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Zugzwang, the emotion war, and how the GOP is equal parts cult, gang, and terrorism ring [1]
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Date: 2022-09-23
(This is lengthy. I’ve added emphases to make the diary easier to skim.)
A bit back, G2Geek happened across one of my diaries and remarked upon what he termed the emotion war. Paraphrasing, he explained that in a conflict (like that of, say, the Cold War), whether or not hot weapons are exchanged, there also exists the emotion war. Momentum works toward this dynamic, the tidal waves of winning and losing. This dimension of the war, he relayed, can be just as consequential as those playing out in physical space.
Physiologically, this is well established: in sports contests and similar arenas, victors are buoyed by dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and other pleasure-stimulating neurochemicals after a contest, while victims are besieged by their own bodies as cortisol and other stress-triggered hormones swamp the bloodstream. This literally underlies the foundation of “the agony of defeat.”
In that diary, I described the phenomenon as zugzwang, an homage to a technical term in chess. Zugzwang, as I adapted it, is a necessary counterweighted action. In chess, when an opponent places one’s king in check, one is obliged to neutralize this condition: either the king must move, another piece must intervene, or one must capture the threat. Zugzwang reflects when no move is desirable. One is forced against one’s true will into taking action. One move necessitates a corresponding, unwanted move. In essence, it’s the action of a pulley.
Enticing the audience
I conceived this adaptation some months earlier, on a different topic. I had been watching several YouTube videos (preferably lectures) on narcissism, and I came across Dr. Sam Vaknin. He’s renowned for his work on narcissism and is very versed in the literature. Last November, I chanced upon his “Is Narcissism Hereditary, Acquired or Epigenetic?”
Juxtapose Benjamin Carollo’s “What Far-Right Radicalization Looks Like” (where Carollo dissects how radicalizers help allay anxieties in their viewers, help install rationalizations to explain away disapproval and/or guilt about holding certain bigoted beliefs, and then introduce more extreme content) with what Sam Vaknin actually does in “Is Narcissism Hereditary.”
x YouTube Video
(cue to 4:46)
Right wingers know that transphobia is incredibly common. And so they will intentionally create content that’s catered around telling you that you don’t need to think about any internalized transphobia that you have learned. They create content that’s specifically focused on telling you that all of that is fine, and then focuses on moving people further to the right. And you can say to yourself that, no, it’s just this rational, reasonable whatever. The truth is that you’re just entering the door of part of a pipeline that was created to bring people to the right and to make it seem like these extreme right-wing ideas are neutral or rational.
x YouTube Video
(I suggest watching from the beginning, but at minimum cue to 7:00)
The second reason, and I think possibly even more influential reason [why people were driven to medicalize pathological narcissism], is Adolf Hitler. Adolf Hitler established, or joined and then enlarged, the Nazi Party. And one of the tenets, one of the credos, one of the creeds of the Nazi Party was eugenics, the belief that you can improve the human race by weeding out, exterminating and eradicating outliers, such as intellectually challenged people, or very very sick people, or mentally ill people, etc, etc. So eugenics was founded on the belief that mental illness is genetics-based, that if you were to eliminate the reservoir of mentally ill people, the next generation will be far more mentally healthy. And so after Nazism has been discredited by losing the Second World War and when we discovered the atrocities of Auschwitz, etc, etc. There was a backlash, backlash against genetics. A backlash against associating genes, heredity, with mental phenomena. Not only mental health, not only mental illness, but any mental phenomena—for example, intelligence. To this very day, it’s a no-no in academia, to talk about the genetic foundation of intelligence and whether there are groups of people—which will remain unnamed—whose intelligence is lower than other groups of people, owing to the genetics. This is a no-no. It’s politically incorrect. If you say such things in—aloud? Publicly? You might as well kiss your job goodbye. And this is a direct inheritance from the period of Nazism, because the Nazis did this. So if the Nazis this, we should never do this again. (20:22) Narcissism is linked in numerous studies to attractiveness, to strength, to smooth movement, to athletic prowess, to intellectual achievements, sharper facial features, larger head, thinner lips, symmetrical faces, you name it. Thick eyebrows, and so on.
Vaknin, in the first few minutes of his video,
hints, implies, alludes and otherwise tacitly absolves his audience of holding racist beliefs by drawing them into sharing his disdain of academia’s stance toward “intelligence”;
inflates the viewers’ egos by implicitly praising both himself and those whose works he references (such as Freud); identifying himself subtextually as a narcissist and extolling certain side perks experienced by the narcissist, thereby inviting the audience to identify with him as an idealized figure;
then very subtly praises certain aspects of themes related to eugenics and other ideas that underlie fascism.
Indulging in racist thoughts induces guilt for those who also listen to or hear societal opprobrium against racism. When someone gives them cover for holding these ideas, they are filled with a surge of gratification. The opposite of the dread those ideas inflict in the minds of those people oppressed by the implementation (the performance) or articulation of those ideas. It is the exact opposite in terms of emotion. The relieved racist feels gratification; the recipient of the racism feels dread.
I came to this conclusion after experiencing a series of emotions in reaction to Vaknin’s video. I made an intuitive link between that sense of camaraderie that Vaknin was attempting to curry with his unseen audience with that of when someone puts someone down to a group of people when that someone is in earshot. It’s a dominance behavior, one that Vaknin performed right in the middle of his video in a rhetorical attempt (as far as I can figure) to flatter the viewer so as to have his ideas be more readily accepted. The maneuver creates an instant ‘us’ and ‘them’.
It was a charm campaign—I just happened to be of the “unspoken” group that he was indirectly referring to. At least, that’s how I read Vaknin’s words, and how they ring even a year later.
Zugzwang is the emotion war, what aggressive conservatives attempt when they seek to “own the libs.” They want to feel the rush of pleasure emotions that comes from winning victories, especially those won at the expense or exploitation of others.
Why is this important?
Consider where we are, not just in terms of the culture war but of MAGA/QAnon’s evolution. They have rapidly moved to an openly worshipful phase of their charismatic movement.
In many ways, the GOP right now is a chimera:
It’s a cult.
It’s a gang.
It’s a terrorist organization.
I don’t say the last part lightly. But the party is tolerating violence in their midst as a way of securing political wins; this is tacit encouragement. (Explicit denunciation is needed at this point, and no one in the GOP is willing to step up, outside of those who’ve given up or lost seats in office, or are otherwise inactive in politics.)
There’s a paramilitary arm of the party. Malcolm Nance, in his new book They Want to Kill Americans, calls them TITUS: Trump Insurgency in the United States.
Jerrold M. Post, a political psychologist and expert on terrorism, says in his essay “Terrorist psycho-logic: Terrorist behavior as a product of psychological forces” that cults and terrorist groups share much in common. “The studies of charismatic cults by Galanter et al. contribute usefully to our understanding of the dynamics of the terrorist group,” Post tells us.
New recruits to MAGA are going to be bombarded with racist talk, in everyday turns of speech. If they are being newly introduced to this viewpoint, they may initially feel guilt for espousing these new beliefs. Obversely, many individuals have harbored racist ideas for quite some time, and are ostensibly eager to find a like-minded group of people where they can “let it all hang out,” “tell it like it is,” etc.
Relief certainly can be found upon entering groups like MAGA. Other individuals, such as those exposed to trauma or passing through a life transition, can also experience relief upon entering such a high-intensity group. All sorts of disparate folks can find refuge in what MAGA offers.
The degree of relief is precisely what can be fashioned into a weapon.
Post gives us this nugget to take home and consider:
[END]
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