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Joosse, Paul. (2018). “Expanding Moral Panic Theory to Include the Agency of Charismatic Entrepreneurs: The Case of Donald Trump.” British Journal of Criminology 58(4): 993-1012. Paul Joosse, Ph.D Assistant Professor Department of Sociology University of Hong Kong Email: [email protected] Keywords: Moral Panic; Charisma; Moral Entrepreneurs; Max Weber; Donald Trump; Altruism; Stanley Cohen; Charismatic Authority
ABSTRACT: Working beyond latently Durkheimian figurations of moral panic which depict a dialectic between ‘right-thinkers’ and folk devils, this article integrates charismatic entrepreneurs into a tripartite model that sheds light on two new pathways of interaction that are relevant for the sociology of morality. First, charismatic leaders can outflank traditional leaders (and therewith charismatic) extreme. Second, charismatic leaders can’ aspersions of folk devils, taking the principle of ‘one-upmanship creatively subvert ’ to an extraordinary traditional mores, overturning value tables to ‘bedevil’ traditional leaders. Because moral panic and charismatic enthusiasm implicate distinct, complementary, and unitary social processes, I argue that, taken together, the work of Max Weber and Stanley Cohen offer a more theoretically profitable vision of moral denaturation and reformulation than either would alone. Trump’s charismatic ascension during his 2015-16 US Presidential campaign is used to Donald illustrate the theoretical contribution.
Introduction Stanley Cohen (1972) and Max Weber (1922) made lasting contributions to social theory by modeling how moral enthusiasms trouble and establish the social order. Both viewed morality as something that was determinative of social structure, and it was in large part through moral mechanisms that they carved out space within their respective theories for individual agency (Abrutyn and Van Ness 2013; Eisenstadt 1968; Goode and Ben-Yehuda 2009; Greenfeld 1985; Hall, et al. 1978; Jenkins 1992; Joosse 2014; Hier 2011; Shils 1965). This paper seeks to uncover some deep-seated conceptual affinities between two key social phenomena they describe; namely, moral panic and charismatic upheaval. The practical takeaway is a synthetic
model that draws on this untapped complementarity to provide moral panic scholarship with a more dexterous theory of moral transformation. Given the prominence of the theorists involved, it is noteworthy that there has been little interaction of this sort in the past. Indeed, a search within the vast literature produced in the wake of Cohen’s seminal book Folk Devils and Moral Panics (1972) retrieves only passing references to Weber (cf. McDermottt 2015), and no dedicated treatments of charisma proper. This lack of contact has persisted in spite of some prominent calls for interaction from each of these respective literatures.^1 For example, Goode and Ben-Yehuda comment in the epilogue of their influential book Moral Panics (1994[2009]:246) that: [t]he excitement stirred up during a moral panic is similar to the charisma possessed by certain leaders. This excitement, like charisma, is volatile and unstable. The feelings that are generated during this period of influence are intense, passionate. Writing from the ‘charisma side,’ Philip Smith remarked that: Because the symbolic logic of charisma hangs upon binary codings and salvation narratives, images of ‘evil’ must be present in the forest of symbols surrounding each charismatic leaderhatred of the evil against which they fight, and, indeed will be magnified as this.… Love of the charismatic leader often seems to be predicated on perceived evil intensifies and is incarnated in a specific ‘folk devil’ (2000:104). These observations suggest that moral panics and charisma are features that erupt from of a common moral-cultural substrate. As valuable as such comments may be, however, they remain mere signposts pointing to the possibility of synthesis, rather than synthetic attempts in their own right. This article posits that Weber’s descriptions of charismatic agency stand to complement customary accounts of moral panic, broadening our understanding of how socially-instantiated
(^1) Because of space constraints, my intention is not to engage too deeply with the obstreperous task of weaving together the profuse and divergent literatures that have been built upon Weber and Cohen. these various strands, see Critcher 2008; Dawson 2011; Goode and Ben-Yehuda 1994; Smith 2013 For good; Joosse reviews of 2014.
