He was quick to denounce Richard Nixon during Watergate, seeing the president as guilty of Caesarism.
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William Kristol: Isn't Trumpism a two-bit Caesarism of a kind that American conservatives have always disdained?
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In our era of congressional abdication, all presidents are prodded or tempted toward power grabs and caesarism.
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Let me be very clear what I do not mean by "Trumpocracy," at least not yet: Caesarism.
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But his influence lived on — through him and through the Caesarism that prospered for centuries after his death.
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President Obama's power grabs are part of a bipartisan pattern of Caesarism, one that will likely continue apace under Hillary Clinton.
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The memory of Koba's own treachery is kept alive, as some of his followers have drifted from militant anti-Caesarism to collaboration with the enemy species.
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But in the last few years, the years of Obama's Caesarism and Trump's caudillo act and Congress's utter uselessness, I've developed a limited sympathy for Kennedy's imperial approach.
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But Obama at least persuaded Democrats and the media to go along with his caesarism, and he established precedents that a President Hillary Clinton would have undoubtedly embraced.
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But at the same time, the legacy of Obama's foray into Caesarism offers some reasons to think that our system will limp along without a crisis for a while.
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I wrote a lot, sometimes shrilly, about liberal Caesarism in the late Obama years, and the ideas being urged on Trump would represent the right-wing version of that tendency.
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At the time I called this "caesarism" — an attempt to arrogate to the imperial presidency the kind of power over domestic policy that it already claims over foreign and military affairs.
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Vox co-founder Matthew Yglesias recently snarked about right-wing pundits who got "overheated about 'Caesarism' and 'caudillos'" in the Obama era, mentioning me and National Review editor Rich Lowry as examples.
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Now we must remain alert so that a cult of personality does not develop around the young leader and transform what is now an admirable popular revolution into a new occasion for Petro Caesarism.
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But with West Coast Straussians supporting Trump, we see that Jaffa's license to political extremism can be used just as easily by those who oppose equality—and Kendall's warning of a new Caesarism has been fulfilled.
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But to play us out here, let me test a thought I've had sometimes in the last year: We've been talking about the trend toward "Caesarism," something I criticized harshly under Obama and feared Trump would exacerbate.
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Executive-branch Caesarism has been raised to new heights by the last two presidents, and important parts of the country have responded by upping the ante, and — like ancient Israelites in the Book of Samuel — basically clamoring for a king.
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The decadent years of the Roman Republic are as good a comparison point for our late-republican discontents as any in the history books, and a creeping Caesarism in the executive has been a feature of our politics for many years.
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His caudillo-esque posturing, his contempt for republican norms, his "I alone can fix it!" promises are all populist variations on our political culture's enthusiasm for untrammeled executive power, the bipartisan cult of the presidency, the Caesarism that the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama have done a great deal to advance.
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And because the decay of republics is an iterative process, where each faction builds on the norm-breaking of its rivals, it was fairly obvious — well, to me, if not to his supporters — that Obama's caesarism helped stoke the caudillo appeal of Donald Trump, who promised a cruder version of the same impatient executive ambition.
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In that context, a successful man-on-horseback candidacy, in which a president is elected on whose selling point is that he refuses to bow to convention or restraint, is precisely the kind of thing that could expose some of the underlying perils inherent in our system, and accelerate America's march toward either Caesarism or crisis.
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As the great German sociologist Max Weber predicted about a century ago, the American version of presidentialism contains within it the seeds of a dangerous Caesarism, the yearning for a Great Man (or, now, Great Woman), who promises to take control of a dangerously gridlocked and malfunctioning political system and impose his or her own vision on it.
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It is a hard thing to accept that some elections should be lost, especially in a country as divided over basic moral premises as our own.... [T]oday's conservatism has far more to gain from the defeat of Donald Trump, and the chance to oppose Clintonian progressivism unencumbered by his authoritarianism, bigotry, misogyny and incompetence, than it does from answering the progressive drift toward Caesarism with a populist Elagabalus.
