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The Science of Defeating an Authoritarian, Part 7 - How to Get People to Dump Trump [1]

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Date: 2025-02-18

What do you do about the Trump supporters you know? I don't have great news for you. For people who are all in for Trump, you probably can't change them. I can (and will) give you explanations why you probably can't change them, but no magic bullet to quickly change them. That said, I can gave you actionable advice for doing the best you can. Long term, it’s your best shot. Worst case scenario, you stop beating your head against a wall with tactics that will never work.

This is the seventh installment in a series about using social science to save democracy. Previous diaries are here:

Evidence From History

In his book, Remembering Pinochet's Chile, Steve Stern begins with an example of a couple who strongly supported Pinochet. They were wealthy and the democratically-elected leftist Allende regime hadn't been great for their class economically. When Pinochet came to power, he justified his coup and his violence by falsely claiming that Allende and the left had been on the brink of murdering Chileans on a mass scale. His violence was justified, he said, because it was the lesser of the evils. By killing some people, he claimed he saved many more lives.

Call it motivated reasoning, but this couple believed him. Long after the end of the dictatorship, after the entire world and history books recognized the scope of Pinochet's human rights violations, this couple still believed him. They still supported him.

When I read this in the spring of 2016, I was shocked. But it was also what alerted me to the danger of Trump. He has the ability to convince his followers of a false reality that they act on, just like Pinochet. The people who attacked the Capitol did not see themselves as attempting to overthrow a free and fair election; they saw themselves as defending a free and fair election that had been overthrown by Joe Biden. What would you do if you thought an election had been stolen illegally?

I read another relevant book by a journalist and, unfortunately, forgot the title and author's name. The journalist went back to Germany a decade after the end of World War II interview former Nazis. The Nazis who had been true believers still believed in Hitler. After every catastrophically bad decision Hitler made that harmed Germany, these people believed that Hitler had been betrayed by untrustworthy subordinates, but he himself had always been good. (Funnily enough, that was also Hitler's opinion. According to William Shirer, he used his suicide note to blame some of his own most senior and loyal Nazis for his failure.)

What this says to me is: no matter how bad our immediate future will be because of catastrophic decisions made by Trump, we will have Americans who go to their graves decades from now still believing in Donald Trump. But you know what else it says to me? We can overcome that. Chile did. We don't need every single American on our side - we need a majority. We need the college kid who (real story) just voted for Trump because he thought Trump was funny and my hairdresser, who voted for Trump because she wanted RFK Jr to give her clean food and people like them to realize they made a mistake. Those are not necessarily people with strong bonds to Trump and their minds could be changed.

That's not to dismiss the pain people are feeling when their relatives go all in for Trump. There are some ugly stories out there: a homophobic Trump-supporting grandmother who makes nasty comments in front of her gay grandchild and gay son; Trump-supporting parents of a trans adult child they routinely misgender and no longer have contact with; Trump-supporting relatives of undocumented immigrants, afraid they will be deported; and a Trump-supporting mom who refuse to get vaccinated for Covid even though she had cancer. We can win back the White House without winning back all Trump supporters, but families are still torn apart.

Authoritarianism expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat says that once people bond with a charismatic, personalist, authoritarian leader like Trump, there’s damn near about nothing you can do to make them change. Last year, Ben-Ghiat wrote:

It takes years to cultivate a personality cult, especially when you are forced to operate in a democracy, and it can take a long time for one to recede. Trump started his leader cult in 2015, building on established media relationships and associations of his billionaire persona with dominance and glamour. His strongman profile and propaganda points have been around for almost a decade. History shows that shifts in perception that can lessen leaders’ holds over their followers usually happen over time...even in a democracy, disengagement from a leader cult such as Trump’s is a slow process. That’s because the behavior of many cult members is dictated by aversion to loss and intolerance of the cognitive dissonance that comes when the cult belief system is confronted with reality. The more an individual has invested in the cult world, the more they are reluctant to admit to others, and to themselves, that they have misplaced their trust and love. Just as cultivation and conversion leverage strong positive emotions (belonging, safety), so does disengagement evoke strong negative emotions (shame, humiliation) that many wish to avoid...

Why It’s So Difficult To Convince People: The Social Science

Speaking as a social scientist, the identities and relationships of Trump’s base are wrapped up with being MAGA.

