Trump’s paradox: a critique of ‘populism’

The nasty parties. Nigel Farage speaks at a rally for Donald Trump in August, 2016. Gerald Herbert AP/Press Association Images. All rights reserved.

Do we understand
Trump’s rise to power yet? In order to explain his surprising victory in the
2016 elections, experts on the left attribute much analytical weight to
feelings of resentment among working class Americans. This resentment would
emerge as a consequence of many Americans’ deteriorating socio-economic position
in times of ‘neoliberalism’ and ‘globalisation’. The people, so the story goes,
have grown so dissatisfied with the American establishment that they were
driven into the arms of a man who, for all his defects, managed to present
himself as a Washington outsider and the saviour of the American dream.

On this account,
popular resentment is the main explanation for right-wing populism. In
response, social scientists have fired up their regression machines in order to
calculate the correlation between socioeconomic variables and Trumpist
sympathies. This approach is not necessarily wrong, as the precarious socio-economic
position of many Americans undoubtedly plays a role in their voting behaviour.
However, the problem is that it glosses over the main paradox of the recent US
elections: Trump represents the very characteristics that supposedly gave rise
to the feelings of popular resentment in the first place.

Trump’s paradox

This is
especially clear in two cases. First, when Trump says he is going to make
America great again, experts claim this resonates with people’s resentment
because it promises to turn back the clock on economic globalisation and the
outsourcing of Ameri- can jobs. At the same time, however, Trump symbolises
these problems as no other: the owner of an international business empire,
Trump is well-known to move his production lines overseas to save costs. We
have all seen the pictures of Trump merchandise with a ‘made in China’ label. We have all seen the pictures of Trump
merchandise with a ‘made in China’ label.

Second, when
Trump promises to drain the swamp, experts explain the popular appeal of this
claim with reference to the supposed feeling of powerlessness among ordinary
people vis-à-vis the American political elite, which has cuddled up to the
richest Americans. Yet here the paradox shows itself again. A billionaire
businessman with many friends in the political establishment, Trump symbolises
the very swamp he would sup- posedly drain. Haven’t we all seen the picture of
Hillary, Bill, Melania, and Donald at the wedding of the latter two in 2005?
Clearly, Trump’s paradoxical embodiment of the very causes of resentment which
his victory supposedly tapped into poses a problem for social scientists.  

Popular
resentment can only explain Trump’s rise to power on either one of two
assumptions. The first option would be to assume that the people who vote for
him out of resentment are too misinformed and ignorant to realise that Trump is,
in fact, not on their side. This assumption of popular ignorance, which many
social scientists would not seem to be very averse to, seems unrealistic. With
the extensive media coverage of the US elections it would be quite hard for
anyone to overlook the fact that Trump is, in fact, not Joe the Plumber. Also,
the assumption of popular ignorance is morally problematic, because
underestimating the intellectual capacities of the people so greatly makes it
difficult to hold them accountable for subscribing to the politics of
nationalism, racism, and sexism. This
assumption of popular ignorance, which many social scientists would not seem to
be very averse to, seems unrealistic.

For these
reasons, I will argue that there is a second assumption that makes it possible
to explain Trump as the outcome of popular resentment. This second option,
then, is to assume that disenfranchised Americans know very well that Trump is
not on their side, but vote for him anyway. In this case, the very interesting
challenge for social scientists would be to analyse what this ‘anyway’ consists
of.

Voting for him anyway: identification with an
aggressor

This requires an
approach that goes beyond the idea that there is a direct relation
between popular resentment and right-wing populism. Rather, I will argue that
an explanation for Trump’s paradox has to take seriously the mediating role of
psychological mechanisms that may be very paradoxical in their own right. In
other words, an irrational phenomenon such as Trump’s popular- ity among
disenfranchised Americans may also require an ‘irrational’ explanation.

The question
about Trump’s paradoxical popularity invites us to think about how people react
when their way of social being is threatened. Psychoanalysis can be of
assistance here. Anna Freud, in her
essay Identification with the Aggressor, relates of a young boy who
behaved abnormally in school, in the sense that he started twitching his face
as soon as his teacher spoke to him. Upon closer inspection it appeared that
the boy was not so much mocking as imitating the teacher, in order to deal with
the latter’s reproaches. The analyst noticed that ‘the boy’s grimaces were
simply a caricature of the angry expression of the teacher and that, when he
had to face a scolding by the latter, he tried to master his anxiety by
involuntarily imitating him’ (A.
Freud 1993, 110).

Based on similar
observations in other children’s behaviour, Freud argued that identification
with the aggressor is one of the defence mechanisms of the ego. It helps the
ego to deal with the anxiety that arises when confronted with an overwhelming
external threat from a source of authority, insofar as it transforms itself
‘from the person threatened into the person who makes the threat’ (ibid.). This
is especially clear in those cases where children adopted the authority’s
aggression and projected it onto another object or child who serves as a
scapegoat.

