Month: August 2020

We use Hitler to stand for monumental evil, but he fascinates us because hero-worship is so dangerous. Everybody knows the footage of Hitler at the podium in Nürnberg lecturing the sweating worshipful crowd of supporters in military formation below him. Likewise, Trump gave his acceptance speech at the White House—also a grandiose setting—to guaranteed followers.

It’s naughty to compare the Donald to Adolf. Yet it’s hard to avoid.

Both Adolf and Donald are famous narcissists, but narcissism is a system. Both flatter their followers. As Trump has said, “I want every child in America to know that . . . ANYONE CAN RISE.” The slogan is also a euphemism. “Make America great again” means “I can make YOU great again.”  He’s talking about self-esteem. YOURS and HIS.

The hatred of “enemies,” whether Jews or liberals, reinforces the conviction of supremacy.  There is a direct connection between fantasies of Aryan and white superiority. You stroke my self-esteem and I’ll help you “RISE.” To rise means not just an elevation in status, but to grow up as a hero.

If you rise far enough, you become a god, the messiah. In Trump’s words, “I am the chosen one.” As Donald has told us many times,  he is infallible—supremely right—and like Adolf, he has no plans ever to step down.

But remember: it’s a system. We’re all tempted. Everyone wants to be rescued from something. The messiah saves you, but without somebody to save, the messiah is nothing.  Adolf and Donald both need the base. “I’m with you. I am your voice.” And the fantasy of rescue requires the hero to profess, as the Donald does, “they are coming after ME, because I am fighting for YOU.” 

The base worships the super-parent  to feel, as they say, on top of the world.

Adolf’s followers had lost a “world” war and suffered the Great Depression. Donald keeps trashing his predecessor Obama in order to have something to rescue us from.  Meanwhile, Donald promises magical  rescue from the pandemic as Adolf associated Jews with disease. Identify with the hero and you RISE above social death or, in a pandemic, real death. In a lockdown you feel helpless: you’re surrounded by an invisible viral enemy.  If you give in and wear a mask,  you risk realizing that the hero can’t reliably defeat of virus and therefore can’t save you.

As in sports, one of the best remedies for fear is winning. In combat the winner controls the loser, enslaving or killing them. Both Adolf and Donald promise victory.  

This sounds like populism. But it is a parental promise to sacrifice for the kids, although the Hitler kids would die as martyrs in combat, and Trump’s militarism (so far) is his defense of gun rights, the Armed Forces, and white militias. Hence his taunt to Democrats. “We’re here and they’re not”—meaning we’re in the White House and they are not; but also, we are alive and immortal, and they are not.

Personality is organized around self-esteem. We want to feel good about ourselves. We want to feel right. This is a social behavior, since being right is competitive and like winning in sports or victory in warfare.  But being right is also a survival behavior. Being right about the world and its dangers means that you are likely to live longer.

You can see why protest attracts us. Whether it’s solitary or a crowd behavior, in thought or in action, protest intensifies the feeling of being right.  As Canetti says in Crowds and Power, joining a crowd expands yourself.  There is more of you. The crowd amplifies your power.  You don’t have to worry about faults or the fine details of being right: the crowd shares your responsibility even as it confirms your feeling of being right.

This is true whether your protest is right or wrong. Presumably, depending on the circumstances, you can get an ego- boost whether you believe in White Power or Black Lives Matter. Incidentally, this is a good place to repeat that I believe that blacks in this country have been oppressed and subject to social death. Perhaps that needs to be emphasized because I want to write about the psychology of protest—a  distinction that may be misunderstood.

For one thing, protest is attractive, even seductive. Like a drug, it feels good,  whichever side you happen to be on. Fighting against a protest is itself a kind of protest.  In Hong Kong, the authoritarian Chinese communist party demonizes protesters. Cops disparage those they fight in the streets, partly out of guilt for their attacks  on people usually unarmed, partly out of fear that they could be injured too.

Both sides—cops and protesters—illustrate the tragic creaturely motive that there is no natural limit to protest. Both sides in a skirmish are likely to be gripped by idealism.  Both sides feel that they’re acting to improve a threat. But concepts such as “peace,” “goodness,” “purity,” and “order” have no upper limit.  How much is enough? This is one reason why people fight to the death over religion—which after all tends to be cosmic.

In everyday psychology, the danger is hysteria.  Cops  act hysterical when they beat unarmed protesters;  lynching is a  sadistic form of protest. And some protesters act hysterically when they try to  burn down government buildings. The appetite for self-esteem can be voracious.

This doesn’t mean protest is never justified, but that it needs to be grounded.

For implications, have a look at The Psychology of Abandon (Leveller’s Press).