The Psychohistory Forum Roundtable on the January 6th Insurrection

In our roundtable below, you will find the comments of our psychohistorical colleagues on the January 6^th attack on our Constitution and the historical analogies that come to mind. We welcome your thoughts on our Google listserv and for our next issue on the paranoid style in American politics. Our roundtable began here at Dr. Loewenberg’s suggestion.

Peter Loewenberg (01/06/2021, historian, psychoanalyst, and psychohistorian): I am furious that the Capitol security forces were totally incompetent and unprepared. Where were the Capitol Police, the Federal Police, the DC Police, the National Guard? Can you imagine the response had it been Black Lives Matter (BLM) protestors demonstrating in the Capitol? It reminds me of the Dallas Police who let Oswald, the one person who had unknown answers to the assassination of President J. F. Kennedy (Oswald’s Russian stay and trip to Cuba), be murdered in the Dallas courthouse just hours after the event.

Paul H. Elovitz (01/07/21, historian, psychohistorian, and Clio’s Psyche’s editor): One of my thoughts is of Mussolini’s 1922 March on Rome leading to Italy’s fragile democracy being intimidated and soon destroyed without bloodshed.

Robert Dallek (01/09/21, presidential historian of FDR, JFK, LBJ, Nixon, Reagan, et al.): The attempted insurrection on January 6^th was an unprecedented event in U.S. history unless you go back to the British assault on DC in the War of 1812. The current assault confirms Trump’s presidency as the worst in U.S. history. Trump is a malignant narcissist who needs to see himself as a great man and the most exceptional president ever. He needs to be indicted for various crimes. My guess is that he will flee the country for a place with no extradition treaty with the U.S. Hopefully, he will be barred from running again and will be indicted for various crimes including tax fraud.

Avner Falk (01/09/21, an Israeli psychologist, psychohistorian, and prolific author): Ever since Donald Trump’s election to the U.S. presidency in 2016, the Yale psychiatrist Bandy Lee and dozens of other mental health experts have been warning the world

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about his dangerousness. They have variously diagnosed him as suffering from narcissistic personality disorder, “malignant” narcissism, borderline personality disorder, psychopathy, sociopathy, and even psychotic disorder. The most stable thing about Trump seems to be his instability and his unpredictability. He has paranoid delusions of persecution and grandeur, often seeming to live in his own reality. His conviction that he won the 2020 presidential election, which, he believes, was stolen from him by the Democrats and by election officials, is a delusion. No amount of evidence to the contrary seems to be able to convince Trump of the reality of his loss.

At the same time, however, Trump has shown emotional resilience in crisis situations. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, when his business ventures failed and he owed vast amounts of money to banks, Trump surmounted the crisis and prevailed. He sprang back from adversity. Rudy Giuliani called Trump “a turnaround artist.” After Trump’s State of the Union speech in February 2019, the editors of The Blade admired his resilience. They wrote, “Perhaps no American politician of the last 100 years has been pronounced politically dead as often as President Trump. And every time his critics have made the declaration, they have turned out to be wrong.”

Right now, in January 2021, Trump seems to be going through the worst crisis of his life. Following the violent invasion of the U.S. Congress that he provoked, he is under incredible pressure from all quarters to resign his office. His closest aides and cabinet secretaries are resigning. He is about to be impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives for the second time, perhaps also tried and convicted by the Senate. The scene is reminiscent of Charlie Kane, the protagonist of Orson Welles’ classic Citizen Kane (1941), who dies in his palatial Xanadu mansion, alone, abandoned by everyone, his belongings being carried away or discarded by his staff, including the snow sled Rosebud. The sled was a reminder of how the child Charlie was given away by his cold and greedy mother, who could not or would not raise him. Trump’s Rosebud was his early emotional abandonment by his mother when he was a two-year-old toddler, after the birth of his younger brother and the near-death of his mother. He was also kicked out of his family home at the age of 13 for rowdy and violent school behavior and sent to a military academy by his angry father with no resistance from his mother.

