T.A.E. Quilty

“Alexander Kluge has offered this allegory about Trumpism, which he ascribes, anachronistically, to the liberal sociologist Max Weber (who was the author of Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution that allowed a state of emergency to be declared without the consent of the Reichstag, a provision that Hitler exploited): “Weber had never studied elephants at close range. In a London newspaper he came across a report claiming that certain herbs ferment within the coiled intestines of the huge beasts. It ‘must be a grand sight’ to witness the alcohol making the animals go berserk and thunder forth, breaking all obstacles. For Weber, this was akin to the way self-confident women, forced to live in servitude to their husbands, experience a build-up of mighty wrath. As in the elephants’ stomachs, this process may continue over multiple generations, and this wrath is passed on to their sons (usually the secondor last-born). This ‘innate’ courage or pride is a fury unrelated to any specific character trait, and manifests itself in essentially hideous men. It is recognized by the hate that wells up in the fermenting mental intestines of millions who no longer tolerate their oppression. The sudden drunkenness—the charisma—of their role model seems to be contagious. It takes hold of the masses that look to this essentially smaller man, uprooting trees like a charismatic monster, as their leader. With the light of millions of eyes, he becomes radiant.” See “Charisma of the Drunken Elephant,” Frieze (November 2016).”
― Hal Foster, What Comes After Farce?: Art and Criticism at a Time of Debacle