I am fascinated by cults. What makes people join them and devote themselves so ardently to the cause or the leader that they will even forsake their families and friends?
The Trump cult is going to be studied for some time. A common image of the majority of Trump supporters who stormed the US Capitol building on January 6th during the insurrection is that they are white men who are going through financial hardship and angry at feeling that they have been ignored and are also members of various armed militant groups. But it appears that a significant number do not fit that profile.
One of the emerging truths that FBI detectives and prosecutors will have to wrestle with is that, despite the substantial presence of white supremacists and military personnel, most of those who have been arrested are what might be described as unremarkable Americans with no previous criminal records or history of extremist behavior.
Political scientists at the University of Chicago who studied the profiles of arrestees and published their conclusions in the Atlantic found that many were middle-class and middle-aged – with an average age of 40. Almost 90% of them had no known links with militant groups. Some 40% were business owners or with white-collar jobs, and they came from relatively lucrative backgrounds as “CEOs, shop owners, doctors, lawyers, IT specialists, and accountants”.
The one common denominator uniting this large group is not any extremist group, website or media outlet, but an individual – Donald Trump. This is why the connection between the pending impeachment trial and the ongoing FBI roundup of suspects is so critical.
More evidence of how cults can attract a wide variety of people.
I would like to see a further breakdown of the professions listed against education levels.
Because CEOs (of businesses like construction companies) and shop owners are people who do not need higher education to reach that level of success. I’ve known IT specialists and accountants who studied hard to get certifications but did not attend higher education, and so were not exposed to the diversity that many institutions of higher learning aim for. Further, there is at least one law school which is openly authoritarian, Liberty U. So having some lawyers in the group isn’t surprising. But it would be interesting to know if the 40% was really, on the order of, say for every 100 people, there was 1 doctor, 4 lawyers, 5 accountants, 10 IT specialists, and 20 shop/business owners. They all could be CEO’s, because becoming a CEO only relates to how the business they work at is incorporated. An IT company with a single employee can have a CEO, as can an accounting firm with two accountants.
If I was going to look for a common denominators among the groups listed, I would look for psychological ones. One of the psychological traits I would look for is the idea that they were successful solely because of their own hard work, despite what they saw as government interference with their business. Or the flip side, that the reason they were unsuccessful in their endeavors (if they are or perceive they are) was due to government interference. That was one of the underlying messages the republican party has been using since Reagan, and Trump certainly amplified it.
This message rests on three pillars of belief. First; that becoming wealthy is possible through hard work, individual effort is all that is needed to be successful. Second; that failing to become wealthy no matter how hard a person works is due to government restrictions and government giving handouts to others, i.e. your failure to become wealthy is not your fault but the governments. Third; that the republican party (the party of business), and Trump in particular, would remove both the government barriers to your acquiring wealth, but they would also stop all the government handouts to other groups (this was the core message of “drain the swamp”).
All three of these beliefs are false, and demonstrably so, but they seem to be common among conservatives. It would be interesting to know if they are common among the insurrectionists, and how fervently they hold these beliefs.
Isn’t this similar to what they saw in studying the profiles of actual terrorists? That many were not poor or marginalized or pre-radicalized, but were rather instead reasonably successful doctors and engineers and similar professions?
That common image, sedulously propagated by the centrist media as well as the right, has always been false with regard to Trump’s support base. In 2016, his voters had a higher median income than his opponent’s, and from what evidence there is (exit polling was limited), the same was almost certainly true in 2020 (scroll down to “Exit Polling” and look at the table for income). As for the insurrectionists, how many of those going through financial hardship could afford to travel across country and stay at Washington D.C. hotels? The main factor uniting the great majority of Trump voters is the perception of threatened privilege. If only the votes of white people, or of self-identified Christians, or of men, had been counted Trump would indeed have won a clear victory -- in the first two cases, by a landslide.
Common denominator? They are afraid to lose what they have, afraid that their kids will have it worse then they do. They have been taught for years that this is not a fear but a truth. But it has always been couched in “nudge, nudge, wink, wink” and dog whistles since the enemy is strong.
Then comes the ‘big hero’ who is no afraid to say this openly, better (well for them worse for society) yet the enemy has no counter and everyone who has been teaching them who to fear, why to do so & claiming they have been resisting this enemy is openly falling in behind the ‘hero’. Which over time transferred the loyalty from these people to the hero.
