One of the defining features of the rise of American neofascism is violence. This is in no way surprising: violence is one of the primary tools that enemies of democracy use to impose their will, undermine institutions, and prevent the types of consensus-seeking that's foundational to a healthy democracy and society. Contrary to what right-wing leaders and their disinformation media would like to suggest, this violence is not on “both sides.” The data and other evidence show that political violence and extremism in the Age of Trump (and from the late 1980s to the present more generally) is a phenomenon almost exclusive to the right-wing and “conservative” movement. Donald Trump’s coup attempt on Jan. 6 and the terrorist attack by his MAGA zealots on the Capitol serve as the most prominent example.
National security experts and law enforcement are continuing to warn that right-wing political violence as seen on Jan. 6, in mass shootings and other acts of terrorism, hate crimes, and other such actions – up to an including the possibility of a sustained insurgency to remove President Biden and the Democrats from power – is the greatest threat to the country’s domestic safety and security.
As the 2024 Election approaches and Trump’s criminal trials continue, the risk of lethal violence by members of the American right wing will only escalate. In all, Trumpism and American neofascism and the types of radicalization and extremism they are both a product of and are encouraging (and spreading) constitute a political, cultural, moral, and public health crisis.
In an attempt to better understand why so many Americans have succumbed to radicalization and extremism in the Age of Trump and beyond, the psychological processes involved, how this is a global problem, and what can be done to escape the spiral of radicalization in American, I recently spoke with Dr. Emily Bashah, a licensed psychologist and author. She is the co-author of Addictive Ideologies: Finding Meaning and Agency When Politics Fail You.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length:
Given the state of the world, with all this conflict and tumult, how are you feeling?
As a mother, I am heartbroken. As an Arab Jew, I am heartbroken. As a psychologist, I am looking to science and theory that can give me answers, hope, truth, and a path forward out of this horror. As a forensic psychological expert, I deal with some of the most hardened, ideological, extreme people. I do evaluations mostly in jail or sometimes prison. I have evaluated people who have been found guilty of crimes, heinous acts against children, or women, and convicted of domestic terrorism. Believe it or not, as hard as these interviews often are, I leave them feeling both grateful and hopeful. Because it is clear to me that as individuals, we decide who we are. That free will gives us the ability to decide to become the best version of ourselves or the worst version of ourselves.
This does not mean that there are not terrible conditions that these people are afflicted by that are outside of their control or power. But it offers an important framework based upon self-agency that can be applied to understanding and uncovering the process of becoming extremist. I can tell you that as a psychologist who does both forensic evaluations and clinical psychotherapy, I have interviewed people who came from the worst conditions, and who will spend the rest of their lives in prison for their crimes, but have transformed themselves for the better. I’ve also dealt with people who have everything that someone could imagine would be good in life, and their view is incredibly dark, bleak, and negative. The only thing that gives them some solace is the ability to blame someone or something for all their problems.
I’m optimistic because I believe in free will, that we don’t have to become products of our environments. Though the work is hard, we get to choose our narrative. I personally look for the heroes in our past and present to find inspiration in dark times. While a prisoner in an Auschwitz concentration camp, Viktor Frankl said most prison guards were not sadistic, but there were some who you could see found pleasure in killing or torturing others.
As a clinician and mental health expert, what suggestions do you have for how people can better manage what has been an exhausting last seven or more years here in the United States?
Long-term stress can have deleterious effects on our health. Prolonged exposure to stress has an effect on hypertension, heart disease, stroke, cancer and mental illness.
If you’re stressed by “the liberal elite," or by Donald Trump, or by any politician, you should start with a recognition that terrifying the public is profitable. All of us need the neocortex to be able to rationalize, and process information using executive functioning skills. But when we’re stressed and overpowered through a process called the amygdala hijack, we are operating on a flight, fight, freeze response. In this process, our limbic system is activated and overrides our frontal lobe.
