Though the US election is upon us, it feels like the campaigning has been going on for ages. And what an election it has been! Donald Trump stumped President Joe Biden in the first debate, setting the stage for Vice President Kamala Harris to stand in the incumbent’s place. In spite of Trump’s claims that Harris is “mentally incompetent”, he tanked in the first of two further scheduled debates. Like many a bully after someone stands up to them, he refused any more debates, cancelled a bunch of interviews, and retreated into the safety of his Maga world.
Since then, he’s taken to dropping falsehoods so outrageous that even friendly Fox hosts are calling him out, rambling incoherently when he has the freedom to do so, and doing really weird stuff on stage. Like swaying to his own musical playlist for almost 40 minutes, and talking about raining vengeance on “the enemy within” (Democrats).
I belabour this because it has set up a scenario that has left Democrats and Republican Never-Trumpers nervous wrecks. Specifically, polls indicate that after an initial surge in support for Harris, the race soon rebalanced on a knife edge.
To understand why, let’s look at some of the psychology at play. First up, the US election wouldn’t be close at all if we were the ones deciding. In my own large-scale surveys of New Zealanders, fewer than 1 in 10 of us preferred Trump over Biden.
Those who did prefer Trump were notably more socially conservative, but no more economically conservative, than Harris supporters. Yes, it’s the culture wars – anti-transgender rights, Covid scepticism, and the part of immigration fear that has more to do with fear of people who look different contaminating predominant values and traditions than fear of any impact on the economy.
But that’s not enough to explain the knife edge. In this country, it’s people who like New Zealand First and Te Pāti Māori, and who dislike Labour and the Greens, who favour Trump. Those in this camp fit the profile of people who reject the existing New Zealand order, and don’t trust the establishment.
A few weeks ago, I heard an interview with anti-Trumper George Conway, who has set up his own “Anti-Psychopath” political action committee and podcast. As that hints, he argues that Trump is a malignantly narcissistic psychopath. In the interview, he credits neo-Freudian psychoanalyst Eric Fromm with coining the term “malignant narcissist” and goes on to explain how Fromm links this personality constellation with authoritarianism and fascism.
What Conway didn’t get into in the interview was what Fromm said about people who follow authoritarians. He argued that we live in a world where we have existentially frightening freedoms and some of us retreat into authoritarianism in the face of this threat. We gravitate towards authoritarian leadership to protect us and give us an enemy to replace our freedom.
Sure enough, in my surveys I find that people who endorse right-wing authoritarian submission and aggression prefer Trump. But I also find, absolutely intriguingly, that left-wing authoritarianism also predicts preference for Trump. How can that be?
I’ve already told you the answer because we see it in how our own political leanings predict preference for Trump. It’s the combination of need for an (apparently) strongman leader to protect us from the social ills some of us see as the downside of our freedoms, and also disenfranchisement with the political status quo and its actors, that drives a significant chunk of Maga appeal.
Fromm argues authoritarianism isn’t the only escape from freedom. He says we can embrace “positive freedom” and find ways to sublimate our unconscious fears in ways that benefit, rather than harm. Does that make Harris the positive freedom candidate? 90% of us hope she is.
