Specter

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Languages of Fear

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Why the growing talk of a “r= egime” in America? Laura K. Field on an emergent ide= a swaying the politics of the Republican Party.

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Norbert Kowalczyk

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(Originally published 2022 | 1= 1.1)
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=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09After Hurricane Ian de= vastated the U.S. state of Florida in late September, its Republic= an governor Ron DeSantis used some unusual language to criticize American p= ress coverage of the storm. The “national regime media,” he sai= d, had wanted to see Ian hit the city of Tampa, because that would have bee= n “worse for Florida”—and helped the media “pursue = their political agenda.” DeSantis’ comments were certainly odd = in that there’s no record of journalists ever hoping for any har= m to Tampa—but they were even more striking in their association of t= he media with a “regime” that’s hostile to his party= and subverting his country.
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For some time now, far-right membe= rs of the U.S. House of Representatives—such as Marjorie Taylor Green= e, Lauren Boebert, and Paul Gosar—have been railing against the &ldqu= o;Biden regime.” Others on the American right have meanwhile argued t= hat a more deep-seated and oppressive “regime” extends far beyo= nd government—to the press, universities, nongovernmental organizatio= ns, and “woke” corporations. Ohio’s Senator J.D. Van= ce even claimed that the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was “censored= by the regime.” And according to the former Trump national-security = official Michael Anton, “the people who really run the United States = of America” all belong to it. What are they talking about?
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Laura K. Field is= a scholar-in-residence at American University and a senior fellow at the N= iskanen Center in Washington. To Field, the rising popularity of the term i= s a sign of how fluidly extremist ideas are now migrating from the fringes = of American politics into the mainstream—from niche intellectuals to = ideological entrepreneurs to politicians, media commentators, and other inf= luencers. Field notes that many of those who’ve helped popularize the= idea of “the regime” had tried from 2016 to articulate an inte= llectual framework that supported the politics of Donald Trump—and ar= e trying now to develop the framework for a right-wing populism that can ou= tlast him.

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Graham Vyse: What= ’s “the regime”?
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Laura K. Field: T= he idea of a regime is relatively familiar. Political scienti= sts have commonly used the term to refer to a system of government. But unt= il recently, it’s not something you’d hear much in mainstream U= .S. political conversation.
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The new idea of “the regime&= rdquo; in America comes from a network of intellectuals, commentators, and = politicians broadly aligned with the new-populist politics of Donald Trump&= mdash;often called “the new right”—who’ve given&nbs= p;the term a specific, negative, even cynical, new meaning in the U.S. cont= ext.
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Fundamentally, it expresses a view= of the Biden administration as an effectively authoritarian government&mda= sh;colluding with progressives who control the media, run the universities,= and, increasingly, dominate, corporations. There’s a clearly siniste= r connotation to the rhetoric, tying in with the idea that the 2020 electio= n was stolen and Biden’s presidency is fraudulent—while also co= nveying a broader sense that the left is exerting despotic power over Ameri= cans, and above all Republicans, in all kinds of ways. The regime is very a= ll-encompassing and so very threatening.
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Vyse: How did the= idea take shape?

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Field: When Presi= dent Trump took power, he didn’t show a very clear sense of what he s= tood for politically beyond the rhetoric of his presidential campaign. In t= hat context, there were a number of right-wing intellectuals who identified= with the politics of Trump’s campaign and offered ideas about what i= t might ultimately stand for—and arguments for these ideas.
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It might sound strange to a lot of= liberals or other Trump opponents that there would be a real intellectual = component to Trumpism, but there is. That’s what these intellectuals = have tried to foster—and some of them have been effective, drawing on= considerable knowledge about American history and political theory. They&r= squo;ve been able to find ways to make sense of, and sometimes justifiably = defend, what Trump-era Republicans have tried to do—even if= the intellectual weight of it all didn’t always come through in what= Trump would say.

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=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09One of the sources of this thi= nking, and of the idea of “the regime” in particular, is t= he Claremont Institute, a research and advocacy organization in California = that understands itself as working to restore America’s founding prin= ciples—and that had close ties to the Trump administration.
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[Michael Anton, a senior fellow at= Claremont, is a former Trump national security official. John Eastman, the= founding director of Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional= Jurisprudence and another senior fellow, was the lawyer who helped Trump r= ationalize his attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.]=
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There’s a strong tendency at= the Claremont Institute, and intellectually affiliated institutions, to vi= ew the United States as having been fundamentally transformed by progressiv= ism—and to see themselves as counter-revolutionaries working to bring= things back to a more authentic American condition.
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=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09There’s also a group of = religious traditionalists—sometimes referring to themselves as &ldquo= ;post-liberals”—who also use this language of the regime. Patrick Deneen, a Notre Dame professor and the author of Why Libera= lism Failed, has a forthcoming book called Regime Change: Toward a= Postliberal Future. So it’s not necessarily just rhetoric; some= of those using the language have big ideas about changing politics. Some p= ost-liberal Catholics, for example, are outspoken in their support of Hunga= ry’s very illiberal Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Some groups, = such as the National Conservatism organization, promote a populist economic= nationalism.

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Olesya Yemets

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More from Laura K. Field at Th= e Signal:
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=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09“There’s s= ome truth to the conviction that liberals or progressives have mor= e cultural clout than conservatives in America—that Hollywood has a l= iberal or progressive bias, and many mainstream news sources and universiti= es do too. But this conspiratorial notion of a regime that includes the gov= ernment, corporations, and law enforcement all colluding to oppress Republi= cans says something very different—and ultimately absurd. There may b= e a hardening of language on both sides of the American political divide, b= ut it’s important to distinguish which parts of that reflect reality = and which don’t.”
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=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09“A hard version = of the of the idea of the regime suggests that a president no= t in league with it will be thwarted in office—and that votes in favo= r of his reelection won’t matter, because the whole system has been t= aken over by illegitimate forces outside voters’ control. There&rsquo= ;s an implicit call to action in the argument—to radical, even possib= ly violent action—to stop what’s going on. If you genuinely bel= ieve that people don’t have the control they should have over their g= overnment in a democracy, there’s an imperative in that belief to upe= nd the system.”
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=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09“The rhetoric of= the regime works by being vague. It suggests a phenomeno= n that’s sinister, authoritarian, and aggressive, but it also gives t= hose who use it a degree of plausible deniability about its more radical im= plications. They can say they’re only using it in an innocuous way. T= o an ordinary person, though, it has a very ominous feeling to it.” =09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09

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