What I find fascinating is the high age. There used to be a claim that people age out of violent crime (including terrorism) and that if someone has not become a terrorist by 30 they just won’t.
flex @ 1:
” Second; that failing to become wealthy no matter how hard a person works is due to government restrictions and government giving handouts to others, i.e. your failure to become wealthy is not your fault but the governments. ”
I would add that not becoming wealthy could also be seen as a personal failure (i.e., laziness) and that the government will help these people anyway. Thus they are seen as non-deserving and as “line cutters” getting handouts ahead of the cultist, which the cultist sees as money out of his/her own pocket via taxes they have paid to said evil government.
What amazes me about all of this is that on the one hand, they will scream about how evil the government is, but if you in any way agree that there are systemic problems with the society, you are called an America Hater. Somehow they divorce the concept of the society from the larger concept of a government derived from the consent of the people in said society. Granted, that doesn’t preclude particularly noxious politicians or even entire political parties at various points, but the attack instead seems to be on the very concept of self government. Thus, someone who is seen as an outsider has a great appeal. What they’re looking for is a benevolent leader that they can follow. What they want is Jesus, and that may explain the 80% evangelical vote.
Religion in general and evangelical christianity specifically.
Once you stop having any problems believing in sky gawds, Q-anon is easy.
We should be careful to distinguish between those who participated in the Jan. 6 events and the broader population of Trump supporters. If you want to understand that cult, then it’s constituted by tens of millions of people, not a relatively small number in the former group which may be very unrepresentative of the rest.
It’s fairly obvious that they’re not very poor at all, if they can actually afford to travel across the country to attend a Trump rally (or anything of the sort). I certainly don’t have the money for crap like that. At the same time, they may still be mostly “lower class,” if that’s meant to include anybody without a degree, as the term is sometimes used.
In any case, having higher income/wealth doesn’t tell you that they’re not actually concerned about their perceived economic status. I guess it would be nice and seem pretty reasonable, if poorer people were more energized about that sort of thing than wealthier people…. If that were true, maybe as a result the country would have less inequality and be more socialist. (But of course, it isn’t.)
Anyway, these folks were such fans of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts because those were most beneficial to rich people and their corporations, people like them. For that matter, the same could be said of most tax cuts which actually get passed into law…. That’s their preferred form of “government handout,” but really only for them. Yet they also expect the government to continue functioning, again, only for them.
So, it’s not that they’ve experienced “financial hardship” in any reasonable sense. But that’s very different from saying that they’re not obsessed with trying to climb the ladder (and tearing down anyone who they believe is in their way). They are. Do they have a good reason to be? No. They don’t have good reasons for lots of things. You can tell me they’re a bunch of selfish ghouls who want things which are actually terrible for the country and the rest of the world. But the underlying thought process is not hard to understand…. Greed is good for them. Political and economic power for them. Fuck everybody else. That’s pretty much it.
Lots of TV personalities do try to spin it into a message that’s supposed to sound somewhat appealing to poorer folks, but of course that’s obviously nonsense. At least it’s obvious to me, but somehow certain people do confuse themselves into believing it. However, the more brazen assholes among them, like Trump himself, never seemed to care much about hiding their real agenda from anybody, especially after he was already in power and thought he could do absolutely anything he wanted. But at this point, all these fuckers really want is for their team to be in control again. It doesn’t seem like there’s much more to it than that.
@5 -- anat:
that is a poser, really. Normally the most dangerous age for delinquency is considered as being between 17 and 27, so those folks are really outside the bracket. One or two of them actually died of hearth attacks IIRC, and were past fifty! (now, that’s my age bracket also, but I tend not to attack capitols, not even on Sundays).
@6 jimf and 7 hyphenman:
that’s another component, the search for a… messiah? Prophet? Conducator? And yes, Führer? A regrettably common disease, but really, Trumpy as a saviour? Gah, strong stomachs needed.
Which brings me to one last point: even considering the sense of threatened privilege, the need for a Caesar, the hate of those who are different and so on, how childish are those folks really? What mentality can they have, to swallow the QAnon rubbish wholesale? I mean, it’s unpresentable from any viewpoint. That I cannot understand, even desperation won’t explain it.