Interviewer: Senator Numitor, you recently stepped down from your position as Princeps Senatus. Are you planning on retiring from politics altogether?
Cyprianus Tiburtius Numitor: I have served Selucia for 27 years and I believe that, together with Caecilia Bousaid, we have achieved our main goals. It is time to let the next generation of leaders come forward and carry the Republican torch. This will in fact be my last term in the Senate. After this, it is up to the General Congress of the party to decide on its course.
I: One question any retiring polititcian probably asks themselves is what their legacy will be. You mentioned that you have achieved your political goals, but yet, you are also a very polarizing figure. In the most recent
survey evaluating past Caesares Republican voters rated you at 7, while In Marea voters at only a 2. Are you not concerned that your legacy will ultimately be one of deep division?
CTN: I would be more concerned if I were to be loved by everyone! That would mean I didn't get to do anything other than be likeable and pleasing for all sides, and that would mean I have failed. I would have gotten higher scores if I'd have been seen as a figure of national unity and friendship and singing Kumbaya round the fire. But that's not why I joined politics.
I: Then why did you join?
CTN: I didn't join to bring civil concord, but discord. Being good and friendly is easy. It is much harder to be cruel and to know when to use hatred and conflict constructively. A good political leader, especially in a democracy, must learn how not to be good, and use that, or not use it, according to necessity. Previous Republican leaders have unfortunately forgotten that. They forgot the very reason why the party was founded in the first place: as a reaction against the new left goody two-shoes diversity embracing "progressivism" that is nothing but the left wing of neoliberalism. The Republican Party was founded against "Diversity Day", against transnational capital, and against that narrow-minded understanding of progress that is nothing more than a legitimizing tool for capitalism. Instead of trying to make the citizens poor and the public rich, as should be the goal in a Republic, this type of "progressivism" says it's ok if the economic differences between the rich and the poor increase, as long as the elites look more like the non-elites. Instead of asking how many women we have on the Supreme Court or how many gays are elected Praetor, we should be holding elites to account and forcing them, on pain of death, to pursue the common good.
I: You've gained a lot of notoriety by calling for "ferocious populism". What do you understand by populism and why do you think it is something that would benefit Selucia?
CTN: Populism is not an ideology or a type of regime, it is a style of politics. Populism is an essential and unavoidable outcome in regimes based on democratic principles but where the people do not in fact rule. In representative democracies majorities do not rule, they choose which elite rules over them for a certain period of time, and more often than not these elites pursue their own interests. Capitalism plus electoral politics only results in economic and political inequality. This is where populism comes in, as the cry of pain of the vulgar. As we've mentioned elsewhere, in any polity there are two main classes, those above that wish to rule, and those below that merely wish to not be ruled. And it is the latter that are the best guardians of freedom, because they are the ones that wish to be free in the first place. So this is where populism comes in; it is a reaction to the lack of effective power that the vulgar have, in spite of the best promises and high principles of the elites. And this is why we need populism. For too many years in our party we have lost our way and given to high-brow philosophizing and theorising, when in fact we should have been more vulgar and less good.
I: How does that tie in with your two most controversial bills, the
Law on Classes and the
Law on the People's Tribunate?
CTN: Vulgar politics entails primarily appealing and stoking the elite-mass division. It is easier to think of oneself as an equal co-ruler in a democratic polity than to accept the reality of second-class citizenship most citizens are reduced to. A plebeian Republicanism relies on making the distinction between nobles and ignobles, the few and the many, the rich and the poor. We must insist that liberal democracy can never be what its proponents claim it would become, so we must reject the idealism behind the notion of free and equal citizenship for all. Not because we object to the ideal itself or to efforts to achieve genuine meritocracy, but because the dream of free and equal citizenship can never be fulfilled. Ultimately no formal equality can prevent the strongest members of democracy from abusing and dominating ordinary citizens, so what a plebeian Republican should advocate is differentiating between the few and the many, particularly singling out the most advantaged in society and subjecting them to additional burdens, and, why not, spectacular violence.