So, the nightly news picks a side. They appeal to an audience. And then they intentionally terrify them to keep them watching tomorrow. Politicians and political parties terrify you about the other side to keep you loyal. They take your agency from you and then stand upon it for greater leverage. The only way out of this is to take responsibility for yourself and don’t surrender your accountability, responsibility, and personal agency. Think about re-registering as an unaffiliated voter — as recommended by my partner, Paul Johnson, and co-author of our book. Turn off the nightly news if it’s stressing you and try reading things that have a more in-depth look and critical analysis of problems, so you are not basing your assumptions on emotional reasoning. Be engaged in politics when it’s time to vote. The rest of the time focuses on the great things that are happening in your life.
As I, and a few others with a public platform, have consistently been trying to warn throughout the Age of Trump and beyond, America’s democracy crisis and ascendant neofascism is also a mental health crisis.
I couldn’t agree more.
If the mental health crisis that we’re talking about is a result of the stress, terror, loss of control, unpredictability, that individuals are experiencing from our current political divisions, then I see this as a psychological crisis in the U.S. This problem stems from not only extremism, but the effect that extremism has on tribalism.
Our current political crisis has created a win/lose mindset. The tribal belief that if one side wins the other side loses. This becomes the politics of resentment, hate, envy, revenge, and assigning fault. We slip consciously or unconsciously into these types of problems, that if unaddressed can begin to look very much like the ones that we are seeing in the Middle East.
All of this creates stress, anxiety, hopelessness, existential threat, collective grief, and paralysis. My other concern is people are secluding their lives with people who either think like them or more extreme forms of it. Households and families are so divided by politics. And all this further differentiates us from artificial categories of friend or foe. Through this process, we lose the ability to exercise communication skills and having difficult conversations with people you disagree with without making it personal and exercising respect, social norms, and preservation of a common ground socially and within the community.
The Age of Trump and the rise of the global right has seen an increase in violence, terrorism, hate crimes, and other antisocial behavior here in the U.S. and abroad. There is also conspiracism, the MAGA political cult behavior, disinformation, echo chambers, and a world where there increasingly seems to be a lack of consensus about basic reality and facts. How are you navigating these forces?
Certainly, we all worry about this. Unfortunately, sometimes these values come in conflict with one another. Here’s the hard answer to your questions; If those on the left see this as a problem of the right, this can’t be fixed. If those on the right see this as a problem on the left, this can’t be fixed. But if we both take responsibility for the excesses of the extremes within our tribe and stay away from moral relativism, whataboutisms, and instead focus on our own accountability, there is hope. This is no different than every person I have dealt with on death row.
I imagine from your questions that both of us are on the Left. Both of us are more worried about the increase in violence, terrorism, hate crimes and other antisocial behaviors. However, I see this as what is my role in making the problem better or worse, and why does the right feel the way they do? As a strong supporter of human rights, equal rights and civil rights, It would be unfair to say that there weren't people in the U.S. who believed that they lost something as those values were moved forward. That something may have been social status, lost a job or a promotion, or even being hired in the first place.
We don't have to give up our values to be empathetic to the other side. And maybe through empathy we look for ways to mitigate their loss. Maybe we quit seeing the world as one of scarcity that results in an us versus them mentality. Maybe we recognize that the abundance of this country has enough to benefit all groups.
Life is much more hopeless if we believe our problems are caused completely by the other side. If one believes this, then nothing that I do can make it better.
What do we know about the process of radicalization? Why do some people succumb to radicalism and others do not? How is radicalization like an addiction?
The definition of an addiction is that you continue doing something harmful to yourself and people you care about, and you cannot stop. One can become addicted to an ideology just as they can become addicted to drugs, alcohol, gambling, or sex.
Part of this addiction is driven by personality type. But there is also a chemical addiction. The need to be right actually creates a biological effect on the body that creates an addiction. When one wins an argument, it releases dopamine and hormones. This, like a drug, causes an artificial high. And this high we want to repeat. It forms the basis for an addiction.
