We can explain what Trump has been doing in the first two months of his second term if we recognize that he is executing a plan devised by some Straussian intellectuals associated with the Claremont Institute: he is becoming the Red Caesar.
In this post, I will explain how this plan developed out of the thinking of Michael Anton. And then, in my next post, I will show how Trump's invocation of the Alien Enemies Act for the quick deportation of some Venezuelan immigrants illustrates how he can become America's Red Caesar.
THE RED CAESAR PLAN
As far as I know, the plan began in 2020 with the publication of Michael Anton's book The Stakes: America at the Point of No Return. Actually, a podcast conversation between Anton and Curtis Yarvin in 2021 suggests that the idea of a Red Caesar might have originated with Yarvin. I have written about Yarvin as an advocate for the neoreactionary authoritarianism of a Filmerian monarchy as superior to America's Lockean liberalism.
I have written previously about Anton as one of the leading Trump intellectuals associated with the Claremont Institute. In the first Trump administration, Anton was the Deputy Assistant to the President for Strategic Communications on the National Security Council (2017-2018). In Trump's second administration, Anton is now Director of Policy Planning at the U.S. State Department.
The Stakes was about the high stakes in the election of 2020--making it the most important election in over a hundred years. Anton concluded the book by warning that while his "fondest political dream is for a restoration of the American constitutional order," the conflict between Blue America and Red America could lead to the total collapse of the constitutional order. Then what?
He considers various possibilities. One of them is Caesarism. "Caesarism is a particular form of one-man rule: halfway, as it were, between monarchy and tyranny. It is monarchical in that a single person rules. It is tyrannical in that there is no appeal; Caesar's word replaces constitutionalism and even, in the final analysis, law" (341). Caesarism, therefore, can be defined as "authoritarian one-man rule partially legitimized by necessity," where that necessity is the breakdown of the republican, constitutional order caused by the people becoming so corrupt that they lack the republican virtues required for liberty (342).
Anton explained that Caesarism has five kinds of benefits, which he saw in the history of ancient Rome's Caesars. First, the benefits of Caesarism to Caesar are obvious--it satisfies his ambition for absolute power.
But there are also at least four benefits for a nation. Caesarism can hold together a large nation and prevent it from breaking up. In the case of the Roman Empire, it might have been broken up by factional conflict if Julius Caesar and is successors had not taken command.
Caesarism can also provide stability by preserving most of the formal institutions of the nation.
Caesarism can also calm factional conflict by subordinating all the factions to the rule of Caesar.
And it can preserve and even enhance the cultural and economic achievements of a great civilization, as was the case for Roman civilization under the Caesars.
Of course, Anton admitted, the great cost of Caesarism is the loss of liberty. And yet when Caesarism comes, it's because liberty has already been lost (342-43).
But then we wonder how Caesarism is established. As is characteristic of the Claremont Straussians, Anton's answer drew ideas from the ancient and modern political philosophers--principally, Machiavelli. According to Machiavelli, a "principality" (one-man rule) is caused either by "the people" (the common people or the multitude) or by "the great" (the upper class). The great ones are those few people who want to rule. The people are the multitude of people who don't want to rule, but who don't want to be exploited by the rule of the great ones. If the great ones can't resist the people, they will choose one of themselves to become the prince, who will suppress the people. If the people can't resist the great ones, the people will choose one of the great to become the prince, who will defend the people against the great ones.
Anton concedes that this Machiavellian analysis fails to apply to the American situation today in one respect. "In the present, divided America there is not one multitude but two: one blue, the other red. Yet there's only one ruling class, to which the blue multitude is allied" (344).
As I have indicated in my posts on Anton, this points to a problem for the "populist" rhetoric of Trump and the Claremont Straussians. They depict a simple clash between The People and The Ruling Class. But in fact, they can't claim to be on the side of The People if The People is divided into two groups--blue America and red America. They have to argue that blue America is not the real America. But in order to win the popular vote at the national level, they must appeal to both Americas. Consequently, as I have indicated, Trump won the popular vote (by a slim margin) in 2024 only because he appealed to a multiethnic, multiracial, and multireligious coalition through a liberal rhetoric of pluralism.
In 2020, Anton foresaw, if only dimly, how Trump could come back to power in 2025 as the Red Caesar. Anton considered the possibility of a Blue Caesar, but he thought that since the blue coalition had the upper hand in 2020, it was unlikely to see the need for Caesarism. On the other hand, since red Americans were constantly under attack, they were more likely to turn to a Caesar to defend them.
If they were to do this, then Anton saw two formal mechanisms for a Caesar to come to power--"by military coup and by winning office legally and then refusing to give it up when his term ends, or maneuvering things in such a way that he's begged to stay" (345). He thought that a military coup in America would be unlikely because the circumstances that made military coups frequent in ancient Rome did not hold for America. Roman generals enjoyed great wealth and prestige from their conquests. They could hold command for long periods. They won the personal loyalty of their soldiers by distributing to them the spoils of war. The people were accustomed to military rule. Beginning in the early days of the Republic, there was even a procedure for appointing a military dictator for a limited term. A few years before his death, Julius Caesar had himself appointed dictator perpetuo. Nothing like this holds true for American generals.
So, the second route to Caesarism--being elected to office legally and then refusing to leave the office--is more likely. But what about the constitutional amendment that limits a President to two terms? Anton suggested:
The instant you hear someone float the idea of repealing, or even "reforming," the Twenty-Second Amendment, you'll know that Caesarism has moved from theoretical possibility to someone's plan. Lawful repeal through actual constitutional means would be hard--the Constitution is difficult to amend by design--but Caesars don't tend to respect constitutional principle. The objection, which I half expect to hear offered seriously, that "the courts would never allow that!" is therefore irrelevant. The mere possibility of Caesarism presupposes a degeneration of politics well below levels at which laws and courts are obeyed. Caesar's contemptuous reply to the courts would echo Andrew Jackson's: you've made your ruling, now let's see you enforce it (345-46).
