The demagogue exploits psychological weaknesses in the masses for personal gain, offering a sense of deep meaning and purpose in the face of anomie and abandonment. The “true believer,” as Eric Hoffer described the term in his 1951 classic of social psychology, will sacrifice anything for the greater good of the cause, which transcends the good of the individual and is not subject to empirical verification. Hoffer explains that religion is not a separate domain from politics or other social movements: mass movements are “interchangeable” in that they all offer an escape from the self and a sense of striving for transcendance. “It is rare for a mass movement to be wholly of one character,” Hoffer writes, “Usually it displays some facets of other types of movement, and sometimes it is two or three movements in one.” A mass movement is characterized by real political consequences combined with a powerful imaginary, catalyzing discontent with appeals to an idyllic future (usually also involving a return to a glorified past).

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Mass movements draw their strength from socially disaffected youth, but not from those who are completely marginalized. In order to organize effectively, adherents of a social movement must have a modicum of resources at their disposal. It makes sense then, that Trump’s revanchist nationalism would arrive after a large degree of economic recovery had taken place. Occupy Wall Street faltered not because of any inherent weakness of analysis or lack of commitment, but because people being kicked out of their homes do not have time and resources to worry about collectivizing. The alt-right’s political successes depend on armies of basement trolls, people who have free time at their disposal, food in their bellies, and a roof over their heads. Paradoxically, the economic recovery produced the new nationalism among white, privileged people, the self-described “shitlords” of the alt-right who generate and disseminate racist memes.

Hoffer also goes a long way towards explaining the pageant-like quality of the Trump phenomenon. Hoffer writes:

in every act, however trivial, the individual must by some ritual associate himself with the congregation, the tribe, the party, etcetera. His joys and sorrows, his pride and confidence must spring from the fortunes and capacities of the group rather than from his individual prospects and abilities. Above all, he must never feel alone. Though stranded on a desert island, he must still feel that he is under the eyes of the group. To be cast off from the group should be equivalent to being cut off from life.

The stagecraft of the rallies, the make-believe greatness (of walls and deals), the ubiquity of tweetstorms, all serve to facilitate the group dynamic, the sense of belonging for the #MAGA adherent. Abandoning the movement is tantamount to death: for this reason, we should expect outright defection to be rare. The fusion of the GOP and Trumpism makes sense in the light of this need for group solidarity and cohesion: far from being an individualist movement, conservatism is best understood as a tribal identity.

Posting a meme, the present-day equivalent of holding aloft a totemic object, does not convince anyone to change a political affiliation. Memes are not about belief per se: they are signals of tribal belonging. Belief is secondary to affiliation. The meme is empty, in that its surface message appeals only to those who already belong to the same tribe. Internet “triggering” is a form of tribal warfare in which one scores points with the “in-group” by offending the “out-group.” Its true purpose is cohesion, not conversion. This is not to say that conversion does not take place: only that the mechanism of conversion is different than is commonly believed. One does not become a conservative according to the dictates of conscience, but because one wants to signal a certain status, as a “winner,” a “maker,” a “real American,” a “real man,” etc. The content of the message is secondary to the feeling of belonging, the sense of group identity.

None of this analysis excuses the casual racism, classism, xenophobia, and misogyny of the right. It is easier to retweet than it is to think, and it is the abandonment of duty and agency that is most blameworthy for the members of the Trump bandwagon. The appeal of mass movements is specifically that they relieve one of the responsibility of individuality, that they allow one to escape into a fog of magical thinking, to escape from the burdens of reality and logic. The attacks on science and evidence make sense in the context of a demagogue seeking to maintain information control over his followers. Of course, the facts are there for anyone who wants to find them, but the obfuscating aura of a mass movement precludes the very possibility of an information-based belief system.

A mass movement collapses either when it achieves its aims or is suppressed by a more powerful belief system. To a certain extent, Trumpism has already achieved its aims: it is now the central religio-political ideology in the United States. It is the establishment. Mass movements thrive on persecution and underdog status, so this is a bit of a liability. The victimhood narrative will continue to be pushed by #MAGA pundits / theologians, but it becomes less plausible by the day. To the extent that the GOP has gotten its much-coveted tax cuts, it needs Trump less and less. It could be that the coalition realigns or that a new charismatic figure emerges. The players will change, but the conservative movement will remain committed to white identity politics and trickle-down economics. The politeness will come and go, but the movement will be the same underneath.

The resistance, meanwhile, is not immune to Hoffer’s critiques. It also will have to foster belonging and a sense of meaningful destiny in order to attract adherents. It will need some religious zeal and self-sacrificing behavior in order to be successful. This has worked for the left before, in the labor movement and the civil rights movement. The organized left in America is a fusion of socialism with the Judeo-Christian prophetic tradition: it relies upon utopian visions and principled striving. It is a mass movement subject to social psychology, but this is not to say that all mass movements are morally equivalent. They should be judged by the tangible outcomes that they produce, not by the utopian imaginings that they proffer. By looking at consequences, we can determine the true import of a mass movement.

