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Out of nowhere [1]
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Date: 2022-09-06
The totalitarian dictator is like a foreign conqueror who comes from nowhere[.] — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, p. 417.
Trump fits this bill. Back in 2015, CNN had a segment on the GOP primary season. The description that accompanied the video teased the declaration that Donald Trump had “defied the critics in 2015 using fiery rhetoric to come out of nowhere to lead the Republican presidential field” (italics mine).
Again, Arendt:
If the totalitarian conqueror conducts himself everywhere as though he were at home, by the same token he must treat his own population as though he were a foreign conqueror. (p. 416)
It is no coincidence that Trump, and the GOP after him, launched this latest fusilade of rhetoric just after the raid at Mar-a-Lago.
Lo, he comes riding a pre-electric horse
Consider that some scholars of Adolf Hitler noted that, after he suffered a near life-threatening illness in his young adulthood, Hitler later psychologically linked his illness—brought about by an external threat—to a societal threat that he perceived as originating with Jewish people. He self-analogized his own somatic disease with that of an ‘invasion’ of Germany. As he saw himself as the embodiment of the state, this blurring of identity could be accomplished effortlessly.
Donald Trump, in the midst of his document disaster, has linked the FBI, who are his tormentors, with the IRS, who have the potential to torment the broader electorate, at least according to conservative talking points. By conjoining these two agencies, Trump associates his enemies with those of his followers, increasing their paranoia that their own private residences might face government intrusion. In so doing, Trump more tightly binds them to himself.
Jerrold M. Post, in his article “Narcissism and the Charismatic Leader-Follower Relationship” (1986) says this, referencing Wilfred Bion’s theory of groups:
The dependency group turns to an omnipotent leader for security. Acting as if they do not have independent minds of their own, the members blindly seek directions and follow orders unquestioningly. They tend to idealize and place the leader on a pedestal, but when the leader fails to meet the standards of omnipotence and omniscience, after a period of denial, anger and disappointment result. In the pairing group, the members act as if the goal of the group is to bring forth a Messiah, someone who will save them. There is an air of optimism and hope that a new world is around the corner. And the fight-flight group organizes itself in relationship to a perceived outside threat. The group itself is idealized as part of a polarizing mechanism, while the outside group is regularly seen as malevolent in motivation. The threatening outside world is at once a threat to the existence of the group, and also the justification for its existence. (pp. 684-685, paragraphs added)
Richard Ulner and D. Wilfred Abse (1983) speak to a different yet related aspect of this theme in their article “The Group Psychology of Mass Madness: Jonestown.” Does this lend insight to the fascist slogan of “invasion”?
[W]e have attempted to illuminate the often hidden and unseen unconscious dynamics at work in the appeal, formation, and structure, and functioning of a charismatically led mass movement such as Jim Jones’ People’s Temple. In applying our theoretical model to Jones and his followers, we sought to explain the origins and power of Jones’ invasion into and eventual takeover of the minds and lives of the members of his group. (p. 658, my italics)
The invasion has commenced but it is psychological, taking place entirely in the setting of the followers’ own minds—emanating from the movement’s leader. Yet that experience/sensation/idea is projected upon a designated outside target already marked for group comtempt.
The perceived sensation of threat of invasion from outside of these followers is real. Except, in this case, it’s an analogy. The sensation/experience is analogized by the sufferers, not as transduced through the manipulations of the leader who “conquers from nowhere,” but rather as originating from a pre-identified and clearly demarcated despised outgroup. It’s a transfer so automatic that the sufferers, due to the lacunae in their self-perceptions, their self-deception, that they fail to track the true source of the danger.
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