It's important to separate the addicted into at least 2 categories; the extremist and the tribal member. The extremists might also be seen as the afflicted and the tribal members as those who are at risk. I create this distinction both because they react in different ways, but also because the prescription is different.
On the extremists, I’m going to give you some bad news. Studies show that once somebody becomes an extremist, trying to confront them with facts or experts can make them more violent. The only real thing we can do to help them is to get them off the topic of politics and get them back onto other important aspects of their life, family, job, etc. And often even there, their ideology eclipses the values of those other things, and they create a reason as to why their job, children, or spouse is so wrong in their view of the world. Thus, becoming more justified in their reasons for taking violent action.
This group probably does not represent more than 3-4% of the public. Some of them have mental disorders. Others are recruited into radicalized organizations. The ability to recruit generally comes from one's sense of loss. But this group is more willing to harm other individuals. Sometimes reputational harm, other times physical harm.
The tribal members are different. This group of people are less willing to harm others. However, these individuals are tied to these extremists through their social identities. In the problems we are addressing in these questions, they are tied to these extremists through political parties. Most members of those political parties are not extremists. They are not willing to commit violence of any type to promote their cause.
Loneliness and social atomization play a large role in why individuals join extremist organizations be it ISIS/ISIL or right-wing paramilitaries and other antidemocracy and hate groups here in the U.S. What do we know empirically?
The sense of loss is a major driver for recruitment. Isolation drives one more towards violence. This might explain why racial minority members are more optimistic than racial majority members. This should be curious because we know that racial majority members are doing better economically than racial minorities. However, as pointed out in the work of Eric Hoffer in the True Believer, mass movements do not come from people who have a lot and want more, and they don’t come from people who have nothing and want something, mass movements come from people who had some something and lost a piece of it. Every radical movement utilizes this concept to gain membership: victimhood. They give them an ideology that creates a compact and simple explanation of why that happened.
After that isolation becomes a problem. As one is going through the process of radicalization, it becomes very difficult to have conversations with people who are not a part of the ideology. This in turn creates distance between someone who is being radicalized and those people who care most about them. This makes the more radical influence the only dominant voice they are hearing. That, according to Belanger’s work, leads to violence.
The FBI still identifies these radical organizations as a very small percentage of the population. But this does not show how these more radical organizations such as the Alt Right, through political organizations, have an ability to expand their numbers.
Hillary Clinton recently suggested that Trump’s MAGA cultists need to be “deprogrammed. Intervene if you would.
I don't see how Hillary Clinton has any ability to be helpful in healing the country. While I might agree with her on many policy issues, she sees the other side as being without merit. She sees them as being some group of people who have deplorable values.
I also do not believe Donald Trump has the leadership skills to pull our country back together. I am hopeful that we will find the right leader. But more importantly, I am optimistic that there are enough people who want to preserve what they see as being good in Western-style liberal democracy.
What interventions can be made individually and collectively to counter the spiral or radicalization here in the U.S., specifically, and more generally?
- Help people know the truth, it’s not as bad as you think. But you will probably have to turn off the nightly news.
- Become accountable for your own actions. Know that our partisan ideologies allow us to escape the evils within us. More importantly, over time it allows us to objectify the other side.
- Find strength through free speech. We do not become stronger by finding a safe place. We become stronger by listening to people we disagree with. Being safe is important. Free speech is more important.
- Find meaning and purpose. Focus on this instead of happiness. We find this in what you create, who you love and how you serve.
- Love and forgiveness. We will have to let go of things that were done to us that were harmful. We will have to find ways to love people that today we count as our enemy. See people as people, not as some member of a group.
- Find a sense of belonging. A common narrative is essential and the one we had for 250 years shows great promise at being able to attract people on the right and left.
- It’s We not Me. We have to be willing to think beyond our ego, frailties, cognitive and prejudices. Try to focus on building a better We.