Case and Method This dynamic between moral panic and power-challenge was strikingly evident during the 2015-2016 US Presidential contest, when Donald Trump combined classic rhetorics of ‘deviance amplification’ (his aspersions of Mexican immigrants and Muslims, for example) with trenchant attacks on establishment figures from the Republican party and wider political establishment (his promise to “drain the swamp” in Washington). This dual challenge was enacted through a combative political style that defied norms of decorum at every turn; outraging and enthralling audiences while ensuring maximum press coverage. For the purpose of this article, the contention will be that this political style was ‘charismatic.’ Max Weber defined charismatic leaders as those who are “considered extraordinary and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities” (1922:241); his main thesis being that once followers attribute such extraordinary qualities to leaders, these leaders are accorded a certain “radical freedom” that is seldom found in non-charismatic modes of the social contract (1922:244-245, 1115-1118; see also Reed 2013:280-283). Weber frequently stresses the creative or “virtuousic” quality of charismatic interventions in moral systems, which can take place through the use of rhetorical flare or dramatic action, and which affect alchemical transformations of moral culture (1922:542, 565, 599). Because of their antinomian presence, charismatic leaders tend to be “sharply opposed…to everyday forms of domination” and indifferent and intransigent in the face of all “formal and regulated [processes of] appointment or dismissal” (1922:244, 246). ‘Alt-right’ media figures have continuously been describing the nature of Trump’s appeal in these terms—that is, in ways that non-supporters have only been able to see or acknowledge in
hindsight. For example, in January of 2016, long before Trump had secured the Republican nomination, Rush Limbaugh observed that: Everything he’s doing goes against the book…. Everything that any analyst or consultant or professional would tell you not to do, Donald Trump is doing it, and he’s leading the pack thoughts that run from person to person [of Republican candidates]. This creates its own set of emotions and feelings and .... Trump is functioning totally outside this structure that has existed for decades. As such, the people who are only familiar with the structure and believe in it and cherish it and want to protect it, feel threatened in ways that you can’t even comprehend [emphasis mine]. Rich descriptions of Trump’s charismatic appeal are also to be found in the ethnographic work of Arlie Hochschild (2016a; 2016b). In a recent essay entitled “The Ecstatic Edge of Politics,” for example, she described the following scene: The day before the Louisiana Republican primary in March 2016, I watched Donald Trump’s Boeing 757 descend from the sky at the Lakefront Airport in New Orleans. Inside the crowded hangar, Elton John’s “Rocket Man” was playing. Red, white, and blue strobe lights roved sideways and up. Cell phones snapped photos of the blon haired candidate as he stood before thousands waving and shaking signs that read MAKEd- AMERICA GREAT AGAIN. A small, wiry man bearing this sign with both hands, eyes afire, called out within earshot, “To be in the presence of such a man! To be in the presence of such a man.” There seemed to be in this man’s call…a note of reverence, even ecstasy (2016b:683 [emphasis in original]). This paper recognizes the evidentiary importance of such observations, and it justifies applying the descriptor ‘charismatic’ to Trump as Weber would—without endorsement or invidious judgment.^3 It is my contention that recognizing and understanding these dynamics is a matter of contemporary importance that extends beyond the case of Trump, however, since a variety of populisms and nationalisms in the US and across Europe seem posed to propel moral ‘outsiders’
(^3) Weber described St. Francis of Assisi, Napoleon, Joseph Smith, and Genghis Khan, and a variety of his contemporaries including although the adjective ‘charismatic’ Bavarian revolutionary Kurt Eisner could be regarded either as a complement or a criticism in colloquial discourse, (among many others) as charismatic leaders, and Weber within the maintained a confidence moral agnosticism of followers in their leader in his analysis: “How the quality (1922:241-242, in question would ultimately be 1112 ). “Legitimacy,” for Weber, rests solely judged from any ethical, aesthetic, or other such point of view is naturally entirely indifferent for the purposes of definition…. recognition on the part of those subject to authority which is decisive for the validity of charisma”(1922: 241 - 242 it is; see McDermott 2013 for a recent integration of Weber’s concept of legitimacy into moral panic theory).
