The Daily Beast Podcast - Why the MAGA Cult Votes for Trump and Against Its Interest

Episode Date: July 7, 2024

Professor Stephen J. Ducat tells The New Abnormal podcast how feeling like part of a tribe is giving Americans, especially those on the right-wing, a sense of belonging. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits comfortably on the left. Hi, I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and recovering lobbyist. But today, I'm an unapologetic, woke commentator on America's threats to democracy. And I'm producer Jesse Kedden, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. Our goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our New Abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears.

Welcome back to another bonus episode of New Abnormal, and we thank you so much for being here. Today we have an extra special guest in Stephen Jay Duke. He's a political psychologist and easier to talk to us all about his new book, Hatreds We Love, the psychology of political tribalism in Boots Truth America. But first, let's have some fun. Who would you name 2024's Person of the Year? Like as a good person? Yes, yes, a good person.

Somebody who's really, really killed it this year and done good for the world. Like, is it a celebrity? Yeah, somebody who's done good for the world or bringing a good thought into the world that's spreading, things like that. You know, honestly, I'm going to say Jose Andreas. I love it. The World Central Kitchen, I think that the work that Jose Andreas has done to bring food into absolutely devastated war-torn countries, I think is extraordinary. I think his food advocacy that he does, he has really shifted the idea of what it means to be a celebrity chef, you know, who has tons of restaurants, tons of, you know, cookbooks, like all of those things. And he really turned it into activism that is beautiful and heartbreaking.

But because of his star power, it's brought a lot of attention to a lot of suffering around the world that is unnecessary suffering. So I'm going to give it to him. Yeah, that's really good. I did not realize that this was being broadcast live because I've gotten a bunch of texts. I'll just read one of them. Jose Andreas, great choice, but obviously should be you, Andy. Another one, not to take anything away from Jose Andreas, who does great work, but it has to be a podcast host. Probably should be you, Andy.

I've gotten several like that. I am not comfortable naming myself, so I won't do that. So I will say Danielle Moody. Oh, wow. Wow, person of the year, doing really good for the world. Yeah. Yeah. I think everyone needs F bombs and rage in their life.

So thank you for them. Yeah. Obviously, I can't think of a good answer. Oh, great. So then it's just me. What is a law that Congress hasn't passed yet you'd really like to see past? Mine personally is the stock ban. And I think that do we have to get stocks out of politics as soon as possible?

I think that members of Congress should receive the same style of health care that most of their constituents receive. So why should they have a Cadillac plan for health care when their constituents like could damn near go bankrupt by going into the emergency room? So let me just add to that. Your income as a representative should match the median income of. your constituents and maybe you'd give a little bit more of a fuck about the working class and middle class than you do corporations that you take fucking money from those are both really good i wouldn't mind a law that says that once you are elected to congress or any other office that you are barred from being a lobbyist for life mhm that's a great one i don't think it would pass

constitutional muster, but if we're just spitballing here, I just think there's been so much damage done to this country by politicians who just use their office as a way station to making just a grip load of money lobbying for whatever company or industry will pay them the most, and it just sucks. Well, I told you to my idea for one that I don't think would pass constitutional muster, but I would really love to see somebody trying to put a law through that goes to the Supreme Court that you can't hang a flag upside down just so we can walk. just as Alito's squirp. Yeah. No, that's a good one. Okay. Last one. If heaven exists,

what would you like to hear St. Peter say when you arrive at the pearly gates? I think what I would hear is, well, this is a surprise. Yeah, definitely. There'd be a lot of shuffling of papers and he would put on his half glasses. That one-way phone line

that goes down to the other place going, we're sure, we're sure. Yeah. No, no, I see his name. I just, you know. Yeah, I don't know. I'm at a loss. I like Andes, because I am at a loss.

I don't think I'll arrive there, but, you know. Delusional thinking. A craving for an autocratic strong man. A need to punish perceived enemies. These are just a few of the hallmarks of Trumpism. And in his new book, Hatreds We Love, the Psychology of Political Tribalism in Post-Truth America. political psychologist, psychoanalyst, and former psychology professor, Stephen J. Ducat,

explores just how critical a role group identification plays into the MAGA belief system, and he joins me now to talk about it. Stephen, thank you so much. Well, thank you so much for your interest and having me. Absolutely. Before we begin, I do want to say that while the majority of the book focuses on tribalism and the American right, it doesn't let the left off the hook for its own, I guess you could say, epistemological failures. And I'm not going to have time to get into that aspect of the book, but I did feel that it was important to let people know that it is indeed there. To concentrate more on the other side, one of the things you talk about at the beginning of the book is why people most harmed by GOP policies kept returning the architects of those policies to power. You say you were long puzzled by how citizens can be so easily persuaded to vote and otherwise act against their self-interest.

But that something clicked for you in 2016 when you realized, there's an interest that can sometimes and often does supersede life itself, maintaining one's good standing in the tribe. So that's the basis of all of this, isn't it? Absolutely. And it's an understanding that I kept getting dragged, kicking and screaming towards. I couldn't avoid it. I couldn't avoid confronting my own naivete that people were driven by the material self-interest.