Imagine you are a conservative, evangelical Christian who gets your news from Fox News, Breitbart, OAN, etc. Perhaps you or your spouse work at your church. Your children might go to a parochial school. Your church is your entire social life. You feel good because you are a part of a community. You’ve got your crew you attend Trump rallies with in matching custom made Trump T-shirts. You have MAGA hats in three different colors and you wrapped your Christmas gifts (Trump ornaments and mugs) with Trump wrapping paper last Christmas. MAGA is part of your community’s collective identity and your individual identity.

Let’s say tomorrow — for whatever reason — you decided that you weren’t on board with Trump anymore. What happens? First, you lose your sense of belonging. You no longer get to feel a sense of group cohesion and shared purpose. (I’ll admit — and maybe I’m not alone — I felt this here on dKos when we went from being unified against Trump to divided between the factions for Obama and Hillary. For years it had been us together against the world, and suddenly people I thought were just like me were all in for candidates I thought were too moderate.) So, that’s no fun.

Maybe you start to lose relationships. Let’s say you start to tell people you don’t like this or that thing Trump did and you’re no longer really a part of the group. They start calling you a RINO. You stop getting invitations to things. You enter rooms and people stop talking. Your friends still talk to you but you have less to talk about. Or you argue. If your job, church, or kids’ school was connected to your identity as MAGA, maybe you need to move jobs, churches, or schools.

What else? You have to admit that you were wrong. You were fooled. You hurt this country. How do you explain that to yourself? How do you maintain an image of yourself as a good person?

In short, if you dump Trump, you’ve got a lot to lose.

The other issue is knowledge. By knowledge, I mean what people believe is true, not what is actually true. Knowledge is embedded in identity and relationships. Borrowing from (and paraphrasing) sociologist Michael Bell, I am a social scientist because I know a lot about social science and I know a lot about social science because I’m a social scientist. I learned about social science from other social scientists. I trust the knowledge I got from sociologists and anthropologists more than I trust the knowledge of people who aren’t sociologists or anthropologists.

As I stated above, what initially concerned me about Trump was his ability to convince people of a false reality. At this point, being a Trump supporter means believing many falsehoods: Pete Hegseth is qualified as SecDef, COVID was a hoax, Trump won the 2020 election, the U.S. is experiencing a crime wave caused by undocumented immigration, Trump is intelligent, the mainstream media and academia are lying, and maybe also that Michelle Obama is a man.

Where would you get different information that you believe? The New York Times? Anthony Fauci? Judge Juan Merchan? Your adult child who voted for Kamala? Probably none of the above.

OK, But You Said You Had Actionable Advice…

Oh, right. I did say that. Yes, I do. This list comes partially from my own research. As an academic it is KILLING ME not to cite sources but I want to remain anonymous because, while I am open to relocating, I am sincerely uninterested in moving to Gitmo.

First, maintain the relationship with the MAGA folks in your life if you can do so in a way that doesn’t harm your mental or physical health.

with the MAGA folks in your life if you can do so in a way that doesn’t harm your mental or physical health. Don’t argue with them about politics because it won’t work anyway. Trump’s press secretary Stephanie Grisham (who referred to her relationship with Trump as abusive) said that the left’s opposition to Trump drove her closer to him, even as she saw his dysfunction and took his abuse up close. Apparently YouTuber Natalie Wynn of Contrapoints has had some luck at deprogramming incels, so maybe there’s a universe out there in which people with Very Bad Ideas can be talked out of them by debating them directly… but remember the incels who decided to watch Natalie Wynn’s videos made that decision on their own when they were ready. The Trump voter in your life isn’t doing jack squat until they are ready.

because it won’t work anyway. Trump’s press secretary Stephanie Grisham (who referred to her relationship with Trump as abusive) said that the left’s opposition to Trump drove her closer to him, even as she saw his dysfunction and took his abuse up close. I think the advice for pulling a loved one out of a cult or a conspiracy theory can be useful here. There are episodes about this on the Conspirituality and Q-Dropped podcasts.

or a conspiracy theory can be useful here. There are episodes about this on the Conspirituality and Q-Dropped podcasts. Talk about things that you have in common (sports, hobbies, fashion, food, etc).

