To understand Trump (from old Europe)

In his blog Ned Resnikoff presents an interesting thesis : we can better understand the United States today - Trump and the American people - by reading Hannah Arendt. What did she say? German people voted for the NSDAP and for Adolf Hitler in the early 1930's; nevertheless, the elites accepted the nazi ideology without any reluctance... Those Germans - wealthier classes, intellectuals - preferred respectability to ethics and courage. Trump triumphed in the United States due to a single principle : respectability. 

, That line is taken from “Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship,” a lecture that Arendt delivered in 1964. She was one of our great theorists of personal responsibility and the human faculty for judgment, and I have found myself repeatedly coming back to this lecture in particular in the months since Trump’s second inauguration. Along with Dorothy Thompson’s immortal “Who Goes Nazi?”, I believe “Personal Responsibility” is one of the great prophetic essays that everyone should read to understand this moment.  ,

Are the Americans of 2025 like the Germans of 1933, all keeping their heads down ? I tried another point of view this morning, on BlueSky. Because American news makes me think of the history of France, during 19th century, notably the French Republic of 1848 (observed by Marx). Born in February, the Revolution sacrificed its most sacred values. The reputation of democracy, the separation of powers, the republican armies: a bandit seized them. His name was Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte.

The Second Empire 🇫🇷 pursued a disastrous policy: similar to what we see today in the United States. Under the authority of a scoundrel, elected president in December 1848 (he became emperor in 1852), the Imperial court (in Compiègne) was composed of a diverse public. It included adventurers, businessmen, bigots, and soldiers ready to kill to become rich and famous.

French society adapts to Louis-Napoléon (Napoleon III, Emperor between 1852 and 1870). The privileged seek respectability as their supreme goal. Naturally, this interests the writer Zola (who invents a gallery of characters: the Rougon-Macquarts). Louis-Napoléon and his entourage ignore the law and seize wealth in the name of France's development. They send the French army all over the world: to China, Rome, and Crimea. Napoleon III proclaims that "empire means peace," but causes the death of innocents. France expands, but the French pay dearly for his adventurism.

Worse still?

The Second Empire sought to "modernize" France, while Parisian elites denigrated all eternal values. While ignoring the country's interests, it supported the British Empire. Yet the latter was the most belligerent and expansionist empire in history. For example, France and the United Kingdom participated in the Chinese Civil War; weakening (without recourse) the Ottoman Empire, too. Napoleon III sought the good of the people: he imposed the reconquest of nationalism in France's enemy countries.
Trump = Napoleon III ?

One last comment ? Napoleon III made an even more catastrophic decision than the previous ones. He committed the French army to an expedition into Mexico in 1863. This decision had an unexpected effect during the American Civil War. Without Mexico, the French Emperor might have supported the Confederates in 1863 - who knows? Imagine if the French Navy had lifted the Union Navy's blockade: the Southerners would have won against the Northerners. France would have prevented the abolition of slavery.  

This would have changed the course of history. Napoleon III abdicated on September 2, 1870. In the United States, what could be worse than the War of 1870 and its abominable consequences?