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" Accused of the most enormous crimes (counterrevolution, espionage, wrecking), Bukharin had no choice but to plead guilty "to the sum total of crimes," while simultaneously adding numerous phrases clearly meant as messages to the outside like "whether or not I took a direct part in any particular act"; using terms like "palace coups" and "Caesarism"; and, reaching for the heights of absurdity, "I am afraid of making an error from the entire material.
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But just as the pro-life movement ultimately won real gains — in lives saved, laws altered, abortion rates reduced — by accepting the legitimacy of the republic even as it deplored the killing of the unborn, so today's conservatism has far more to gain from the defeat of Donald Trump, and the chance to oppose Clintonian progressivism unencumbered by his authoritarianism, bigotry, misogyny and incompetence, than it does from answering the progressive drift toward Caesarism with a populist Elagabalus.
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Oswald Spengler used the term, Caesarism, in his book, The Decline of the West.
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The first documented use of the word is in the 19th century when it was used by German historian Johann Friedrich Böhmer in 1846 to describe the state subordinating the Church to its control. In 1850 it was used again by Auguste Romieu, who defined Caesarism as the rule of military warlords. Sociologist Peter Baehr writes "following Romieu's polemic "Caesarism"...[Caesarism] gained vogue status". In 1857 religious writer Orestes Brownson used it to mean monarchical absolutism.
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In 1858 the Westminster Review wrote "clumsy eulogies of Caesarism as incarnate in the dynasty of Bonaparte". Benjamin Disraeli was accused of Caesarism in March 1878 when, in anticipation of war with Russia, he mobilised British reserves and called Indian troops to Malta. G. K. Chesterton made one of the most ringing denunciations of Caesarism in his work Heretics, calling it "the worst form of slavery". Sociologist Max Weber believed that every mass democracy went in a Caesarist direction.
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Professor of law Gerhard Casper writes, "Weber employed the term to stress, inter alia, the plebiscitary character of elections, disdain for parliament, the non-toleration of autonomous powers within the government and a failure to attract or suffer independent political minds." A so-called "democratic" form of Caesarism has been advocated by theorists like Venezuela's Laureano Vallenilla Lanz in Cesarismo Democrático (1919). The most famous person who themselves espoused Caesarism was Napoleon Bonaparte, who admired and emulated Caesar during his rule in France. Italian Duce Benito Mussolini and the ideology of Italian Fascism espoused Caesarism.
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Baehr, Petter R. Caesar and the Fading of the Roman World: A Study in Republicanism and Caesarism. (Transaction Publishers, 1998).On the paradox of "Caesarism" (i.e. the combination of popular support and tyranny), After the defeat of Sextus Pompey (the son of Pompey) in the Sicilian Revolt by the Second Triumvirate in 36 BC, the Populares ceased to be a relevant political label.
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Emilio Gentile, The Struggle for Modernity: Nationalism, Futurism, and Fascism. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishers, 2003. pp. 137–138. Spanish Caudillo Francisco Franco and the ideology of Francoism espoused Caesarism.
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Statue of Julius Caesar in Rimini, Italy Caesarism is an authoritarian or autocratic political philosophy inspired by Julius Caesar. It has been used in various ways by both proponents and as a pejorative.
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Both the Second Religiousness and Caesarism demonstrate the lack of youthful strength or creativity that the Early Culture once possessed. The Second Religiousness is simply a rehashing of the original religious trend of the Culture.
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The Second Religiousness appears as a harbinger of the decline of mature Civilization into an ahistorical state. The Second Religiousness occurs concurrently with Caesarism, the final political constitution of Late Civilization. Caesarism is the rise of an authoritarian ruler, a new 'emperor' akin to Caesar or Augustus, taking the reins in reaction to a decline in creativity, ideology and energy after a culture has reached its high point and become a civilization.Oswald Spengler, "The Decline of the West," New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962, p. 396.
