On a recent episode of the popular podcast Chapo Trap House, co-host Will Menaker used a memorable metaphor in addressing calls for unity on the left. “Republicans in control of politics, that’s the problem,” he began. “However, to the pragmatists out there and the people who don’t like purity in politics, yes, let’s come together. But get this through your fucking head: You must bend the knee to us. Not the other way around. You have been proven as failures, and your entire worldview has been discredited. You bend the knee to us and then let’s fucking work together to defeat these things, not with fucking means testing or market-based solutions but with a powerful social democratic message.”

Chapo’s many foes seized on the phrase “bend the knee.” Because the show has often been accused of sexism, the phrase “bend the knee” was interpreted by some listeners as a sexual remark aimed at humiliating Hillary Clinton supporters.

Imagine being a wealthy white guy and telling this to poor minorities who vote for Democrats pic.twitter.com/QFy141R94p — Marcus H. Johnson (@marcushjohnson) July 13, 2017

Something tells me Chapo hosts spend a lot of time ordering recalcitrant women to get on their knees for something https://t.co/XFzpaJ5A7c — Sady Doyle (@sadydoyle) July 13, 2017

This chapo dude wants women and POC Dems to "bend the fucking knee" and in or out of context, it's gross. Feigning outrage is dumb. — Swearin' Spartacus (@Spartacussin) July 13, 2017

This gendered analysis seems unwarranted because Menaker’s remarks weren’t aimed at women as a class, but at the centrist wing of the Democratic Party; Clinton wasn’t mentioned, and the phrase may even be an allusion to a common refrain in Game of Thrones. Yet if the remark wasn’t sexist in intent, it still suggests a troubling vision of politics as a contest in domination. As New York magazine’s Rebecca Traister remarked in an email, “‘bend the knee’ gets read as a sexual reference, not because people think it is literally about sex, but because it conveys a hunger for dominance and submission, which is very quickly heard as gendered and sexual, even when the reference is not explicit.” To put it another way, the comment was an act of dominance politics, which, accusations of sexism aside, is problematic in its own right.



The concept of dominance politics was fleshed out by Josh Marshall, founder of Talking Points Memo, in an analysis last year of Donald Trump’s hold over the Republican Party. “Pundits and political obsessives tend to get distracted by process and policy literalism,” he wrote. “But politics generally and especially intra-Republican political battles are really about demonstrating dominance—not policy mastery or polling leads but a series of symbols and actions that mark the dominating from the dominated.”

Dominance politics is, as Marshall noted, the default mode of the Republican Party and especially Trump. “You can’t insult your way to the presidency,” Jeb Bush told Trump on a debate stage in late 2015. The former Florida governor was dead wrong. Trump’s constant name-calling of “Low Energy Jeb,” “Lyin’ Ted,” and “Crooked Hillary” secured enough votes to win the Republican nomination and defeat Clinton. Trump did insult his way to the presidency, and the gambit worked because his abusive language jibed with the Republican base’s desire for a tough, masculine leader who unapologetically humiliates and punishes his enemies (RINOs, liberals, feminists, immigrants, foreigners, and so on). Displays of dominance are also assertions of hierarchy, and thus go hand in hand with the right-wing goal of defending privileged groups.