It’s the Fascism, Stupid

On November 5^th, MAGA voters knew what they were getting, but some pretended they didn’t want it – the violent purging of the racially “impure,” the control and punishment of women, a leader that would relieve them of freedom’s burdens, and a ruthless, sadistic, and unrestrained daddy who “alone can fix it.”  For the pro-Trump majority of the voting electorate, those were the features of their chosen candidate, not bugs. The claim that inflation and the well-heeled Democrats who didn’t care about their woes made them do it is a story they tell themselves, pollsters, and self-flagellating liberals.

That’s as persuasive as the good Germans of the Nazi era who said they had no idea that the Holocaust was unfolding and had no hostility toward Jews (except, of course, for those conniving Jewish bankers who ran the world). They just wanted to lower the price of bread, create more living space, and make Germany great again. Before digging into the deeper motives of the MAGA majority, the economic justification must be debunked.

The Public Opinion Reality Belied by the Economic Fable

Among the mainstream punditocracy, there has been an immediate rush to present Trump’s reelection as a rational economic choice. Because rent and the price of food have gone up, the argument goes, people overlooked Trump’s authoritarianism, promises of violent retribution, racism, hatred of women, and the mass death and economic loss from climate catastrophes he vowed to worsen with an orgy of “drill, baby, drill.”

We are also supposed to accept at face value that Trump voters took no notice that while Harris had specific plans to address the economic suffering and anxieties of working and middle-class Americans, Trump had no plan other than removing even more of the tax burden on the wealthy.

In their desperation to not problematize voters themselves, after the election, many journalists exhibited the same hysterical blindness regarding the Trump campaign’s promise to add a tax on to all imported goods through tariffs and jack up produce costs by deporting the workforce that picks it, reduce social security benefits, reduce access to Medicare, and increase drug prices. These proposed measures were not whispered but loudly proclaimed. And still, we are supposed to believe that a majority of Americans elected a fascist because of economic anxiety. This is not to deny that inflation, as a contradictory and rationalizing story, played a role in how voters thought and talked about their choices at the ballot box.

Some economists have noted the public opinion disparity between voters’ negative view of the economy as a whole and their more positive perception of their personal financial circumstances. Many voters think the economy is terrible, but their local one is good. The unsurprising source of that disparity is right-wing disinformation about the Biden economy that proliferated on social media and propaganda outlets like Fox. One study found that even the perception of one’s personal economic situation can be shaped by one’s information sources. Those whose understanding of the world came from conservative networks and publications thought they were paying more for food and gas.

One TikTok video with 2.3 million views falsely claimed that the US was in a “silent depression,” Americans had historically low purchasing power, and inflation-adjusted wages were lower than ever. Evolution has primed us to take seriously threat information offered by our fellow tribe members, whether true or not. Our built-in conformity bias primes us to repeat lies even if we don't believe them.

Of course, two different things can be true here. We can genuinely perceive the economy as bad even if our own circumstances are fine. And we can be motivated to camouflage our less noble motives (racism, xenophobia, misogyny, and sadism) to ourselves and others with a more socially acceptable story – that our votes are simply about the economy. While many voters have been happy to tell the latter story and journalists have been happy to repeat it, it is only in the actions and rhetoric of MAGA that the former motives are revealed.

Moreover, a vast body of social science research, summarized in my book, shows that conservatives tend to score higher on measures of disgust sensitivity, xenophobia, ingroup loyalty, deference to traditional authority, need for sanctity, and preoccupation with purity. They also have what psychologists call a social dominance orientation—a preference for hierarchical rather than egalitarian relationships between groups. It is a way of viewing other groups that makes it acceptable to steal the resources, labor, and bodies of groups deemed below yours in a value hierarchy. While these traits do not make the choice of a fascist candidate inevitable, they are psychological predispositions that render it more likely.

Instead of a coherent and plausible economic plan, what MAGA did offer ordinary citizens was a simple narrative about who was responsible for their plight (immigrants and the Democrats who let them in) and what to do about it (deport them and jail the leader’s critics). It wasn’t just that Trump’s economic fable was so persuasive. Voters latched on to it because they needed a psychological cover story to justify acting on their less savory impulses, impulses Trump modeled and sanctified.

As I document in my book, the reality behind Trump’s camera obscura economic fiction is that those who live in GOP-dominated counties are more likely to be poor, sick, and have truncated life spans. It turns out that the most reliable path to poverty is electing Republican officeholders.

Just Wait Until Your Father Gets Home

My book examines the trauma bond that cements Trump’s supporters to him. In that form of malignant attachment, dependency and fear are fused, not unlike the grip held by a mob boss, perpetrators of domestic violence, cult leaders, and many autocrats. The leader is both the protector and the persecutor. If you, my dear readers, think that might be an interpretive overreach, I offer a recent Tucker Carlson riff for your consideration. He clearly has his finger on the pulse of MAGA’s authoritarian masochism he helped to cultivate.

At a Trump rally in October, Carlson compared Americans to “a 2-year-old smearing the contents of his diapers on the wall” and “a hormone-addled 15-year-old girl slamming the door and giving you the finger.” He continues, “Dad comes home and he’s pissed. He’s not vengeful; he loves his children. Disobedient as they may be, he loves them because they’re his children. … And when Dad gets home, you know what he says? You’ve been a bad girl. You’ve been a bad little girl, and you’re getting a vigorous spanking right now. And no, it’s not going to hurt me more than it hurts you. No, it’s not. I’m not going to lie. It’s going to hurt you a lot more than it hurts me. And you earned this. You’re getting a vigorous spanking because you’ve been a bad girl, and it has to be this way.” When Trump eventually arrived at the podium, his ecstatic audience shouted, “Daddy’s home!” And soon, he will be in the White House, paddle at the ready.

