Psychology - the "Charismatic leader-follower relationship" & the Toxic Triangle

Trump mesmerizes his followers who will deny the evidence of their own eyes

Washington DC 6 June 2022

On this anniversary of D-Day, we reflect on countless American servicemen storming the beaches of Normandy to start the long, slow, door-to-door slog to root-out fascism from Western Europe. In 1945, being an anti-fascist was a matter of pride and unquestioned at home. The mothers of America accepted the necessity that their blue star sons were risking a gold star “to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime” (Winston Churchill). Today, being an anti-fascist is to hate “Patriots”. It means you are a Communist intent on destroying America. You are so evil, such a ‘traitor’, that you have to be stopped at all costs.

D-Day is not the only relevant anniversary in America this month. It has been 50 years since the June 17 burglary at the Watergate. Thanks to the painstaking work of journalists backed by owners who undertook risks that might have destroyed their personal assets, Congress held hearings to investigate the unusual activities of the Nixon Administration.

Donald Trump and Richard Nixon shake hands at a gala in Houston in 1989. After the 2020 election Trump would embrace, with shattering consequences, one of Nixon’s adages: “A man is not finished when he is defeated. He is finished when he quits.” (Richard Carson/Houston Chronicle/AP)

Skeptical at first, the nation eventually agreed that crimes had been committed and that there should be consequences. It was not a given. It took years of work. However, by the time President Ford pardoned Nixon, the majority were not at all happy with the pardon, whatever its merit. This time around, despite the years long painstaking work, consensus will be wanting for two reasons. One, an entire media eco-system that did not existing in 1972 will flat out lie about the evidence, testimony and conclusions and counter-spin everything. Two, because the identity of millions of American’s are so entwined with their Leader, accepting he might be wrong would be admitting that they too are wrong. That is not going to happen.

This week the J6C will start hearings that have been advertised as ready to “blow the lid off the House”. This would no doubt be true in a different era. But that is simply not going to happen in 2022. There will be cameras filming the event. But that does not matter. The followers already know that 'what you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening'. Only the Leader knows what is happening and he will be telling you what to think at every turn. His well worn response to any evidence of his wrong doing is simple - it is all a communists hoax seeking to destroy America. His followers will believe this regardless of what is said in a committee run by ‘traitors’ and ‘enemies’, as J6C members will undoubtedly be painted in fellow traveller media. [Not only did Fox ‘personalities’ openly campaign with the Leader, the text message traffic between scores of ‘fair and balanced journalists’ and the Administration prove beyond any doubt that Fox was an integral member of the Administration.]

Thanks to the algorithm, truth and balanced discussion do not rate in Social Media. Only outrage. So the facts and evidence presented by the committee will be drowned out. The best example of this phenomena is the popularity of Alex Jones. Without a cent of advertising, during the 2020 election You Tube recommended Alex Jones’ Infowars site “15 billion times” to people who showed little to no extremist leanings. It did so because research had shown that there was a high chance such people would be outraged by the lies and propaganda on the site, stay, and get engaged with the content (Roger McNamee, Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe, 2019, p. 245). Algorithms designed to create engagement are politically agnostic. They are simply a commercial imperative with shocking political and mass psychological implications.

Psychologists have been warning for years that a unique set of circumstances known as the "toxic triangle" - destructive leaders, susceptible followers (magnified by the algorithm) and conducive environments (isolation due to covid/economic/social trauma) - has created a susceptibility to mass manipulation via the “charismatic leader-follower relationship”. Former CIA psychologist, Jerrold Post, explains the phenomenon in Dangerous Charisma: The Political Psychology of Donald Trump and His Followers, Pegasus, 2019. His explanation recalls the toxic triangle. 

At moments of societal crisis, otherwise mature and psychologically healthy individuals may temporarily come to feel overwhelmed and in need of a strong and self-assured leader… For isolated individuals with damaged self-esteem and weak ego boundaries, the sense of "we" creates and imparts a coherent sense of identity. For such individuals, the self and the "we" are fused so that the self is experienced as the relationship. This leads to a tendency to merge themselves with the group. This helps explain the startling degree to which individuals can suspend their own standards and judgment and participate in the most violent of actions when under the sway of the psychology of the group, if persuaded that the cause of the group is served by their actions. Even that most basic of human needs-the drive for self-preservation can be suspended in the service of the group.

If you have ever wondered why Trump is so popular among religious people the “charismatic leader-follower relationship” explains why. Trump’s power to condemn and humiliate is aspirational to the downtrodden who have been mistreated by the system, in some cases, for generations. They live in grievance and dream of lashing out violently against those who have wronged them. His grievances, victimhood and corresponding rage is highly relatable - indeed admirable. He is a fellow sufferer of injustice who had the wherewithal and gumption to resist. They see him as fighting back against the odds, clawing his way to power to become their protector - like a father or a saint. When he attacks public figures, he gives voice to his followers who feel powerless against symbols of authority, be it government, corporations, or the media. Their attachment goes way beyond admiration. They adore him. They see Trump as their personal savior. He becomes fundamental to, and entwined, with their identities. This is why they cannot accept any criticism of their savior because it would be accepting criticism of themselves. This explains how a billionaire can be wholly adored as an authentic champion of his class enemies (while enacting cuts to taxes and services that completely undermine their interests).

