Double Trouble: Narcissism, Fascism, and Donald Trump

Malignant Narcissism

Diagram by MissLunaRose12, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Last year, in a blog titled Waking Nightmare, I wrote: “Plato warned us about Donald Trump.” According to Plato’s Republic, tyranny is the most unjust and miserable form of government, and the most unjust and unhappy person is the tyrant who rules it. That man, in contemporary terms, is a power-hungry and pathological narcissist. Trump, I said, fits this description.

Recently, more than 200 mental health professionals confirmed this diagnosis, and they took it a step farther. Their full-page ad in the October 24 print edition of The New York Times warns us: “Donald Trump is an existential threat to democracy. His symptoms of severe, untreatable personality disorder—malignant narcissism—makes him deceitful, destructive, deluded, and dangerous. He is grossly unfit for leadership.” The same warning, plus a list of signatories, appears on the website of the Anti-Psychopath PAC led by George Conway, a lifelong Republican and an outspoken Never-Trumper.

By calling Trump a malignant narcissist—and not simply a pathological one—the signatories call attention to his antisocial and sadistic tendencies. These tendencies go beyond what you’d expect from a “normal” pathological narcissist. Malignant narcissists are not simply “into themselves.” They gain great satisfaction from destroying others, and they feel no guilt or remorse for the damage they do. Moreover, they tend toward both grandiosity and paranoia. Trump’s perpetual lying and hateful speech fit this pattern. So does his lifetime of law-breaking, scandals, and punitive actions, as reviewed at length in a recent New York Times article by Peter Baker.

Committed Fascism

Auschwitz, Poland. Photo by Julia Taubitz on Unsplash

I find it inconceivable that we elected such a person President of the United States in 2016 and might re-elect him on November 5. Just as it remains inconceivable that Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany more than 90 years ago and then wreaked havoc at home and abroad for a dozen years. Are we, citizens of “the land of the free,” so easily duped by a would-be tyrant? Are we so ignorant of history that we think what happened in Nazi Germany could never happen here?

As Rachel Bitecofer shows in a post titled “What (Really) Happens If Trump Wins?” little will prevent Trump from quickly dismantling American constitutional democracy, just as few barriers stood in Hitler’s way once he became Chancellor of Germany in 1933. Indeed, a very recent article in The New York Times says the America First Policy Institute, a little-known but highly influential right-wing think tank primarily staffed by former officials in the Trump administration, “has already drafted nearly 300 executive orders ready for Mr. Trump’s signature should he win the election.” I urge you to read this article and Bitecofer’s post.

“Faschismus ist keine Meinung” (Fascism is not an opinion). Photo by Christian Lue on Unsplash

It's unfortunate that “fascism” and “Nazi” have become casual curse words in contemporary politics. For they indicate real anti-democratic commitments that have attracted die-hard supporters in the past and are attracting them again. We cannot treat them lightly. Yet even Robert Paxton, a leading historian of fascism in the twentieth century, thinks this label applies to what could be called Trumpism, according to a recent article by Elisabeth Zerofsky in The New York Times Magazine.

That’s why it’s important to hear about Trump’s ideology from former officials in his administration. According to Ruby Cramer in The Washington Post, Mark Milley, the retired U.S. Army general who chaired the Joint Chiefs of Staff during Trump’s administration, has told Bob Woodward that Trump is “fascist to the core” and “now the most dangerous person to this country.”

One-time White House chief of staff and former Marine general John Kelly also thinks Trump’s political outlook and actions fit the definition of fascism. For Kelly, what’s most telling, according to a New York Times article by Michael S. Schmidt, is that Trump put a premium on personal loyalty to him and never really accepted that his top aides “were supposed to put their pledge to the Constitution—and by extension, the rule of law—above all else.”

Double Trouble

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

When you combine all that with Trump’s white nationalist ideology, his authoritarian approach to government, his admiration for powerful dictators both past and present, and his eagerness to use the military to round up immigrants and punish what he calls “the enemy within”—including U.S. Representatives Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff—then you can see how the combination of committed fascism and malignant narcissism make Donald Trump an extremely dangerous man.

Little of this would matter, of course, if he were a one-man show. But he’s not. Most Republicans have fallen in line with Trump’s agenda; those who haven’t have been marginalized, defamed, or defeated. Moreover, many of the conservative moral and religious leaders you’d expect to challenge Trump have instead sucked up to him, in the vain hope that he’ll protect their way of life. Some even see him as God’s anointed one, sent to deliver them from the snares of cultural wokeness and progressive politics. These leaders are sadly deluded. They’ll soon find that out if, God forbid, Trump and his minions prevail on November 5.

Why Care?

Two weeks ago Joyce and I celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving with our friends in West Michigan. On that occasion I published a blog post on gratitude and resentment. It encourages my readers to live in gratitude, “despite and amid the social ills that surround us.” Yet it’s hard to feel grateful right now. As November 5 nears, it’s hard not to feel frustration, anxiety, and dread. As Jamelle Bouie recently argued, This is no ordinary election. So much hinges on it, including, for some of us, the question whether it will make sense or be safe to remain in the United States.

In the face of such uncertainty, perhaps it helps to remember the sources of gratitude that make us care deeply about the election’s outcome. I, for one, care about the institutions of political democracy, however flawed, that can enable us to pursue liberty and justice for all. I care about the practices and policies of a sustainable economy, still in their infancy, that in the long run can secure good work and a new earth. I care about the many organizations and communities that show solidarity toward those who are disadvantaged and on the margins, including the many immigrants who, like my own parents in the 1920s, come to North America in search of a better life. I also care about the future of genuine religion, religion that demonstrates its truth in edifying actions rather than restricting itself to politicized beliefs.

Sunset Picnic. Photo by Arthur Poulin on Unsplash

And I care for my friends and family members, both those whom Trump would persecute and those who still sing his praises. To paraphrase a gospel tune I sang recently in a concert with the Choral Connection, may our circle be unbroken—now, and next week, and in the weeks and years that follow—and not only by and by. In the words of a beautiful choral song by Stephen Paulus, as performed in the linked video by VOCES8, may we together find The Road Home.