Unfortunately, this is not a kink unique to MAGA but is, in part, the culmination of over fifty years of “biblical parenting,” which has been documented by Talia Lavin in her new book, Wild Faith. Research psychologists Michael A. Milburn and Sheree D. Conrad showed that conservatives are not only fond of inflicting corporal punishment on children but spanking itself helps to create conservatives. The role of the authoritarian family as a contributor to widespread support for fascism was identified by Wilhelm Reich as far back as the 1930s. Cognitive linguist George Lakoff, especially in his work on the power of metaphors, demonstrated how conservatives have long conceived of government as a harsh and punitive father.

White Supremacists of Color

While white men may have been the most avid converts to the Trump personality cult, ethnic minorities and white women also found a way to embrace the leader of the new “unified Reich.” Like the Nazi designation of the Japanese as “honorary Aryans,” a plurality of voters of color seemed to be moved by the promise that Trump would elevate them to honorary white status, which meant having their own group of devalued others to dominate and shame. They were presented with the opportunity to disidentify with and punish immigrants. They could now feel disgust for others instead of being the object of it. For non-white men in particular, the pitch was that he would make them gender tops as consolation for being racial and class bottoms.

Trad Wives and Ladies Against Women

For some white women, being protected, whether they liked it or not, was an offer they couldn’t refuse. Apparently, a future of being broodmares for the state did not trouble them. According to the explainers of the political punditocracy, the eagerness of so many American women to drink the Kool-Aide of MAGA’s Kinder, Küche, Kirche (Children, Kitchen, Church) was the price of eggs.

Center-Left Enabling and Normalization of MAGA Fascism

Even though the New York Times expressed skepticism about the president-elect’s economic plans, its reporter discussed the nostalgic rewriting of the first Trump economy as if it were a mindset of reasoned self-interest. As researchers like Liliana Mason have shown, Republicans hated the “Obama economy” until two weeks after the beginning of Trump’s first term, when it was called the “Trump economy.”

Liberals persistently referred to Trump as a “strongman” as if that were a criticism. Instead, it gifted him with the image he so desperately sought to present. In a New York Times article, voters cited that persona as a motive for electing him.

Of course, the feckless Merrick Garland was a primary culprit in making Trump seem invincible. His invertebrate timidity led him to pursue legal accountability far too late to have any impact other than making Trump look untouchable.

The November 7, 2024, headline in the Times was another example of rhetorical complicity with MAGA fascist framing, “Populist Revolt Against Elite’s Vision of the US.” That is, of course, precisely how the global billionaire class would like to present itself and its new oligarch president-elect – as scrappy warriors for the little guys against the female-dominated, educated, and multicultural deep-state.

The Fascist State of Mind and Fascist Manhood

To fulfill the vision of a fascist state, it helps if a significant plurality of the population has a “fascist state of mind.” Psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas coined that term to denote a mind intolerant of opposition. It is a mentality that clings to certainty – religious, ideological, and moral – to ward off conflictual emotions and complex thoughts. It constructs a rigid and monolithic sense of self comprised of black-and-white categories into which the ambiguities of sexuality, gender, race, and identity are crammed. Such a mind erects walls to keep out the alien, the strange, and the unfamiliar.

Purging the mind of dissident feelings and ideas makes it much easier to impose censorship on others. Annihilating unwanted parts of the self is a good rehearsal for eradicating tribal outsiders in the social and political world.

One iteration of this authoritarian state of mind is something we could call fascist masculinity. For men, dominating, subduing, and banishing the aspects of oneself construed as feminine, such as empathy, tenderness, compassion, and caretaking, is perfectly congruent with the subjugation of women in the world. If those traits are devalued in oneself, it only makes sense to devalue those who seem to be the “natural” embodiment of such qualities.

The notion of manhood as dominant, hard, straight, high status, and purged of tender “feminine” traits is what researchers label “hegemonic.” It is held by women and men and is more predictive of support for Trump than partisan identity, sex, race, or education. It is also highly associated with racism, homophobia, sexism, and anti-immigrant attitudes. This species of masculinity has long been a feature of fascist identity, from Mussolini’s army of thugs to the proto-Nazi soldiers of Weimar Germany who would go on to serve Hitler. As we can all observe, it is now a central feature of the men who comprise the MAGA manosphere and the trad wives who revere them.

Conclusion

I have listed a mere handful of the qualities that have enabled the Trump base to be the fascist followers he needs. Others could be added. Nevertheless, it is clear that justifying economic motives aside, they elected him because he was the fascist leader they craved. They longed for him because of the combination of who they already were and who he and others helped them become.

A character in Walt Kelly’s comic, Pogo, once famously proclaimed, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” While the verb and pronoun may not agree, it is hard to argue with the observation.

This analysis is not a rebuke of MAGA voters, although I do feel a barely containable fury that their self-defeating zealotry has the potential to take us all down. My aim is for those of us in the pro-democracy coalition to understand what we are dealing with. Yes, Trump supporters are hobbled by their cult membership, but liberal compassion for their plight alone will not be an effective strategy for ending the reign of a corrupt and psychopathic oligarch.

Be this guy.