“Marx’s theory of historical repetition, as it appears notably in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, turns on the following principle which does not seem to have been sufficiently understood by historians: historical repetition is neither a matter of analogy nor a concept produced by the reflection of historians, but above all a condition of historical action itself. Harold Rosenberg illuminates this point in some fine actors or agents can create only on condition that they identify themselves with figures from the past. In this sense, history is theater: ‘their action became a spontaneous repetition of an old role… It is the revolutionary crisis, the compelled striving for “something entirely new”, that causes history to become veiled in myth…’” – from Gille Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition
I first note here how Deleuze is at his most accessible when he works in the domain (that is in terms of the philosophical spectrum (of the social/political. And as I have pointed out, he seems to have worked from the more superficial of the social/political to the more metaphysical/ontological (that is via the epistemological/logical (which, as I see it, gives license to work in a similar manner as concerns Difference and Repetition.
That said, and at the risk of taking this off topic (that is as concerns Deleuze (and bogging it down in the more superficial: the social/political, I would like to focus this on the phenomenon of Trump in America.
As I have said before, while rock stars seem to have Anti-Christ complexes, demagogues tend to have Christ complexes. And to give you a sense of what I’m getting at, I would point to the semiology of the concert. A rock star (that is when they have reached rock star status (will give a show that involves a lot of pretty and expensive toys. It is as if they are saying: look at my toys, look at my power. At the same time, given the negative associations attributed to rock stars (the idea that they may be worshipping the devil (there is always room for question. And it is always as if they are asking you to question it: that antichrist aura they take on.
Now compare that to country music which uses the same technology. Same message: look at my toys; look at my power. But in this case you’re expected to look at it as the American Dream fulfilled. And should you question it (much as the Dixie Chicks did (you will be rejected from the in-crowd.
Trump, of course, fancies his self a rock star. He is the guy shooting straight from the hip and to which everyone is listening –by which I mean his fans: likely a lot of displaced tea partiers. But his main appeal is that of a beer table demagogue: the loud mouth at a bar table telling everyone what he would do if he had (like a corporate CEO (control of the country. Of course, fancy is, at this point, already playing a role. But where the Christ-complex comes in to it is in him thinking he has broken through the veil of deception and having seen the simple answer to everything. And this is common among republicans. I mean what was Bush Jr. but a frat boy with a Christ complex: he thought he was going to save the world from the evil of the middle east and Islamic radicalism. But in Trumps case, the evil he is going to save us from is immigration. He thinks of himself as a kind of revolution. But:
“According to Marx, repetition is comic when it falls short -that is, when instead of leading to metamorphosis and the production of something new, it forms a kind of involution, the opposite of an authentic creation.”
Trump is basically in the same Land of the Lotos Eaters as his followers. He avoids (a kind of denial (the real issue at work in the world: the fact that you cannot have a handful of people feasting at the table and expecting everyone else to fight for the crumbs and not expect the problems we are having. He, basically, offers more of the same –as most republicans do. And, granted, Hillary is also in the land of lotus eaters. But of the two, who are you more likely to change their way of thinking: Trump who is so immersed in Capitalism as to not be able to see beyond it; or Hillary who actually tried to create a healthcare system that acted outside of Capitalism?