Donald Trump and his MAGA movement are currently at the epicenter of political violence in the United States. Trump has created a type of permission structure that encourages and incites violence against perceived enemies. This includes both individuals and targeted groups who are deemed to be the so-called other. Research shows that a significant percentage of Trump’s MAGA followers support political violence, up to and including an insurgency and a civil war, to put him back in power.

The violence is not just interpersonal. Trump and his regime also engaged in acts of structural and institutional violence against the American people through willful negligence and outright malice. For example, the Trump administration's COVID-19 pandemic response resulted in the avoidable deaths of many hundreds of thousands of people (if not more).

In Bob Woodward’s new book “War”, General Mark Milley, who served as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Trump administration, describes the corrupt ex-president in the following way: “He is the most dangerous person ever. I had suspicions when I talked to you about his mental decline and so forth, but now I realize he’s a total fascist. He is now the most dangerous person to this country…. A fascist to the core.”

In all, Donald Trump is more of a symbol than a man. The violent and other antisocial behavior he has encouraged and given permission for will, in all likelihood, continue well past the 2024 election, whatever the outcome is on Election Day.

Related

Stephen Ducat is a political psychologist, psychoanalyst and former psychology professor in the School of Humanities at New College of California. His new book is “Hatreds We Love: The Psychology of Political Tribalism in Post-Truth America.” In this conversation, he explains how Trump’s seemingly unbreakable power over his MAGA followers and other “conservatives” reflects a type of shared pathology and antisocial behavior that is a type of societal emergency. Ducat highlights how social psychology can help us better understand our current democracy crisis and the role that social dominance behavior, attraction to violence, sexism, misogyny and disinformation play in support for Trumpism. At the end of this conversation, Ducat praises Kamala Harris’ approach to confronting Trump’s version of masculinity by taking his thug persona head on.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length:

How are you feeling at his point in the Age of Trump? How are you making sense of this crisis with less than a month until Election Day?

I cannot help but be plagued by the many dystopian possibilities ahead. Whether Trump wins or loses the election, it is clear that Trumpism will be part of our political culture for a long time to come. Harris may very well win the vote,........

© Salon