Shadowboxing for Trump

“THIS NIGHT IS NOT ABOUT ME. This night is about the real heroes: the US military, the doctors, the nurses, the police officers, the firefighters, the farmers, the truck drivers—all of those who make the world go ’round. Thank you, America! It’s the era of truth. It’s the era of good. There is a shift in the world, and good is rising!” This is the triumphant claim of YouTuber-turned-boxer Jake Paul, moments after a victory via unanimous decision over former boxing world champion Mike Tyson.

In that ring in Texas, where the 58-year-old legendary ‘Iron Mike’ stood battered and breathless, Jake Paul—a 27-year-old with a red-tinged beard, more skilled at crafting slogans than landing punches—pro­claimed a new dawn in a clear reference to the start of the second Trump mandate. The Gen X Mike Tyson, symbol of the vanishing era, conceded to this Gen Z social media phenomenon, a simulacrum of authenticity draped in bravado.

The symbolism of this victory over Tyson is unmistakable. Jake Paul steps into the ring as the “Great White Hope”, a cyclical yearning for the re-emergence of white boxers’ dominance over black prize-fighters, a phenomenon harking back to Muhammad Ali’s time, briefly satisfied by stars such as British Tyson Fury or Ukrainian Wladimir Klitschko.

The influencer who likes to punch as much as a punchline is not immune to charges of racism himself. In 2017, he was accused by former collaborators of perpetuating anti-Arab and anti-Mexican stereotypes. In 2018, a video was released showing the fighter using the N word several times. And even in the famous fight against the African-American champion from Brooklyn, at weigh-in he approached his adversary knuckle-walking like a gorilla, before stepping on his opponents’ toes and getting slapped across the face for it. Tyson, as a testament to his age, said he suffers from sciatica and was hurt by getting stomped on his foot. And by being compared to an ape.

So now, unsurprisingly, the Ohio-born Jake Paul—who in 2020 declared Covid was a hoax—officially hails the beginning of the “era of truth” and the “era of good”, sporting a red MAGA-like cap with the slogan ‘Make Boxing Great Again’.

Yet, here lies the glaring contradiction. Paul is not a true boxing champion. He has reached an average level, professionally, with matches organised mostly for show-appeal. There is nothing ‘great’ about the mismatched spectacle of his victory over Tyson. Paul is a social media star, a crafted persona, a manufactured ‘truth’. This is not reality—it is a simulacrum.

This match is a testament of the second phase of Trump’s era. As Joe Biden stumbles through the White House, at the twilight of his presidency, kindly ignored at summits, as the world turns its attention to the administration waiting in the wings, the Trumpian ethos looms large.

Jake Paul’s slogans in that ring are not just hollow proclamations—they mark a pivotal moment in our cultural timeline. For what is the ‘truth’ in a match like this? Eight rounds between a 27-year-old influencer and a 58-year-old boxing icon heading fast to Sunset Boulevard—less a contest, more a stage for spectacle.

Let’s forget for a moment the insistent whispers of a rigged fight. Where is the ‘good’ in an internet celebrity seeking real-world legitimacy by defeating by decision of the referees a relic of the past? It’s all artifice, a carefully orchestrated performance. It’s showtime in the culture of showbusiness.

This is the ‘truth’ birthed on social media, the veracity promised by this new era: a place where ‘journalists’ are branded with the rhyme of ‘terrorists’, where mainstream outlets are the enemy, and where, as Elon Musk insists, users should fact-check themselves in the unregulated chaos of the timeline. Welcome to the “era of truth” and of “goodness” according to the likes of Jake Paul.

How did we get here, to this type of truth, the one that pre­fers an algorithm that reinforces our belonging to an informa­tion bubble instead of the judgment of reliable, trustworthy and professional editors? How are we now trapped in the mael­strom of mistrust not only of any system but of each other?

A spokesperson for this era, Tucker Carlson, perfectly captured this zeitgeist in an electoral rally speech: “Why do we love Trump?” he mused. “Because he allowed us to tell the truth.” He gave us permission, he explained, to say what we feel, to express disgust at liberals’ progress, to reject the guilt imposed on us for our interpretation of history and what we consider universal values. This raw “give the masses what they want” resonates not only in America but across Europe’s coarser political waves. It aims low, not high.

