Thomas ZimmerAs America nears a tipping point, Russell Vought desires a radical rightwing “counter-revolution.”
For Die Zeit, I wrote a profile of one of Trumpism’s key figures – and one of Trump’s most dangerous henchmen.
Some thoughts from the piece (since it is in German):
The Trumpists want escalation – and would love to use the murder of Charlie Kirk as pretext for a comprehensive crackdown on any “leftist” opposition, on that “vast domestic terror movement” Stephen Miller has raged about.
Do they really believe any of this nonsense?
Enter Russell Vought – a man who is driven by the idea that a radically anti-American “Left” has taken over the country and is destroying the nation. He is determined to use his detailed understanding of how the government works in a crusade to turn the state into an instrument of Trumpist domination.
Vought is singularly focused on bending the entire government machine to Trump’s will. He believes that any check on the power of Donald Trump, who Vought literally describes as a “gift of God,” is illegitimate. There is no line he doesn’t feel justified to cross.
Key to understanding Vought’s worldview is the idea that the constitutional order - and with it the “natural” order itself - has been destroyed: The revolution has already happened, “the Left” won. Therefore, conservatives categorically err when they try to preserve what is no more.
Vought certainly sees himself in the modern conservative tradition - and loves to invoke the canonical forefathers like Whittaker Chambers - but he also disdains the conservative establishment for their inability to understand and act upon the radical demands of the moment.
Power, Vought claims, now lies with a “permanent ruling class” of leftist elites who control all major institutions of American life and especially the “woke and weaponized” agencies of the state. In order to defeat them, conservatives must become “radical constitutionalists” - and take radical action.
While Vought traces the “leftwing revolution” back a hundred years, to the progressive era, there is no question that the election of Barack Obama was a radicalizing moment for him and many key thinkers on the radical Right - as were the multiracial protests in the summer of 2020.
What he is railing against is a profound shift in culture, status… He is obsessed with the idea that a leftist “ruling elite” controls everything - but “elite” isn’t defined socio-economically or by political power, it means something like: getting to define “real America.”
Vought is not interested in “normal” democratic politics: He seeks to “traumatize” civil servants, use the military to suppress protests, and sees Trump as an agent of God’s will. He is a committed ideologue, convinced to be fighting a noble war to defend his “real America” of white Christian patriarchal rule.
Russel Vought’s ideology of “radical constitutionalism” captures the defining sensibility on the Trumpist Right: The “Left” has command of America, all that is noble has been destroyed, nothing short of a radical “counter-revolution” can now save the nation.
Vought’s case is emblematic of the Right’s trajectory more broadly: From – at least rhetorically – claiming “small government” principles and “constitutional conservatism” to an ever more explicit, aggressive desire to mobilize the coercive powers of the state against the “enemy within.”
The key task, as Vought sees it, is to take over government and turn it into a tool that serves only two purposes: To enact revenge against the “woke” Left – and impose White Christian patriarchal domination on the country.
And he knows how to wield the power of the state as his instrument.
And he knows how to wield the power of the state as his instrument.
Today’s Right is dominated by people like Vought who are convinced there is nothing left to conserve – that our moment requires not “conservatism,” but a radical “counter-revolution.”
They have never been so powerful. And they are determined to abuse their power ruthlessly.
They have never been so powerful. And they are determined to abuse their power ruthlessly.
SellaTheChemist@tzimmer_history Grim assessment. A mullah by another name.