Review | Become Ungovernable

HLT Quan’s manifesto for ungovernability contributes to strategies for resisting state violence and fascism, that did not begin with Donald Trump, writes Clara Hill.

H.L.T Quan’s Become Ungovernable is a manifesto for political action and a radical cry to throw off the restrictive chains of liberal democracy and instead embrace moving towards a model of governing based on the ideas of Black and LGBTQ thinkers like Angela Davis, Audre Lorde and Sara Ahmed. 

When Hitler sought inspiration for bringing his Nazi politics to life, he looked to the United States, dubbing them the ‘one state’ building the fascist world he dreamed of. He particularly admired the Jim Crow South.

Quan convincingly argues that the roots of fascism are baked into the DNA of the US political system. Its lauded founding fathers, such as Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton of the Lin-Manuel Miranda musical fame, maintained a system of stolen enslaved labour. This crime, which has never been atoned for materially or spiritually by the Western imperial core, is the basis for much of the imperialist capitalist system we operate and feel stuck under. 

Quan’s arguments are underlined by the story of the recent US presidential election. Not just the second victory of  Donald J. Trump who plans to enact Project 2025 on his return to the White House on 20 January, but also the Democrats’ nominee pick of Kamala Harris. The exact reason for her landmark loss, which saw Republican Red eat into safe Democratic Blue states like New York, may continue to be picked apart by cable news pundits and newspaper columnists for a long time. Still, it represents one more example in the long list of the failings of liberal politics. The only options to pick from were a sexual assailant billionaire and a former prosecutor unmoved by her boss, Joe Biden’s commitment to Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people. How does this make a democracy? Barbarism or barbarism?

Much has already been made, particularly by those on the left and involved in anticapitalist struggles, about how neoliberal mechanisms of governing thrive by enabling fascism and its goals. The state, a tool for managing and delivering bourgeois interests, doesn’t respond to people’s material needs, indeed in Britain and beyond it uses austerity measures to redistribute wealth to the rich.

Much of this ground to fascism is given freely by liberals. Recent examples in Europe include France’s president Emmanuel Macron’s En Marche preferring to work with Marine Le Pen’s National Front rather than the left coalition The New Popular Front, the true winners of July 2024’s parliamentary election. Even outside of electoral aftermaths, fascism is making gains. For example, Germany’s centre-right Christian Democrats’ response to the rise of the fascist Alternative For Germany is to adopt their policies. A reminder to anyone needing to hear it; becoming the enemy does not defeat them. If anything, this justifies their conservatism to the electorate.

As noted above, debates about the exact reason for the Democrats’ pounding at the polls will continue to rage across the political spectrum. Conservatives, liberals and leftists will ask again and again if it was the Palestine movement, misogynoir (the hatred of black women),  Biden’s delayed decision to pull out of the race or four-plus decades of Reaganite and Thatcherite consensus which delivered us the former reality star as the leader of the free world. 

However, Quan shows in detail in her book that Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ project – a return to a time that can only be implied to be before the triumphs of the 60s Civil Rights movement – was not born in a vacuum. She writes extensively about how the former Apprentice host’s rise to power, and his use of the birtherism conspiracy theory that alleged his original predecessor, president Barack Obama, was actually born in Kenya, had its foundation laid in a more contemporary moment, The Tea Party. This libertarian, white supremacist movement made powerful by ideologically aligned billionaires’ funding, already gave us former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, who joined Republican senator John McCain’s attempt for the White House in 2008 as his VP pick. 

Returning to Quan’s writing can help us resist the path set out by the ruling classes, and not in the liberal way argued by the many who proudly declared that Harris embodied the spirit of Charli XCX’s summer-defining album Brat, or added a coconut emoji to their social media handles. The reprise of Trump has left many scared for the material and political future of many marginalised communities, such as undocumented migrants, the  LGBTQ community, and women, along with the prospects for fighting the already-present climate crisis. While defining the obstacles to our collective freedom, Quan simultaneously reminds us of the words of Karl Marx, who argued that history has been defined by the struggle against tyranny. State violence is not new, and it is not going anywhere, not unless we fight back in real and tangible ways, whether that be building mutual aid networks or the overthrow of the capitalist state. We can, as Quan argues, become ungovernable. 

Along with critiques and advocacy for community-centred democratic living free from the chains of the state, Become Ungovernable is a welcome addition to the fight to imagine a better world. Its vision stems from concepts comrades ought to hold dear, such as solidarity, freedom and imagining new horizons. It not only makes theoretical developments but also relies on real-world contemporary examples of resistance, both in the US and in Asia, like the uprising at manufacturing giant Foxconn’s factories in Asia and the closer-to-home Black Lives Matter movement that sprang up in response to the police officer Derek Chauvin murdering George Floyd in Minnesota in broad daylight amid the height of the coronavirus pandemic. 

Quan’s findings show us that within these various resistance efforts, we can shape new realities and forms of governing, removed from state-orchestrated formations. What they do is build the world we want to see, the one way from neoliberalism. 

This is an essential part of ‘ungovernability’, throwing off the chains of neoliberalism. Quan argues that the state cannot be fixed, putting forward the idea that abolitionist ideals and organising outside-of-state apparatuses are the only routes to liberation. This is because of what the state is designed to do: protect capital and white patriarchal supremacy.

This idea is convincing, but still, chasing state power feels worthwhile. This is largely because of its Leviathan nature. We cannot concede this massive concentration of power to the wrong interests.  Regardless, with this book, Quan convincingly argues that it is indeed possible, although reliant on many conditions, to embrace the creed of ungovernability. It is all around us, and what is going to save us is ourselves. 

Become Ungovernable: An Abolitionist Feminist Ethic for Democratic Living  is published by Pluto Books.