A Toxic Pair

I recently started following Jen Mercieca on BlueSky. She's a historian of American political rhetoric and a professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism at Texas A&M University.

Yesterday, she posted about the psychological underpinning of what's happening in our country (and many parts of the world). In the thread, she named some of the scholars who study the topic and gave a link to Google Scholar.

But here are some of her thoughts:

Really wish folks would have looked up "social dominance orientation" when we still had the chance to prevent this sh*t.

Right Wing Authoritarians (RWA) defend social hierarchy and group norms, hate differences, cling to "normal" and want to follow a "strong leader."

Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) have narcissism, sadism and Machiavellianism. They want to be the "strong leader."

RWA and SDO are a toxic pair.

It's really important to understand two things: RWA is both innate and learned. And, it can be "activated" or "triggered" by SDO who use exactly the kind of polarizing propaganda and fear appeals that Trump (and all autocrats) has used to attack the US over the last 10 years.

When Democrats were calling Republicans "weird," that worked because RWA audiences heard that and thought, "wait, are we the weird ones or are THEY the weird ones?" RWA want to defend "normal" more than most people, so being associated with "weird" made them uncomfortable. Too bad someone told them to stop.

I understand that it's difficult to understand the high level of psychological warfare that has occurred in the US over the past 10 years—but that's what a lot of folks have been trying to explain. RWA have had their minds attacked where they are most vulnerable.

SDO types look for vulnerability and exploit those vulnerabilities to their advantage. Over the past 10 years they have attacked our institutional vulnerabilities, our media vulnerabilities, and our psychological vulnerabilities. They've moved what is "normal" from democracy to fascism.

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This relates to two earlier posts of mine about authoritarian personalities:

Two ways of looking at deniers (July 2021)

Who are Trump's supporters and what do they want? (March 2016)