(sports, hobbies, fashion, food, etc). It’s OK to set boundaries about topics you don’t wish to talk about (e.g. politics).

about topics you don’t wish to talk about (e.g. politics). Play the long game . It might take your friend or loved one decades to leave MAGA (if they leave it at all) but better late than never. Leaving MAGA might mean giving up all of their MAGA friends, and that will be harder to do if they have no non-MAGA friends. Your job is to maintain the relationship so they have a connection to someone who is non-MAGA and a friendly place to go if they decide to leave.

It might take your friend or loved one decades to leave MAGA (if they leave it at all) but better late than never. Leaving MAGA might mean giving up all of their MAGA friends, and that will be harder to do if they have no non-MAGA friends. Your job is to maintain the relationship so they have a connection to someone who is non-MAGA and a friendly place to go if they decide to leave. No insults! Even if you think that Trump supporters are [fill in long list of nasty adjectives here], DON’T SAY THOSE THINGS ABOUT AVERAGE AMERICANS. Criticize Trump, Musk, Vance, the Dogebags, Ye, Nick Fuentes, etc, as much as you want — but not average folks. How many times did you listen to someone you disagreed with who called you stupid, immoral, racist, etc. etc. etc. etc. Probably never. You want to keep the door open for your friend or loved one to leave Trump and come back to you, and you want to reduce the barriers to them doing that. If they are going to have to eat a bunch of crow and admit that you were right and they were wrong after you called them every name in the book, it’s going to make it harder for them to do that.

Even if you think that Trump supporters are [fill in long list of nasty adjectives here], DON’T SAY THOSE THINGS ABOUT AVERAGE AMERICANS. Criticize Trump, Musk, Vance, the Dogebags, Ye, Nick Fuentes, etc, as much as you want — but not average folks. Emphasize a shared collective identity (as Americans, residents in your town, members of your family, etc.).

(as Americans, residents in your town, members of your family, etc.). Emphasize that we can reach better decisions together by considering everyone’s different perspectives. People can have different opinions and still appreciate one another (even if you’re maybe not going to do that right now in this relationship because the result would be a big fight). When we all get to share our perspective and reach a decision together, we’ll reach better decisions. (This is actually true when everyone really listens to one another and reaches a decision by consensus.)

by considering everyone’s different perspectives. People can have different opinions and still appreciate one another (even if you’re maybe not going to do that right now in this relationship because the result would be a big fight). When we all get to share our perspective and reach a decision together, we’ll reach better decisions. (This is actually true when everyone really listens to one another and reaches a decision by consensus.) Focus on what you CAN agree on. You both want this country to be as good as possible, you both want a strong economy, you want our nation to be safe, you both believe airplane crashes are bad, etc. OK, so you think keeping the Jan 6 insurrectionists locked up was a good way to fight crime and your MAGA friend thinks deporting every undocumented immigrant and then some is the best way to reduce crime. Set that aside. Focus on the fact that you both agree that crime is bad and the government should reduce it. Then don’t get into your disagreement about the rest.

You both want this country to be as good as possible, you both want a strong economy, you want our nation to be safe, you both believe airplane crashes are bad, etc. When Democrats screw up or when your Republican friend is right, admit it. Yes, former Senator Robert Menendez was corrupt and good riddance. No, Biden did not do a great job with the withdrawal from Afghanistan (even though Trump contributed to that particular failure). Yes, even if you think masks and quarantine were the right policies at the time and both were superior to dying of COVID, experiencing both was objectively terrible. If you pretend having Thanksgiving on Zoom in 2020 was anything other than terrible, your MAGA friend will feel gaslit because having Thanksgiving on Zoom was actually terrible.



Just Waiting A Decade Until They Figure Out Trump’s Bad On Their Own Isn’t What I Wanted…

Oh, right. Yes. We’re getting to that.

All of the above is about keeping the peace, maintaining the relationship, and waiting for your loved one to realize Trump’s awful on their own. What if you want to help speed that realization up?

First, nothing good happens when anyone is in fight or flight. Once either of you are upset, forget it. When you are afraid or angry and you go into flight or flight, the part of your brain running the show is not rational. You can’t reason with someone when they are in fight or flight, and you aren’t going to be your best self when you are in fight or flight either. As soon as either of you go into fight or flight, change topics or end the conversation.

