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Trump didn't create the cult, the GOP did. Trump's success came after 30 years of the Republican Party telling uneducated white people their lives were ty because of minorities, gays, atheists, and rich people having to pay taxes. Trump's rhetoric delivers the same message that mainstream GOP rhetoric delivers, it just does so in a much more direct and blunt way that "moderate" Republicans like Rick Wilson can't justify supporting.A neuroscientist explains how Trump created a cult and radicalized its members
there is certainly a subset of them that have shown they are unconditionally loyal and would follow their leader off a cliff.
That kind of allegiance is dangerous.
When a president is seen as a messiah who is infallible,
democracy is at stake, and
the threat of authoritarianism becomes real.
For the cult member, no position is too extreme.QAnon, Dems eating babies
one well-supported psychology theory explains the essence of the phenomenon better than all the others.
That theory is called Terror Management Theory (TMT).
A lot of people would say that it really all boils down to racism and bigotry.
Others might make the same claim,
but more softly, arguing that https://www.rawstory.com/2020/09/a-neuroscientist-explains-how-trump-created-a-cult-and-radicalized-its-members/?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=5429
afraid of losing their culture,
which is white Christian American culture.
While I believe that there is truth to these claims,
I think that the most accurate explanation goes even deeper.
TMT is based on the idea that human behavior is largely driven by our fear of death.
According to TMT, as a way of dealing with this persistent existential fear,
humans created
cultural worldviews that instill our lives with meaning and purpose,
and give us a sense of permanence.
Worldviews—like religions, national iden ies, and political ideologies—
ease our fears and distract us from the cold hard fact that we will soon be gone and forgotten.
Being an “American” provides a path to symbolic immortality,
meaning a national iden y makes people feel like they are part of something bigger that will outlive the individual.
for many Americans, nationalism and Christianity provide a moment-to-moment defense of a deep-rooted existential fear that would otherwise cause perpetual terror.
Essentially, worldviews are death-anxiety buffers.
a study published in 2017 by the co-founder of Terror Management Theory found that priming death-related thoughts directly increased support for Donald Trump.
The same study found that these participants viewed immigrants moving into their neighborhood as an existential threat.
These experimental findings show that fear creates aggression, and aggression creates more fear.
what fuels the bigotry and racism we are seeing with the nationalist movement that has swept much of rural America.
It is a direct result of manufactured fear and psychological manipulation.
we should view Trump loyalists differently.
They are not normal supporters,
but more akin to cult members who have been radicalized by fear.
They are, in a sense, victims.
They have been brainwashed by rigid ideologies from the time of birth,
and those ideologies have been weaponized by divisive politicians like Donald Trump.
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/09/a-n..._campaign=5429
All Trump is is a symptom of 21st century conservative politics. If the Lincoln Project heads were being honest with themselves they'd know that each one of them led us down the slippery slope to Trump's America.
hater firmly moves his goalpost to listening to 18 entire taped interviews.
