PureX
Veteran Member
I stumbled across an interesting bit of information in an essay about Trump loyalists.
"The attempt to blame New Yorkers for the rapid spread of the coronavirus in Florida illustrates the political rhetoric that has kept Trump’s ordinary supporters so fiercely loyal to him.
Key to Trump’s popularity has been a rhetorical strategy identified in 1951 by political philosopher Eric Hoffer in a book called The True Believer. Hoffer noted that demagogues needed a disaffected population whose members felt they had lost the power they previously held, that they had been displaced either religiously, economically, culturally, or politically. Such people were willing to follow a leader who promised to return them to their former positions of prominence and thus to make the nation great again. But to cement their loyalty, the leader had to give them someone to hate. Who that was didn’t really matter: the group simply had to be blamed for all the troubles the leader’s supporters were suffering.
Trump has mastered this technique. He has kept his base firmly behind him by demonizing immigrants, the media, and, increasingly, Democrats, deflecting his own shortcomings in office by blaming these groups for undermining him. But the coronavirus crisis is making it hard to do. Immigration stories are running against Trump as his own acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has said that immigration authorities will stop most of their enforcement efforts during the crisis. The media is pushing back hard against his lies and Americans seem to be on the media’s side as the administration’s response to the coronavirus has been scattershot.
But New Yorkers represent Democrats and the urban life that so many of Trump’s supporters distrust. Identifying them as the cause of Florida's troubles both deflects attention from DeSantis and Trump's missteps and reinforces loyalty to the president.
According to Hoffer, there’s a psychological trick to the way this rhetoric works that makes loyalty to such a leader get stronger as that leader's behavior deteriorates. People who sign on to the idea that they are standing with their leader against an enemy begin to attack their opponents, and to justify their attacks, they have to convince themselves that that enemy is not good-intentioned like they are, but evil. And the worse they behave, the more they have to believe their enemies deserve to be treated badly.
According to Hoffer, so long as they are unified against an enemy, true believers will support their leader no matter how outrageous his behavior gets. Indeed, their loyalty will only get stronger as his behavior gets more and more extreme. Turning against him would force them to own their own part in his attacks on those former enemies they would now have to recognize as ordinary human beings like themselves."
I think this explains the actions of that segment of the population that supports Trump in spite of the fact that they are not wealthy, even as he so obviously acts in the service of those who are.Key to Trump’s popularity has been a rhetorical strategy identified in 1951 by political philosopher Eric Hoffer in a book called The True Believer. Hoffer noted that demagogues needed a disaffected population whose members felt they had lost the power they previously held, that they had been displaced either religiously, economically, culturally, or politically. Such people were willing to follow a leader who promised to return them to their former positions of prominence and thus to make the nation great again. But to cement their loyalty, the leader had to give them someone to hate. Who that was didn’t really matter: the group simply had to be blamed for all the troubles the leader’s supporters were suffering.
Trump has mastered this technique. He has kept his base firmly behind him by demonizing immigrants, the media, and, increasingly, Democrats, deflecting his own shortcomings in office by blaming these groups for undermining him. But the coronavirus crisis is making it hard to do. Immigration stories are running against Trump as his own acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has said that immigration authorities will stop most of their enforcement efforts during the crisis. The media is pushing back hard against his lies and Americans seem to be on the media’s side as the administration’s response to the coronavirus has been scattershot.
But New Yorkers represent Democrats and the urban life that so many of Trump’s supporters distrust. Identifying them as the cause of Florida's troubles both deflects attention from DeSantis and Trump's missteps and reinforces loyalty to the president.
According to Hoffer, there’s a psychological trick to the way this rhetoric works that makes loyalty to such a leader get stronger as that leader's behavior deteriorates. People who sign on to the idea that they are standing with their leader against an enemy begin to attack their opponents, and to justify their attacks, they have to convince themselves that that enemy is not good-intentioned like they are, but evil. And the worse they behave, the more they have to believe their enemies deserve to be treated badly.
According to Hoffer, so long as they are unified against an enemy, true believers will support their leader no matter how outrageous his behavior gets. Indeed, their loyalty will only get stronger as his behavior gets more and more extreme. Turning against him would force them to own their own part in his attacks on those former enemies they would now have to recognize as ordinary human beings like themselves."
