The Authoritarian Personality

 Now that the worst has happened and Donald Trump is definitely coming back to the White House, we are all experiencing the temptation to try to normalize him. It's hard to do otherwise. We have to get on with our lives, after all. Most of us don't plan to leave our native country just because a bully wins an election and threatens us. So we look desperately for any signs that might tell us: "meh, this will be survivable. He won't be so bad—or at least, no worse than he was during his first term." 

A New York Times article expresses a hope that's been on many of our minds: maybe Trump will somehow mellow out. Now that he's won the ultimate prize he sought, maybe he won't be so anxious to follow through on his threats of revenge. Maybe he will just bask in being the center of attention and forget his worst plans. "After all," Peter Baker writes, "he has essentially gotten everything he wants." But he adds: this take is almost certainly underestimating the depths of Trump's rage and resentment.

One of the absolute worst political takes I heard from the campaign trail was from someone who suggested that it was perhaps better for the country that Trump win the election—not because he thought Trump was a remotely good leader or candidate; but rather because Trump would almost certainly try to stage another coup if he lost, whereas he might chill out if he got what he wants. In other words: give the baby his bottle. Let him hold our democracy hostage and reward him for blackmailing the nation.

I can't endorse this specious "take whatever you want; just don't hurt us" reasoning on moral grounds; but I also think it's pathetically misguided for exactly the reason Baker notes: this hope—that Trump might somehow be appeased—fatally misreads his character. 

Specifically, it overlooks the pattern of behavior characteristic of the "authoritarian personality," as Erich Fromm describes it. I've been reading Fromm's Escape from Freedom this week. How could I not? The book should practically be required for anyone hoping to survive another four years (or longer) of Trump. It is one of the most definitive accounts ever published of the underlying psychology of fascism: why do so many people vote for self-interested demagogues who want to take away their freedoms? 

Fromm's fundamental contention is that the fascist demagogue and his followers share a basic personality type: the "authoritarian personality." And while they may appear to play opposite roles—the follower and the followed, the mass and the leader—in reality, they are locked in a dialectic in which any of them could play either part. Sadism and masochism in politics are two sides of the same coin, in Fromm's telling: the urge to dominate and submit are part and parcel of one underlying impulse. 

Fromm has an excellent eye throughout the book for these kinds of dialectical paradoxes: the way in which the human personality manages to accommodate seeming contradictions. If you were looking for the underlying theoretical underpinnings for how it can be true, as RuPaul says, that "if you don't love yourself, how the hell you gonna love someone else?"—you can find it in a passage in Fromm. 

Likewise, if you've ever wondered of certain darkly pessimistic religious movements—like Calvinism—how they can reconcile the apparent "humility" of their groveling conviction of sin with their contempt and self-righteousness toward others, Fromm explains this too. A character in a Camus novel once said: "the more I accuse myself, the more I have the right to judge you" (as quoted by Robert Jay Lifton). Fromm tells us: this is no paradox; it is part of the inherent dialectic of a certain religious mentality. 

In much the same way, Fromm tells us, we should not be surprised at the fact that the authoritarian personality manages to combine two seemingly incompatible elements: on the one hand, the will to dominate; on the other, a blind urge to submit to the rule of an all-powerful leader; to submerge one's individuality by surrendering to some absolute despot. These two urges are always present in a certain type of person—one who grew up in an authoritarian family structure (which Trump certainly did). 

This profound "ambivalence" about authority, as Fromm calls it, helps us explain a great deal of the otherwise confounding aspects of the MAGA movement. After all, it constantly seems to combine a rage against authority with an urge to submit to it. The movement is full of the "rebellious" and "defiant" aspects of fascism that Fromm describes: there is the constant urge to overturn all expertise, to defy all trusted sources of information, to ignore all advice from scientists and administrators. 

At the same time, the MAGA movement also has this mad urge to submit itself utterly to the will of one man—Trump—and to fulfill his every personal demand. What gives? How do they reconcile the contradiction? 

Fromm explains: it starts in childhood. You grow up with an authoritarian father, and you develop from an early age a deep well of resentment against the father's control. But at the same time, there is a profound underlying urge to submit to the father, and earn his love by blindly obeying all of his instructions. 

Trump clearly has this same dynamic with his followers: the sadistic contempt mixed with the need for their adulation. 

But does this mean that Trump can in fact be appeased? Can we just give the baby his bottle and hope he leaves us alone? Now that he's "gotten everything he wants," as Baker puts it, will he finally mellow out and stop trying to destroy democracy? 

Unfortunately, no. Fromm explains: a core part of the authoritarian personality is that the submission and weakness of others only strengthens its will to dominate; whereas the brutal strength of others arouses its admiration. This obviously explains a great deal about Trump. The only people he admires and speaks of fondly are despots and dictators—Putin, Xi, and Kim Jong Un. Anyone who is in a weak or vulnerable position arouses his boundless hatred and rage. 

Fromm writes of the authoritarian personality: "His love, admiration and readiness for submission are automatically aroused by power." Hence: Trump's love of Putin and other tyrants, and his urge to bend the knee to them in foreign politics and simply give them whatever they ask for (to "let Putin do whatever the hell he wants" to NATO countries, as Trump notoriously put it). 

At the same time, Fromm writes: "powerless people or institutions automatically arouse his contempt. The very sight of a powerless person makes him want to attack, dominate, humiliate him. Whereas a different kind of character is appalled by the idea of attacking one who is helpless, the authoritarian character feels the more aroused the more helpless he has become." 

That description, which might once have struck us as polemical (how could anyone actually be that warped? we might have said), today just reads as a straightforward description of Trump's behavior. As soon as the man is in the presence of anyone who has suffered misfortune, it sends him into an abject frenzy to humiliate and degrade them even further. The presence of a person with a disability or a foreign-sounding name arouses all his junior high bullying instincts. 

Or how about the mere mention of soldiers who died or were captured in war? Every time they come up, Trump simply can't help himself: he feels an uncontrollable need to dance on their grave, to call them "losers and suckers;" to mock Medal of Honor winners for being shot; to say—of people like John McCain, who were imprisoned and tortured for their country—"I like the ones who didn't get captured." 

Tucker Carlson is another figure in Trump's orbit who taps into this same sado-masochistic mentality very well. To the discomfort of millions, Carlson publicly indulged in a sadistic fantasy from the stage of a Trump rally not so long ago—delectating over the image of the United States as a disobedient teenager who was about to get a "spanking" from "Daddy" Trump. 

At the same time as he fantasizes about breaking the resistance of the American public, however, Tucker himself likes nothing better than to feel the boot of Putin's authoritarian regime on his neck. The sadism and the masochism go hand in hand. Tucker longs for "Daddy" Putin to teach him a lesson. The same goes for Trump.

This dynamic shows very well why the "appeasement" strategy will never work with Trump (just as it didn't work with the fascists of yesteryear). Submitting to Trump will not earn his clemency. To the contrary, it will only further arouse his rage. If liberal democratic institutions bow down to him, it will not make him think twice about prosecuting his efforts to subvert our country's political norms—it will, to the contrary, convince him to go even further. 

Fromm writes: "While the Republican government thought they could 'appease' the Nazis by treating them leniently, they not only failed to appease them but aroused their hatred by the very lack of power and firmness they showed. Hitler hated the Weimar Republic because it was weak[.]"

Well then—so much for the theory that Trump can be bought off. Handing him our democracy and its institutions will not satisfy him. It will only make him hate us more. 

One more reason not to give in to extortion!