I appreciate Bret Stephen’s effort. The New York Times columnist analyzes the Trump fanbase from that standpoint of well-known cults like the Moonies and the Branch Davidians, and asks what might make them finally realize that their hero is a fraud. And, obviously, to do that kind of inquiry, you want to talk to cult experts and psychologists. I’m not saying it’s an unworthy exercise, but my feeling is that Trump’s following will move on when one of two things happen.
First, if any possibility of a Trump restoration is removed, he’ll no longer be seen as a potential savior. This could happen because Trump dies or if his candidacy in 2024 is made impossible either through conviction for sedition or impeachment with a prohibition on seeking future office.
The second way Trump’s cult can dissolve is if someone or something comes along with more appeal or promise. The less electable Trump seems, the more likely it is that an alternative will appear preferable. But time can play a role, too. This is important to remember because on one level it doesn’t matter if Trump’s loyal following disappears if the Republican Party is prepped to carry on with his basic strategy after its gone. We don’t want one of the two major parties in America to reject the legitimacy of elections, for example, or to remain committed to a post-truth world where politics are driven by conspiracies and hateful populism. Trump’s movement is fascist, and the Republican Party is in the thrall of Trumpism. The problem is that the GOP is virtually synonymous at this point with the Cult of Trump, and that has to change.
So, it’s wrong, in my opinion, to think solving the Trump cult problem is a solution in itself. But the element of time means that the underlying causes that give Trumpism its appeal can be detached and splintered from a right/left or red/blue dichotomy. A very large percentage of Trump Republicans did not see any appeal in the Republican Party before Trump came along. That’s because the GOP was seen as a party for fat cats and coastal elites who didn’t give the slightest crap about the common man. The party is different now in that its coming into conflict with traditional Republican organizations like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and relying more on white nationalist brownshirts and militia members. But that’s just a reorganization of the electorate, with the better educated and affluent drifting towards the Democrats, while working class whites consolidate with the Republicans.
I’ve said many times that if white working class voters are given a choice between fascism and an urban/suburban professional class party, they’ll choose fascism every time, and that means support for democracy, the outcome of elections, and the peaceful transfer of power will erode. Small-town and rural America needs a left-wing that feels like home to them, that’s driven by their own residents and leaders, and that prioritizes their issues. That’s how fascism is splintered and defeated.
I warned about this for years before January 6, but maybe it’s clearer now. We can deprogram people out of Trumpism, but we can stop letting the fascists operate unopposed. The change won’t be seen overnight, but it will eventually lead us out of this treacherous impasse.
“When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression”.
For right-wing authoritarians, they are victims because their traditions are under attack – that is to say, racism, misogyny, and the PRIVILEGE that they were born into and grew up with. Any time you see some conservative bitching about being oppressed, it’s about their loss of privilege. For conservatives, that loss of tradition means that they themselves are being erased. Their beliefs, their laws, their values…are all being…replaced. They might point to “great replacement theory” and physical replacement, but in reality, their…programming…is being replaced, that is, their shitty traditions and privileges that had previously operated society.
There is no “deprogramming” that inherent victimhood, meaning there is no way to “teach” them to stop believing the inherently false reality narrative that oligarchs and fascists have been weaving for the past 30 years. Conservatives identify around their loss of privilege. Not with liberals whom inherently DISAGREE WITH THAT PRIVILEGE. Deprogramming “Trumpism” is the same thing as “wiping out” conservative tradition. They are one in the same. These people cannot be saved. They can be marginalized and physically taught that their ideology is poison, but only physically. Read into that what you want, and it’s not that I’m promoting violence against them, but active self-defense for what is obviously coming. The Second Amendment isn’t just a right, it’s a responsibility.
In other words, deprogramming right-wing authoritarians is impossible because they are the program.
So, until their programming plays out PHYSICALLY, they will continue to double-down, triple-down, etc., until they get exactly what they want. This is the 2012 “anyone but Rmoney” primary that ended up with Rmoney because an outright unapologetic Fascist hadn’t YET come to the forefront. Trump was their first real taste of outright unapologetic fascism, and they aren’t going back to Rmoney. Whomever is more outwardly fascist than Trump will pick up Trump’s place, and he’ll just become the new mythical Reagan-figure. He’s cemented his “legacy” already.
And in fact, the longer and longer right-wing authoritarians continue existing without getting the greenlight to murder liberals, the more radical they will become to continue justifying their shitty ideology. They have to double-down in order to hold off the cognitive dissonance of the hilariously inane bullshit they say they believe. And you can find multiple studies to back that up – cognitive dissonance requires the deluded to believe even harder…and believing even harder in the shit they believe now leads to them murdering you and your family while y’all are asleep. Just give it a few more years.
By 2010 this trajectory became all-but-obvious for anyone who has ever studied history. The Tea Party, even if astroturfed, was made up of real right-wing authoritarian sentiment that they would rather die than be equals to “others”. That notion seems to continue to be ignored as we hope and wish and pray that this is all just some temporary thing and not a movement that is still building.
Right-wing authoritarians would rather DIE than be EQUAL to the people they consider “others”. The Democratic Party seems to be trying to run out the clock on this, as if “demographic destiny” is some real concept and not a liberal delusion that’s proven itself to be delusional.
Once you get that, you’ll realize that there are few options where the US escapes outright partisan violence. I expect political assassinations within the next few years, and once we’re at that point, there is no “escape”. If political assassinations start and ramp up with Republicans controlling the White House, most State Governments, and Congress…well, we’re at the point where finally, a proper fascist will give the greenlight for paramilitaries to start murdering the “worst others” while they’re asleep. “Slightly-less-bad others” will begin to lose some of their “rights”, and voila, we’re right where all authoritarian societies end up.
“First they came for the [insert others]…then they came for me”.
And that’s not even taking into account how society is already collapsing due to climate change and the dozen of other ways that human society can no longer maintain the complexity of society that we take for granted now.
How do y’all think things are going to be when climate change has rendered entire regions uninhabitable and millions of people are immigrating to regions that are barely holding without ten-or-hundreds of thousands of refugees taxing it further? It’s called ecofascism, and it’s the answer to that problem when right-wing authoritarians are in charge.
Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.
Yeah, people (us included) are going to have to work through their own psychological and emotional issues. What matters in dealing with the “cult of Trump” politically is defeating him and weakening his power.
The DOJ prosecutions, though moving excruciatingly slowly, are one way to do that. The Select Committee hearings are another way. Both operate largely on a carrot-and-stick approach to power: sork with us and things will be better for you; refuse to work with us and things will be worse for you.
And it’s working. Check out clips of Liz Cheney speaking at the Reagan Library. It’s not so much what she says as how the crowd reacts. That’s the sound of a politician losing power.
They’ll still have Q….
We get a little too distracted sometimes by the party realignment of the racist South a generation ago. The truth is that southern states have been under the yoke of corrupt one-party rule for most of the last 150 years. The tendency toward fascism hasn’t always been an animating force, but it always comes back up. 100 years ago it was the rise of the Klan. Really, it still is.
What has happened here is that the South has moved into position to win the Civil War at long last.
The civil war has been going on since before the US Constitution.
Here’s a great blog post on it by a great sci-fi writer, David Brin. His blog is absolutely worth reading.
http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2014/09/phases-of-american-civil-war.html
I agree. Now show me a progressive Democrat who can have a twenty minute conversation with a moderate White male Oklahoman without correcting the person’s speech or lecturing him on his privilege. We used to have union members who could talk to truck drivers, cooks and retail clerks, now we just have liberal arts majors who can’t talk to anyone but each other.