American Carnival: The Aesthetic Politics of Trumpist Insurrection

The storming of the Capitol building in Washington produced startling scenes of anarchy, the symbolism heightened by the intense media coverage of events. As such, it was a frighteningly apt visual representation of and conclusion to the Trump presidency, a four-year-long trashing of democracy - always in plain sight, yet rarely so dramatically performed. 

Fittingly, it took the form of carnival, the logical cultural form of Trumpist insurrection. 

Upside Down

As influentially theorised by Mikhail Bakhtin, the carnivalesque is a form of representation or performance that subverts assumptions and hierarchies of the dominant social order. It is an anarchic and ludic force that turns the world upside down, often by profanely debasing norms and suspending normative reality. In its chaotic dramaturgy, it creates performances and spectacles in which performers and spectators are combined.

The siege of the Capitol building was carnivalesque in these terms, subverting the dominant liberal order in one of its centres of power through ribald and chaotic activities. The authority of the power elites was briefly upended and the civility and prestige of the environs debased. All the while, the protestors-cum-mob were both performers and spectators, constantly filming their own antics for social media.

The siege was a dramatic spectacle in which the performers played their parts knowingly, using the capitol building as a backdrop for images and memes, with the interior and exterior environments of the iconic building functioning as stage sets. The incongruities and ironies of the imagery echoed the carnivalesque debasement of civil decorum and order.

The images accentuated the subversive inversions of democratic comity that were evident throughout the siege. There is an image of the mob moving against police lines while displaying a banner reading “Blue Lives Matter”, and as Trump’s supporters ransacked the building, the president tweeted “Remember, WE are the party of Law and Order respect the Law and our great men and women in blue.”

Such seeming absurdity reflects the carnivalesque fantasy world in which many Trump supporters imaginatively and emotionally invest, a world in which conspiracy theory and social media combine to create an alternative reality, an “upside down” world that is self-contained and -reinforcing and impervious to facts. The powerful appeal and effects of the fantasy should not be underestimated nor its violent potential be disavowed as the actions of a few zealots.

President elect Joe Biden gave a powerful speech during the rioting in which he decried it as the action of a “small number of extremists dedicated to lawlessness”. He asserted “The scenes of chaos at the Capitol do not reflect a true America, do not represent who we are.” That is wrong, the scenes of chaos do reflect a true America albeit in distorted, carnivalesque form.

The alternative reality that has been constructed in the US by alt-right political and media culture, galvanised by Trump’s near messianic leadership, is pervasive and deeply embedded in the imaginations – the fears and desires – of millions of Americans. It cannot simply or swiftly be undone. Trump’s deceptions are widely endorsed as an alternative reality – his very performance of lies and fabrications is what designates his reality for supporters.

Armies of the Night

Many commentators noted the “carnival atmosphere” among the Trump supporters milling around the Capitol building prior to the siege, a vague reference to the rowdy and colourful but not yet violent nature of their presence there. The carnivalesque styling of the Trumpists merits closer attention, for it emblematises their countercultural identifications and sense of community, and their revolutionary potential.

This styling is visually evident in their clothing – combat gear, MAGA hats, star-spangled hoodies, coonskin hats, superhero costumes, ghillie suits, flag capes - their markings – painted faces and tattoos – and their symbols – Uncle Sam, QAnon signs and slogans (“Q” and “Trust the Plan”), Confederate flags, the Gadsen flag, and nooses. It is a heteroglossia of styles and cultural references, some of which are so in-group as to be indecipherable to outsiders. It is all too easily mocked as “cosplaying”, but these stylings are also forms of camouflage and totems of insurrectionary desires, portending violent transgressions to come.

While the cultural montage is of the moment, in the setting of protest in the national capital descending on the centre of government power, this carnivalesque revolt recalls many previous assemblings in Washington. Perhaps none is so vividly echoed as the march on the Pentagon in March 1967, a massive demonstration against the Vietnam War, which was evocatively reported by Norman Mailer in his book The Armies of the Night.

Mailer viewed the march as symbolic evidence that the US had entered the “crazy house of history,” reflecting the growing absurdity of events in late 1960s America. Yet he was smitten by the “idea of a revolution which preceded ideology” and in the carnivalesque figures of the counterculture protesters he saw a flicker of existential promise:

“The hippies were there in great number, perambulating down the hill, many dressed like the legions of Sgt. Pepper’s Band…some were gotten up like Arab sheiks…others like Rogers and Clark of the West, Wyatt Earp, Kit Carson, Daniel Boone in buckskin…a hippie got up like Batman…They were close to being assembled from all the intersections between history and the comic books, between legend and television, the Biblical archetypes and the movies … the aesthetic at last was in the politics – the dress ball was going into battle.”

This was to be a last hurrah for a countercultural politics that foundered on the mediocrity of the American mainstream. The centre held, just, and many of that counterculture joined the mainstream.

Fast forward more than half a century to the spectacle of Trump supporters moving through Washington and laying siege to the Capitol building and we see that the aesthetic is once again very much in the politics. This is also to say that the alt-right in the US today constitutes a politicised if disaggregated counterculture, which knowingly takes cues from the predominantly leftist American countercultures of the twentieth century.

The hippies and freaks Mailer romanticised as agents of an existential revolution - trying to levitate the pentagon, hyped on LSD - protested against a totalitarian establishment and advocated individual freedoms. There are echoes of that anti-establishment animus in the alt-right of today, but now combined with racism, chauvinism and multiple social grievances and angers, and a driving sense of cultural resentment. This emergent alt-right counterculture is a curious amalgam of privilege and victimhood, and this is a significant part of the popular appeal of Trumpism.

As in the 1960s, today’s cultural and political turmoil is playing out in struggles over identity, representation and recognition – but in a more profound sense, American reality itself is under siege. The American carnival that was violently staged at the Capitol building this week not only represents a true America, it also signifies an emergent counterpublic that is likely to be a generative cultural and political force for years to come. The carnival is not over.

Liam Kennedy is Director of the Clinton Institute at University College Dublin.