The Mysteries of Trumpism

Sir: Peter Murphy (May 2016) writes with great knowledge and authority about the history of populism, but seems to be all at sea in his attempt to explain Donald Trump’s appeal. Sure, populists may “hyperbolically” magnify “odd bedfellows”, make virtues of “vertiginous equivocality and high-wire ambiguity”, they may be “protean political personalities” that walk “impossible tightropes”. He even accuses the Donald of “inscrutable Left-Right political hermaphroditism”! Murphy says that populism lacks a sunny optimism, but what could be more optimistic than the slogan “Let’s make America great again”? He uses terms like contradictory, incongruous, blended positions, antitheses, refractory appeal to describe the populist, and mad as hell, anxious and an audience for insult who no longer think there is such a thing as truth to describe the supporter.

But nowhere in this rambling essay will you read the words elite, intellectuals or insiders, nor the phrase that describes the phenomenon that provides the clearest reason for Trump’s popularity (a word that describes Trumpism better than “populism”)—political correctness. How one could write an essay on Trump and not mention his defiance of political correctness as the primary source of his popularity could only mean one thing—that the essay writer was from a class of people that understands neither Trump nor his supporters nor what makes them tick. And as if that wasn’t enough “protean contradictoriness”, Murphy ends his essay thus: “Nominating Trump as its presidential candidate would guarantee a wipe-out in the 2016 election”, only to jump the highwire of ambiguity in his final sentence with, “Where it will end is impossible to say.” Yes, quite.

Anthony Sharpe
via e-mail

Sir: It will be some time before the last authoritative word is written on populism. Populism in the normative sense is a derogatory description of a mass appeal not sanctioned by the Establishment. Hence its use by mainstream media and commentators is invariably disparaging and sometimes even a touch loathing or despairing.

It would be too much to expect political populism to become the new normal in the West. Though it is not an aberration in the nature of things so much as a reiteration of the power of the people to re-assert itself when the Establishment runs out of legitimacy, it is not, historically, an enduring state of affairs.
For the West, the question of survival is now at hand. Will the coming socio-political storm occasion a genuine re-valuation of all values and a renewal of Western society, or be a dud revolution and leave the West in subjection to the full force of new global players and the powers exercised and unleashed by them?

The so-called elites which have been supportive of globalisation and instrumental in the corporate takeover of government and the bureaucracy in, and almost all international relations between, Western nation-states, are in a class of their own. There is yet little comment, let alone analysis, from the mainstream, acknowledging the exploitative, extractive and potentially nature of the ways and means by which this class of internationalist progressives creams off the fluffed-up, corrupted economies of the Western nation-states and now gravely undermines the very viability of the Western democracies as sovereign states.

In the West, a Clayton’s democracy lorded over by the globalising corporates, considering the growing mood of anti-Establishmentism, appears increasingly unlikely. As Peter Murphy indicates, in the case of Trumpism and the Republicans in the US, “Where it will end is impossible to say.”

Nick Cater, however, sees a future in an attempt to defeat populism by means of a return to the first principles of Liberalism: “freedom for the individual, reward for endeavour and a passionate commitment to parity of opportunity”. And, presumably, the also-rans will be thrown out unceremoniously, or locked up forever. For that is the corollary of Liberalism, or any ism, in the West’s unrepentant struggle for total political supremacy: To dictate terms, write and concoct laws, regulations and interpretations to suit, and leave the winning combination of powers to take all, in the first instance; to have it all destroyed by the winning combination of the unruly erstwhile-ruled objecting to being disenfranchised out, in the second instance.

Jacob Jonker
Fern Tree, Tas

Sir: Frank Pulsford (March 2016) professes himself unable to understand my critical reflection on Roberto Unger’s The Religion of the Future (December 2015) after two readings; and, in particular, declares that he “could not find why Unger thought we needed a new religion”. I fear that any further attempt to explain the matter to him will also be lost on him. But let me at least make an attempt.

Unger’s view is that none of the old religions is credible any longer as regards claims about the origins of the cosmos, the nature of life, the history of humanity or the workings of the world. This is because of the findings of the modern sciences concerning the nature of the cosmos, the evolutionary realities of life and the knowledge of human evolution and archaeology acquired only in the very recent past.

He nevertheless pays generous tribute to each of them as regards the motivation they have provided to human beings over several millennia to make life more dignified, meaningful and principled. He is not, in this respect, like Sam Harris or the late Christopher Hitchens, an anti-religious vandal, bent on destroying what good there is in the world’s religions.

Nonetheless, he is convinced that the religions are inadequate because they are false in so many of their dogmatic claims and also because they do not provide sufficient motivation to human beings to live with imagination and love and to rebuild civilisation for the better.

This is why he believes we need a new religion. Whether or not Frank Pulsford can bring himself to accept the argument, it is not a complicated one and is surely at least comprehensible. Unger’s prescription for this new religion is, however, seriously flawed, in my judgment, as I endeavoured to explain in the balance of my review.

That Pulsford considers Consumerism, Hedonism, Secular Humanism and Global Warming to be new religions (which he rejects) suggests he is able to understand the idea of a new religion. He just prefers his own to any other on offer. He shares this disposition with a few billion others. It’s just that they cannot agree with one another.