The mental health experts say that Trump is delusional and

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desperate, that he is deeply disturbed and extremely dangerous in the final days of his presidency. While this may well be true, the fascinating question about his resilience, which has been overlooked by most observers, is whether it is a genuine strength, perhaps acquired from Theodore Dobias, the officer who “adopted” Donald in the military academy when he was a teenager, or whether it conceals a massive denial of reality and psychotic delusions.

Robert Dallek (01/09/21): The best historical example was Huey Long, the “Kingfish,” from Louisiana. He was a brilliant demagogue in the 1920s and 1930s. Franklin D. Roosevelt believed that Huey Long and General Douglas MacArthur were the two people most dangerous to democracy in America.

Paul H. Elovitz (01/09-19/21): Demagogy has been a staple of support for numerous American politicians. It works especially well in times of stress. We have major stresses in our capitalistic digital society, which lacks a sufficient economic, employment, and health safety net and brings all the bad news of our country and world to our ears and eyes. Then came the COVID-19 threat to our lives, jobs, and way of life during the Trump Big Lie presidency. One of Trump’s biggest lies was to deny and minimize the coronavirus in the name of strengthening his chances for reelection since he was running on the economy and thought that he didn’t need to have a clear-cut national, effective policy (in fact, he never did!). Regrettably, in the name of respecting the office of the presidency, the country has ignored or laughed at his 2016 lie that he had more votes than Hillary. I’ve been able to trace Donald believing his own lies from his early teenage years. Hitler’s use of the Big Lie has been on my mind ever since January 6^th!

There are so many historical examples of leaders galvanizing their followers to action. A midwestern Psychohistory Forum colleague brought up the case of the French Pope Urban II who was for a while considered in Rome to be an antipope, declared that Christians should stop killing each other and turn their wrath on the infidel Muslims. Enough Christians listened, making the First Crusade (1096-1099) a success due in part to the complacency of the Muslims (this reminds me of President Bush’s complacency in the face of the very clear, congressionally reported threats that led to 9/11).

American democracy is threatened by a combination of our instant digital communications weakening the separation of powers, combined with Trump’s sociopathic assault on democratic tradi-

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tions. The demagogic 45^th president drew on the insecurity and sense of loss of a significant part of the white working and middle class in the name of his own Make America Great Again (MAGA) grandiose fantasies. White southerners lost the Civil War but held onto their myth (a Big Lie) of the Civil War being about states’ rights, not slavery. Will the unethical among our leaders be able to turn Trump’s varied followers into a fascistic organized party? Should sensible Americans be considering talking about banning Trumpism the way Germany restored democracy under Konrad Adenauer banned Mein Kampf (1925) and Nazism in almost all its forms? While I do want Trump and other organized insurrectionists banned from corporate-owned Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc., I do not favor government censorship.

The January 6, 2021, attempted coup should not be taken as a one-off! If we are not careful, it will be a harbinger of the future. Even if at this moment, Trump and about 20% of his supporters continue to think Biden stole the election, truth and trust must be the hallmarks of the post-Trump era. His Republican congressional election deniers must be confronted and shamed even as he is considering running for election again in 2024.

James William Anderson (01/16/21, psychoanalyst, Northwestern University, and editor of The Annual of Psychoanalysis): What alarmed me most in the events leading up to the attack on the Capitol were the members of Congress who supported Trump’s false claim that he would have won in a landslide if not for voter fraud. Seven members of the senate and 138 member of the House voted to reject the Electoral result in Pennsylvania. The vast majority of these legislators knew that Trump’s claim was a lie. They figured that backing Trump would benefit their careers. By supporting the false claim, they would please their pro-Trump constituents and be able to prevent Trump from primarying them. They knew that the majority in Congress would accept the Electoral vote and Biden would become president; so, they reasoned, what harm would their stance cause?

