Julius Caesar, Donald Trump and the ‘mighty martyrs’

Trump’s bloodied face and raised fist against the waving flag harkens back to Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” and onto the tragedy of modern politics.

We may call this remake “The Return of the Mighty Martyrs,” and cast Trump in the double role of both Caesar and Marc Antony.

When Shakespeare’s Antony delivers his funeral speech over Caesar’s corpse (“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears”), we catch a glimpse of the combustive and combative combination of victimhood and might. Caesar is both victim and victor at the same time — a victim of his assassins for being so mighty, and a victor to his former subjects, after martyrdom.

Are our faults in our stars or in ourselves? You can make others suffer for all your misfortune, and some leaders are all too happy to teach us how, turning politics into therapy — “politico-therapy,” or “politherapy” for short.

Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” helps us understand this: Politics allow us to cast our personal psyche onto the public sphere; to channel our grievances, insecurities and resentments through our leader; to seek revenge and redemption. “Hail Caesar!” we say, hoping to heal ourselves.

This is the mass appeal of the mighty martyr, boosting Trump and kindred leaders. This appeal is not just cerebral, it’s corporeal. Politherapy is about hearts, minds — and bodies, often with a touch of transcendence.

When Shakespeare’s Antony suggests his compatriots “would go and kiss dead Caesar’s wounds, and dip their napkins in his sacred blood,” we may be excused for thinking of the most famous mighty martyr of them all. The historical mass appeal of Jesus Christ owes much to the carnal symbolism of his tormented body, to the sight of his affliction as onlookers ponder their own. Few bonds are stronger than the stigmata, the bodily scars and wounds corresponding to those of the crucified Christ, turning righteous rage into vengeance against evildoers.

Judaism too has its metaphysical variation of this theme in the image of the mighty martyr Samson. Betrayed by his beloved Delilah, his eyes gouged out, the biblical judge asked God for one last exercise of his superhuman powers to bring the Philistines’ temple down on them, and himself. As I have written previously, Samson’s vengeful last words are nowadays chanted by ultra-nationalist Israeli Jews, targeting Palestinians.

The body of the mighty martyr serves as a canvas to paint over our own pains, turning the body politic into a mental battleground of corresponding wounds. We project our fears and frustrations, our hurts and humiliations, onto the wounded leader; enraged, we unconsciously adopt the leader’s superior reassuring strength to seek revenge and redemption.

In his brilliant 1940 review of Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf,” George Orwell wrote, looking at Hitler’s photograph: “It is a pathetic, dog-like face, the face of a man suffering under intolerable wrongs. In a rather more manly way it reproduces the expression of innumerable pictures of Christ crucified, and there is little doubt that that is how Hitler sees himself….He is the martyr, the victim, Prometheus chained to the rock, the self-sacrificing hero who fights single-handed against impossible odds.”

At Trump’s first rally after losing the 2020 presidential election, the defeated incumbent said: “We’re all victims. Everybody here. All these thousands of people here tonight. They’re all victims. Every one of you.”

Trump tapped into an emotional wellspring in our societies. According to a recent study by political scientists Miles T. Armaly and Adam M. Enders, most Americans feel like victims, whether driven by egocentric entitlement (“I deserve more”) or social unfairness (“we deserve more; the system is rigged”).

Armaly and Enders also discovered that it’s less about class, partisanship or ideology, and more about personality traits. Entitlement and victimhood are the two sides of the same narcissistic coin in which we all trade. Prone as we are to begrudge life’s inherent unfairness, toxic leaders are keen to stir and weaponize our negative emotions.

Fusing heroism and victimhood is the political alchemy of the mighty martyr, Trump’s secret of success. We need not see our modern-day Julius or Jesus dead to fight for him as if he were. Today’s authoritarian leaders project the strength of Caesar while employing Antony’s enflaming martyrology. And like Antony, these leaders would shrewdly add, “let me not stir you up to such a sudden flood of mutiny,” while doing exactly that.

The return of the mighty martyrs can hardly be stopped without first realizing their malignant politherapy.

Uriel Abulof is an associate professor of political science, teaching at Tel Aviv University and Cornell University. He lives in Jerusalem.