Remarkably, Trump has often suggested that he should run for a third term; and Steve Bannon has said that, of course, Trump will run again in 2028.
So there it is--the Red Trump Plan. And yet anyone who has read Anton's book could object that he did not actually endorse such a plan. After all, he remarked: "Given all these and other obstacles, prospects for red Caesarism seem fanciful, the stuff of cheap political thrillers and big-budget summer blockbusters. At any rate, I see and have seen no evidence whatsoever of anyone mounting any such effort anywhere" (350).
But remember that Anton is a Straussian, and Straussians are known for their claim that philosophers, fearing persecution for their unpopular ideas that shock the common people, must write esoterically, so that they hide their secret teaching from their common readers, while surreptitiously conveying their true teaching to their philosophic readers. So, of course, Anton should say openly that he's not recommending or planning for a Red Caesar to seize one-man rule over America. At the same time, however, by elaborating the many benefits of Caesarism, while arguing that the corruption of American politics has made Caesarism necessary, that's enough to insinuate to his Claremont Straussian readers that he really is endorsing Red Caesarism.
Sure enough, the Claremont Straussians got the secret message. In his review of Anton's book in First Things, Nathan Pinkoski wrote: "What is Anton's ultimate intention? In good Straussian fashion, what he teaches is not what he says, at least not outright. With great moderation, he explicitly teaches us how to act prudently within the framework of the republican constitution; with great daring, he implicitly teaches us how to act prudently when the republican constitution is gone. But the ultimate intention of The Stakes is to teach prudence and fortitude. It is to prepare us for life in postconstitutional America" (Pinkowski 2020).
Charles Haywood writes frequently for the Claremont Institute. He is also a self-proclaimed "warlord" who has founded a secretive network of far-right male fraternal lodges. In his review of Anton's book for his blog, he writes that when Anton concludes that the Red Caesar is unlikely, "this seems like an error (or more likely disingenuous)." He is excited by the prospect of a Red Caesar: "Me, I like, if not love, the idea of Red Caesar, the creation of an Augustan system. . . . Caesarism, and its time-legitimated successor, monarchy, is a natural, realism-based system, under which a civilization can flourish. (Maybe Elon Musk can be king and lead us to Mars.)" Remarkably, then, Haywood saw in 2020 that Musk's project for colonizing Mars could become part of the Red Caesar Plan. I have written about how Trump's Second Inaugural promoted America's "Manifest Destiny" to follow Musk in colonizing Mars.
Some Claremont Straussians--like Casey Wheatland--have claimed that Anton got his idea for the American Red Caesar from Leo Strauss himself, when Strauss pointed to Caesarism as the likely alternative to a failed republic in his "Restatement on Xenophon's Hiero" (Wheatland 2023).
What explains the support for Trump as the Red Caesar among so many of the Claremont Institute scholars of political philosophy? As I have said previously, I believe Ross Douthat might have the best explanation: it's their "enthusiasm for a politics of crisis." The Claremont Institute story of the American regime is a story of three regime crises. First, there was the crisis of the American Revolution and the Constitutional Founding. Second, there was the "crisis of the house divided" that led to the Civil War and Lincoln's triumphant "new birth of freedom" that was a re-founding of the regime. Third, there was the crisis of corruption during the Progressive Era in which the Founding was overturned in favor of the Administrative State. Now, we need a new transformative crisis in which Trump as the Red Caesar overturns the Administrative State and establishes the new American regime of one-man rule.
A crisis is turbulent, chaotic, violent, and risky. It might turn out to be a disaster. But we must take the risk to avoid the triumph of the evil ones who want to destroy America. That was the message of Michael Anton's "Flight 93 Election" essay.
A crisis is alluring to politically ambitious people who see it as creating an opportunity for them to exercise some political influence in the halls of power during a transformative period of history. Kesler told the Washington Post: "Trump was such an amateur that he didn't have contacts even with the establishment conservative think tanks in Washington, like Heritage and AEI. That was an opportunity for us to have a little more influence as an outsider." And, indeed, people like Anton have found positions in Trump's White House.
Thomas Klingenstein is the chair of the Claremont Institute's board and its main funder. Appearing on Steven Bannon's "War Room" show last week, Klingenstein said the Claremont Institute has been widely "recognized as the intellectual basis for Trump," making this "a great time for us. . . . Our budget is going way up. The Washington Post is going to write a hit piece on us, and we take great pride in that. . . . It tells you that they think we're important, and we're not just a group of political philosophers."
That explains it all. We're important, and we're not just a group of political philosophers.
The Trump supporters at the Claremont Institute think they can be important if they provide "the intellectual basis for Trump" that allows him to lead the country through a crisis in such a way that he can found a new American regime of Red Caesarism.
In my next post, I will illustrate how Trump is doing that by looking at his invocation of the Alien Enemies Act.
REFERENCES
Anton, Michael. 2020. The Stakes: America at the Point of No Return. Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing.
Haywood, Charles. 2020. "The Stakes: America at the Point of No Return." September 8. The Worthy House, theworthyhouse.com
Pinkoski, Nathan. 2020. "Postconstitutional America." First Things. November.
Wheatland, Casey. 2023. "Founding Fathers and Red Caesar." The American Mind. October 20.
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