The current New York production of “Julius Caesar” in which Caesar is portrayed as a Trump-like figure is no ordinary propaganda.
Caesar is a particular figure with particular characteristics. Why was he assassinated? Because the assassins thought he had become a tyrant. They met a bad end themselves, as assassins often do, but along the way they felt they were doing Rome a service by ridding it of a dangerous leader. They considered it to be not an assassination, but tyrannicide:
Brutus began to conspire against Caesar with his friend and brother-in-law Gaius Cassius Longinus and other men, calling themselves the Liberatores (“Liberators”).
The assassination is portrayed in the play thusly:
The version best known in the English-speaking world is the Latin phrase “Et tu, Brute?” (“You too, Brutus?”); this derives from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (1599), where it actually forms the first half of a macaronic line: “Et tu, Brute? Then fall, Caesar.” This has no basis in historical fact. Shakespeare was making use of a phrase already in common use at the time. According to Plutarch, after the assassination, Brutus stepped forward as if to say something to his fellow senators not involved in the plot; they, however, fled the building. Brutus and his companions then marched to the Capitol while crying out to their beloved city: “People of Rome, we are once again free!”.
In actuality, the Caesar’s death precipitated a chain of events that led to the Republic’s fall:
The Roman lower classes, with whom Caesar was popular, became enraged that a small group of aristocrats had sacrificed Caesar. Antony, who had been drifting apart from Caesar, capitalised on the grief of the Roman mob and threatened to unleash them on the Optimates, perhaps with the intent of taking control of Rome himself. But, to his surprise and chagrin, Caesar had named his grandnephew Gaius Octavius his sole heir, bequeathing him the immensely potent Caesar name as well as making him one of the wealthiest citizens in the Republic…
[A civil was ensued and the chain of events] resulted in the final ascendancy of Octavian, who became the first Roman emperor, under the name Caesar Augustus, a name that raised him to the status of a deity.
Speaking of assassins who come to a bad end, the most famous American example is John Wilkes Booth. Booth was an actor, of course, and murdered Lincoln in a theater (Caesar was murdered in a place called Pompey’s Theater, but it doesn’t seem to have been a theater in the conventional sense). Not only that, but Booth’s motive for the assassination was also tyrannicide, and he is reported to have made a reference understood to be to Julius Caesar (in Latin, no less) as he leapt to the stage:
[John Wilkes Booth’s] father, the eminent Junius Brutus Booth, had been given a name that identified him with both the legendary founder of the Roman Republic (Lucius Junius Brutus) and the descendant who fought to preserve that republic half a millennium later (Marcus Junius Brutus). The elder Booth in turn had bestowed the same appellation on the oldest of his American-born sons, three of whom were destined to follow him into the theater.
You’ll recall that in Julius Caesar the example of the original Brutus is invoked as a symbolic conscience for Shakespeare’s brooding protagonist. Partly through the persuasions of Cassius, but mostly through Brutus’s sense of his own honor, the spirit of the ancient Brutus urges the inheritor of hrs virtues to circumvent a would-be king and thereby safeguard the liberties that have defined Roman dignity since the abolition of monarchy some five centuries before…
Like the Marcus Junius Brutus of Shakespeare’s play, John Wilkes Booth was keenly receptive to the promptings of ancestral tradition. He aspired to what “an antique Roman” would do in his place, and it is very likely that he was alluding to both Brutuses when he spat out “Sic Semper Tyrannis” (“Thus Be it Ever to Tyrants”) and slew a President he had frequently scorned as a “King.”
The rest, as they say, is history. It’s a history of which the directors of the current NY play may or may not be aware, although they should be aware of it. They are playing with fire—and probably considering themselves brave Romantic and/or classical heroes, much as Booth did, although they obviously aren’t going as far.
Here’s an example of someone calling for Trump’s death, this time by legal execution rather than assassination. And the author of the piece—originally published at HuffPo, although subsequently removed after the ballfield assassination attempt—doesn’t limit the call for execution to just Trump, he thinks his aides and VP should be executed, too:
Trump’s firing of James Comey to impede the investigation into an act of war against our nation, and his assistance to ISIS in the form of providing them with propaganda for recruitment, both provide “Aid and Comfort” to enemies of the United States. It would be difficult to find a more grave offense among those Trump and his team have already committed against this nation and its people. But all involved must face justice.
And that’s why the impeachment and removal of Donald Trump from the Oval Office are merely the first steps in what must be a long-term policy to redeem the United States in the eyes of the world. They are certainly important steps in restoring the credibility of our government, our standing in the eyes of the world, and our very democracy. But they must not be the only steps, lest we still be left with Mike Pence as the acting president after Trump’s removal. No, to quote our new fuhrer, we must “drain the swamp.”
Draining the swamp means not only ejecting Trump from the presidency, but also bringing himself and everyone assisting in his agenda up on charges of treason. They must be convicted (there is little room to doubt their guilt). And then”Š”””Šupon receiving guilty verdicts”Š”””Šthey must all be executed under the law. Anything less than capital punishment”Š”””Šor at least life imprisonment without parole in a maximum security detention facility”Š”””Šwould send yet another message to the world that America has lost its moral compass. In order for America’s morality and leadership to be restored, it must rebuke Donald Trump, his entire administration, and his legislative agenda in the strongest manner possible. And nothing would do more than to convict them of the highest offense defined by our Constitution, and then to deliver the ultimate punishment. Donald Trump deserves nothing less. Mitch McConnell, Steve Bannon, and Paul Ryan should also share Donald Trump’s fate, for they have done more than practically anyone to protect him and to throw our country under the proverbial bus. In order to survive, we as a nation must deliver the ultimate punishment under the law to all involved in its current destruction.
HuffPo is considered a relatively mainstream website, but the fact that this article passed muster there shows how acceptable it’s become to talk about and advocate Trump’s death.
People like the author of that HuffPo piece see themselves as heroes on a great stage. Their disagreements with Trump can’t be just the usual political dissension, because that would make them petty and ordinary too. No, the scale must be grand, and the remedy equally grand. There are a disturbing number of people around who feel this way, and some of them almost undoubtedly will try to act.