And so I was just plagued by this, you know, as a professor, a writer, thinker, psychoanalyst, how it was that people could act against their own material self-interest. And then it kind of dawned on me, watching Donald Trump and watching the delirious adoration with which he was greeted. And it just occurred to me that there is this drive that is in some ways so powerful that people will kill and die for it, which is to preserve our status in the group. So talk about something that you refer to in the book as tribal epistemology. I mentioned earlier that the left has its own epistemological failures. So talk about what this means. What is tribal epistemology? Well, it is really about how we come to understand the nature of truth and what confers truthfulness on something. And of course,

post-truth is part of the title of my book. And it's important to point out that post-truth is not just isn't simply lying, but it's an attempt to undermine the very notion of truth. And of course, epistemology is about truth. But the post-truth moment that we are part of that is characteristic of the Maga cult, and I might add Putin's Russia, is that you can't really know what's true, that experts can't be trusted, that facts can't be disentangled from fiction. And that's ultimately the only thing that you can hang on to is what the leader says, that the leader tells us what is really true. He or she defines reality. And so when it comes to epistemology, you know, what we're talking about are the different ways that left-wing and right-wing tribalism,

if you will, views truth. So in a way to really answer that question, we really have to unpack what the differences are between left and right wing notions of tribalism. So the key distinction, well, first of all, a tribe is, I use the term tribe in the kind of everyday sense of the term, which is it's a group that confers a sense of belonging and identity. It's a group that we feel we share values, beliefs, and a real or imagined history. And I say imagined history because right-wing tribes in particular, struck a kind of fictitious past, making America great again or making Germany great again. But you have left-wing tribes and right-wing tribes. But the difference is really about the

way that boundaries around groups are conceived. So liberal tribes, if you will, think of their boundaries as kind of semi-permeable members. Some people come in, some people go out, and we are selective about whom we let in. It's kind of, in a way, built not intentionally, but developed in a way that's very similar to our biological membranes, our cell membranes, which are semi-permeable. This is in dramatic contrast with right-wing tribal boundaries, which are impermeable. And if you're in a right-wing tribe, that boundary, who can come in and who can go out, is based entirely on race, ethnicity, religion, sexuality, gender. And if you are other, you are on the outside of that very rigid and impermeable boundary.

And throughout the book, you show how people gravitate to one of two particular types of tribes, and you compare and contrast, there's xenophobic versus xenophilic, there's securitarian versus unitarian, and there's universalism versus parochialism. And conservatives fall fairly neatly into the xenophobic, securitarian, and parochialism sides, right? And that all plays into this notion of boundary permeability. Absolutely. And in fact, we could think about Trump's wall as both a concrete external structure that he never really finished and an internal psychological structure that he actually did finish in the minds of his followers. And that wall is a kind of representation of that impermeable boundary around the Trump.

I think the difference between xenophobia and xenophilia is fairly obvious. But I also want to talk about securitarian, the notion of, as you say, people who are securitarian are driven by a deep sense of collective vulnerability and insecurity. They're always looking for traitors within their own group and they're mistrustful of people outside the group as threats. And then Unitarians, which is more of the liberal tribe, identify more with humanity as a whole. it's more empathic, more open to new experiences. And the same thing goes for universalist versus parochialist. The parochialist, as you would imagine, prefers the things that are and the people that are

closer to them, whereas a universalist would be more likely to believe, like, you don't know, all humans are humans and we don't treat them differently. Absolutely. In fact, there's a term for that concept I talk about in the book with identification with all of humanity, which is, of course, not unsurprisingly, characteristic of liberals. And all of these different terms, in a way, are different ways of talking about the same thing, but with a different emphasis. So like the idea of the securitarian, what that foregrounds is the notion of threat that my group is in danger, that there are these forces out there that are trying to get us. And we have to wreck walls. We've got to keep them out. got to lock them up. We have to put them in internment camps. We have to censor their ideas that they are

dangerous and we are vulnerable. That's the xenophobic worldview, as opposed to a kind of attraction to difference that characterizes liberals. And I know I'm creating, you know, a stark dichotomy. And I want to emphasize here that the differences are relative. They're not absolute, but they're there and they are profound. Yeah, absolutely. And when you talk about, you know, when we talk about all these things, the securitarian impulse, the xenophobic impulse, you make it very clear that we're talking a lot about the use of fear as a primal motivator. I think you use the example of George W. Bush, his administration discovered that every time they raise the color-coded terrorist threat level that we all remember, if we were old enough to remember, his approval ratings would go up. And there's sort of a direct line from that to Trump talking about Mexican rapists. And as you say, the idea that we need to build the wall and the shithole countries, all of that, right?

Absolutely. And that kind of priming for securitarian impulses to that activation, a triggering of that kind of deep fear, the fear of, you know, invaders, the invaders, the evil, swarthy hordes that are coming to get us. That's something that is so fundamental to the conservative mindset. And that brings to my mind something that I wrestled with for a long time. And that was the Obama to Trump voter, you know, because we often think about the Trump voter as, you know, not just xenophobic, but racist. And I think to great extent they are. But how do we make sense of the people that switched from Obama to Trump?

