Donald Trump, Joseph Stalin, and the Kronstadt Revolt
Steven Calabresi has had his Kronstadt moment. The ultra-conservative law professor and co-founder of The Federalist Society (the wonderful group that has given us, among other things, Justice Brett Kavanaugh), writes in the July 31 New York Times that Donald Trump’s sending a tweet speculating that the November election should be postponed is grounds for impeachment and removal from office. Not colluding with foreign powers that have historically been considered enemies of the United States to win election and reelection; not ending immigration of people of color; not placing children in cages; not enacting massive tax cuts for the rich; not engaging in a level of self-dealing and use of the Presidency for personal enrichment unseen in American history; not the attendant violations of the Constitution’s emoluments’ clause; not using tear gas and military planes to displace peaceful protesters for a 30-second photo shoot; not sending in secret police in unmarked cars and without identification into American cities to abduct and detain protesters without legal authorization. No. Just the President’s sending of a tweet (which, if you haven’t been paying attention for the past four years, is something President Trump does). Oh well. Take ‘em where you can get ‘em, I guess. But one thing that has been remarkable to watch for the last four years, as Donald Trump clawed his way to the top of the Republican Party and into the White House, is just what it takes for Republicans to have their own Kronstadt Moments, and of course observe those who have not.
The idea of the Kronstadt moment comes from a piece by the anti-communist cold warrior Louis Fischer, one of the six authors whose works appear in The God That Failed, a collection of essays by former communists. Fischer took the phrase from the great anarchist Alexander Berkman, who had been deported to Russia for his anti-draft agitation during the First World War. Although he had initially been supportive of Lenin and the Bolsheviks, Berkman publicly broke with the communists over the “Kronstadt blood bath”, that is the violent suppression of a worker’s and sailors revolt against the harsh economic programs imposed by the early communist regime. As Fischer explains, it is the public break that is essential to a Kronstadt moment. Prior to that, one may “waiver emotionally or doubt intellectually or even reject the cause altogether.” But only when one publicly breaks with the system one had previously supported, can a Kronstadt moment be said to have arrived.
Joseph Stalin, of course, gave a good western communist many opportunities for a Kronstadt moment. The purge trials, the imprisonment or murder of numerous political prisoners (many of whom had been until moments before their arrest among the lights of the party), and that most public of betrayals, the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact (the cause of Fischer’s own Kronstadt moment). Yet many western communists never had their own Kronstadt moment. And many who did publicly break with the movement did so not out of conviction but out of fear during the madness of what we now call the McCarthy period.
It is easy, from our post-Soviet perch, to look down on those whose Kronstadt moment never came, or came at a time we would consider too late. But let us look back on the past four years, and the numerous opportunities that Donald Trump has given the Calabresis of the world. He began his campaign with an attack on an entire ethnic class, followed by an attack on a former Republican standard bearer and war hero, encouraged the single greatest geo-political enemy of the United States to assist him in his electoral efforts, and declared a moral equivalency between Barak Obama’s American and Putin’s Russia (perhaps because he believes both leaders were not born in the United States). Oh, he also refused to condemn the former Imperial Wizard of the Klu Klux Klan and said that an American judge of Mexican heritage could not possibly adjudicate a case against Trump University because Donald was going to build a wall. The then Republican Speaker of the House, described that last statement as quintessentially racist. Not that that would stop Speaker Ryan from supporting Donald Trump’s presidential campaign as racism, at least in the view of the former Speaker, is not grounds for a Kronstadt moment. All of this before he was even elected.
Since that election, now President Trump has given Republicans numerous opportunities for a Kronstadt moment. Besides those already mentioned, there were his continued attacks, even after death, on John McCain, which was not enough to give Senator Lindsey Graham, supposedly John McCain’s best friend in the Senate, grounds for a Kronstadt. There were the revelations of his using his media connections to suppress stories which might have hurt his election, and the sordid stories themselves, which were not enough to give any of his prominent evangelical supporters a Kronstadt. There was his finding that there were “good people” among those who marched shouting “Jews will not replace us”, which was insufficient to lead to Gary Cohn’s Kronstadt moment. There was his encouraging the President of China, another national enemy of the United States, to use its economic power to help him win reelection and to build concentration camps for Uyghurs, neither of which would cause John Bolton to break with the Donald. Not even failures of leadership and gross incompetence that have given us three Viet Nam’s worth of American casualties in under six months have led to prominent Kronstadts. Not even Donald Trump’s reaction to the Black Lives Matter movement and the burgeoning recognition by a majority of White Americans of just how unlevel the playing field is - i.e. to double-down on white identify politics, and the support of the Confederate battle flag and Confederate monuments - seems to matter.
Not that Kronstadts don’t come. For Calabresi it was a tweet about postponing an election. For Gary Cohn it was the imposition of tariffs. For John Bolton it was the realization that Donald Trump would not impose regime change in Tehran, at least not through force of arms. Like I said, take ‘em where you can get ‘em. But it is a striking sign of our times that the President of the United States can, when asked about his relationship with a woman who has been arrested for helping to mastermind a child sex ring - the real thing, not the ravings of conspiracy theorists who are searching for a basement prison in a building that doesn’t have a basement - that he could wish her well without causing a single prominent Kronstadt moment.
Perhaps most notably, is there a single elected Republic official who has not announced his or her retirement from public life who has had a Kronstadt moment? OK, maybe Mitt Romney, at least sort of, though whatever his beliefs about Trump’s fitness for office, they don’t extend to actually doing anything to precipitate his departure next January 20. But Senator Romney comes from Utah, a state whose conservative Republican voters are also members of a church that seems to take its ethics seriously. In any event, Romney doesn’t need to face the voters for four more years, and doesn’t need to raise money for, well, ever. But, can you name another?
Well, that’s not entirely fair. After the Access Hollywood tape came out with Trump’s boasting of his sexual assaults, at least one elected Republican, Representative Jason Chaffetz of Utah, announced he was out. After all, he pointed out, he had a daughter. Nineteen days later, Representative Chaffetz had what one might call an anti-Kronstadt moment, tweeting out his intention to vote for Donald Trump. The status of his relationship with the young woman who had been his daughter is not commented upon.
Finally, consider what these pillars of the Republican Party are swearing allegiance to? Yes, American Communists may have been naive. But they were also, in large part, sincere idealists who saw a political party that alone appeared to be fighting for equal rights for all, regardless of race, religion, or national origin. A political party that seemed to be dedicated towards providing everyone with food, clothing, and shelter. A political party that seemed to be interested in the rights of every person. And if that party dismissed the crimes of Stalin as fake news, well, the evidence of those crimes were not being paraded before the public every day, and one did not have to engage in the absurd levels of denial and cognitive dissidence that animate today’s Republican Party.
Perhaps some percentage of Trump loyalists are animated by a sincere belief that supporting Donald Trump is the price you pay to prevent the “murder of the unborn”. Whatever you may think of that argument, and I don’t think much, at least it’s sincere. But it is readily apparent that for the vast majority of elected Republicans, and certainly everyone one in Washington facing election in the fall, all that is keeping them in the thrall of Donald Trump is the sugar high of proximity to power and fear. Not fear of the gulag, the camps, or a bullet in the back of the neck. No, they fear a tweet, which, if you haven’t been paying attention for the past four years, is something President Trump does.
