The cruelty is not the point: On Muskism and McCarthyism

The magazine n+1 did a long interview with me about Muskism and McCarthyism, where, among other things, I said: One of the claims you often heard during Trump 1.0, which I always thought was misleading, was that “the cruelty is the point.” If you know anything about the history of political intimidation and politically repressive fear, you know that the cruelty is not the point. Silence, obedience, and submission—subjugation for political ends—that’s the point. The goal of McCarthyism was to crush what was left of the New Deal left-liberal alliance, primarily in the labor movement, and it succeeded. The point wasn’t to be cruel. Trump and some of his allies really are just sadists, psychopaths, and sociopaths. There is no […]