After World War II, studies were made and books written to explore whether customs of child rearing could have made some nations more easily succumb to authoritarian rule. Now that our nation has elected yet again a leader who thrives on demagoguery, the question arises here at home.
When I told a friend about speculation that Donald Trump was profoundly affected by undiagnosed learning disabilities in his youth, she suggested checking out Gabor Mate. She mentioned a study of facial expressions at Trump rallies that documented a nonverbal communication between Trump and many of his followers. The premise: victims of childhood trauma reveal that trauma through subtle facial cues picked up on by others who have also experienced trauma.
I looked up Gabor Mate, and though the study didn't come up, a colleague of his, Stephen Porges, said something similar in a conversation between the two:
Instantaneously, our body responds to another who has suffered trauma, not just in seeing them, but in feeling their facial expression and feeling their voices. Our nervous system evolved to detect those features.
What I found in Mate's online writings is the connection he makes between the childhood trauma that Trump likely experienced, and the widespread trauma that causes many people to follow him. In a short essay from 2016, "Trump, Clinton, and Trauma," in which Mate explores the potential impact of childhood trauma on Trump, and also Hilary Clinton to a lesser extent, he explains the compensations that can play out in adulthood in those traumatized in childhood.
“What we perceive as the adult personality often reflects compensations a helpless child unwittingly adopted in order to survive. Such adaptations can become wired into the brain, persisting into adulthood. Underneath all psychiatric categories, Trump manifests childhood trauma…. Narcissistic obsession with the self then compensates for a lack of nurturing care. Grandiosity covers a deeply negative sense of self-worth. Bullying hides an unconscious conviction of weakness. Lying becomes a mode of survival in a harsh environment. Misogyny is a son’s outwardly projected revenge on a mother who was unable to protect him.”While many of us see Trump as a dangerous demagogue, Mate explains how others can see him very differently:
We need not be perplexed that a Donald Trump can vie for the presidency of the most powerful nation on Earth. We live in a culture where many people are hurt and, like the leaders they idolize, insulated against reality. Trauma is so commonplace that its manifestations have become the norm.
People who are anxious, fearful and aggrieved may be unable to recognize the flaws in those seeking power. They mistake desperate ambition for determination, see grandiosity as authority, paranoia as security, seductiveness as charm, dogmatism as decisiveness, selfishness as economic wisdom, manipulation as political savvy, lack of principles as flexibility. Trauma-induced defenses such as venal dishonesty and aggressive self-promotion often lead to success.
The flaws of our leaders perfectly mirror the emotional underdevelopment of the society that elevates them to power.
Dramatically different interpretations of the Harris-Trump debate can be viewed through the prism of Mate's insights.
Can a nation be artificially traumatized through propaganda?
Playing a big role in preparing a population for a demagogue, in my view, is the ever expanding reach of rightwing news media. The dystopian America that Trump depicts in his speeches, the fabrication of dark forces and enemies in our midst, of evil immigrants eating people's pets, would be traumatizing for anyone who believes it. Any real trauma people have experienced in their own lives is then augmented by the artificial, vicarious trauma of dark and looming threats conjured by Trump, then amplified by the very news media that should properly be exposing its fallacies. Pervasive propaganda, once it takes hold and becomes dominant, can, to paraphrase Mate, insulate people against reality and stir in them anxiety, fear, and grievance. False propaganda and real trauma, then, can be seen as working in tandem to prime a nation for demagoguery.
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