Aetiology: Moral Eruptions from the Traditional Order As mentioned, one key affinity between moral panics and charismatic upheaval is aetiological. Both Weber and Cohen describe eruptions within the social order, and these eruptions are said to originate first and always within the sphere of values; as challenges to traditional morality. In the case of Cohen, this point hardly needs making (although it is often ignored [Garland 2008:11]), since he was explicit; even borrowing a phrase from Howard Becker to describe panics as a sort of churning, protean process that helps to establish “the moral constitution of society” (quoting Becker, p.3). That his abiding concern was with moral firmaments is further evidenced by a telling anthropological distance he erects between his vantage point and the objects of his gaze: the “folk devils” who trouble the social body, the “right-thinking people” (“editors, bishops, politicians”) that these devils contrast, and the “moral barricades” that both of these two dialectically instantiate. Recent extensions by those like Sean Hier (2002; 2011) and Chas Critcher (2009), who seek for further integration between moral panic theory and general sociological theories of moral regulation are thus in keeping with Cohen’s original intentions, as much as they are logical extensions of his founding premises. With Weber’s ‘charisma,’ the situation is slightly more complex, since his theory of social power implicates a tripartite typology of domination [ Herrschaft ] that involves ‘charismatic authority’ as something that stands over and against not just traditional mores, but also (and more famously) legal-rational legitimacy. This means that the alignment proposed here between charismatic upheaval and moral panic needs to be justified by centralizing the charisma/tradition dialectic within Weber without reducing his model in a way that sacrifices its complexity.
Thankfully, we can find statements throughout Economy and Society (1922) that are permissive of such a move. Many of these statements appear as remarks that Weber intended to serve as contextual backdrop for his overriding concern with rationalization. For example, while Weber allowed for the possibility that charisma will intermittently perturb the modern rationalized world in which he lived, he tended to emphasize that charisma and tradition are, by contrast, more primordially twinned. It is “in traditionalist periods,” Weber tells us, that “charisma is the great revolutionary force” (1922:245, emphasis in the original). Elsewhere, he writes that charisma is increasingly salient “the further we go back into history” (1922:1111). The special relationship between charisma and tradition is also evident in in Weber’s stress on Jesus’ famous anaphora, ‘it is written… but I say unto you…, (1922:243, 978)’^5 and his emphasis on the distinction between the (charismatic) prophet and the (traditionalist) priest (1922:439-442),^6 suggesting that he viewed charismatic challenges primarily as a Jesus- like/Pauline repudiation of ‘the Law’—this being ‘law’ in a custom-bound, traditional sense, rather than a rational-legal one (Turner 2011:233; also Weber 1922:510-511). This notion of a primary opposition between charisma and tradition can also be found in the The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905), his most famous work and the foundation of his rationalization thesis. Here, we find Weber depicting rationalized modernity as something of a death-knell for other forms of authority, charisma and tradition included. The relevant ‘iron cage’ passage is almost so well-known that it need not be quoted, save for the opportunity to insert a few points of emphasis:
(^5) Weber maintained that, “every charismatic authority would have to subscribe to the proposition” (1922:243). On the biblical basis for Weber’s usage, see the “Sermon on the Mount” in Matt. 5 Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, because he taught as one who had-7, especially Matt. 7:28-29: “When authority, and not as their teachers of the law.” (^6) “[T]he prophet declares new revelations by charisma, whereas the priest serves to a sacred tradition. It is no accident that almost no prophet has come from the priesthood” (1922:440).
from the ground of traditional culture.^8 Moreover, if tradition is the repository and curatorial space for the moral canon, then charisma (which ‘transforms all values’ [1922:1115]) and moral panics (whose folk devils threaten “all the conventions and values of life”[1972:51]) both present as alternately radioactive and rejuvenating challengers of such moral substance. With this commensurability established, it behooves us to entertain questions about whether the dynamics of moral panic and charismatic enthusiasm implicate distinct, complementary, or unitary social processes of moral denaturation and reformulation.
