Trump conceded that he would leave the White House on January 20th in his crazed press conference the other day. And, of course, he then tweeted this:
Harvard professor Timothy Snyder, and expert on tyrannical regimes of the 20th century, appeared on CNN this weekend. And he had an insight into Trump’s probably post-election strategy that I haven’t see described quite this way:
Let’s imagine that we go into 2021 with this alternative reality alive Let’s imagine what that means. Mr Trump and probably number of the Republican Party are telling a Big Lie. They are saying something about the system about the outcome of the election which they know not to be true. They are encouraging this view which is not just a Big Lie but a conspiracy because if you want to believe it, you have to believe that not only the Democrats but the judges and the vote counters and all those Black people in all those cities were somehow in on this conspiracy.
And the other thing that’s wrong with this is that you’re telling people, basically Trump voters, whose votes were counted, that they are the victims and in doing so you are reversing the basic truth of the American history which is that the people who are a real risk of being disenfranchised are African Americans. You are reversing that story and that in itself is not only tragic, and unfair, but it is also dangerous.
When you teach people who have power that they are victims, you are risking people who have power to go outside the system the next time. That they will expect that their own party will and should cheat the next time.
Or, even worse outcomes.
When asked about Trump attending the inauguration, Snyder pointed out that others have been “bad sports” in the distant past but that it wouldn’t be unlikely that Trump would refuse to attend because he is setting up a story about him being the victim as a way to dominate the GOP for the next few years though his own martyrdom.
That’s an interesting way of looking at what I have called “the president-in-exile” myth— or what others have dubbed the “Avignon strategy.” I think Snyder is on to something important about this that could have some real potency: the extension of the idea of conservative victimhood — even Lost Cause mythology. The chip on the shoulders of conservatives is already the size of Mt. Everest. All he has to do it stand at the summit and shout.