The Social Bandit

Whether Rob Roy MacGregor, aka the Scottish Robin Hood, or Ned Kelly, a 19th century Australian outlaw, “the crucial fact about the bandit’s social situation is its ambiguity,” Hobsbawm wrote. “He is an outsider and a rebel, a poor man who refuses to accept the normal rules of poverty. … This draws him close to the poor: he is one of them. It sets him in opposition to the hierarchy of power, wealth and influence. He is not one of them. … At the same time the bandit is inevitably drawn into the web of wealth and power. Because, unlike other peasants, he acquires wealth and exerts power. He is ‘one of us,’ who is constantly in the process of becoming associated with ‘them.’” (Of course, being “one of us” doesn’t mean the social bandit cannot come from wealth or privilege. As the Robin Hood lure evolved from its 14th century roots, the masked bandit became a former nobleman who turned traitor to his upbringing and cast his lot with the poor. It’s about affinity and identity, not background.)

This excerpt is from a Politico article by historian Joshua Zeitz that draws upon Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm's theory of "social banditry" to explain the positive response on social media to the cold-blooded murder of Brian Thompson. But as I was reading it, I was struck how it might also describe Donald Trump's populist appeal and why his crimes have been so easily overlooked by the people who voted for him. Clearly he’s someone who refuses to accept the normal rules in any respect.

Now the idea is absurd that a self-absorbed and utterly transactional character like DT cares a whit about the 'have nots'. But that doesn't mean that he isn't perceived as caring or that even in some bizarrely delusional way he sees himself as a "man of the people". He clearly is channeling their resentment and grievance, and he has positioned himself as their "retribution" on an establishment that they see as crushing them. And in that one respect Mangione and Trump are alike, right? Both are agents of retribution against the system.

The illegitimacy of the "system" is the dominant mood in the country right now, and this is something that the Liberal talking heads on cable TV don't seem to get when they talk so rhapsodically about the "rule of law": It means nothing to people who see the law as serving the interests of corporate and political establishment and working against the interests of everyone else.

Zeitz goes on:

Hobsbawm linked banditry to moments of economic and social upheaval, where a weak or unstable state infrastructure failed to meet people’s needs. In the early modern era, such instability could be the result of the enclosure of common lands, the transition to capitalist or market-based agricultural systems or the collapse of traditional feudal structures. Bandits filled a power vacuum created by the state’s inability to deliver justice or provide economic stability.

The federal government in 2024 is of course a great deal more powerful than the weak state structures Hobsbawm studied, but it is arguably about as ineffectual in key areas. In recent years, Congress has effectively stopped legislating, failing to pass routine budget and appropriations bills, let alone sweeping structural reforms that might make permanent fixes to, say, the health care system. In turn, presidents have assumed greater executive authority, only to be reined by the courts, which — at least when the incumbent president is a Democrat — have sharply limited the executive branch’s purview in areas as diverse as immigration, student debt relief and environmental protection.

Not just ineffectual, but since the '80s pursuing policies that actively atomized society and obliterated any idea of the common good that lingered from the post-WWII era. The irony, or course, is that the GOP has been the primary driver for all this government dysfunction and failure to deal sanely with solvable problems. And yet it got rewarded with the trifecta last month. When there is such a huge gap between perception and reality, it's hard to imagine how any sane, lower-case 'd' democratic politics can be possible in the near future.

Vigilantism and terrorism are the responses of the powerless in asymmetric power relationships. In no way do I think such responses are justified, but "What goes around comes around." It's the law.

At least in a fallen world that in our moment seems all but bereft of grace in its public spaces.