Performativity: Moral Characters One ‘way in’ to such questions is to examine the protagonists, or moral characters that take center-stage in each author’s analysis (eg. Alexander 2010; Joosse 2012a; Reed 2013; Wright 2015). For Weber, this is the charismatic hero; for Cohen, the folk devil. Immediately we can notice that these characters share some common features. The first involves the concentration of emotional and normative sentiment into a point of attention that affixes to an individual or small group of individuals. Second, this concentration, in turn, has a propensity to radiate back outward, such that these characters, who initially would have been subjects of attention only for particular acts or behaviors, increasingly come to be seen as representatives of the entire ‘moral situation’ of society. Third, because of their focus on the above two processes, Weber and Cohen both tended to stress that these characters should be understood as social fictions. Weber writes that charismatic qualities have authoritative efficacy “regardless of
(^8) Greenfeld (1985) argues that Weber’s charisma relates to two distinct categories of phenomena: a) proximity to ultimate values, and b) a personal ability to generate excitement. While I do not see such a stark bifurcation in Weber’s writing myself, the tendencies I am stressing here align best with her first category (also, Geertz 1977; Shils 1965).
whether this quality is actual, alleged, or presumed” (Weber 1922:295),^9 and in his discussion of folk devils, Cohen quotes a version of the pragmatist truism that, “‘[i]t is the perception of the threat and not its actual existence that is important’” (Cisin and Clark 1962, quoted in Cohen 1972:16).^10 Such statements indicate a preoccupation with describing how social mediation works to exaggerate morally-relevant qualities, eroding any consonance that initially may have existed between the ‘actual person’ and the hero/devil that they come to represent. It would seem that the similarities end there, however. For Weber, the charismatic hero emerges as a subject of valorization, whose justification rests “on devotion to the [leader’s] exceptional sanctity, heroism or exemplary character” (1922:215). His two prophetic forms— the “ethical prophet” (who demands allegiance to an innovated moral system [i.e. Laozi]) and the “exemplary prophet” (whose style or way of life demands imitation [i.e. Buddha])— both derive their constituency through a motivational mechanism that is alternately aspirational and mimetic (1922:448-449). It is clear that the distinguishing feature of the charismatic leader is thus his or her emblematic status for a new or newly-invigorated^11 morality. Folk devils, by contrast, accrue what we might refer to as a ‘negative constituency.’ Rather than inducing an inclination among onlookers to admire or imitate, they function as “unambiguously negative symbols” (1972:38) serving as “visible reminders of what we should not be”(p.2). Whereas the charismatic leader inspires hope among followers by providing the vision for a better society, the folk devil is “defined as a threat to societal values and interests” (1972:1), he or she is “symptomatic” of wider problems (Garland 2008:11), and regarded “as a
(^9) See note 3 for further discussion on this point. See Joosse (2017b:57-64) for a description of how different groups compete in this fictionalizing process. (^10) Jock Young (1971:27) also opens up his early analysis by citing a version of the ‘Thomas[es] theorem’: “a situation defined as real in a society will be r (^11) “No radical distinction will be drawn between a ‘renewer of religion’ who reveals a new meaning in an oldereal in its consequences.” revelation, actual or fictitious, and a ‘founder of religion’ who brings completely new revelations” (1922:439).
the devil. The Cohenian dialectic between the traditional moral actor and the folk devil is well- known and well-understood, but the Weberian/charismatic dialectic is in need of further explication, because its challenge to those holding power via traditional means is more subversive. That is, while the charismatic hero may present as one who is ‘on the side’ of traditional mores, traditional power holders themselves (for Cohen, the “editors, bishops, politicians” or for Weber, those possessing “Ordnungen und Herrengewalten ” [‘orders and powers of the Lord’]1956:130) will typically feel threatened by the incipient charismatic leader, recoiling at the tenor, scope, and methods of the charismatic mission. The ‘fundamentalist’ hero, for example, will tend to make proposals to restore society to a prelapsarian past that seems dangerously purist and retrograde. The progressive hero (meaning, a charismatic leader working from within a progressive moral tradition ) will, by contrast, seek to draw upon more ‘forward-looking’ elements of what Shils (1975:6) referred to as the “utopian potentiality” of the value system, striving for idealistic transformations that will be regarded as impossible, unserious, and impractical in present circumstances.^12 Whichever the case may be, the idealism of these would-be heroes will invariably be distasteful to elder statesmen who have grown accustomed to ‘manning moral barricades’ while maintaining a direct line of sight toward practical exigencies of the ‘political game.’ In these circumstances the charismatic hero thus occupies the familiar position of the gadfly: a “voice of one, crying in the wilderness”^13 who shames established leaders into living up to the traditional values that they espouse.
