The American Republic is like the late Roman Republic, but Donald Trump won’t be its first Caesar

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By David Engels

David Engels is a Belgian historian specializing in the history of Antiquity and in particular of Ancient Rome. He is best known for his books comparing the ills of the late Roman Republic that led to civil war, Caesarism and the emergence of an ‘Augustan’ conservative civilization-state with the West’s contemporary deepening crises (‘Le déclin’, Paris 2013). In this article, David Engels compares presidential candidate Donald Trump not to Rome’s first Caesar, but to the “populist” Catiline whose failed attempt at challenging the Roman corrupted liberal elite in the 60s BC preceded the first Roman Emperor’s conservative coup.

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“For ever since the state fell under the jurisdiction and sway of a few powerful men, it is always to them that kings and potentates are tributary and peoples and nations pay taxes. All the rest of us, energetic, able, nobles and commons, have made up the mob, without influence, without weight, and subservient to those to whom in a free state we should be an object of fear. Because of this, all influence, power, rank, and wealth are in their hands, or wherever they wish them to be; to us they have left danger, defeat, prosecutions, and poverty. How long, pray, will you endure this, brave hearts?” (Sall., Cat. 20,7-14; transl. Loeb)

Is this an extract from a recent speech by Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen, or Viktor Orbán? No, it is rather a polemic from the last years of the Roman Republic – attributed, to be precise, to the famous and shady tribune of the plebs, Catiline. The similarities are striking, and point to a question that is being asked more and more frequently nowadays: is the United States of America, and more generally our Western civilization, in the final years of its own  “republican”, that is, democratic, era?

Indeed, over the last few months this question has come up more and more often in the mainstream media, especially in the Anglo-Saxon world (which, if I may make a slightly narcissistic remark, is far from original: Back in 2013 already, I dealt with it exhaustively in my book Le Déclin: La crise de l’Union européenne et la chute de la République romaine – quelques analogies historiques (Decline: The Crisis of the European Union and the Fall of the Roman Republic—A Few Historical Analogies).

While the American Right is obsessed with the parallels between the current immigration crisis and the migration of peoples into Rome in the 5^th century AD, thereby indulging in a form of declinism drawn from late antiquity by seeing Trump as a sort of last bastion against the migratory tidal wave, the Left instead focuses on Julius Caesar’s destruction of the Old Republic to make sense of the Trump phenomenon. In doing so, it takes two positions: firstly, it is choosing to take a rather negative view of the ancient dictator instead of recognizing both his genius as an organizer as well as a peacemaker, not to mention the degree of corruption that existed in the Roman Republic at the time; and secondly, it is adopting a rather naive and positivist point of view by seeing the end of the Roman Republic as some sort of ‘accident’ that could have been avoided if only the Romans of the time had had a better capacity for political analysis – and obviously, if they had enacted repressive laws against the “Right”…

Our times are reminiscent not of the late Roman Empire, but of the declining Roman Republic

My readers will probably know that I dispute the parallels that have been drawn between our times and late antiquity, but likewise, I am not too sure that with Trump we have reached the stage of the reign of a first Caesar. Or at least not yet: our equivalent of the Roman civil wars may indeed be imminent, although at present we are still witnessing the clash between what were called, in ancient Rome, the optimates and the populares – which is the symptom of both a serious structural crisis and an imminent political transition. And this is true for both the New World and the Old Continent.

So let us go back in time two millennia when those ‘optimates’ supported the continued authority of the senate while the ‘populares’ contested that authority, relying on the people. The Roman Republic was similarly marked by impoverishment, unemployment, mass immigration, the disintegration of the family, a loss of identity, demographic decline, (Mediterranean) globalization, the disappearance of the ancestral religion, and the arrival of Oriental cults, not to mention philosophical hedonism, financial speculation, the primacy of economics over politics, the elites isolating themselves from reality, an apolitical attitude on the part of the masses, insecurity concerning one’s standard of living, asymmetrical wars, a culture of bread and circuses, and so on. The political system, which was paralyzed by nepotism, corruption, short-lived magistracies, and factional rivalries, made any serious reforms impossible without a risk of civil war, meaning that dealing with important issues had to be postponed year after year. It is little wonder, then, that Roman citizens, just as we are seeing today, gradually decided to refuse to participate in a political system which clearly favored a tiny elite, thereby becoming increasingly receptive to the discourse of the new political group known as populares, as opposed to the political establishment, which was described as optimates.

Today’s “populists” resemble the late Roman Republic’s populares

The political agenda of these populares – who, like the Gracchi brothers, Catiline, and Clodius, were generally as much a part of the elite as their opponents – was ambiguous: on the one hand, there was obviously the ambition to rise to higher and more lucrative positions by counterbalancing the senatorial opposition with support from the streets. On the other hand, the program they championed was an explosive mix of necessary reforms, idealism, and demagoguery: for example, the redistribution of land for the benefit of the poor, the free distribution of grain to all citizens, increased power for the plebs’ tribunes, the creation of public associations which could serve as paramilitary forces, the expulsion of foreigners from the city of Rome, etc.

The parallels with Trump and other so-called ‘populist’ forces are obvious: they, too, in their quest for power, are acting as mouthpieces for the concerns of the masses, which are being slowly dispossessed to the benefit of the economic and political elite as well as tyrannized by an increasingly unbridled wokeism. They also propose solutions that are often simplistic and demagogic: lower taxes, more social benefits, more direct democracy, combating threats to the standard of living, deportations of migrants, and so on, all the while knowing that the political facts on the ground as well as the reality that prevails in the governing institutions mostly precludes the possibility of their proposals’ actually being implemented without colliding head-on with the legal system as it is currently constituted.

