Trump's Primordial Sentiments on Display at the Battle of Lafayette Square

While reading on the topic of national identity, I came across a reference to a passage from the American anthropologist, Clifford Geertz. The passage comes from Geertz's well-known book, a collection of his writings, published in 1973, The Interpretation of Cultures. In Chapter 10, titled, "The Integrative revolution: Primordial sentiments and civil politics in the new states," Geertz reflects on the problems faced by newly emergent nations that seek to form a civil society. That is, in the 1960s and 1970s, as colonial rule came to an end across Africa and Asia, what ties can hold these nations together? Now that the external force of colonial government is lifted, will nations violently split apart, like India and Pakistan at the time of partition? How can people who speak different languages, follow different religions, have different kinship and tribal allegiances, build a nation that with a common, peaceful purpose? In other words, Geertz is asking if the American idea of a nation that is based not upon a state religion, national language, or same-blooded, ancestral kin, form a "more perfect union" that can become a prosperous nation.

The challenge that he identifies are the conflicts that can emerge from both "Primordial" and "Civil Sentiments." The former, are what Geertz claims are variously called "tribalism, parochialism, communalism, and so on." They are "very serious and intractable" problems that threaten the task of integration. The latter, are "civil sentiments," built upon such ties as "class, party, business, union, [or] profession." Civil sentiments are less threatening, "because they do not involve alternative definitions of the nation is, of what its scope of references is." However, Geertz cautions that civil sentiments can threaten the state if they become "infused with primordial sentiments." Such sentiments find an "outlet in the seizing, legally or illegally, of the state apparatus." 

Bringing this back to the current conditions in the US under Trump, what I see in Geertz's writings is a reading of Trump's appeals to his "base" as an appeal to Americans' "primordial sentiments." Trump has little interest in building a "civil polity" or government comprised of all the people. Instead, he appeals to the "primordial sentiments" of some Americans, to their "disaffections" based upon race, religion, or culture. And in the process he has co-opted the Republican Party to become not a civil group, with "civil sentiments," but a tribal group, with "primordial sentiments." And in the process, the Republican Party's outlet for expressing its discontent by the "seizing, legally or illegally, of the state apparatus," has merged with the primordial sentiment to undermine the state itself, to take off the proverbial head. This is most dangerous.

I copy the passage from Geertz here:

It is this crystallization of a direct conflict between primordial and civil sentiments—this “longing not to belong to any other group”—that gives to the problem variously called tribalism, parochialism, communalism, and so on, a more ominous and deeply threatening quality than most of the other, also very serious and intractable, problems the new states face. Here we have not just competing loyalties, but competing loyalties of the same general order, on the same level of integration. There are many other competing loyalties in the new states, as in any state—ties to class, party, business, union, profession, or whatever. But groups formed of such ties are virtually never considered as possible self-standing, maximal social units, as candidates for nationhood. Conflicts among them occur only within a more or less fully accepted terminal community whose political integrity they do not, as a rule, put into question. No matter how severe they become, they do not threaten, at least not intentionally, its existence as such. They threaten governments, or even forms of government, but they rarely at best—and then usually when they have become infused with primordial sentiments—threaten to undermine the nation itself, because they do not involve alternative definitions of what the nation is, of what its scope of references is. Economic or class or intellectual disaffection threatens revolution, but disaffection based on race, language, or culture threatens partition, irredentism, or merger, a redrawing of the very limits of the state, a new definition of its domain. Civil discontent finds its natural outlet in the seizing, legally or illegally, of the state apparatus. Primordial discontent strives more deeply and is satisfied less easily. If severe enough, it wants not Sukarno’s or Nehru’s or Moulay Hassan’s head, it wants Indonesia’s or India’s or Morocco’s. (p. 261)

Geertz, C. (1973/2000). The interpretation of cultures. New York: Basic Books (Original work published 1973).