(^1213) See Hier (2016) for an important recent contribution on the possibility of ‘good’ moral panics. See John 1:23 and Isaiah 40:3.
If the traditional power-holders are sufficiently weak or lacking in moral credibility, however, then this modus vivendi with the moral critic will break down, and one can see how the idealism of the incipient charismatic leader can serve as the animus behind a real bid for power. In this type of interaction, it is evident that the charismatic leader spars with ‘folk devils’ only in a secondary, superficial sense—that is, as a means of affecting a more fundamental performative distinction with the traditional leader, as Weber described. For these conventional authority figures, this outflanking move will no doubt feel like a cruel trick: their folk devils have been stolen from them, and the moral centre has shifted from under their feet, leaving them in an off- kilter position vis-à-vis their moral base. Figure 1 below illustrates this particular constellation.
Certain aspects of the political ascendance of Donald Trump during the GOP Primary contests
Statements like these—so recognizable as the stock in trade of moral panic discourse—went far beyond the parameters of whatever dynamic of one-upmanship may have existed among the other candidates with respect to the core Republican value of being ‘tough’ on these issues, and many commentators suggested that these remarks would doom his campaign. Such reasoning was partly predicated on a belief in the widespread acceptance of the moral norms that were being upheld by every other candidate in the GOP field, but this ‘red line’ was not merely a normative barrier. It was also a prohibition borne out of the rational calculation of the ‘autopsy’ that the GOP had undertaken in the wake of their 2012 electoral loss, which produced a consensus among GOP leaders that in order to win, the Republican party needed to broaden its base by appealing to non-traditional constituencies, chief among which were Hispanics and other racial minorities, youth, and women (Barbour et al. 2013). Trump’s statements thus went against the ‘party line,’ even if they stood to resonate with the GOP’s traditional constituency. This route was open to Trump in particular because, as an outsider, he was not constrained in the manner that a conventional GOP candidate would have been. His sensitivity to the possibility of this route, however, indicates another, wholly charismatic mode of relation to the body politic. That is, charismatic leaders are distinguished by an uncanny ability to sense emotional discontent within an audience (Wasielewski 1985) and their ability to “formulate and express the inchoate sentiments deeply held by people around them” (Dawson 2011:122). In the case of Trump, his ‘feelers’—reputedly honed while consuming thousands of hours of conservative talk radio (Sherman 2016)—seemed to be sensitively attuned to a subterranean region of the body politic where phobic sentiments about ‘outsiders’ were widely shared. Trump’s continual aspersion of Muslims and Mexican immigrants, which would have not sounded out of place in the colloquial discourses of the
‘flyover states,’ nevertheless sounded refreshingly new when issuing from the mouth of someone who stood a real chance of winning the GOP nomination (Hochschild 2016b). What are the conditions under which such outflanking becomes possible? James Scott’s (1990) concept of the “hidden transcript” helps to describe the manner in which divergences between official and popular but unexpressed discourses can imbue political bodies with a charge of discontent that is propitious for charismatic eruption. Scott describes hidden transcripts as speeches, gestures, and practices that contradict the status quo , ‘public transcripts’ promulgated by elite, powerful, opinion leaders. They are the product of marginalized sectors of society—those who most naturally have grievances against the governing order—and they are ‘hidden’ precisely because they “characterize discourse that takes place ‘offstage,’ beyond direct observation by powerholders…. produced for a different audience and under different constraints of power than the public transcript” (Scott 1990:4-5). Incipient leaders who confront official discourses through public declarations of the hidden transcript can acquire mystique and charisma within the constituency out of which they arise (1990:221, 218). This charismatic affectation is partly a function of awe at the reckless temerity of the one who ‘speaks truth to power,’ and partly a result of the fact that such persons open up a new avenue of identification in which they are seen to be speaking on behalf of a larger community as a paradigmatic, living emblem of unexpressed discontents (Scott 1990:222). As Scott writes, “[t]he powerful emotional valence of the charismatic speech or act for subordinate groups—their sense of elation, joy, release—depends, I think, on it finding this resonance within the hidden transcript” ( ibid :222). The ‘directness’ that charismatic devotees experience in the communications they receive from their leaders (Trump was consistently described by admirers as a ‘straight talker’) thus can