Even if 2018 swings blue in a wave election, the Trump administration will have long-lasting negative consequences, especially for those living in red states who overwhelmingly supported The Great Ego. Trump supporters will lose insurance coverage under the ACA after repeated conservative attacks on the law. Cutbacks to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are waiting in the wings. Trumplings will die disproportionately as a result of rollbacks in environmental standards and failed responses to disasters. They will continue to die in the opioid epidemic, as the administration’s response looks like an unfunded mandate and harkens back to the failed approach of the War on Drugs. The wealth gap between rich and poor will only increase as a result of the recent tax rollbacks for the wealthy and corporations. Red states will have very little in the way of a line of defense against these regressive social policies.

The resistance will no doubt reverse some of the worst consequences of 2017, but it will take years, if not decades, to return government to some sense of normalcy. This is equally true on the domestic and the foreign policy fronts, as average citizens have been disempowered at home and America’s standing in the world, such as it is, has diminished in an astonishingly short period of time. Hearkening back to my earlier articles on the “Cult of Trump,” the Kool-Aid has now been served, and the poison has entered the vital organs of the body politic. Some institutions will be broken, perhaps permanently, but partial recovery will be possible with swift and decisive action. The country awaits the next big mass movement: the Women’s March on Washington and the Black Lives Matter protests are foreshadowings of things to come. The gauzy, secular mysticism of “hope and change” has given way to specific, material critiques lodged by these protest movements.

The best thing to come out of 2017 will be the galvanizing of resistance against Trump and the broader conservative coalition, including the religious right. So many of the pieties of conservatism have been exposed as complete shams, from supposed concern about deficit spending to claiming to care about women and minorities to fictitious concerns about working Americans. Of course, this has been obvious for decades, but the hypocrisy now comes into sharper focus. As the cult of Trump continues, it will become even more insular and backward-looking. Controls on information will become more stringent, and fans of conservative media will become even more blinkered and myopic. We can expect attempts to suspend the rule of law and even more dirty tricks to maintain power.

But the thing about history is that it keeps being written, each and every day, and we are all actors in the drama. We will be judged by future generations according to what we did or did not do during this time. Perhaps we are looking at some epochal change or societal revolution, or perhaps this is just a dark chapter for progressive activists. It should be clear, for those “with eyes to see and ears to hear,” that the conservative movement is based on transferring wealth upward, disempowering minorities and immigrants, and providing health and well-being only to the well-heeled. Conservatives serve the anti-gospel of Ayn Rand while making a lot of noise about Jesus Christ. No one can serve two masters, but the Paul Ryans of this world are certainly going to try to preserve the appearance of doing so.

The coming years are likely to be turbulent, but the tension is absolutely necessary. Events like those in Charlottesville cannot go unanswered, and the conservative movement must face just consequences for its contempt for women, the poor, immigrants, and minorities. Trump fans and GOP voters more generally will continue to work against their economic interests by supporting regressive social policies. The “true believer” effect explains, clearly and concisely, the appeal of con artists like Donald Trump. The desire for belonging and meaning simply overrides rationality and facts, so that #MAGA fanatics would rather be praised by fellow cultists, even if it means a loss of health and livelihood. They simply have too much invested to back down.

There will be no simple way forward. Our optimism must not be rooted in external events but in an internal resolve for a better future for ourselves and our children. We cannot look for savior figures, but we must wrestle among ourselves for true solutions to the problems facing society. We must work collectively to address the problems that we face, from climate change to the overpopulation of prisons to the inadequate social safety net. Progressive politics must undergo internal contestation and debate, the “community of interpreters” of the pragmatist philosophers. We will need bold experiments and a whole generation of new leaders. The rot in our society runs deep, but we must begin to clear it away and start again with fresh materials. This process will be ugly. We will get things wrong and make mistakes, but we have no choice but to begin.

It is conceivable that a demagogue figure could arise on the left. In the event that such a person arises, this form of politics must be rejected, even if the policies seem good on the surface. Progressives are better served by a broad-based coalition, even if that seems frustrating and ineffective at times. A movement with many leaders will be less rigid, and therefore less fragile, than one that puts so much of its stock in one person or one family. When that one person goes down, the fall discredits the whole movement, as conservatives are about to learn. By having a broad array of leadership figures representing different factions, the progressive movement can move, amoeba-like, into a more desirable direction for the country. This next generation of leaders will usher the country past the death embrace of the cult of Trump and into a brighter, more inclusive and fact-based future.

The right in America will not have any new ideas, as their rigid orthodoxy permits devotion only to tax cuts and deregulation. The conservative God is a cruel despot who blames the downtrodden for being downtrodden, an ancient tribal storm deity who commands fear and not love. Meanwhile the golden bull on Wall Street, the true object of conservative worship, receives ever more offerings. We must continue to reject the false religion of the right and to look for creative ways forward. The cult of Trump will die, and out of its ashes new possibilities will be born. This will not happen automatically or painlessly: it is up to us to make it so.