The United States, homeland of freedom... and of illiberalism

Anti-liberalism has always existed in the United States, despite being a country that likes to present itself as the shining city on the hill that radiates freedom. To think that the racist or xenophobic ideas of Donald Trump's most radical voters have come out of nowhere prevents a good diagnosis of the status. Robert Kagan's tracing of this illiberalism, which has coexisted in American society and politics until today since the very times of the Constitution essay -which protected both the liberal and the illiberal, since it protected slavery-, is the most interesting part of the new book by this American political scientist and internationalist.

Kagan's tracing allows us to understand the ideological process of the mutation of the U.S. party system. In the times of the Civil War, in the middle of the 19th century, the Republican Party was born as a defender of liberties and individual rights, while in the Democratic Party the interests of the states, among them the slaveholders, weighed heavily; thus, in the following decades, in the South, blacks voted mostly for the Republicans and whites for the Democrats. Massive immigration was transforming the affiliations, and over time the defense of minorities has been left to the Democratic Party and the white vote has been concentrated in the Republican Party, now strong in the South and weak in the North, unlike what happened in those decades.

Kagan warns that the illiberal forces have had a special boom at two moments in the history of the United States, one in the 1920s (black segregationism was joined by contempt for Catholics and Jews and for immigrants in general; the first law against immigration dates from 1924) and the other now (when what is being rejected, moreover, is the democratic system itself). This electoral sector supported Reagan in the 1980s, but the liberal attitude was so well established that his presidency was supported by liberal conservative personalities, and this same ideological label had all the Republican candidates until 2016.

But since George W. Bush - according to Kagan, one of the most 'left-wing' Republican presidents of the last century, describing him as a "genuine multiculturalist" - the illiberal sector has been gaining ground within the party. This already obtained 44% of the vote in the 2012 primaries, with several candidates, and in 2016 it reached 69% (44% for Trump and 25% for Ted Cruz).

From the presidential defeats of 2008 and 2012 the Republicans drew two possible strategies: the most focused believed that it was necessary to broaden the base by appealing to the Latino vote that Bush had achieved especially in 2004; the most radical bet on focusing on the 'white vote' that did not go to the polls, which was precisely the strategy followed in 2016 and now Trump is reediting in 2024. The consequence is that each time the white population, reduced in issue, concentrates more and more of its vote in the Republican Party. As a strategy, this has an expiration date due to demographic reasons.

"Today the forces of illiberalism can see that the demographic times and the system are playing against them (...) Their only option is to overthrow the system, now, in the 2024 elections; (...) it may be their last chance," says Kagan. "These days the illiberals are openly talking about overthrowing the system or undermining it from within (...) For the first time since the Civil War they have the means to do so." The author rules out a war, but believes that "some Degree of violence is inevitable."

Despite this somber tone, the author ends the book with determined optimism. "The tragic irony," he says, "is that if Americans get through this coming crisis with their democracy intact, then the greatest of dangers may have passed. Trump's move is not exceptional, but Trump probably is."

Rebellion' is suggestive and provides interesting interpretative keys, but it has a starting problem. With his work, Kagan tries to confront the polarization that the United States is experiencing -the politics of the thick stroke-, however he himself suffers from simplification and also from a certain ideological bias. He does not seem to understand that there are people who are at all suspicious of being anti-democratic who vote for Trump, as if all his voters were white supremacists. Something that complicates everything even more is the lack of terminological precision: when Kagan speaks of 'liberal' she means progressive, as is usual in the US, but when she refers to 'illiberalism' she refers mainly to the traditional (or European) concept of liberal, which makes her reasoning seem to mean that if a person is not progressive he is anti-democratic, which is obviously not true.

Kagan comes from progressivism (in foreign policy she came closer to the Republican Party for defending more assertive approaches - hence the label that was given to her as 'neoconservative' -, although she distanced herself after the rise of the isolationist Trump) and in her pages she shows an inability to understand the full legitimacy of conservative thinking on social issues. Of course, the racism and intolerance of many radical Trumpists is to be condemned, but there is also much intolerance in the 'woke' movement that progressive radicalism protects and that Kagan herself, while disagreeing, comes to excuse despite the fact that she can become as illiberal as the worst Trump.

It is true that without Obama there would have been no Trump, as the author says, but not only because his presidency exacerbated the hatred of those who would not admit a black man in the White House, but because Obama himself fostered polarization by not striving for consensus at congress; at least it was a two-way process, not a one-way process.

When Kagan predicts a bright future for liberalism in the United States, given the growing racial and cultural complexity of the country that can only be managed through pluralism, she seems to be preaching the same future for the Democratic Party. However, it should be noted that radicalisms within the Democratic Party, such as gender ideology and other 'woke' approaches are driving away a moderate electorate that may turn to the Republican Party as soon as Trump ceases to be a reference, and a new mutation between the two parties cannot be ruled out.