The Allure of Trumpism

Review of Mari Fitzduff, Ed., Why Irrational Politics Appeals: Understanding the Allure of Trump (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2017), ISBN9781-4408-5514-6, pages i-vi, 238, hardbound, $37.00.

Here an impressive array of social psychologists, political scientists, and one historian grapple with the electoral success of Donald Trump, both in the Republican primaries and in November 2016’s general election. Their contributions have been gathered by Mari Fitzduff, a specialist on conflict resolution (with a long career in Northern Ireland), who now teaches at Brandeis University’s Heller School for Social Policy and Management.

The book explores Trumpism from varied perspectives. Micha Popper of the University of Haifa, author of seven books on leadership and followership, mentions that people’s desire to identify with an appealing leader can prompt them to shift their personal priorities, to rearrange their personal “hierarchy of self-identity” so that it better aligns with a given leader and his cohort. Leadership thus isn’t attained single-handedly but evolves through a relationship with followers.

Yet what is it about Trump that draws followers? Micha Popper and another of this book’s authors make much of Daniel Kahneman’s 2011 book Thinking, Fast and Slow. Popper says what matters most nowadays in national U.S. political campaigns is “fast thinking” (consisting of impressions and feelings), whereas “slow thinking” (which is thorough and diligent) doesn’t gain primacy until later, when people evaluate a political leader in hindsight.

This dovetails with a chapter sub-titled “Electoral Theater in the Age of Trump,” which calls today’s American political campaigns “performances” comparable to stage drama. As such, today’s campaigns emphasize storyline (plot), costumes, and the quality of performance—a deviation from rational discourse into “entertainment” that is largely driven by how campaigns are covered on TV, which in turn is driven by TV ratings and advertising revenue. This chapter’s authors draw on Erving Goffman’s book Frame Analysis (1974) to label Trump’s campaign speeches as theatrical performances that were probably less reflective “of who Trump really is than what his fan base desires to see in him” (200).

A chapter titled “Intolerant and Afraid” also stands out. Here Matthew C. MacWilliams of UMass at Amherst uses survey data to identify key variables that correlate with support for Trump, which turn out to be “authoritarianism and a personalized fear of terrorism” (121). Thus, despite “Irrational” being in this book’s title, MacWilliams does not think

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Trump’s core loyalists support him via “fast thinking” or for his “performance,” but rather support him because they want few if any constitutional limits on a leader whose pronouncements about Muslims, immigrants, refugees, and dissent are in accord with their own views. MacWilliams’ survey was conducted in December 2015 online with 1,800 registered voters, including 558 registered Republicans. To measure authoritarianism, he used four questions about child-rearing that were previously used in 1992 by ANES (American National Election Studies). MacWilliams says explicitly that “sex, educational attainment, age, church attendance, evangelicalism, ideology, race, and income” were not statistically significant predictors of support for Trump (123). He somewhat implausibly claims that the only other viable factor he found to be statistically significant as a predictor of Trump support was fear that an act of terrorism might personally harm the respondent or his/her family.

MacWilliams also documents that feeling threatened tends to boost authoritarian attitudes, a theme developed further in the next chapter, titled “Death: The Trump Card.” Drawing on research inspired by Terror Management Theory, this chapter correlates thoughts of death with a spectrum of heightened authoritarian tendencies, notably with support for charismatic leaders (see 142-143 especially). The chapter makes no claim that Trump explicitly asks people to imagine themselves being killed, but it does say that his frequent allusions to terrorism, mosques, and immigrants serve the same function.

Overall, Mari Fitzhugh has pulled together a thought-provoking book, and I now feel better able to interpret our new chapter unfolding in American history. The Trump “plot” continues thickening with no resolution in sight. As I write this in mid-April 2017, the mainstream right wing of the Republican Party had just seemed to gain the upper hand over Steve Bannon and the far right populists. But foreign war can change that, and Trump has now veered toward a confrontation with North Korea. The mainstream right wing Republicans seemed to hope they could control Trump and use him for their own purposes—like the mainstream Right in late-Weimar Germany thought they could use Hitler. But foreign confrontations and “enemies within” bolster a chief executive’s autonomy, and the Trump chapter of U.S. history appears far from over.

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