If you aren’t used to looking for signs of when you or your friend or loved one is in fight or flight, start paying attention. You’ll probably be able to feel when you get upset or see if your MAGA friend starts to raise their voice. There are a few other cues I look for too. Mostly, it’s when the other person seems stuck. When they aren’t able to listen. When rational thought is completely out the window for them.

For some people, entire topics are off limits. Often these are topics where a lot of emotion has already built up because they have felt attacked, afraid, angry, or frustrated about the topic in the past. If your friend cut off their relationship with their queer kid, queerness is going to be a loaded topic. If there’s a topic they always get in Twitter fights about, that’s going to be a tough topic.

Sometimes I notice people are having one side of an argument that I’m not having with them. If they are defending themselves against arguments you haven’t made — you’re on a difficult topic.

People will resist anything that threatens their identity or their relationships. If a particular issue is very salient for your MAGA friend because they feel ideological alignment with Trump is central to their identity (for example, immigration), it’s going to be triggering for them. Don’t bother showing them this study that found undocumented immigrants are half as likely to be arrested for crimes as U.S. born citizens and expect them to believe the results. It’s a better bet they will rant at you about Biden Migrant Crime and open borders.

Beth

Instead of attacking head on, I go in sideways. Within the last year, one person in my life I’ll call Beth asked me how I felt about Biden letting men on women’s sports teams. I asked what she meant and said I wasn’t familiar with Biden letting men on women’s sports teams. Beth isn’t MAGA by the way (and I like her) but… well, you can see the problem here. She meant trans women.

I told her I was really glad making those decisions wasn’t up to me because it must be really hard. Then I told her about an episode of RadioLab called Dutee about an Indian cisgender woman who was an extraordinary runner who had higher than average testosterone. The episode goes into all of the ways they have historically checked women in sports were females and none of the ways are good. Initially, they did naked inspections. Yikes! Now they check hormones or DNA? I can’t remember.

Beth was listening. This was a normal conversation and she wasn’t upset. Because of that, I went on.

The thing is, I told Beth, a friend of mine has androgen insensitivity syndrome. When I met this friend I thought she was female and had all the same body parts and chromosomes as me. She has XY chromosomes and testes but developed entirely female anatomy aside from that. So if they tested her DNA, they would say she’s a man. That’s not right. I also told Beth about this article I read about Caster Semenya.

Beth told me a little bit more about her point of view and I listened. This parts important. Forgetting who’s right and wrong and just thinking about basic manners, it’s polite to listen to other people if you want them to listen to you. You have to listen like you are having a normal conversation. Beth described an experience of accepting an intersex person she knew. She had some ideas about biology and clearly gives a shit about sports more than I do (which is to say, at all).

In the course of the conversation, I let Beth know there was a controversy where some people called other people TERFS (trans exclusionary radical feminists) and they did not mean it as a compliment. I can’t remember if we discussed JK Rowling. I did not call Beth a TERF. I let her know that being a TERF was bad, defined the term, and just let her sit with it. I probably described MichFest, the ugly scene at the lesbian music festival where cisgender lesbians excluded trans lesbians.

Beth actually votes Democrat, so she’s not the toughest nut to crack, but this is the approach I would take if she was an independent or Republican too.

About a month ago, Beth brought up trans people again in an ambiguous way. I asked what she was thinking about. She said, “I wouldn’t want there to be a law against them. I think, be whatever you want, I don’t care. It doesn’t hurt me. I’ll call you whatever name and pronouns you want.” Beth’s older and not too familiar with trans people, but she’s not trying to be hateful. Instead of calling her out for her failure at allyship, I complicated what she thought about sex and gender and sports and then gave her a bit to chew on about what trans people and their allies think about social justice.

Linda

A few years ago, I met a very conservative Trump voter on Facebook through a friend. She LOVED Ben Peterson. I told her that, speaking as an academic, he comes across a pompous idiot. She didn’t buy it. She wanted to know about CRT. I told her.

Here’s what I learned. In her town, there was an uproar about the kindergarten teacher teaching CRT. The kindergarten teacher had asked how the Pilgrims could have been more sensitive to the Indians at Thanksgiving.

