Minding Politics is a blog that moves beyond the headlines and glib punditry to identify and explain the psychological dynamics at play in politics and culture. Democratic self-governance is under profound threat – not just from actual and aspiring dictators but from a growing plurality of citizens all too willing to forsake their freedoms. This blog will give particular attention to political tribalism, which threatens to cleave the country to a degree not seen since our nation’s first civil war.
My thinking draws from many sources –the scholarship and insights of social psychologists, anthropologists, historians, psychoanalysts, neuroscientists, and the many intrepid journalists increasingly threatened by authoritarians who have good reasons to fear truthful reporting. And, of course, I’ll also be drawing on my own experiences, visions, and values.
Among the topics this blog will address is the malignant mindset animating MAGA neo-fascism's zealous partisans. Donald Trump’s fortunes may fade in the coming months and years, but Trumpism will likely remain ascendant. Of course, xenophobic bigotry, violent aversion to democracy, political cults of personality, and indifference to facts are global phenomena and not limited to the US. But America plays a prominent role, even abroad.
In December 2022, it was revealed that a right-wing coup attempt in Germany was, to some extent, modeled on America’s own post-election insurrection, which was planned and executed by the paramilitary wing of the MAGA movement. That German episode was not the first time that the actions of American anti-democratic and white supremacist groups became the template for similar efforts worldwide.
In the 1930s, German fascists looked to America as a blueprint for implementing race-based tribalism. Hitler so admired Jim Crow laws in the US, especially concerning citizenship and antimiscegenation, that he sent a team of legal scholars to America to study its statutory framework for addressing the problem of "racial pollution." While the Nazis initially found a lot to love and incorporate into the Nuremberg Laws, they ironically rejected much of the American model as too harsh.
Many pundits have decried the “extremism” of Trumpian lynch-mob politics. On the contrary, it is clearly contiguous with the long history of American conservatism going back at least to the antebellum South. From this perspective, the worldview and actions of the GOP's MAGA faction are the logical outcomes of the consistently expressed right-wing ethos of domination, xenophobia, and the "freedom" to harm.
Although there is much handwringing about the toxic synergy of authoritarian political forces, white identity politics, and the embrace of post-factuality, there is insufficient understanding of the links between them. Chief among those links is tribal psychology, which is the focus of my recently completed book, Hatreds We Love: The Psychology of Political Tribalism in Post-Truth America. Nearly every political pundit decries political tribalism. Yet, public discussion rarely addresses more than its most disturbing symptoms. My new book speaks to the causes and underlying dynamics of what is now one of the greatest threats to the viability of what remains of American democracy and global democratic governance more broadly.
Zealous in-group loyalty is such a powerful driver of political behavior that people will readily abandon their values and long-held moral principles. They will even sacrifice their lives and those of their loved ones to avoid tribal exile – a fate more dreaded by some citizens than death itself. Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s book, Strongmen, and her blog, Lucid, have given us powerful insights into the common features of authoritarian leadership. Minding Politics complements her work by illuminating the psychology of followership.
As television, film, art, fashion, and literature are central to shaping and reflecting our political worldview, this blog will direct its gaze at culture as well as politics. Television is especially effective as a Trojan horse that delivers covert ideology along with its overt “entertainment.”
That is why my first series of posts will be a multi-part analysis of the wildly popular contemporary Western soap opera Yellowstone. It is the most-watched TV show in the country, especially in red states. As a person of the Left, it can make me cringe but also keep me profoundly engaged. At times, this dreamscape of cowboy conservatism is one from which I want to wake up but one that also captivates me. Rather than simply sneer at its right-wing assumptions from the outside, I aim to understand Yellowstone’s appeal. To do that, I enter the world in which those assumptions make sense.
I hope this blog will offer readers ideas they can readily use to craft new, more effective forms of pro-democratic political action. Interpreting the world is a vital first step toward that end. But as Karl Marx famously argued, the point is to change it.
ABOUT ME
I am an author, political psychologist, psychoanalyst, and former psychology professor in the School of Humanities at New College of California, where I taught courses in political psychology, cross-cultural psychology, and psychohistory. My doctorate is from the Wright Institute in Berkeley, California. I completed my psychoanalytic training at the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California and am a licensed psychologist in California and Oregon.
From the beginning of my career as a psychologist and writer, I have been ceaselessly plagued by the question of what drives people to support autocrats and persecute out-groups, even at the cost of their own material self-interest. My history of publications reflects those long-standing concerns. For several years, the political psychology blog I wrote for HuffPost took up those questions from various perspectives.
My last book, The Wimp Factor: Gender Gaps, Holy Wars, and the Politics of Anxious Masculinity, was an in-depth study of the role of femiphobia, male fear of the feminine, in men's political behavior. Though published in 2005, it remains in print, enjoys an enthusiastic readership among the general public, and still finds a place on syllabi nationwide. In my just-completed book, Hatreds We Love: The Psychology of Political Tribalism in Post-Truth America, I examine an often-overlooked motive that sometimes can be more compelling than life itself – group membership.