The Resistable Rise of Cum-Jo

Things seem very precarious. With Cummings and Johnson, the right-wing have a stranglehold over normal politics. What can we do? Perhaps The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui has something to tell us in these depressing times? It was written by Berthold Brecht in response to the rise of Hitler. He wanted audiences to understand the mechanics of dictatorship so that it could be opposed.

Well, there is no direct equivalent of Arturo Ui in our government. Ui is a Chicago gangster and represents Hitler. Our prime minister is not of his kind, thankfully. He would be too cowardly to pick up a tommy gun and spray bullets around. Neither does he have the primitive shrewdness of Ui, as his handshakes with coronavirus patients testify. So, we are unlikely to be liquidated, wacked or fed to the fishes by him. The machine gun route to dictatorship can stay in the play.

Ui though is an opportunist. Here we see a similarity. He did not plan every move from the beginning. He only needed to wait for mistakes. By such means he acquired power and control. The strategy worked like the escapement of a clock. You rub out this guy, tick, then you move on to the next guy, tock. No need to think too much. The method is simple and only requires that you have no concern for human life.

Johnson is an opportunist but would make a hopeless gangster. He does have a single-mindedness that is dangerous though. He has ratcheted himself up by kicking others down and he shares that same carefree disregard for those beneath him. Witness the purge of his party in the run up to the 2019 election. Even so, we cannot take this comparison too far. Johnson has two serious flaws that fatally undermine his authoritarian credentials. Unlike Ui, he wants to be loved. Ui was never like that. And Johnson is, at heart, a coward. No self-respecting dictator would ever lock himself in a fridge. Left to his own devices Johnson would be useless. Unfortunately, he is not alone.

Just as Ui depended on his henchmen, Johnson depends on Dominic Cummings, the rarely seen puppeteer, who in his turn depends on still shadier operatives. The closest character to him in the play would be Givola, a thug with a knack for winning the argument. In the play he owns a flower shop, the odours of which overpower and intoxicate visitors. They invariably come round to his opinion - or wind up dead. Terror can make you believe anything.

Cummings does not have the quick fix of terror at his disposal, so he uses something else. Rather than the old tick-tock mechanism, Cummings uses the rule of thirds. It goes something like this. One third of the people you must twist up into a storm of righteous anger. You do this by convincing them they have been betrayed. They are your third. The other two thirds are your enemies and must be driven apart. To do this, make them confused. Destroy their will to fight. And do not forget to keep your third on the boil. They will respond with unblinking loyalty. Cummings and Johnson are the classic double act. Johnson distracts, so the real business of corruption can go on.

The more we delve into the play the more we see the distance between Ui and Johnson open up. There is a scene in the play where Ui recites Mark Anthony’s speech in Julius Caesar, as he practises the art of looking like a statesman. Johnson, on the other hand, has built his alter ego on the role model of the English eccentric. Buried somewhere in this conceit is the notion that he is a hero struggling to get of a clown costume. He wants to make us laugh, but still have us admire his Churchillian principles. The intention, of course, is to avoid scrutiny. As Max Hastings said, he is a “far more ruthless, and frankly nastier, figure than the public appreciates”. Johnson wears a disguise that has been years in the making.

All of which brings us to the engine of the play. Power and money. All the violence, plotting and double-crossing was to achieve these ends. Brecht was writing for an American audience after all. What would be our equivalent to such a merciless endeavour? Brexit is the only answer. Just like a protection racket it enables money to be extracted under false pretences. For it to work, we need the carefully cultivated third angry again. How? By pushing their buttons. They are huge and well-defined buttons in England. Just lift the safety guard and press. They are marked Xenophobia, patriotism, and exceptionalism. Press, press, press!

All at once we see the hazy outline of a no-deal Brexit, hanging like a cardboard axe, under a theatre light. The motif that makes sense of everything that came before and will follow. The holy grail of those billionaires who would rather regulations disappeared, and their cash was not squandered on wasteful taxes. And the other two thirds? The ones who might cause some trouble? Forget them. Corbyn and Swinson will take care of themselves.

COVID-19 is now the backdrop for this epic political disaster. No-deal Brexit is becoming reality. A horrendous US trade deal is being hatched. If Brecht were with us, what instructions would he give?

He would explain each trick and how it works; how we are being gaslighted; the subversion of reality; the use of technology and social media; and he would let us see the pantomime for what it is, a cynical distraction while what is left of England is stolen from under our noses. He would want us to see that none of this is difficult to understand. The machine is made of big clunky cogwheels. And once he had got us to apprehend this, he would want us to jam a spanner in its works.