In the early 20^th century, Vienna Mayor Karl Lueger spewed anti-Semitism to increase his popularity. It seems that he didn’t actually hate Jews but found that attacking them helped him get elected and reelected. He probably imagined that his rabid attacks didn’t matter that much; the position of Jews in Vienna did not radically deteriorate during Lueger’s tenure. But there was a greater effect. His fulminations convinced many in the city that the Jews

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were a poison in the body of the Germanic Volk. One young man who lived in Vienna at the time was Adolf Hitler. In Mein Kampf (1925), Hitler acknowledged his debt to Lueger. The danger when leaders make lies for personal gain is that listeners might actually believe the lies. The legislators who supported Trump’s Big Lie about the election chose narrow self-interest over the truth and caused excessive harm to the country.

Jon Smith (01/16/21, an African American lawyer who thinks it is professionally safer to remain anonymous): To effectively treat an illness, one obviously must correctly diagnose it. But imagine if a disease, like cancer, was classified as an outdated, even slanderous designation, only to be attributed to the relics of the past or the most reckless in the present.

Such is the malady of white superiority. It cannot be cured but perhaps treated. America, however, has declined treatment—the type of therapeutic remedies that Martin Luther King Jr. implored this nation to seek—because the country cannot come to grips with the diagnosis. America has decided it is more important to say its noble White citizens are the picture of health than for them to actually be healthy. If White superiority were lung cancer, a significant portion of our country has been smoking the tobacco of disdain for non-white citizens for decades, usually in alleyways. For the last four years, these individuals have begun chain-smoking out in the open. The nation fears an honest assessment and coddles these heavy smokers.

The diagnosis is clear. America is riddled with the cancer of White superiority, and its aggressive spread has spawned domestic terrorists. Propelled by Donald Trump, inflamed by Fox News, and enabled by the Republican Party, these cancerous cells invaded the Capitol on January 6^th, seeking to destroy whatever healthy cells of a multicultural democracy remained. Joe Biden’s inauguration will occur two days after Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Will America acknowledge its illness and finally seek the treatment he prescribed or allow democracy to decline further?

Michael Maccoby (01/20/21, psychoanalyst, anthropologist, and expert on narcissistic leadership): Was Trump delusional or cynical in claiming to have won the election? Clearly, it would have been delusional if he were the only one that believed it. But millions of his supporters believed it and millions of dollars were sent to him for his campaign to overturn the election. Does Trump suffer from a narcissistic personality disorder? He only seems to suffer when

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he feels victimized or criticized. But many people have suffered from Trump’s moral character disorder, his lack of concern for anyone else, and his pathological lying. Trump was able to make millions of followers, especially whites with little education—his base—who love him and believe he loves them. He brought out hope that they would regain their racial superiority and their rage at not being respected. Trump’s greatest fear was to be a loser. Maybe he believed that Republican judges, state legislators, members of Congress, and his base could make him a winner. His final desperate attempt on January 6^th, inciting insurrection, went too far.

Peter Petschauer (01/21/21, historian, psychohistorian, and poet): We need more historical context. Orators (a word from Latin) fit the broader context of public speakers. History offers examples of the very best, from Cicero, Lincoln, Churchill to Obama. They are excellent in uplifting the spirit of their audience during crises by going beyond their personal needs. Demagogues, too, fit in this broader context. But while the first emphasizes the group’s benefits, the second incites for a subgroup or the self. Demagogues (from Greek demos and again) orate in the sense of the word used since the 18^th century, are mostly men agitating to attain narrow interests. The ancient Greek Cleon, Mussolini, and Trump are good examples of this phenomenon.

In either group, most orators stem from the elites of society, speaking at a specific historical moment. Both are skilled, eloquent, and adroit with language. Both trained for the moment of their performances, like Cicero and Hitler. They astutely place/d themselves in their physical context to persuade. Until the electronic age, orators needed a strong voice, one that could be heard in the entire “marketplace” (the agora of ancient Greece); but today even a weak voice can project with the latest media enhancements. In the ancient world, orators relied on props like a clear view and columned buildings, now massive platforms enhanced by sea of flags and patriotic music are a must; there is also the “intimacy” of a massive desk. Democratic orators are uplifting and focused on the general interests of the community, while the demagogues are self-centered and ultimately destructive.

