Chartbook 350: Bullying as a mode of power

The onslaught of the first weeks of the Trump Presidency has been intense. Even making a list of the points of attack is exhausting and demoralizing.

At some point over the last few days I began to think a lot about bullying as a mode of power.

What makes bullying distinctive as a form of government?

Bullying power isn’t the same as authoritarianism, or tyranny, or dictatorship, or repression.

Bullying involves the use of power to humiliate as well as to intimidate, hurt or coerce.

Bullying is transgressive and excessive. It goes beyond conventional police, punishment or compellence and yet it is also less. It is less purposeful and instrumental than other forms of power. In the end, enacting repeated moments of humiliation may be an end in itself.

In a world of warlordism, bullying may be the normal modus operandi.

In a world of order, bullying can not persist unless it is tolerated, or it is authorized by other more stable and legitimate modes of power.

Bullying is violent, but it is not the behavior of a master or a hero.

In the classic formulation of the “master-slave” dialectic (paraphrasing Kojeve/Hegel here) the struggle for recognition between the two protagonists is a struggle to the death. Both need something (recognition) and demand it from the other. The one who is willing to stake their existence emerges as master, whereas the one who chooses life, ends up as bondsman. This conclusion is unstable because the master wants recognition from a peer and the bondsman is no peer. For their part the bondsman has given up their claim to recognition. The classic resolution is for the bondsmen through their labour to emerge as the true subjects of history, collectively usurping the role of the master.

Bullying might be thought of as a degenerate form of this dialectic.

Two options come to mind:

• Bullying could take the form of a frustrated bondsmen picking on their fellows without challenging the basic hierarchy.

• Or it might involve a bored and sadistic master choosing to reenact the moment of submission, even though the issue has long ago been decided.

In either form, bullying is violent and dramatic, but it does not move the historical process forward.

Bullying does not create a new order, but lashes out, threatening and smashing existing things.

As a transgressive form of power, bullying does not know its limits. Bullying doesn’t have a predetermined measure or plan. It starts with teasing and can end in hounding someone to death.

And yet the intention of bullying is not murder. Bullying inflicts harm. Some victims may not survive. But the main purpose of bullying is not to kill. After all, the bully needs their victim.

In this sense too, bullying is a secondary form of power. Not only does bullying need license, but bullying needs its victims.

Bullying is a social activity. The bully has victims and a successful bully has followers. The bully is amongst us.

And yet despite being social, it is in the nature of bullying that it is unaccountable and irresponsible.

Part of the stress of living with bullying is that one ends up devoting an inordinate amount of mental and emotional energy to anticipating the next capricious onslaught.

In the conventional repertoire of power, the closest analogue to bullying is psychological warfare. It works by destabilizing and wearing down its victims.

PSYOPs are mounted in the service of wider goals, such as counterinsurgency. Not for nothing they are the classic terrain of conspiracy theory.

The question in the case of the Trump Presidency is how much is instrumental and how much of the bullying is nothing more than that, an end in itself.