at my announcement [loud cheering] (first GOP debate, August 6 2015, Cleveland, Ohio).^15 That Trump’s statements are consistently of a kind with moral panic discourse is immediately apparent. Accompanying this in an equally consistent fashion, however, is a critique of traditional moral leaders themselves, who alternately lack ‘toughness,’ moral commitment, or even (as quoted above) the ability to “figure out what the hell is going on.” In the midst of the GOP debate on December 15, 2015, Trump combined fears of immigration and terrorism into a dual-pronged attack on establishment candidate Jeb Bush: Look, look, look. We need a toughness. We need strength…. And if we don’t get it back fast, we’re just going to go weaker, weaker and just disintegrate…. Jeb out and he talks about the [US’s southern] border, and I saw it and I was witness to it, comes and so was everyone else, and I was standing there, [quoting Bush] ‘they come across as an act of love’—he's saying the same thing right now with radical Islam. And we can't have that in our country. It just won’t work. We need strength. In previous cycles, it would have been difficult to criticize the GOP establishment for a lack of toughness on these issues. It is clear, however, that moral panic discourse also affords an ‘outflanking’ opportunity that, in the hands of a charismatic outsider, can inflict damage to erstwhile representatives of the moral barricade.
Dialectic Two – ‘Bedevilling’ the Traditionalist Leader As much as the first dialectic above highlights Trump’s radical affirmation of certain moral values, at the same time, his campaign has also been marked by a dramatic willingness to engage with moral experimentation and novelty. From his initial entry into the political field through the promotion of ‘birtherism,’ to his expressions of admiration for Vladimir Putin as a
(^15) On the topic of Islam Trump also took credit for being a ‘conversation starter.’ Two weeks after the San Bernardino attacks which killed fourteen people, he remarked, more so than it has been in the past. People like what I say. People respect what I say. And we've opened up a very “Radical Islamic terrorism came into effect even big discussion that needed to be opened up” (GOP debate, December 15, 2015, in Las Vegas).
“strong leader” (eg. GOP debate, March 10, 2016), to his questioning the validity of the reverence accorded to Republican Senator John McCain for his Vietnam-era military service,^16 to his statement that, although he is a professed Christian, he has never felt the need to ask God for forgiveness (Luntz 2015); Trump has been an insouciant heretic with respect to American conservatism specifically and American political practice generally. Trump’s ascendance thus hints at a route to power that is less circuitous than the ‘outflanking’ pathway described above. Highlighting the innovative aspects of moral entrepreneurship, this second dialectic involves the instantiation of new folk devils directly, without reference to the middling role of traditional moral actors. By invoking processes of demonization that have no precedent in the practices of traditional leaders, this route draws on the “virtuosic” creativity indicated in Weber’s description of charismatic leadership (see 1922:542, 565, 599). As Trump’s example will show, such creativity can even involve ‘bedevilling’ the ruling class—refashioning conventional moral authorities themselves as folk devils for new dialectics of moral panic. The theoretical reference for such radical departures can be found in the account of moral origination that Friedrich Nietzsche explored, first over a series of aphorisms in Human, All-Too- Human (1878: sections 45, 96, 136), and then much more fully in The Genealogy of Morals (1887, especially book one). While Cohen was primarily concerned with the preservationist aspects of moral culture—that is, how the existing social order produces agents who shore up traditional value distinctions through the principle of moral contrast— Nietzsche’s interests lay instead with the creative processes of moral production; in his words, “the conditions and circumstances in which [morals] grew, under which they evolved and
(^16) “He’s a war hero because he was captured—I like people that weren’t captured.”