Pamela Steiner (01/21/21, Harvard’s FXB Center for Public Health and Human Rights ): In writing my soon-to-be-released Collective Trauma and the Armenian Genocide, some history lessons I learned from studying the demise of the Ottoman Empire and also as an American citizen are as follows. First, elites generally will do

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anything to hold onto power, prestige, position, and money. Second, occasionally or periodically some exceptional individuals and groups evolve and support principles and processes of human and group rights that governments are to follow. These embody fairness, transparency, and accountability as being more important than their own power, prestige, position, and money. Third, such individuals come and go. Finally, national and international laws, enforcement abilities, and the will to take action are essential if the first lesson is not to be the sole pattern.

The late 19^th century constitution of the Ottoman Empire guaranteed rights to all its citizens and provided proper rules for performing official functions. Yet before the close of that century, large massacres of Armenians were carried out. This happened again in 1909, and leaders were not held accountable. By the end of the first decade of the 20^th century, both the rights and the governmental processes were ignored, and the constitution was as good as dead, if indeed it had ever been more than a paper reality. In 1915 those who were to benefit from the rights in that constitution were massacred in a genocide. By the end of the first decade of the 20^th century, both the rights and the processes were ignored, and the constitution was as good as dead, if indeed it had ever been more than a paper reality. Ever since Turkish leaders practice denial as state policy.

Paul H. Elovitz (01/21/21): Yesterday, I was elated by the beginning of the new presidency and quite worried when, in gun-obsessed America, I looked at all the heavily armed National Guard soldiers in and around the Capitol. While they were there to avert another January 6^th riotous insurrection, I’m concerned about assassinations and suicide bombings by true believers in Big Lies—whatever their ideological justification. We must accept the reality of the concerns, hopes, fears, and sense of loss of our Trump-supporting neighbors, as I did for my Trump-supporting students last semester, while being vigilant as well as speaking and acting strongly for the values of truth, trust, and democracy in our engagement with them.

Jeff Meyerhoff (1/22/21, social worker): Following the recent attack on the U.S. Capitol, there have been two differing responses: calls for national unity and a strong crackdown on Trump’s far-righters. A historically informed, social psychoanalysis provides an answer as to which response is best. Like Trump’s personal pathology of anti-social—narcissism—the primary principle of fascists

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is that winning confers rightness regardless of the means used to gain victory. “Might makes right” is the fundamental fascist principle. In contrast, “right makes might” is the traditional liberal, democratic, humanist philosophy. The ideal liberal humanist evaluates means and ends ethically. The liberal humanist response, in theory, would attempt to stop international and domestic disputes through rational exchange and legal means.

The liberal humanist needs to realize their fundamental difference from the fascist. The liberals’ attempts to be fair and use rational exchange are seen by the fascists as an admission of weakness to be exploited. That’s the foundational feature of the fascists’ anti-social disorder: no serious ethical considerations on the path to self-aggrandizement (see Trump). Historically, we see this fascistic principle in the relationship between the U.S. and Vietnam. The U.S. used the rhetoric of democracy promotion as moral cover to inflict their superior military force on Vietnam and dominate the weaker foe. Trumpian neo-fascists, like Nixon and Kissinger in Vietnam, care only for victory by any means. Those liberal humanists whose principle is “right makes might” must use all legal means to assert their superior strength over the neo-fascists.

Peter Loewenberg (01/25/21): Petschauer and Maccoby seem less focused on the problem of understanding the dynamics of what happened in DC on June 6^th in the Capitol and why the Capitol Police and law enforcement were so egregiously unprepared. We do know who called out the mob, but we do not know their make-up. At this point, we only have impressions and speculations and cannot speak with assurance until we have detailed lists of arrestees, social profiles, police, military, veterans, and group affiliations.

Michael Maccoby (01/26/21): The Trump insurrection of January 6^th appears different from past insurrections, such as that of Catiline in Rome of 63BC and Shays’ rebellion in Massachusetts of 1786. Both these insurrections included veterans suffering from debt. There were veterans in the Trump insurrection, but their complaints were cultural. Their aims were racist, and their goal was not economic but to keep their beloved leader in power. Has there ever been an insurrection like this?