At first sight,
this psychoanalytical insight into the identification with the aggressor
mechanism may seem far removed from anything political. But according to Freud,
such defence mechanisms could be observed in many different social situations
among people of all ages. As such, it can also be very helpful in explaining
the paradoxical dynamics of contemporary politics. I will argue that it is
possible to qualify the relationship between Trump and his electorate as a case
of identification with the aggressor. The key lies in the paradox described above.

Ordinary
Americans are confronted with stagnating wages, outsourcing of jobs, rising
inequality, and a widening gap with the political establishment. To an
important extent, this threat to working Americans’ socioeconomic position and
their options for political participation stems from the changing conditions of
an increasingly globalised political economy. This process is propelled forward
by a class of rich entrepreneurs who make their money in global commodity
chains and use that same money to gain political influence through party
donations. Now, the crucial point is that when faced by this overwhelming
threat, disenfranchised Americans may try to defend themselves by identifying
with its source: multinational entrepreneurs represented by Donald Trump and
his red power tie. Through identifying with Trump, ordinary Americans may assimilate
the threat emanating from him, transforming their vulnerability into an
aggressive stance. The result … is the strange spectacle
of working class Americans, wearing those red Make America Great Again caps
(made in China), going out to protest against raising the minimum wage, more
restrictive banking regulations, and universal healthcare.

The result of
this identification mechanism is the strange spectacle of working class
Americans, wearing those red Make America Great Again caps (made in China), going
out to protest against raising the minimum wage, more restrictive banking
regulations, and universal healthcare. Identifying with Trump makes it possible
for disenfranchised Americans to endure their socio-economic hardship insofar
as they mimic his overpowering aggression towards their own interests, adopting
the fantasy that getting in line with this aggression will solve America’s (and
their) problems. Throw in a Mexican or Muslim scapegoat figure and you have all
the ingredients for what psychoanalysts call utopian fantasy: the impossible
idea of the restoration of a fullness of society (‘make America great again!’),
dependent on the expulsion of the scapegoat (‘build that wall!’).

Demonstrating how
psychic affect may overrule rational political reasoning, the identification
with the aggressor mechanism helps to explain the riddle of working class Trump
voters going against their own interests. However, the introduction of the
scapegoat figure adds another dimension that clearly warns against casting
Trump voters as the innocent and passive receiving end. As Sigmund
Freud noted, the ego derives pleasure from turning a negative experience
into an aggressive activity towards someone else (S. Freud 1975b, 227).

This is why Trump
needs his Mexican wall and his Muslim ban: so that his supporters can have
their revenge, not on him or his billionaire cabinet, but on the minority
scapegoat. Insofar as they aim to subject Mexicans and Muslims to exclusion and
disenfranchisement, Trump supporters transfer onto others the harm they
experienced themselves.

The double
character of identifying with Trump’s aggression now comes into stark relief.
On the one hand, it is a mechanism to shield the ego from external threat and
fend off anxiety-inducing experiences. On the other hand, it is also a source
of pleasure insofar as Trump supporters can retaliate against a substitute
object, the scapegoat. Crucially, as the notions of anxiety and pleasure
suggest, this identification mechanism is not a rational process, but rather
takes place on the unconscious level of affective investment. As is well known,
the unconscious and the rational constitute different domains in psychoanalytical
theory (S. Freud 1975a, 373). Identification and scapegoating are affective
processes, so bound up with unconscious irrationality that rational political
argumentation has no purchase on them. As such, they have not much to do with
politics in the rational sense.

Trump’s immunity

This may explain
why Trump’s popularity seems immune to exposing the inconsistency of his
arguments. His supporters may know very well (rationally) that he is not really
on their side, but unconsciously they rally behind him anyway because he
offers an opportunity to structure their social being on the affective level.
In the same way, they may know (rationally) that Mexicans and Muslims are not
the real threat, but they insist on the idea of the threat because they are
invested in it on an affective level. In other words, Trump’s popularity among
a large part of disenfranchised Americans is based on affect not rational
deliberation. This is most clearly attested by a recent poll which shows that
the first 100 days of his presidency, which he largely spent golfing and
creating scandal, did not negatively impact his popularity among his core
supporters (Balz
and Scott 2017).

Now, the
identification and scapegoating mechanism as witnessed in the case of Trump is
of course nothing new. Sartre came across something very similar in his
classical account of anti-Semitism. According to Sartre,
anti-Semites are ‘afraid to discover that the world is badly made’. They know
that their anti-Semitic statements are ‘empty and contestable’ but they
nonetheless hold on to their anti-Semitic ‘passion’, because this allows them
to see themselves ‘as forming an indissoluble unity’ with their country as a
whole. Sartre’s account thus also points out the twin combination of
identification with a larger authority on the one hand, and minority
scapegoating on the other. This combination, whether in the historical case of
anti-Semitism or currently with Trump, is so persistent because it gives the
threatened ego a sense of pleasure and belonging – at the expense of someone
else (Sartre 1946, 166 -170).

