a strong idea of identity, then this kind of racism is not going to be counteracted by business-as-usual politics, but by offering people a better story about who they are and what gives life its meaning. In short, it will ultimately be accomplished by offering an alternative sense of identity.
From about 2009 to 2020, I was an avid Facebook user, and I observed some of that platform’s trends very carefully. In particular, what I saw in the couple of years running up to the 2016 election was very interesting. One thing that I noticed was that white people who were from the working-class neighborhood I had grown up in, and with whom I had grown up, were vacillating. They were posting all kinds of memes, as well as some articles, from a wide range of websites and Facebook pages — from the far Left to the far Right. Which indicated to me that they were looking for something. And what I think they were looking for was a story — a narrative that would explain what was happening in the world, why it was happening, and what could be done about it. In other words, they wanted something that would give meaning to what they were seeing, or thought they were seeing, around them. Some of their search was undoubtedly motivated by economic insecurity, but some of it was motivated by challenges to what they had always thought were their values. And these factors, of course, varied from person to person.
As Sartre and other political philosophers like Hannah Arendt and others realized, the search for meaning and the creation of meaning is a central aspect of political life. This period was no exception. Unfortunately, what I have to conclude is the Trump told a “better”, in terms of a more compelling, story. As a master bullshitter[1], he instinctively knew what his audience wanted to hear, and gave it to them, without the slightest thought as to whether it was true or not. And while it took gerrymandering and other types of voter suppression, as well as the injustice of the Electoral College to “win” the election, he was able to convince enough people that it worked.
So the question is: what do we do about it?
Clearly, we have to tell a better kind of story. We have to tell the kind of a story that will give people the sense of meaning in their lives and the sense of who they are that they crave. In a way, this is kind of beside the point of what we’ve been talking about this whole time, because we won’t be able to give them the kind of certainty which we’ve been saying that people seek in racist ideology. But if we can at least take meaning to be central to political life, this will give us some worthwhile things to think about.
I think that what we have to do is to create a truly holistic and inclusive vision. We can’t just argue for rational solutions to specific problems, although we certainly have to do that, too. We have to be able to give people a world-view. Precisely that happened in different movements in history. Marxism made its appeal to the working class. Occupy Wall Street called to the 99%. The Civil Rights movement presented a vision of a just society for everybody. These were broad movements that told people the role that could play in the construction of a just and meaningful society. And it wasn’t by marking “D” on Election Day.
If we were right in saying that racism isn’t just a bad opinion among other ideas that could be right or wrong independently of each other, that in fact it’s a complete choice of the self, then the most complete way to counter-act it, indeed maybe ultimately the only way, is to offer people the choice of a different kind of self. If Trump was able to tell a better story, it might very well be because he told a more complete one — one that answered more of their questions about the world and their place in it, about their lives and what those lives meant.
So there are two things that we should pay attention to when trying to imagine what this alternative self or alternative view of the self might be like. One is the matter of completeness; the other is the matter of certainty.
We need to be fully aware of how complete this existential choice of a personal identity is. One of the insidious things about racism is that, most likely, when people opt for it, they don’t know that that decisions drags with it all the other character traits that we’ve been talking about. In other words, they probably don’t realize that the choice of racism is an entire, existential choice of the self. In fact, this is the whole basis of what Sartre calls “existential psychoanalysis”. Sartre is deeply skeptical (probably too much so) about aspects of the theory of the subconscious in different works, but more interesting than this critique is the alternative type of psychoanalysis he suggests. As he describes it, the choice of what kind of self one wants to be involves a selfhood that is not just a patchwork that a person stitches together. In reality, this kind of fundamental choice brings with it all kinds of subsidiary character traits that one probably isn’t even aware of. This, then, would be the work of psychoanalysis — to bring to the conscious mind all of the unconsidered implications of the type of person one has chosen to be.[2]
One main place where Americans have gone wrong in their political culture is in assuming that political life proceeds issue by issue, and that one’s views on issues are independent of each other. This piecemeal approach is practiced by “pragmatic” people of all kinds of views. In fact, conservative-leaning thinkers have touted this as a downright virtue, marking the opposite of “totalitarianism”. (See, for example, Karl Popper in his classic work, The Open Society and its Enemies.) But the fact is that capitalism is a totalizing system; as its economic, political, and cultural power get ever more centralized, all issues become tied together. And therefore, we need to be more conscious than ever about how each of our views reflects the totality of society, and consequently, how each of our actions has an effect on the whole society.
Therefore, as Sartre says, we don’t just need to create a new system, although it should be obvious that we have to do that, too. We have to create a new type of human. The fact that we’re able to do this is shown by the fact that there are two senses of the term “human”: descriptive and normative — or as Grégoire Chamayou puts it, ontological and axiological. This is the difference between a supposedly inherent “essence” of being human and the ethical call to act “humanely”. It is because of this condition that it makes any sense at all to talk of “humanism”.[3]
But on a deeper level, it’s Sartre’s existentialism that lets us see that this is possible. The heart of existentialism is the recognition that humans are fundamentally free: that while we don’t get to pick the circumstances we’re born in (personal or social), we can make meaningful choices about what to do with what we find ourselves with. And not only that, but ultimately, humanity itself can make a collective choice about what it will be. This is because humans have no “essence”, no unchangeable “human nature” that circumscribes our range of actions. The human species has produced both Hitler and Gandhi, both Donald Trump and Rosa Parks: so much for “human nature”. The only extent to which we can define what humans are in any meaningful way is to look at the sum total of what humans have done so far. And each and every one of us contributes to that. Each one of us, as we choose ourselves, at the same time also collectively choose what humanity is, and will be considered to be.[4]
But how do we create a whole new person? A whole new culture and way of living? Are there models for us to look to?[5] There are some precedents in recent history, in fact, within my own lifetime. It seems to me that the counter-culture of the 1960’s was at least an attempt to create a new person.