My analysis of that is that what MAGA did was find ways and how deliberate this was versus how intuitive. I don't know that I can disentangle that. But they found a way to activate white identity in the white Obama voter. Because these kind of xenophilip and xenophobic tendencies, they're part of all of us. The demands of the environment are essentially what cause one predisposition to get a expressed or the other. So there's a kind of latent xenophobia, even in liberals, that under certain circumstances, can get activated. And suddenly you have, or maybe not so suddenly, you have white liberal Obama voters that begin thinking about themselves in terms of race when they

hadn't before. The role of race in all of this can't really be overstated. And in fact, you point to a study that showed that racial attitudes have become the leader. indicator of a whole cluster of political stances from guns to police to health care, even to things like international trade. And it was really something to see that there's such a correlation there. Yeah. Well, there are few things that mark outsider status more than race, you know, because you've got, unlike just liberalism per se or any belief you might have, race, even if it's in many ways a fictitious biological category, is at least a phenotypic one. You look different from somebody else.

And that marks you as either an insider or an outsider. So it's in some ways not surprising that would be so highly connected to all of these other factors. No, for sure. And, you know, I want to touch on another thing you said. You talked about what Trump was able to do and sort of activate this latent racist. and xenophobia among people who had voted for Obama. And it struck me that, you know, we talk a lot about Trump and sometimes we talk about him as a cult leader. But regardless of how you want to describe him, it seems very clear that he understands quite well the value of tribalism. And one of the

things you point out in the book is how he constantly uses the rhetorical device of turning things that are about him, for example, the raid on Mar-a-Lago, into they're coming after you. And if they'll do this to me. Imagine what they have planned for you. And he really, whether, again, whether it's intuitive or whatever, he really understands tribalism very well, doesn't he? He does. And he also has finally developed autocratic instincts. Trump's psychology is really very interesting because, you know, for many of us on the left, I know for at least speaking for myself, I looked at Trump and I saw a charmless moron who didn't understand. understand the world who was kind of a treasonous con man and so obviously so. And yet that's not how

half the country saw him. And that's one of the other things that I struggle to understand is, you know, understanding the tribe and understanding right-wing tribes means understanding an autocratic leader because right-wing tribalism is so much tied in with the role of an authoritarian an autocratic leader. And so the very things that you and I might find repellent, his corruption, for example, is part of what his followers adore about him because his brand is impunity. You know, the fact that he's been openly corrupt, he's a liar, racist, sadistic, and has never, until relatively recently, been held to account or pay a significant price, and it still remains determine if that is actually going to happen, that those qualities of impunity, his followers find

powerfully seductive and admirable. And he gets away with it. And I think that what you started out referring to is the way in which he has successfully linked his self-interest or framed his self-interest in terms of tribal interest. You know, as he said, in the end, they're not coming after me you're coming after you. Right. I'm just standing in the way. And this is the kind of tried and true trope of autocratic narcissism going back forever, at least to Louis XIV, you know, whose famous statement was let's et moi.

The state is, it is I. So that if you are supporting Trump, you are supporting the tribe. And, you know, those two things cannot be disentangled. Yeah, for sure. there was a really interesting part of the book where you write that the factor that was most associated with the decision to reelect Trump, in other words, people who voted for him in 2020, was the view that men are victims of persecution in politics and the culture. And as you say, also the delusion that people are being persecuted for being white, male, and Christian is the animating resentment of MAGA men. And that is the thing that really that I think that Trump plays to when he says they're coming after you. And imagine, and what they're going to do to you. And it just, he ties it in so perfectly. It really is what drives them, isn't it?

Oh, absolutely. Well, you know, I wrote a whole book about right-wing masculinity a number of years ago. And the central concept was femophobia, which is men's fear of the feminine. And I'm speaking specifically of conservative men, especially, and that the most important thing about being a man is not being a woman. So everything weak is gendered, female. And so, for example, to be a mark, To be conned is to be feminized, but to be persecuted, that's manly, you know, and that requires

retaliation and vengeance. And of course, then there's the reversals. You know, the actual oppression perpetrated by one group is turned on its head. You know, and one of the things, of course, that Maga likes most about the Christian framework is not so much Christ's teaching, but is crucifixion. They love the idea of his persecution. And Trump has worked, and his followers, I have worked very hard to climb on the cross and, if necessary, hammer the nails in themselves. Because persecution is equated with virtue in that framework. There's so much more in the book that I don't have time to cover.

But I will just say that it's a big book and so full of interesting insights. And I encourage people to read it. It's called Hatred We Love, the Psychology of Political Tribalism in Post Truth America. is out now. And Stephen Jay Dukot, thank you so much for joining me to talk about it. Well, thank you so much. And it's a pleasure to be speaking with someone who takes these ideas so seriously because many ways our democracy depend on grappling with this stuff. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of the new abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend and keep the conversation going.

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