David Lotto (01/27/21, psychoanalyst and Journal of Psychohistory editor): It seems to me that we are witnessing an outbreak of mass psychosis. You might want to call it a hysterical panic, but I favor the term psychosis. Many of the beliefs held by so many of

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the 74 million who voted for him, as demonstrated by the huge crowd that showed up in DC on January 6^th, are frankly delusional. There was a weird hodge-podge of bizarre delusions, including QAnon and related conspiracy theories such as the belief in the all-controlling “deep state.” But the 10s of 1,000s of people who showed up for the rally were united in the delusion that the election was stolen. Delusions are out of touch with reality, firmly held, and impervious to influence by the usual rational means. The behavior of his loyal followers is best understood as being the “cult of Trump.” Loyalty to and belief in the pronouncements of the leader are characteristics of cult followers. With Trump now somewhat out of the picture, it remains to be seen what will happen to the cult.

Regarding historical parallels, there are many powerful leaders who inspired fanatic loyalty among their followers, including Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Caesar, and Jim Jones. There are also
examples of what is usually referred to as mass hysteria, like the Salem witch craze, which can be seriously out of touch with reality and be seen as having psychotic elements. The saving grace so far is that a clear majority of us still seem to be attached to the real world.

Peter Loewenberg (2/17/21): We are just beginning to get a profile of the mob’s makeup that stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021. The first results are tentative but indicative. There is much data gathering and interpretation yet to be done and revelations to come as further arrests are made, charges filed, and evidence produced in trials. The best source we have so far is an intensive review of the 175 people charged as of January 31^st on page one of the New York Times on February 4, 2021, co-authored by six journalists who were supplemented by eight additional reporters and three photo specialists who reproduced colored postage-stamp-sized photos and city of residence of those arrested.

The insurrectionists came from 39 states, an extensive American area, including Honolulu, Seattle, Montana, San Francisco, and San Diego. One is a racist student at UCLA. These were not Lumpenproletariat (unemployed classless dregs of society). They included at least 30 police and other law enforcement officers; one was Chris West, Sheriff of Canadian County, Oklahoma (New York Times, February 17, 2021, A13). At least 22 were current or former military. Twenty-one had ties to militant militias such as the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, QAnon, Nazis, and the KKK. The number of veterans, particularly ex-Marines, military,

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police, and auxiliary law enforcement participating is striking. They came from all over the U.S. with vans, transportation, and accommodations. Clearly, this was a well-organized and synchronized recruitment and mobilization. They were charged with trespassing, disrupting Congress, interference with law enforcement, property crimes, assault, weapons crimes, conspiracy, and threats to kill Speaker Pelosi. Soon, with more arrests, we will have a more nuanced social profile.

Peter Loewenberg (2/22/21): The Capitol Police Force has 2,000 sworn officers and a budget of $515 million. They were clearly not immediately and fully mobilized. D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department has 3,800 officers and a budget of $556 million (Los Angeles Times, January 8, 2021, p. A6). Why were they not immediately deployed? We are now beginning to get a picture of confusion, lack of authority, and chain of command delay in calling for speedy back-up for the outmanned Capitol Police Force. For anyone familiar with the role of the military in authoritarian regimes of Latin America, Africa, or Fascist Europe, it is comforting to read of the Pentagon sensitivity to the principle of civilian supremacy. Lt. General Walter E. Piatt, Director of Army staff, “did not like the visual of the National Guard standing a line with the Capitol in the background” (New York Times, February 2, 2021, A17).

Jon Smith (02/24/21): Professor Elovitz’ comment got me thinking. White superiority has been discussed a great deal, including in the statement I previously submitted to the roundtable. While I believe the overarching theme about the persistence of White superiority to be accurate, it strikes me that the term “White superiority” does not accurately depict the psychology involved in what we’ve witnessed the last four years, culminating on January 6^th. There is an advantage to using another term, “White priority.” Many White Americans intensely love democracy—but for them, it is a conditional love that places a premium on whiteness, and a hierarchy with the White male at the apex. In their hearts and minds, it seems that democracy without whiteness is not democracy at all. Those who voted for Trump are not abandoning democracy in favor of idolatry of the demagogue, Trump is seen as the sturdiest weapon in countering what they view as a war on White democracy. Indeed, true equality and justice would demand that democracy that supports this hierarchy must fall. Some Whites are motivated to defend their conditional democracy at all costs because it supports the self-identity of White America. Who wouldn’t fight to the death for one’s very idea of self? The battle continues, with no end

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in sight.

