inBUSINESS Issue 15

and balances. What is strange, he
answered, with a burst of laughter
and his head thrown back, is this
new state of suspended insurrection,
for which the improbably elected
president bears responsibility. One
might think that, owing to this
insurgency from within, Trump could
serve an even shorter term than that
of the protagonist in The Plot Against
America.
Of course, Roth’s novel and
today’s situation are not precisely
comparable.
Roth’s story unfolds in 1940, and
depicts the heroic aviator and Nazi
sympathizer Charles Lindbergh
triumphed over incumbent President
Franklin Delano Roosevelt. And
Lindbergh was a virulent anti-Semite.
Trump, nevertheless, employs
rhetoric that is reminiscent of
Mussolini. And he has professed his
solidarity with the worst populists
and outright fascist leaders on the
other side of the Atlantic, from Nigel
Farage and Viktor Orbán, to Marine
Le Pen and Vladimir Putin.
Then there is that slogan, “America
First.” It is astounding that those
words have not turned stomachs
across the American political
spectrum.
After all, as anyone with a modicum
of historical and political awareness
should know, “America First” was
American Nazi sympathizers’ slogan
in 1940, during Lindbergh’s time.
It was the response thrown back at
those who wanted the US to resist
Hitler’s Germany.
It was used to denounce the Jewish
“warmongers” who were accused
of placing their interests over the
national interest.
And it is this slogan, which Trump
repeated on the Capitol steps, that
leads the likes of former Ku Klux Klan
leader David Duke to unmask himself
and crow, “We did it!”
Trump knows all of this, and when it
is pointed out to him, he replies that
he is looking toward the future, not
back at the past.
But there are only two teams in this
game: nihilists with no memory, and
those who know that languages have
a history and, therefore, an id. The
first team thinks that a speaker can
invoke a white-supremacist slogan
repeatedly in a single speech without
having malign intentions; the second
team knows that the genealogy of
words cannot be denied without the
past taking its revenge.
Trump, a would-be ally to
the most unsavory and hated
demagogues of our time, is being
rejected worldwide. But consider
this particularly odd and sinister
twist: America’s most unpopular
president recently visited Jerusalem,
and developed an affinity for the
very same people that his fictional
predecessor considered to be
subhuman.
May the recipients of Trump’s
sudden solicitude be as wary of
this new friend as they are of their
enemies.
May they never forget that Israel’s
fate is too serious of a matter
to be used as a pretext for an
impulsive, uncultured adventurer
to demonstrate his authority or
supposed deal-making talents.
And may they be spared the
dilemma, depicted in Roth’s novel,
of having to choose between two
equally dreadful fates: that of the
victim, Winchell, or the willing
hostage, Bengelsdorf.
America has not read enough of
Philip Roth. His world or Trump’s: that
is the question.
• Bernard-Henri Lévy is one
of the founders of the “Nouveaux
Philosophes” (New Philosophers)
movement. His books include Left
in Dark Times: A Stand Against the
New Barbarism, American Vertigo:
Traveling America in the Footsteps
of Tocqueville, and most recently,
The Genius of Judaism.
Ku Klux Klan
www.inbusiness.co.bw | Issue 15 | 2017 19