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As in Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Emile (1762) treatise on education (or the "art of training men"), the Enlightenment conceived the human species as perfectible: human nature could be infinitely developed through a well-thought pedagogy. Cyclical conceptions continued in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the works of authors such as Oswald Spengler (1880–1936), Nikolay Danilevsky (1822–1885), and Paul Kennedy (1945– ), who conceived the human past as a series of repetitive rises and falls. Spengler, like Butterfield, when writing in reaction to the carnage of the First World War of 1914–1918, believed that a civilization enters upon an era of Caesarism Compare Oswald Spengler and History as Destiny, page 93: "[...] the closing years of the First World War, when Spengler was completing his work, had witnessed the passing of the feudal rule of landed aristocracy in Germany and its merging into budding forms of parliamentary plutocracy - soon to be followed by the rise of 'mobocracy' and then Caesarism." after its soul dies. Spengler thought that the soul of the West was dead and that Caesarism was about to begin.
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These provisions were later used by Adolf Hitler to subvert the rest of the constitution and institute rule by decree, allowing his regime to suppress opposition and gain dictatorial powers.Eliaeson, Sven. 2000. "Constitutional Caesarism: Weber's Politics in their German Context." In The Cambridge Companion to Weber, edited by S. Turner.
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It depicts an elephant (labelled The Republican Vote) running toward a chasm of chaos; frightening a jackass in a lion's skin (labelled Caesarism) which scatters animals representing various interests. Although Nast used the elephant seven more times to represent the "Republican Vote", he did not use it to represent the Republican Party until March 1884 in "The Sacred Elephant".
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Caesar is considered by many historians to be one of the greatest military commanders in history. His cognomen was subsequently adopted as a synonym for "Emperor"; the title "Caesar" was used throughout the Roman Empire, giving rise to modern cognates such as Kaiser and Tsar. He has frequently appeared in literary and artistic works, and his political philosophy, known as Caesarism, inspired politicians into the modern era.
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His book was a smashing success among intellectuals worldwide as it predicted the disintegration of European and American civilization after a violent "age of Caesarism," arguing by detailed analogies with other civilizations. It deepened the post-World War I pessimism in Europe, and was warmly received by intellectuals in China, India, and Latin America who hoped his predictions of the collapse of European empires would soon come true.
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Salazar's aim was the depoliticization of society, rather than the mobilization of populace. Opposed to democracy, communism, socialism, anarchism and liberalism, Salazar's rule was conservative and nationalist in nature. Salazar distanced himself from fascism and Nazism, which he criticized as a "pagan Caesarism" that recognised neither legal, religious nor moral limits. Unlike Mussolini or Hitler, throughout his life Salazar shrank from releasing popular energies and he never had the intention to create a party-state.
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Every imperialism needs a justifying philosophy". (, 1948) "Hitler, although he disposes of absolute power, finds himself a thousand leagues from Caesarism. Power does not come to Hitler from the military base, but from the book that inspires the troops from the top. Hitler's power is not owed to the troops, nor the battalions, but to his own discussions... Hitler represents, ultimately, an idea, the German idea, so often humiliated previously by French militarism and English perfidy.
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In political science, delegative democracy is a mode of governance close to Caesarism, Bonapartism or caudillismo with a strong leader in a newly created otherwise democratic government. The concept arose from Argentinian political scientist Guillermo O'Donnell, who notes that representative democracy as it exists is usually linked solely to highly developed capitalist countries. However, newly installed democracies do not seem to be on a path of becoming fully representative democracies. O'Donnell calls the former delegative democracies, for they are not fully consolidated democracies but may be enduring.
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In Spain, the Acción Española adopted not only its far right monarchism but also its name from Maurras's movement.Stanley G. Payne, Spain's First Democracy: The Second Republic, 1931–1936, 1993, p. 171 The influence extended to Latin America, as in Mexico where Jesús Guiza y Acevedo was nicknamed "the little Maurras", as well as the historian Carlos Pereyra or the Venezuelan author Laureano Vallenilla Lanz, who wrote a book titled Cesarismo democratico (Democratic Caesarism). Other figures influenced include the Brazilian Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira.
