The Cruelty Is the Point

May 10, 2021
Atlantic journalist Serwer reflects on the antecedents, methods, and legacies of Trumpism in his clear-eyed and incisive debut essay collection. Combining pieces published during the Trump presidency and new material, Serwer draws parallels between the conservative backlash to President Obama and the Southern Redemption movement that wiped out the gains of Reconstruction; examines how periods of greater “civility” between Democrats and Republicans have often hinged on the exclusion of minorities from the halls of power; points out the irony that some of the “most ardent restrictionists” in the Trump White House were descended from people who fled poverty and persecution in their home countries; and argues that racial disparities in the spread of Covid-19 fueled conservative opposition to lockdowns, mask mandates, and other public health measures. Along the way, Serwer threads in snippets of his own biracial background and offers concise and illuminating history lessons on the Nation of Islam, the eugenics movement in America, and police unionization, among other topics. Though the territory is familiar, Serwer is a perceptive guide and a skillful synthesizer of scholarship by Eric Foner, Michelle Alexander, and others. This sober-minded inquiry into the Trump era provides essential perspective.

June 1, 2021
A cogent examination of the challenges America faces. In a vigorous collection of more than a dozen essays, award-winning journalist Serwer, a staff writer at the Atlantic and former fellow at the Shorenstein Center at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, considers the social and ideological forces that led to Trump's presidency and, without intervention, will continue to shape American society. Most essays, drawn from pieces published since 2016, are newly contextualized, and Serwer includes additional pieces on immigration, politics within the American Jewish community, the destructive impact of police unions, and the past and future of American authoritarianism. He argues persuasively that racism lies at the heart of Trumpism. Although the media focused on economic anxiety to account for Trump's rise and continuing appeal, "the movement," he asserts, "cannot be rescued from its bigotry," which was intensified by Obama's presidency. Trump's supporters have found what they deeply wanted: "a president who embodies the rage they feel toward those they hate and fear, while reassuring them that that rage is nothing to be ashamed of." Serwer underscores the prevalence of cruelty in American life, which Trump exacerbated. In "The Cruelty of the Covid Contract," he sees that Trump's refusal to deal with the pandemic was essentially racist. "The lives of disproportionately black and brown workers are being sacrificed to fuel the engine of a faltering economy, by a president who disdains them," he writes. "This is the COVID contract." In examining the claims of nativists and White supremacists, Serwer traces the roots of White nationalism to the American eugenics movement that influenced immigration policy in the 1920s and later fed Nazi ideology. In "The Cruelty of the Code of Silence," he excoriates police unions for promoting the image of the police "as the lone barrier between civilization and barbarism," characterizing the people they are meant to defend and protect as violent and uncontrollable. A strong contribution to conversations about racism, injustice, and violence, all of which continue to plague this country.

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