He appears to believe that his Catholic belief (inferred from his recommendation that Unger read Aquinas, which I am confident he has) makes sense to the simple-minded and that this should suffice. Here he cites Matthew 11:25 and Louis Pasteur, respectively, to the effect that Jesus or God revealed his secrets to the “little ones” while hiding them from the wise and prudent; and that there is merit in the faith of Breton peasant.

One is reminded of the stance of the third-century Christian apologist Tertullian, who declared, “I believe because it is absurd.” I have never understood why any self-respecting human being would prefer the mental status of a minor or that of a Breton peasant to the dignity and autonomy of educated adulthood. Many people believe things despite the fact that they are absurd, but it requires a singular perversity to declare belief because something is absurd.

We can surely do better than this. My own belief, which differs in important respects from that of Unger, is that religion has been a constant in human societies around the world and that we are foolish if we do not reckon with this in seeking to revitalise human civilisation. Since this has happened many times before, there seems no reason to believe it cannot be accomplished again. But it is a very challenging task.

Like Unger, I attempt to contribute what I can. To quote a figure after whom I was named and with whom Frank Pulsford will be quite familiar, “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as child, I thought as child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” That was written not to Olympians, but to Corinthians. It is a message we still need to heed—perhaps more than ever.

Paul Monk
Melbourne, Vic

Sir: I’m grateful to John Whitworth for his wonderful literary detective work recorded in his essay “Ever William” (March 2016) about the William Brown children’s books (first published in England between 1923 and 1947) and their female author Richmal Crompton. His article revived memories of those deliciously daring and comical novels of my tomboy childhood in South Australia. William’s adventures can probably be blamed for my forming a small baddy-baddy gang at my girls’ grammar school, and I was curious about the writer with the unusual name.

As to the reason for Crompton never marrying, Whitworth speculates that she could have been a lesbian or, alternatively, “something of a bluestocking … not perhaps very marriageable”. She, however, like hundreds of other English spinsters in the post-Great War period, matured (she was born in 1890) at a time when, owing to the slaughter of the war, there was a great shortage of marrying young men available. Women without “hopes” filled the staff rooms of polite girls’ schools then, even in Australia; I was taught by several such schoolmistresses. It is interesting that Crompton was published by George Newnes Ltd, the firm which employed the wise and witty spinster-by-choice poet Stevie Smith throughout her working life.

Until I read Whitworth’s article, William had seemed a “lost” childhood hero, but I still own William Again (1947) and William the Good (1950) and have indulged in the pleasure of a little re-reading.

Suzanne Edgar
Garran, ACT

Sir: I write to take issue with some of the points made by Harold Callaghan in his article “Operation Official History” (April 2016), in which he reviews The Protest Years: The Official History of ASIO 1963–1975; Volume II by John Blaxland.

In discussing Murphy’s raid on ASIO in March 1973, Callaghan claims that by using the word raid in inverted commas and by preferring to call it a visit, Blaxland downplays “a traumatic event for ASIO staff”. It is true that he does use the word raid in inverted commas and that at times he does call it a visit (he also uses the word raid, not in inverted commas, on at least six occasions) but it is not true that Blaxland downplayed the traumatic effect on the staff. On page 333 he says some staff members “felt traumatised”; and that a “subsequent report” (called the Visits Report) on the incident noted that “for all practical purposes the staff were under house arrest and this had a chilling effect on morale”. On page 336 he reports that when ASIO Director General Peter Barbour met Whitlam, on March 17, he told him that the raid “had had a shattering effect on the staff”.

Callaghan also claims that “Blaxland strangely omits reference to Murphy and Whitlam’s lies” that Barbour “had not complained about the raid and does not address the political dimensions of the raid which exhibited the hostility between Whitlam and Murphy”. If he reads page 337 again he will see that Blaxland does refer to both Whitlam and Murphy claiming that Barbour did not complain to them. Furthermore, it is not true that he doesn’t address the political dimensions of the raid. On page 335, quoting from the Visits Report, he notes the effect the raid had not only on ASIO staff, but also on the public service—it was “stunned”—and that “it left all Western security and intelligence organisations bewildered”. Also, Barbour and his staff saw Murphy’s actions as a vote of no confidence in them by the government. On page 346 he refers to Whitlam contemplating taking over responsibility for ASIO from Murphy, because of the poor press the government was receiving over the raid. Then, on page 356, after Whitlam had directed that Murphy not be briefed for “Venona”, Blaxland noted that “there was no love lost between Murphy and Whitlam”.

Towards the end of his article Callaghan says Blaxland describes Australia’s “most committed Soviet agent, Bill Brown, as an ‘author’. His true name was not Bill, but Wilton John Brown …” The first point to make here is that it is Callaghan, not Blaxland, who calls him “Bill Brown”; Blaxland refers to him as “Wilton Brown” and “Brown” and “Wilton J. Brown”, never Bill Brown. Also, on page 95 Blaxland refers to Brown not only as an “author”, but also a “hardline” communist. He also makes it clear on pages 95 and 97 that Brown had been a member of the Communist Party of Australia, who left the party to form the Socialist Party of Australia because he disagreed with the path the CPA was taking, that is, it was moving away from the Moscow line which Brown supported. It is true, though, that Blaxland could have made much more of Brown’s Moscow connections, as Callaghan points out.

In conclusion, while I found Callaghan’s article interesting, it needs to be read carefully and it helps to have read the book.

Chris Rule
Gilmore, ACT