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As a member of the Frankfurt School of Marxist critical theory, Adorno's professed project in this essay was to "turn (Spengler's) reactionary ideas toward progressive ends." Thus Adorno conceded that Spengler's insights were often more profound than those of his more liberal contemporaries, and his predictions more far-reaching. Adorno sees the rise of the Nazis as confirmation of Spengler's ideas about "Caesarism" and the triumph of force-politics over the market. Adorno also draws parallels between Spengler's critique of Enlightenment and his own analysis of Enlightenment's self-destructive tendencies.
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The constitution rejected the Ancien Régime and the post- revolutionary restoration monarchies with census suffrage. It referred directly to the French Revolution - saying that it "recognizes, confirms and guarantees the principles proclaimed in 1789" - and especially to the First French Empire. Louis Napoléon was persuaded that democracy needed to be incarnated in a man, and the Constitution of 1851 was a return to the democratic Caesarism of his uncle Napoléon Bonaparte. The regime was characterized by a strong personal power backed by universal suffrage; the French people remained "sovereign", and in this way the Second Empire was different from the earlier constitutional monarchies.
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Julius Caesar is seen as the main example of Caesarism, a form of political rule led by a charismatic strongman whose rule is based upon a cult of personality, whose rationale is the need to rule by force, establishing a violent social order, and being a regime involving prominence of the military in the government. Other people in history, such as the French Napoleon Bonaparte and the Italian Benito Mussolini, have defined themselves as Caesarists. Bonaparte did not focus only on Caesar's military career but also on his relation with the masses, a predecessor to populism.Canfora, pp.
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Vallenilla Lanz held a number of positions under the dictatorship of Juan Vicente Gómez and was well known as an apologist for his regime. In his best-known work, Cesarismo Democrático (1919; English title: Democratic Caesarism), he justified the caudillo system by stating that due to the character of the Venezuelan people, rule by a dictator was necessary to maintain public order. In his view, this system was democratic in the sense that it was due to the "unconscious suggestion of the majority".pp. 15-17, Rómulo Betancourt and the Transformation of Venezuela, Robert Jackson Alexander, Transaction Publishers, 1982, .
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Yet Stalin's necessity for Soviet Union's economic development has been questioned, with it being argued that Stalin's policies from 1928 on may have only been a limiting factor. Joseph Stalin Museum in Gori, Georgia Stalin's Soviet Union has been characterised as a totalitarian state, with Stalin its authoritarian leader. Various biographers have described him as a dictator, an autocrat, or accused him of practicing Caesarism. Montefiore argued that while Stalin initially ruled as part of a Communist Party oligarchy, in 1934 the Soviet government transformed from this oligarchy into a personal dictatorship, with Stalin only becoming "absolute dictator" between March and June 1937, when senior military and NKVD figures were eliminated.
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Oswald Arnold Gottfried Spengler (; 29 May 1880 – 8 May 1936) was a German historian and philosopher of history whose interests included mathematics, science, and art and their relation to his cyclical theory of history. He is best known for his book The Decline of the West (Der Untergang des Abendlandes), published in 1918 and 1922, covering all of world history. Spengler's model of history postulates that any culture is a superorganism with a limited and predictable lifespan. Spengler predicted that about the year 2000, Western civilization would enter the period of pre‑death emergency whose countering would lead to roughly 200 years of Caesarism (extraconstitutional omnipotence of the executive branch of the central government) before Western Civilization's final collapse.
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Ernst Jünger was concerned about rootless cosmopolitan elites, while de Benoist and Buchanan oppose the managerial state and Curtis Yarvin is against "the Cathedral". Schmitt's friend-enemy distinction has inspired the French Nouvelle Droite idea of ethnopluralism which has become highly influential on the alt-right when combined with American racism. CasaPound rally in Naples In a 1961 book deemed influential in the European far-right at large, French neo-fascist writer Maurice Bardèche introduced the idea that fascism could survive the 20th century under a new metapolitical guise adapted to the changes of the times. Rather than trying to revive doomed regimes with their single party, secret police or public display of Caesarism, Bardèche argued that its theorists should promote the core philosophical idea of fascism regardless of its framework, i.e.
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