As a result, our civilization, like that of republican Rome, finds itself at the most critical moment in its history, and indeed at an impasse: the growing influence of the ‘populists’ is forcing the established parties into forming a united front and increasingly immobilizing the political institutions, which are being torn between the paralysis of some and the naive excesses of others. As in ancient Rome, the result is inevitable: as the many inequalities and dysfunctions continue to increase and the voice of the electorate continues to be ignored, the political institutions’ credibility begins to disappear, ultimately prompting prominent social and political actors to promote their interests violently and unlawfully, leading to the implosion of the established order.

What would happen if we projected these analogies into the future? Populism is not a political program, but simply a catalyst: from the Gracchi and the supporters of Marius to Catiline and Clodius, the populares were all victims of the optimates’ opposition, but their very existence paralyzed the Republic to such an extent that no serious political reform was possible on either side. But even Pompey’s last, short-lived restoration of the optimates’ power – which came about as a result of Clodius’ murder, the military occupation of the city, and a series of summary political trials – ended in failure when Julius Caesar, a supporter of the populares who had himself been declared an outlaw, took up arms against the senatorial Republic and plunged the state into long-expected civil unrest. Twenty years of war transformed this confrontation from a struggle between different political ideologies into a conflict between pretenders to absolute power. This continued until Octavian (Caesar’s adoptive son) managed to liquidate all his political rivals and “restore” the Republic – a Republic that only poorly concealed an authoritarian, conservative, and plebiscitary regime in which it was only their control of the army which enabled the princeps to curb the ambitions of both the senators and the people in order to avoid further civil wars… and become, under the name of ‘Augustus’, Rome’s first ‘Emperor’ in 27 BC.

The American Republic is not yet ripe for its own Caesar

The growing electoral success of the so-called ‘populist’ parties in the Western world in recent years is likely to eventually trigger a similar process.

But the United States is still a long way away from an actual coup: Trump seems to me to be more the equivalent of Catiline and Clodius rather than a Caesar. Why? At this stage of the battle, it does not really matter what concrete measures a future Trump government will take as the combined opposition of the political elites, the media, the universities, and the military-industrial complex, not to mention the contradictions inherent in his program, will make impossible any real long-term change, just like in the late Roman Republic, and for similar reasons. Trump’s foreseeable failure will only exacerbate voter frustration, just as it did at the end of Trump’s first term. Admittedly, there is the very conservative ‘Project 2025’, which has been drafted under the auspices of the Heritage Foundation, and there has also been a lot of talk on the Left side of the American political divide about a possible dictatorial coup on the ‘first day’ of Trump’s possible new presidential term. Neither is very credible, however, given political realities and the personality of the candidate in question. The time is not ripe – or at least, not yet.

On the other hand, while four years of Trump may not change the structural status quo in the United Sta very much, they may lead to a great deal of unintended damage as a result of the further polarization and paralysis of the United States that could ensue, and which might, in turn, create tensions throughout the world, especially in Europe, which is politically at least as divided as the United States (also for similar reasons, as the current crises are common to most of the West). So, even if Donald Trump wins the American election on November 5, we could still see, on all fronts, an accelerated weakening of our already perilous political and economic situation through the aggravation of political and inter-ethnic conflicts, speculation on debt, the widening of inequalities, and the loss of representative democracy’s credibility – all of which will continue to take place against the backdrop of a civilization that is being simultaneously threatened by the African demographic explosion, the implosion of the Muslim world, Russian ambitions, and China’s expansion.

The liberal Left is the first to go dictatorial in its attempt to remain in power

Truth be told, if we follow the logic of the late Roman Republic, in the end, real change will come not from the ballot box, but from the streets: the populist only really becomes a Caesar by placing himself above the institutions instead of accepting their authority. Admittedly, Catiline, once he was banished from Rome, tried to raise an army, but where he fell short of Julius Caesar was primarily in the weakness of his organizational and military talents, given that he solely concentrated on demagoguery; and secondly, his relative lack of support among the Roman elite: Catiline was, in a way, the ‘parasite’ of the late republican system, and not, like Caesar, its gravedigger and reorganizer.

Donald Trump is indeed unlikely to be the American Republic’s new Caesar, but the moment for it is approaching as our optimates all over the American Empire (i.e., the West) increasingly use their power over the institutions of governance to turn them into bulwarks against the alleged threat from the ‘Right’, thereby undermining their claim to being on the side of democracy and the rule of law.

We are already seeing this today in Poland, where Donald Tusk has openly declared that he wants to ignore the country’s constitution in order to ‘reestablish’ democracy. He would do better to talk about ‘his’ democracy, given that this statement shows that the decisive step toward a dictatorship justified solely by the so-called ‘good cause’ is already being taken by the leftist-liberal elites, who openly support his government from Washington and Brussels. Indeed, in the near future, we can expect similar measures as those currently taken in Poland after eight years of ‘right-wing populist’ government in other Western democracies.

This, in turn, could leave tomorrow’s populists no choice but to finally cross the Rubicon in order to avoid outright eradication, and act as Caesar did to save Rome and its civilization from self-elimination – at least for a few centuries. As I said, I do not see Trump as someone who is likely to cross this Rubicon – although who knows? Regardless, a younger, dynamic, inventive, and above all unscrupulous character might go for broke sooner or later and become the American Republic’s new Caesar. The same might very well happen on the Old Continent as well, and the liberal Left’s suicidal woke revolution will have greatly contributed to this.