It also explains how a thrice married adulterer, admitted serial sexual predator with incest leanings*, who is unable to name a single passage from their holy book, is looked upon as a Christ-like figure by evangelical christians. They know his history. They know his support of their political causes is transactional and transparently fake. They don't care. They support him for a much deeper reason. They see Christ’s persecution and resurrection made flesh in him. They see their own redemption and their best future self in him. Evangelical, Trump and Christ - becomes the “Trinity” of their identity formation and maintenance.

[*His sexual problems were never concealed. He and his second wife were interviewed not long after Tiffany was born and was asked who the infant most resembled. “She’s a very beautiful baby,” Trump replied. “She’s got Marla’s legs. We don’t know whether or not”—he put his hands to his chest to indicate breasts—”she’s got this part yet, but time will tell.” When Ivanka was 16 he said “Don’t you think my daughter’s hot? She’s hot, right?”. When she was 20 he said it was OK to describe her as “a piece of ass”, and that, “I've said if Ivanka weren't my daughter, perhaps I'd be dating her." In a joint interview when they were asked what they most had in common with one another she replied “real estate and golf”, he replied “sex”. If these were things he was willing to say on national television to female interviewers in the presence of Ivanka, one can only imagine what was happening in private.]

Facts, policies, logic, the reality based world - they do not stand a chance against emotion. When a persons thought processes are dominated by emotion - they see only what they want to see and believe only what they want to believe, so long as it supports their idea of themselves. It is the basis of faith - which by definition does not require proof. In fact, if faith is challenged by proof it only hardens the emotional self’s beliefs no matter how kooky they might be (QAnon). It can be a very hard spiral to break. This is why appeals to logic supported by evidence do not work. 

Authoritarians don’t just want to control the government, the economy and the military. They want to control the truth. Truth has its own authority, an authority a strongman must defeat at least in the minds of his followers, convincing them to abandon fact, the standards of verification, critical thinking and all the rest. Such people become a standing army awaiting their next command. Writes Rebecca Solnit

For healthy functional people this is particularly hard to understand because its so illogical. That’s the point - emotion driven identity formation (and maintenance) negates logic - that’s why it is so powerful and potentially dangerous in a mass political setting. One of the permutations of identity maintenance is radicalization. This is particularly true in the context of the toxic triangle.    

Margaret Singer, a clinical psychologist who studied cults, noted that among the ways cults succeeded was by creating “a closed system of logic” and belief.

That, of course, has always been essential to Trump’s messaging. Either you love Trump or you are an enemy of the people. Either you want to Make America Great Again or you hate America. Either you accept that Trump is always right, even when he contradicts your deepest values — or when he contradicts himself — or you are deficient in loyalty to him and hatred of his enemies. Either you stick with Trump or you’re a Republican in name only, a RINO, and we know what Trump loyalists like Missouri’s Eric Greitens plan to do with RINOs.

The merging of faith based personal identity, divorced from reason, contingent upon a destructive leader, represents the ultimate political danger in any society.

The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist. ― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

In such a society, control of information is critically important. Curiosity, questioning, and doubt, must be kept at bay by constant repetition of the core message. “The aim of totalitarian education (and propaganda) has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any.” (Arendt p.468)

Orwell understood this

“The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

Psychologists suggest that it is possible to break the emotional-identity spell. In short, there has to be public consequences for bad actions. The problem is the longer such consequences take to be delivered, the more hardened the leader and followers are to accepting them and reassessing their identities. Writing in relationship to one of his impeachments trials, but certainly relevant to the J6C committee, an international consortium of psychologists assessed that

For dangerous individuals, setting limits from the outside, such as through conviction and prosecution, are often critical to containing the dangers.  Without limits, copycat acts of violence and lawlessness will proliferate throughout the culture in ways that his individual criminal acts could never possibly achieve on their own.  A failure to convict will have a devastating effect on the public’s mental health.  The country is already traumatized from four years of normalizing, legitimizing, and even glorifying deadly violence, abusive behavior, and severe pathology.

It is ironic that the very mechanism established to deliver a ‘wake up call’ will likely not reach its intended audience because they have been inoculated from the truth by prior attempts to correct the tragic trajectory upon which the country is embarked. It feels like the system has become so entrenched, self-protective and self-perpetuating that nothing will get through.

D-Day reminds us of the exceptional costs when democracy fails.  This year holds the burden of another portentous anniversary. It was not coincidental that German sociologist Max Weber coined the term “charismatic leader” in 1922. That was the year of Mussolini’s march on Rome.