Donald Trump, American Faust

In an attempt to find the source of it all, the US legacy media sent its reporters into the diners of middle America, to Akron and Grand Rapids, to confirm their suspicion that this authoritarian turn was born from economic aggrievement. And yet the unemployed, the working class and the minority voters, the people who made up the traditional Democratic coalition, were not the ones who were voting for Trump. Overall, Republican voters still tend to be the financially better-off. If they were voting out of a sense of aggrievement, then it’s about something else. 

Part of American journalism’s problem has been a lack of fluency in Trump’s language. He speaks in the rhetoric of sports radio and shock jocks, of wrestling commentators and reality television. 

From that combination, he moulded a tongue in a register that speaks to a different part of the brain than is detectable to readers of The New York Times. For what Trump addresses is not a clear head but a black heart.

As the philosopher Theodor Adorno explained in his 1964 study The Jargon of Authenticity, “Fascism was not simply a conspiracy – although it was that – but it was something that came to life… Language provides it with a refuge. Within this refuge a smouldering evil expresses itself as though it were salvation.” 

Because even though fascism may be both capitalism at its cruellest and nationalism at its most fervent, it is primarily an offer of meaning – a way for followers to justify their ego amid the world’s chaos and uncertainty. What Trump offers then is the same bargain that Mephistopheles presents to Faustus: an exchange of the individual soul for the illusion of power. The cost is damnation.

Authoritarianism is the most Faustian of political systems. In my book Devil’s Contract: The History of the Faustian Bargain, I write that fascism creates a system that gives power “over otherwise ordinary people” and it does so by generating in them an irrational faith, by which “an entire nation could become demonically possessed”. 

Just as Faust traded his soul for the delight of fleeting power, the authoritarian personality exchanges freedom and morality for the illusion of importance. In Trump’s case he offers his followers nothing less than the chance to participate in the salvation of America – to make it great again. And what could be more important than that?

Politics in a democracy involves compromise. The “art of the possible” invariably means the sacrifice of certain ideals, as the perfect makes way for the merely good. By contrast, authoritarianism requires a different, much more extreme sacrifice, by which the soul is exchanged for the myth of greatness, and the cost is everything. As in the Faust legend, what’s been acquired by those who have signed the contract is ultimately nothing at all.

Anyone who listened to Trump’s deeply weird acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee would have had an illuminating snapshot of the Faustian bargain he offers. Though most of the speech was devoted to his usual litany of complaints, from the petulant lie that the previous election was rigged against him to conspiratorial ramblings about the Democratic Party, the opening 15 minutes of the speech were arguably the strangest and most disturbing. 

Disingenuously striking a conciliatory tone regarding the deep divisions within American politics for which he is largely responsible, Trump recounted his brush with death and the failed assassination attempt that left him with a grazed ear. Trump told the audience how, after he dove to the ground, the rallygoers in Butler, Pennsylvania had thought he was dead – until he triumphantly arose and urged them to fight.

Evangelical onlookers may well have recalled Revelation 13:3: “One of the heads of the beast seemed to have had a fatal wound, but the fatal wound had been healed. The whole world was filled with wonder and followed the beast.” 

Addressing the convention crowd – many of whom wore bandages over their ears in imitation of their leader, some of which appeared to be Maxipads – Trump attributed his survival to the grace of almighty God. He was the martyr, resurrected to continue his crusade against “foreign, Christian-hating communists, Marxists and socialists” as he’s described his adversaries in other speeches.

A clue to the occult, Faustian appeal of Trumpism for his supporters lay in that speech. The former president is not speaking to those of us who are horrified by the possibility of his second term. He is not concerned with truth, though neither are his supporters. 

What Trump offers is performance. He supplies aesthetics. As Chris Lehman of The Nation has described it, much of Trump’s campaign’s rhetoric has begun to convey the idolatrous notion that “Trump and Trump alone is anointed as your country’s saviour, and indeed your personal messiah.”

The German-Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin argued that the left politicised aesthetics while the right aestheticised politics, and that argument was abundantly illustrated in Wisconsin. The spectacle of Milwaukee, from the set designed to look like the White House to the bandaged ears of his supporters, looked less like an acceptance speech and more like the scene of some dark ritual. 

Those of us congenitally allergic to Trump justifiably saw the convention as an exercise in kitsch, from Kid Rock’s greasy white trash rap to the introductory speech given by the CEO of the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Camp though such performances might be, they’re not designed for you and me. Policy is incidental – almost entirely absent. 

Instead, Trump invites his supporters to embrace their darkest emotions, to feel their superiority, their will to cruelty, their desire to purge the body politic of impurities, from transgendered people to immigrants, college radicals to feminists. Adam Serwer at The Atlantic famously put it best, remarking that when it comes to Trumpism the cruelty is the point. Trump’s appeal isn’t because his supporters don’t know who he is – it’s because they know precisely who he is.

But the problem is that many of Trump’s adversaries still don’t know who he is. A paradox of the Faustian bargain is the mistaken belief that you can trick the Devil. Ever since Trump descended from that golden elevator in 2016, there have been any number of Faustian contracts that members of our political class signed, all of which can partially explain the current crisis. 

The Republican Party, many of whose leaders condemned Trump only eight years ago, are now Trumpists. Figures like senators Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio, once vociferous critics of Trump, now defend him. Senator JD Vance, who in 2016 compared Trump to Adolf Hitler, is now his vice-presidential running mate. 

The Democratic Party is also partly responsible for this moment, albeit for different reasons, ranging from tacitly supporting Trump’s first primary campaign under the mistaken belief that he’d be easier to beat, to Biden’s potentially disastrous decision to run for reelection after implying he’d serve only one term. The party has now replaced its candidate with only a few months to go before Election Day. That brief time frame gives Trump a considerable advantage.

Much like Faustus, who in Christopher Marlowe’s play signed a contract with the Devil but had a final opportunity to renounce his decision, voters have a choice about whether to embrace the darkest currents of political authoritarianism. In a democracy, the voters alone are capable of exchanging the national soul for the ambiguous call to “Make America Great Again.” 

Frequently the Faust legend, in all its permutations, is misremembered as merely being a parable about self-interest, about the ways in which people will subvert their values for power, or money, or celebrity. This is a potent aspect of the myth, but what can sometimes be forgotten is that the exchange that the Devil offers Faust is at its core an irrational one. Machiavellian self-interest can be abundantly rational, but the Faustian bargain concerns trading something incomparably precious for the Devil’s trifles. 

Trump’s multiple character flaws and grievous unsuitability for high office are common knowledge, and yet he’s on the verge of winning the presidency – that more than anything embodies the irrationalism of the Faustian bargain, the willingness to embrace what’s fundamentally a malevolent faith.

The legislative implications of a second Trump term are terrifying enough, but then there are the social, cultural, even spiritual effects of such authoritarianism. Thomas Mann’s 1947 Doctor Faustus, expressed the relationship between authoritarianism and diabology well. Having had his own flirtations with German nationalism in his youth, Mann understood the dark allure of malevolent politics, describing feelings of “wild intoxication,” and how those attracted to such an ideology “drank freely, and under that illusory euphoria”, allowing them to ignore the truth, that “we have for years committed to a plethora of disgraceful deeds”.

Partially set during the world war that Mann had escaped, one character reflects that because of their Faustian bargain, “Germany is done for.” Now, with the clock a half-hour before midnight, American voters must decide if America is done for or not.

Ed Simon’s latest book, Devil’s Contract, is published by Melville House