She was a bit difficult to talk to but here’s what I attempted to say:

First of all, that’s not CRT. That seems like it’s intended as DEI, but it’s a stupid thing to say. After all, Thanksgiving wasn’t the problem with colonization. It was all the times they weren’t enjoying a turkey in friendship that was the problem. And why would kindergarteners have the answer? And why should they?

If I was teaching kindergarten and do DEI, I would have the usual lesson on Thanksgiving but also add a lesson about the nation(s) whose land the school is on. In California, the children could make the acorn mush traditional to the Indigenous peoples of California and taste it. If there’s a good children’s book about the nation whose land the school is on, the teacher could read it. That’s all. They are five and six.

I learned that it hurt Linda’s feelings when liberals call her a racist for voting for Trump. She read her children books about people of different races and ethnicities because she wanted to be a good mother and a good person. Like Beth, she said things that, well, I wouldn’t be able to say them in the classroom. Some of what she said would have offended many people of color. Like Beth, she wasn’t trying to be malicious. And she was listening.

I explained what I would teach about CRT in a normal undergraduate classroom. Kimberle Crenshaw is a critical race theorist. I teach her concept of intersectionality. That just means that you are more than just your race. You’re white but you’re a woman, a Christian, a resident of your state, of your town, from an urban or rural area, with or without a college education, etc. Linda didn’t see anything wrong with that.

Then I told her about me. Instead of telling her what she should do, I told her what worked for me. I told her that I had learned a lot in grad school and, growing up white in a white, conservative area, I had no idea about all of this stuff when I arrived in grad school. I had to figure it out fast. I never meant to be offensive to anyone, but there were things I didn’t know. Thank god I have no ability to do accents because I was insecure as a kid and I would have done anything to get a laugh. Especially anything concrete and easy to copy, like wearing Doc Martens or imitating an accent.

This was the era of the Simpsons and Apu. People I knew thought Apu’s accent was funny. I had I had no idea that it hurt Indian people’s feelings because they thought Apu was making fun of Indian people. Thank god I couldn’t have imitated an Indian accent if I had wanted to. Linda listened. She didn’t want anyone to think she was making fun of their accent either.

Yes, the word for this is white fragility. Coddling it can get you results.

Stan

Sometimes I confess naughty things I did and learned better. Stan told me years ago about a time he offended a Black woman. I tried to explain why she got upset. It didn’t work.

A few years later, I told him about a time more than a decade ago when, not knowing better, I offended a Black woman in the same way. But, then I learned why she felt offended. So now I don’t do that offensive thing anymore. Stan doesn’t have the best memory and he didn’t remember telling me his story before. But, he brought it up again in response to my story. “Oh,” he said, “Maybe that’s why she was offended.”

Krista

I like Krista. She sees herself as antiracist, a gay ally, and an animal lover. She voted for Trump and owns a gun. She voted for Obama. She’s feisty about women’s rights but said she is not a “Feminazi.” She lives in a town that voted 68% for Trump. Krista repeated Trump’s claim that he’s treated worse than any other president. This was before the assassination attempt.

I tried to challenge her with something she’d agree about. She HATES Hillary. “Wait a second,” I said. “I remember the 90s. People HATED the Clintons.” Find me a conservative who will deny that. I just disrupted the idea that Trump is always right.

Don’t assume ignorance is malice. Yes, I could academically analyze exactly what each of these folks said that was offensive about marginalized groups. I could also point out Krista’s hypocrisy — she said it was criminal for anyone to want to assassinate Trump but four minutes later said someone should shoot Hillary Clinton. Krista did not notice her double standard. She wasn’t trying to be a jerk. Quite the opposite, in fact. She subscribes to opposing racism and homophobia and has some feminist ideas despite rejecting the label. It’s actually pretty common for people to have illogical or inconsistent ideas and not notice like she did.

For people who mean well but don’t know better, give them space to learn. Having taught classes about racial justice for a decade, sometimes meeting people where they are at and giving them a slow, steady, nonjudgmental education changes their views. I never approach teaching with changing students’ opinions as my goal though. I’m there to teach them an academic discipline, not give them DEI training. As long as students are being polite to one another in class, their opinions are their own business. But, when I meet them where they are at and help them learn, sometimes their views change.

What are your other tips for people with Trump voters in their lives? What works for you? Please share in the comments.

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