James William Anderson (02/24/21, psychoanalyst, Northwestern University, and editor of The Annual of Psychoanalysis): As a clinical psychologist with decades spent treating patients, I am uncomfortable with applying the term “psychosis” to large numbers of people most of whom are in the normal range in terms of their mental health. Their situation is dramatically different from that of a person who is having a psychotic reaction to the use of hallucinogens or the person with schizophrenia who is suffering from a delusion. A term that strikes me as much more useful is “rationalization.” It’s rationalization rather than cult-like psychotic thinking. All of us have a great capacity for rationalization, that is, accepting what seems like a logical reason for believing something that, for emotional reasons, we wish to believe. A dramatic example I observed is that of a college student who had unprotected sex with a man one weekend even though she knew she should not because of the risk of pregnancy. The following weekend, telling herself, “I did it once, I may as well do it again,” she also engaged in unprotected sex. A more mundane example is knowing I should moderate my eating of high-sugar candy, but my girlfriend gave me some for our anniversary and I told myself, “It wouldn’t be very nice to her if I didn’t eat the candy.” The rationalization is that I ate it for her sake. We human beings are skillful at finding reasons for doing what we want to do and for believing what we want to believe.

I know a highly intelligent lawyer who, to my dismay, has been a faithful supporter of Trump, even believing Trump’s lies about winning the election. How could that be? I know a great deal about his upbringing, and I’ll try to summarize. He came from a relatively poor background. He outworked just about everyone he knew. He had great success in his career and outdid peers whom he resented because they had many advantages he did not have, such as having wealthy parents, an Ivy League education, contacts, and an Eastern-elite background. He became a conservative Republican and felt that the Democrats should not steal his hard-won money by soaking the rich, i.e., him. He also resented the media, dominated by the Eastern elite, which has been adamantly anti-Trump. Because of all this, he was highly motivated to believe that Trump had won the election and that the Democrats had stolen it. His liberal friends disagreed with him, and he was motivated to believe he was right and they were wrong. Trump and intelligent followers like Ted Cruz provided various seemingly rational arguments, such as

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that the mail-in vote in Pennsylvania flouted the state laws and that voting machines had been compromised. In summary, the large majority of Trump’s followers had personal reasons for believing his lies and simply resorted to the human mechanism of rationalization to convince themselves that there were logical reasons for believing his lies.

Jon Smith (02/25/21): I recall Megyn Kelly’s breathless assurance to the “children” of America that Santa Claus was White. That could be dismissed as “Fox News being Fox News,” but also consider the backlash to the simple suggestion of Idris Elba being the next James Bond. These are fictional characters whose whiteness was defended with ferocity. The notions of the White male hero figure are constant messages, explicit and implicit, to the point that everyone accepts them on some level. If Superman was Black it would not feel right to most of America. In history books and households across America, Black people are described in a myriad of ways, but being virtuous is not one of them. A Black man may be idolized by White America for his athletic gifts. A Black woman may be adored for her musical talent. However, that brilliance is viewed from a comfortable distance, both ideologically and physically. Crucially, that idolatry is accorded to natural talent, and their tireless work and proving of themselves are ignored.

To acknowledge those characteristics would be to acknowledge the virtue attached to them. No matter what one thinks about Barack Obama’s performance as president, one must twist yourself into an unwieldy pretzel to claim he is not virtuous and that he lacks intelligence or integrity. These qualities were to be the province of White men; they provide the foundational condition of American democracy. Barack Obama is just a good dude. His performance as president was mostly extraordinary, at times frustrating. But that is not what mattered. To acknowledge his actual character would cut against the pervasive White exceptionalism. A Black man wore the presidential cape, and instead of bringing hope, he scared the hell out of our nation.

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