I: Isn't formally classifying every citizen into classes against the spirit of the constitution, and ultimately immoral?
CTN: Yes, it is immoral, and it is something we have to live with. A plebeian republic can only offer a disenchanted and compromised version of free and equal citizenship, and this is demoralizing. We must relinquish the pure ideal of undifferentiated democracy if we are to implement effective plebeian reforms, and this bad conscience is something we have to live with. After all, social democracies have often made use of the category of the "least advantaged" subject to additional attention, and that category is bound to be arbitrary. The category we need instead is that of the most advantaged. What is even less moral about our proposal is that our reforms are not entirely based on reaction to actual or threatened wrongdoings from individual perpetrators, but also stem from the vulgar desire to see powerful individuals publicly burdened and even humiliated, even if not always guilty of actual offenses. When introducing the People's Tribunate we not only justified it on the grounds that it will make elite citizens afraid of attempting things against the republic, but also that it will allow the people to vent their anger stemming from their status as second-class citizens in a state where first-class citizens not only risk dominating others, but also win most honors, fame, and wealth.
I: Isn't that essentially a form of ostracism?
CTN: I'm glad you brought this up. I think that ostracism, as originally practiced, was a very wise institution. In ancient Kalopia being ostracized was not a punishment - you did not have to be guilty of anything to be sent into exile. Any citizen could be exiled for ten years merely for becoming too arrogant or too prominent. It was not a judicial procedure, but a preemptive political one designed to maintain democracy against overly prominent citizens and also protect them against destabilizing assassinations. Now, I don't think it would be a good idea to bring back ostracism in its original form, but the People's Tribunate serves similar political and emotional purposes; it will hold elites accountable and create a public violent spectacle that will serve as a pressure valve satiating popular demands for violent retribution while also protecting against those that would wreak more violent vengeance.
I: You seem to have taken much inspiration from antiquity, from ancient democracies and republics and from the first Selucian republic. But are those ancient models still in any way relevant to modern conditions? The world has moved far from the conditions where these ancient democratic city-states flourished.
CTN: That is very true. The conditions in which we live are indeed very different. Modern life is characterized by large degrees of specialization, interdependence, and different and complex forms of interactions between politics and economy, far beyond what the ancients could have imagined. This means that the way in which we think of freedom and democracy should be distinct from both the liberal and the republican mainstream, because in modern societies we can't just reduce freedom to one single defining feature, be it absence of interference, self-determination, or active citizenship in a free state. Instead we should recognize that, ultimately, freedom is power, that is control over social and political domains, but also, and more importantly, power and control over one's representatives, whether political and economic. In ancient thought freedom is only possible through politics. But what of the rest of us? In modern society we can't all be involved in virtuous political actions, and for that matter only a small minority of people are actively involved in politics. We now have representatives for that. Rather the type of freedom that can be achieved in modern societies can only come about through channeling private vices and social conflicts towards public virtues, by institutionalizing class struggle. This conflict will not lead to freedom because it will lead to reason or virtue or a clear-sighted understanding of the common good, but because it will provide both classes with the power to control and coerce each other.
I: Lastly, what are your expectations of Selucia after your withdrawal from politics, especially now with the presidential system your party helped implement?
CTN: We are essentially entering uncharted waters here. There are those that fear that the Rector system is too reminiscent of the Imperator office under which Selucia experienced a period of dictatorship. To those critics I would say that there is no rule stating that strong leadership will inevitably lead to authoritarianism. It all depends on the relationship established between the leader and the people. Populism cannot effectively function without strong leadership, so the question is what kind of leadership we will have. Hopefully future Rectors will know the wisdom in serving as a
primus inter pares and achieve a more horizontal relationship between the leader and the people. If they do that Selucia has the potential to become a model democracy, one that understands the complexities of modern life while offering effective solutions to the powerlessness of ordinary people in representative democracies.