In psychological terms, we could translate what Carlson said about Trump into the fact that the Trumpian message is an invi­tation to embrace what Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung called our Shadow. In analytic psychology, it is an unconscious aspect of the personality that does not correspond with the ego ideal.

This psychological predicament forces our conscious self to resist and project the shadow on others, creating conflict with it. It is commonly considered a blind spot of the psyche. It is a part of our self that does not acknowledge our most basic instincts. It is not how we would like to be. It is how we are if we let entirely go, without rules, boundaries (the picket fence of civilisation); it is what happens if we never strive to be better than our first, basest impulse. It is something hidden, hard to grasp, slippery to deal with rationally: that’s why it is called the shadow.

Trump has acted as a force that wanted to look at what lies in that shadow. And accept it. Embrace it. Ride with it. It reverted to an ancient role of leadership striving not to elevate followers, but to affirm their basest instincts, to shout that our most primal fears and hatreds are valid and worthy of expression. He heard, ear to the ground, and he echoed out loud from the podium, using the same language. It’s an encounter with the Shadow.

The social media age, with its algorithmic encouragement of outrage, has paved the way for this regression. Which has paid off royally in political and electoral terms. While the Democrats—eliciting the impression of being disconnected from the spirit of the times and representing aged values—kept pushing for “change”, “betterment”, “improvement”, or “social transformation”, also via an increasingly unpopular wokeness, Trump gave voice to the Jake Pauls hiding within us all, to the “angry blue-collar workers”, the disillusioned by globalisation, the aggrieved by impoverishment.

This era empowers figures like podcaster Joe Rogan, ‘phi­losopher’ Jordan Peterson, and agitprop screamer Alex Jones on Infowars to redefine the narrative, supplanting traditional journalism with, often, conspiracy-laden rants. These are the gatekeepers of the new ‘values’.

Gone in a single sweep is the political class of the Obama era, with its aspirational rhetoric and carefully scripted speeches. Those types of leaders sought, at times, to inspire, however hypocritically. Promising democracy and, when they so desired, delivering unjustified wars and bombs instead. Those were elites ripe for their crisis, of course.

In 2024, we are not witnessing the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning—the culmination of a Trumpian era that started in 2016 and has simmered through the years of Biden’s presidency in Mar-a-Lago, in harsh long trials, on Twitter, after it has been bought and stabbed by Musk with a giant ‘X’. This America, hidden, scorned, chased, put on trial, kept talking and growing. On social media.

Social media is the ultimate information battleground where rationality, with all its flaws, is fading fast. In its place, we return to the jungle—a world governed by sheer wealth, unchecked brutality, and the raw power of insults as a weapon. It is a world with less nuance; a fact that the simpler minds find reassuring.

We are in an era of anxiety brought about by the return to the shifty power of oral culture (podcasts, videos, social media stories or reels) while burying away the depth of verifiable written text, of reading documented long essays, pondered and edited books. The profound crisis of deep thinking. These are times that reject the idea of culture, as we have known it, and of reason—the triumph of the animalistic over the idealistic. But before long, we might find ourselves longing for the lost hypocrisy of rationality—an era where at least the illusion of higher aspirations existed.

The swansong of the fading era comes not in a grand policy speech but in Mike Tyson’s own words, delivered to Jazzy Guerra, a 14-year-old influencer on the eve of the fight. Asked about his legacy, Tyson shrugged with the Schopenhauer-like weariness of a Zen philosopher: “Legacy? I dunno, I don’t believe in the word ‘legacy’… I just think it’s another word for ‘ego’. It’s just some word everybody grabbed on to. Now it’s used every five seconds. It means absolutely nothing to me. I’m just passing through. Imma die, and it’s gonna be over. Who cares about legacy after that? What a big ego…. So Imma die and I want people to think I was great? No. We are nothing. We’re dead. We’re dust. We’re absolutely nothing. Our legacy is nothing.”

Rest in peace to the era that fades with these words, and wel­come to the “truth” and “goodness” of a red-capped YouTuber, throwing 78 punches in eight rounds, streamed to 283 million Netflix subscribers, against a washed-up, wizened and now wise legend as old as his grandfather.

 

Donald TrumpElon MuskJake PaulJoe BidenMike TysonTwitterUS Elections 2024US politics