Donald Trump continued what appears to be an inevitable march to his nomination as the 2016 Republican presidential candidate. He won three of the four primaries/caucuses that were held last Tuesday. Trump then proceeded to give a victory speech and press conference that was both an infomercial for his steaks, wine, and water, as well as an opportunity for him to further mock and berate the journalists in attendance. The result is that the political chattering classes are still flummoxed by Trump’s popularity, and “Trumpmania” remains a riddle.
At the United States Marine Corps Officer Candidates School, warriors are taught to “turn the map upside down.” This simple action allows a person to see the map from the enemy’s point of view. What areas will they attack? What do our defenses look like from their advantage point? Where are our vulnerabilities? Is the enemy susceptible to attack in ways that we had not initially discerned?
This lesson in the power of perspective is very useful for understanding politics more generally—and the appeal of Donald Trump, specifically.
My writing and other work on the ascendance of Donald Trump and the 2016 GOP presidential primaries has been direct and unapologetic. I have referred to him as the American Il Duce. He is a protofascist. Donald Trump is a white supremacist, a nativist, a misogynist, and a bigot. Trump is also a con man who models his right-wing producerist schtick after the “heels” in professional wrestling. And while Trump’s supporters are not the cause of the toxic and broken politics that have given rise to “Trumpmania,” they are responsible for how their actions embody some of the worst aspects of America’s political culture.
Those labels and observations are accurate. However, they tell us little about the life worlds, inner motivations, psychology, “substantive” (at least from their point of view) grievances, and deeply felt anxieties of Trump’s supporters.
Excluding the overt and unapologetic white supremacists, Trump’s support is drawn predominantly from the white working-class and “less educated” members of the Republican Party, Independents, and right-leaning (i.e. Reagan) Democrats.
This cohort feels left behind by globalization and a more cosmopolitan United States. They are racially resentful toward people of color and feel that “their America” is being taken away from them. Undocumented labor is used as a tool of the plutocrats and one percent to create insecurity for those in the lower tiers of the job market. The portability of capital and labor has made the white working class increasingly obsolete.
In all, Donald Trump’s public feels that political elites and opinion leaders have failed them.
The right-wing news entertainment disinformation machine has systematically lied to them—consequently, Trump’s supporters are unable to substantively and intelligently engage with political matters in a way which 1) reflects empirical reality and 2) will bring about the types of economic and social policies they desire.
The white working class is quite literally dying. The deaths of despair—guns, pills, alcohol, poisoning, suicides, and overdoses—are gutting their families and communities. And the civic life of the white working class is in shambles. As Robert Putnam has so forcefully argued, the social and communal institutions that create “social glue” and “social capital” in the United States are long in decline.
Of course, these challenges are nothing compared to the immiseration and vicissitudes that black American, First Nation, and Latino communities historically and through to the present endure as a day-to-day condition of life in the United States. Alas, the inability to deal with these challenges is one of the poisons and costs that white privilege and the psychological wages of whiteness extract from their owners and beneficiaries. Equality, even in suffering, feels like a unique type of oppression for those who are used to being privileged. This is especially so for those people who feel like their lives have been a struggle.
To be “free, white, and 21” is still one hell of an advantage in the United States. Yet, in an era where globalization and neoliberalism have cut into the wages of whiteness, that deficit as compared to years and decades and centuries prior must feel devastating.
The picture must seem bleak as viewed by the members of the white working class who have succumbed to Donald Trump’s political hypnosis.
Members of the white working class (along with other parts of the Republican base) look around their communities (and to the right-wing news entertainment disinformation media) and see a dystopian or perhaps even apocalyptic America. They seek out safety and hope from its perils. Donald Trump understands this. His strategy and appeal is based on manipulating those sentiments.
Donald Trump’s supporters are more inclined toward authoritarianism than other Republican voters and the general public. From the outside looking in, working-class authoritarianism seems likes a dead end, an ideology that has been discredited by modern history. But if we keep the map turned upside down, its appeal for a certain subset of the population becomes much more understandable.
Donald Trump is adept at manipulating the death anxieties and fears of his public. Psychologists have offered the following framework for describing such fears:
Terror management theory assumes that humans have developed a suite of defense mechanisms to protect themselves from the existential anxiety they experience when they are cognizant of their mortality. Existential anxiety arises because individuals experience a profound motive, derived from evolutionary forces, to preserve their life. Therefore, an awareness of mortality could evoke existential anxiety, corresponding to a sense of futility, unless humans invoke a set of mechanisms that are intended to curb this awareness. Some of these mechanisms include a tendency to believe in an after life, to feel connected to a broader, enduring entity, or to distract attention from their mortality, reflecting a form of denial.
Writing elsewhere, I offered this comment on the implications of terror management theory for our understandings of right-wing politics:
Biology, socialization and cultural norms influence how a given person manages their fear of death. The death anxiety also interacts with one’s political values. In some ways, conservative authoritarians manage their death anxieties differently than people who possess a “liberal” or “progressive” political personality type. Conservative authoritarians display high levels of nationalism, social dominance behavior, intolerance, out-group anxiety and bigotry, racism, a need for binary “yes” or “no” answers, a yearning for epistemic closure, and higher levels of religiosity. Terror management theory suggests that conservative authoritarians are especially prone to loving “the flag, guns, god, and religion” because these symbols and institutions are fixed points that will, in theory, outlive a given person.