One thing that I keep coming back to is something that American iconography, in a certain way, takes as the very image of public protest: the movement against the Vietnam War. I am convinced that the reason that movement was so effective — actually forcing an end to the war — was that it wasn’t just organized around one particular issue. The movement that started with the war (and was heavily inspired by the Civil Rights movement) grew into an entire critique of American society, and all of its values and institutions. It didn’t just say that a particular practice was wrong, but that practice proceeded from a society that was fundamentally unjust — and thus, as an overall critique, it challenged people’s idea of who they were. But the key is that it wasn’t just a critique. It was fueled by an entire counter-culture, which provided an alternative way for people to think about themselves: an alternative model for how society could work, and thus, a new sense of identity. This alternative culture developed all the signs through which cultures give a sense of meaning and identity: music, literature, clothing, means of intoxication, philosophies, spiritual practices, approaches to sexuality — even, for some people, a new approach to food. And, not incidentally, it attracted multitudes because it presented itself, not as simply being more right or more humane than the Establishment, but by being more fun. The creativity and passion that was put into various forms of protest — political, cultural, and artistic — not only drew attention to particular issues, but also presented the vision of a fullness of life that corporate jobs and suburban homes couldn’t offer.
I’m not saying that we should revive or even recreate what happened in the 60’s and early 70’s. Even if that were possible, it’s (to say the least) controversial if that would be desirable. What approach could fulfill that function in today’s society? I don’t know if I have a complete answer, but it is a vital question for us to think about. And the truth is that we can’t predict what it will be like. And I am encouraged by that. That’s what makes human freedom, the ability of humans to create themselves, so interesting: nobody can predict what people will do with their freedom, how they will respond to their circumstances. All that we can call for is for humans to make a total choice of an anti-racist self. And then watch what happens.
So that’s one aspect: what our movement should offer ought to self-consciously be about an entire choice of self — because consciously or unconsciously, it probably will be, anyway. But there’s another aspect, too. This vision of a complete self has to be concerned with its content, too, of course — Trumpists have also made a complete choice of self, and that’s the problem we’ve been investigating. And one of the existential longings that leads people to follow figures like Trump is that quest for certainty that we’ve been discussing all along, throughout this series. And that’s something we can’t give, because of all the places we’ve talked about it leading to.
When we create a new type of person, and choose an entire self, we will have to let go of this burning for the security of absolute certainty that ends up blocking out the truth of the world. Luckily, there are tools for how to do that. Some of them we’ve already seen Erich Fromm discuss[6]. Others are the subject of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Ethics of Ambiguity. That is a rich work, which I recommend, to which I can’t do justice in a small space. But the theme is just this: how to behave ethically while living with fundamental ambiguities. How to do this is a longer discussion than we can have here, but it’s an absolutely vital skill for humans to cultivate.
Conclusion
Trump has brought these entwined attitudes toward race and truth into the mainstream. This will be with us for a while. Regardless of the failure of his second campaign, Trump has unleashed a phenomenon that will not go away easily or soon. In the wake of his first campaign, a wave of hate crimes took place. White nationalists have come to occupy a more prominent place in public discourse. Rightists and their opponents have clashed openly and violently in the streets. Conservatives now tend to immediately denounce as “fake news” any fact that doesn’t fit their narrative. Even as Trump has been defeated in the polls, and his insurrection was defeated in the streets, the attitudes on which his campaign thrived have seeped into the culture. This is something we have to comprehend in order to effectively stand against it.
And not only that: we might not be so lucky next time. Trump tapped into something in the right-wing psyche and brought it out into the open, and in force. But he is a buffoon, and ultimately, a bad politician. What if next time we got another racist authoritarian, who was actually a shrewd and skillful politician?[7]
[1] See the first installment in this series for the philosophical definition of this term.
[2] Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness. Tr. Hazel Barnes (New York: Washington Square Press, 1943/1956) p. 712–731
[3] Chamayou, Grégoire. A Theory of the Drone. Tr. Janet Lloyd (New York and London: The New Press, 2013/2015)
[4] This paragraph summarizes one of the main points of Sartre’s famous lecture, “Existentialism is a Humanism”, delivered in October 1945.
[5] The Bolsheviks thought that they were doing this in Russia, but they were unsuccessful. This was partly due to external circumstances militating toward a less free, more disciplined society: civil war, famine, and foreign invasion (oh yes, including by the United States). Unfortunately, this was a discipline that Stalin was able to use to create hell in earth. And there were also internal circumstances: democracy wasn’t just killed by Stalin. As my legendary teacher of Russian history, Sally Fellows, put it: Russia’s problem wasn’t that it became communist. Russia’s problem was that it stayed Russia. In other words, Russian political culture never managed to emerge from the legacy of authoritarianism left by centuries of Tsars and their visions of the “Third Rome”.
[6] In the first installment of the series.
[7] America’s Next Authoritarian Will Be Much More Competent”, Zeynep Tufekci, The Atlantic, November 6th, 2020