A critical view of populism

It now becomes
clear that, in contrast to the classical resentment approach, a psychoanalytic
approach results in a more critical view of Trump voters. The resentment
explanation understands support for Trump as a direct function of people’s
deteriorating socio- economic position, and it can only do so by assuming their
ignorance as to their own interests as well as to Trump’s politics. As such,
the resentment approach comes close to the classical Marxist definition of
ideology, which excuses the people on account of their naïve consciousness,
saying, ‘forgive them, for they know not what they do’ (Žižek
1989, 24). However, as I argued above, rationally they may know very well
what they do, but they do it anyway because of the affective pleasure they
derive from identifying with Trump and copying his aggression towards
scapegoats.

In a way, then,
the resentment approach depoliticises the role Trump supporters play in
upholding the politics of nationalism, racism, and sexism. Of course, this
raises the question how far to pursue this critique of the right-wing populist
electorate. Sartre was quite radical in this regard. He argued that anti-Semitism
is a choice for those who are too afraid to face the challenges of living in an
ever-changing modern society, and seek refuge in the sham certainties of
obeying leaders and hating minorities (Sartre 1946, 177). Since he calls it a
choice, Sartre holds each individual fully accountable for their antisemitism.
I would argue that this perspective is too radical for the psychoanalytic
account of Trumpism outlined above. The existentialist topos of individual
choice is not compatible with the conclusion that the paradoxical alliance
between Trump and the disenfranchised elec- torate emerges on the unconscious
affective level.

The irony of the
psychoanalytical explanation of Trump’s paradox is thus that it is paradoxical
in itself. On the one hand, it opens up the possibility for a critical dialogue
with the right-wing electorate because it doesn’t assume that the people are
ignorant about politics and their own interests. On the other hand, however, it
seems to render such a political dialogue superfluous because the
psychoanalytic account displaces the fundamental locus of political association
to the level of the unconscious.

The question,
then, is what this means for social scientists interested in the critique of
right-wing populism. It is probably not realistic to demand that social
scientists become trained psychotherapists in addition to their normal jobs.
But it would be a start to give up the search for the one variable that might
rationally explain right-wing populism, and instead acknowledge that affect,
the unconscious, and thereby psychoanalysis are fundamental to understanding
the sometimes perplexing dynamics of contemporary politics (Laclau 2005, 101).
If nothing else, psychoanalysis helps to
explain how the structural environment of politics and the economy feeds into
people’s voting behaviour.

At the same time,
however, the focus on affective processes in politics should not distract from
the task to continue the critical investigation of the dynamics of inequality,
precarisation, and disempowerment. The psychoanalytic perspective on right-wing
populism laid out here is not meant to replace the critique of political
economy. Rather, the two perspectives go hand in hand. If nothing else,
psychoanalysis helps to explain how the structural environment of politics and
the economy feeds into people’s voting behaviour. As such, this combined
critique should point out the irrational structural inequalities of the current
political economy itself, of which Trump is of course only a symptom, not a
cause. All the more reason to make sure that a genuine left-wing alternative
emerges. Bernie 2020, anyone?

 

References

Balz, Dan, and
Clement Scott. 2017, April 23. “Nearing 100 Days, Trump’s Approval at Record
Lows but His Base Is Holding.” Washington Post.

Freud, Anna.
1993. “Identification with the Aggressor.” In The Ego and the Mechanisms of
Defence, London: Karnac Books, 109–21.

Freud, Sigmund.
1975a. “Die Verneinung.” In Psychologie des Unbewußten. Studienausgabe Band
III, eds. Alexander Mitscherlich, Angela Richards, James Strachey, and Ilse
Grubrich-Simitis. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 371–78.

———. 1975b. “Jenseits
des Lustprinzips.” In Psychologie des Unbewußten. Studienausgabe Band III,
eds. Alexander Mitscherlich, Angela Richards, James Strachey, and Ilse
Grubrich-Simitis. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 213–72.

Laclau, Ernesto.
2005. On Populist Reason. London: Verso.


Sartre,
Jean-Paul. 1946. “Portrait of the Antisemite.” Partisan Review 13(2):
163–78.


Stavrakakis,
Yannis. 2014. “Debt Society: Psychosocial Aspects of the (Greek) Crisis.” In The
Psychosocial and Organization
Studies. Affect at Work,
eds. Kate Kenny and Marianna Fotaki. Basingstoke: Palgrave

Macmillan,
33–59.
Žižek, Slavoj. 1989. The Sublime Object of Ideology. London/New
York: Verso.