[Recent research has now documented the connection between death anxieties/”mortality salience” and support for Donald Trump.]
Moreover, Donald Trump promises his supporters vitality by proxy; sexual potency and masculinity via proximity; the permission to be violent and intolerant against their “enemies” (a rebuke of “political correctness”); and the hope of future financial success through hero worship of their charismatic leader.
These beliefs and impulses complement how conservative authoritarians prioritize safety, security, a binary worldview, and systems closure over freedom, creativity, and open-mindedness. Donald Trump offers his public the promise of simple answers to complex problems. He also gives them a feeling of safety and security. As such, Donald Trump is the “strict father” that conservative-authoritarians instinctively seek out. Sociolinguist and cognitive scientist George Lakoff explains this attraction:
In the strict father family, father knows best. He knows right from wrong and has the ultimate authority to make sure his children and his spouse do what he says, which is taken to be what is right. Many conservative spouses accept this worldview, uphold the father’s authority, and are strict in those realms of family life that they are in charge of. When his children disobey, it is his moral duty to punish them painfully enough so that, to avoid punishment, they will obey him (do what is right) and not just do what feels good. Through physical discipline they are supposed to become disciplined, internally strong, and able to prosper in the external world. What if they don’t prosper? That means they are not disciplined, and therefore cannot be moral, and so deserve their poverty. This reasoning shows up in conservative politics in which the poor are seen as lazy and undeserving, and the rich as deserving their wealth. Responsibility is thus taken to be personal responsibility not social responsibility. What you become is only up to you; society has nothing to do with it. You are responsible for yourself, not for others — who are responsible for themselves.
Lakoff continues:
The strict father logic extends further. The basic idea is that authority is justified by morality (the strict father version), and that, in a well-ordered world, there should be (and traditionally has been) a moral hierarchy in which those who have traditionally dominated should dominate. The hierarchy is: God above Man, Man above Nature, The Disciplined (Strong) above the Undisciplined (Weak), The Rich above the Poor, Employers above Employees, Adults above Children, Western culture above other cultures, Our Country above other countries. The hierarchy extends to: Men above women, Whites above Nonwhites, Christians above nonChristians, Straights above Gays.
We see these tendencies in most of the Republican presidential candidates, as well as in Trump, and on the whole, conservative policies flow from the strict father worldview and this hierarchy.
Family-based moral worldviews run deep. Since people want to see themselves as doing right not wrong, moral worldviews tend to be part of self-definition — who you most deeply are. And thus your moral worldview defines for you what the world should be like. When it isn’t that way, one can become frustrated and angry.
Donald Trump is a personality-based candidate. Exit polling and other data show that Trump’s actual policies are of little actual concern for his supporters. He is a focal point, symbol, and potential solution for a part of the (white) American public that feels left behind and obsolete. As the famous psychologist Wilhelm Reich observed about the allure of authoritarianism in Nazi Germany, Italy, Japan, and other countries, this segment of the public is infantile and does not want the true duty that comes with civic responsibility.
Writing at CounterPunch, Stuart Bramhall summarized Wilhelm Reich’s observation in the following way:
Reich argues that it’s typical in highly authoritarian “democracies” for the passive, non-voting population to constitute the majority. He also stresses, with examples from Germany, Japan, Italy and other totalitarian states that it’s is precisely this passive, non-voting majority that fascists and ultra-conservatives reach out to. He is very critical of the left for attempting to engage this demographic by addressing their appalling economic conditions – a strategy he insists is doomed to failure. In his view, what the left needs to grasp – and never does – is that owing to the social conditions they grow up in, this politically inactive majority are too caught up in their own internal struggles to think in terms of their economic needs. To put it crudely, status-related needs, such as getting laid, and driving a fast car and watching the Superbowl on a flat screen TV will always be a much higher priority than wages or working conditions.
Reich also makes the point that just because this group is “non-political” in no way means they are passive. To the contrary, he argues that their withdrawal from the political process is actually a highly active (though unconscious) defense against the social responsibility inherent in making political choices… Because the experience of being raised in excessively authoritarian family, educational and religious structures denies men and women any experience of the human organism’s natural capacity of self-regulation – they reach adulthood with no confidence in their ability to conduct their lives without external authority to guide and compel them.
The reactionary right knows exactly how to appeal to these unconscious fears and anxieties...
Reich obviously believes the progressive message – economic and political freedom – is more innately appealing to the working class than what fascism has to offer. His only complaint is the way the left tries to deliver it. What he advocates is that instead of educating low income workers about economic and political injustice, progressives ought to directly address the emotional baggage the working poor carry from authoritarian family and school experiences.
Donald Trump’s actual (and potential) base of support may be much larger than public opinion and other data suggest. In order to win, Trump’s opponents must begin to understand what his supporters want, not only as a matter of public policy. They also need to understand the fears and anxieties (both conscious and subconscious) that motivate their political behavior. Only then can “Trumpmania” be derailed, his supporters persuaded to vote for another candidate, or demobilized. Donald Trump is winning the Republican 2016 presidential primary because his opponents are throwing punches at the air and hitting little, if anything. Hopefully, Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders will turn the map upside down so as to not repeat the same mistake.
