Trump’s Inept Totalitarianism

The silver lining of individualism and narcissism

Image by Dave Lowe, from Unsplash

In On the Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt explained the rise of Nazi and Soviet totalitarianism, by identifying their political, economic, historical, and sociological underpinnings, focusing, in the case of Nazism, on the roles of anti-Semitism, imperialism, and of WWI’s deflation of the myths of progress in politics and the nation state.

It’s tempting to draw from her profound analysis to shed light on what looks like the anti-American phenomenon of Trumpian authoritarian populism. But there are reasons to think Trumpism doesn’t fit the classic totalitarian mold.

American Individualism and Totalitarian Collectivism

To begin with, Americans are more individualistic than Europeans, meaning that Americans have less trust in their federal government. This distrust was written into their constitution, which divided the US government into three, ever-clashing branches.

We see this distrust playing out vividly in the United States’ substandard handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, since American individualism is the main cause of the country’s lack of an adequate (affordable) healthcare system for many of its citizens. To be sure, Trump’s incompetence and egregious…