ON 11/4/2024

Nick LeBlanc

On Saturday I walked by a Jeep Gladiator, the absurd truck/Wrangler hybrid with no real practical purpose beyond making the driver look like a complete jackass. A cutout of Donald Trump with a smug smile sat in the backseat window. Plastered on all four sides of the vehicle, on the doors, over the fender, along the gate in the back were a combination of MAGA and other slogan stickers. Across the after-market light bar installed at the top of the windshield was a long banner reading TRUMP 2024. From the bed of the pickup, naturally, there was a Trump flag flying, stuck into some sort of metal contraption someone had clearly spent hours constructing. The driver, wearing a red baseball cap of course, smiled at my daughters and I as I walked by.

How pathetic, I thought. Not only because he supported Trump but because he was incensed enough about it to dress his car up for some kind of fascist drag show. I have never felt that way about anything, especially politically. The closest I have ever come is putting a Bernie sticker on the back of my car after donating $10 to his campaign in 2020. Ironically, I came out to my car after grocery shopping one day to find someone had ripped the sticker off the back of my windshield and stomped on it. I joked to my wife that it must have been Hillary Clinton hiding in the Market Basket parking lot.

It may well be the most important election of our lives as every think-piece and talking head is wont to remind us. But, weren’t the last two as well? Considering that our physiology limits our experience of time to fleeting moments, with unreliable memories of the past and vague anxieties about the future, doesn’t that mean every moment is the most important, because it’s the only one that truly exists? I’m kidding, of course. The truth is that we don’t know what’s important until long after something has passed and we have seen the consequences of our decision making. The reason we are told this moment is so important—and that we are now told that every time—is because it is beneficial (aka profitable) to the ones who are spinning the narrative for the rest of us to act (and thus make decisions) from a place of desperation.

This is how Democrats convince presumably nice, caring people to put up lawn signs for someone who is part of an administration currently supplying weapons that turn thousands of innocent children into clouds of blood. This is how we find ourselves saying “I hope she wins” about someone who has publicly said she is okay with this type of murder continuing. This is how we all seemingly cheer when a candidate who was nowhere near the top of the pile during primaries is effectively installed by a party after their current candidate has proven too demented to continue—something that many people had spent years saying was happening. This is how the “lesser of two evils” keeps winning.

But here’s the rub: she may in fact be the better option for everyone. Domestically speaking she almost certainly is, at least for working people. And from a foreign policy perspective she may be as well. I have seen many Palestinian voices imploring Americans to vote for Harris over Trump or third-party candidates. I can’t begin to pretend to know how real those messages of support are though. I have unfortunately read enough history to not trust the US Intelligence services. And frankly, I have seen an equal number of Palestinian voices calling for the opposite. I am not Palestinian nor do I know anyone personally who lives there. Whatever the truth may be, I can’t help but ask why my vote from thousands of miles away will have such an impact on the lives of anyone else. For a thought experiment, flip the scenario. When was the last time any American cared about an election in another country? Or the last time an election elsewhere might mean we get tanks rolling down our streets and our schools blown up? There’s the great conundrum of American foreign affairs, like we all say to one another, there is “nothing” we can do about what’s going on elsewhere. The only thing we can do is elect the people who make the decisions. Hey! Wait a minute…

“I hate genocide. But, we need to protect our own people.” This is how we all become complicit. Our tax dollars are used to stomp all over the planet. Theoretically, we the people are the ones giving our “freely elected” leaders the permission to do just that. I pity the conscious American voter in the states where it matters.

I can understand why someone would vote for Harris. There is real fear for what someone like Trump might do if elected again. Or even what he might do if he loses again. He managed to cite an insurrection the last time and still was able to run for president again. The Roe v. Wade decision was awful. The possibility of eliminating the Department of Ed might set back education decades in certain states, it may also lead to the complete elimination of public schools. Deregulation of businesses can destroy unions, and could potentially lead to the return of mass child labor. Never mind what he might do abroad.

I can also understand why someone would refuse to vote for Harris. Some of the stuff she did with the police while DA, the precedent set by her questionable installation as a candidate, her continued support of Biden’s policy of aiding genocide, a distrust and suspicion of the continued rightward drift of the Democrats. There are plenty of reasons, and good ones too. This is probably the morally and ethically correct thing to do. But unfortunately, these decisions don’t exist in a vacuum.

This brings us to the pathetic fool in the Jeep Gladiator MAGA Edition. He, and those like him, are manifesting a mass delusion. Trump is not an “outsider.” He openly has contempt for anyone who is not wealthy or white. He will not lead to “cheap” prices—which is one of the funniest pieces of rhetoric I’ve seen come out of the right. He will deregulate and erode any protections that working people have fought to codify. Virtually any pro-Trump argument can be undone by simply looking at the facts—what he did in his previous term and what his supporters in government have been clamoring to do for years. But the facts don’t matter. It’s a post-truth world, baby!

Trump is the textbook definition of a fascist. I mean that in the actual sense of the word and not the TikTok influencer misunderstanding of the word. The fervor of Jeep Gladiator man and supporters like him only works to prove it. The Mass Psychology of Fascism by Wilhelm Reich was a formative text for my understanding of fascism. He spends a bit too much time for my taste on the exploration of repressed sexuality as an underlying cause for the mass support of fascism—to his credit, he was a trained Freudian and there may be some truth to it. But anyway, for my money, the really enlightening stuff is laid out in basically three points:

First, he says that the authoritarian family is the primary institution that teaches submission to authority, which later translates into submission to authoritarian states. He saw the family as a “miniature dictatorship” where patriarchal structures train individuals from childhood to accept hierarchy, control, and obedience. He writes, “The authoritarian family… becomes the factory in which the state’s structure and ideology are molded.” In Reich's view, the father in a traditional, patriarchal family mirrors the authoritarian leader of a fascist state. This family structure demands obedience from children and enforces rigid gender roles, reinforcing a sense of dominance and subordination. Children grow up internalizing the belief that authority is absolute and that challenging it is dangerous or wrong. He believed that such family dynamics don’t just impact individual psychology but also affect society as a whole, as people raised in authoritarian families are more likely to seek out similar authoritarian structures in politics. Reich explains, “The authoritarian family is the most important institution for the conservation of the authoritarian state.” Reich saw the internalized worship of political candidates and social institutions like the church or the state as extensions of the authoritarian family. Each reinforces submission and conformity through discipline, punishment, and the suppression of individuality. These institutions, particularly in societies with strong authoritarian cultures, create what Reich calls a “mass character structure” that is primed to support fascism.

This presence of the “authoritarian family” leads to the establishment of the “authoritarian character.” This is his second point. An authoritarian character is psychologically rigid person, desiring structure, order, and discipline. People with this mindset are prone to view the world in black-and-white terms and are drawn to ideologies that promote strong hierarchies and strict moral codes, such as fascism. Reich believed this character type represses individual freedom and instead embraces conformity and aggression as socially acceptable outlets. Fascist leaders tap into this psychological profile by positioning themselves as strong, paternal figures who promise to restore order and protect “traditional” values. Reich describes how this appeal works: “The authoritarian character is not only a supporter of authority, he is also a person who loves to obey.” The authoritarian character’s dual need for submission and dominance makes fascism especially appealing, as it allows people to feel both protected by and aligned with a powerful authority while also providing them with groups they can look down upon (such as marginalized communities or political enemies). This fulfills their psychological need to both submit to and exert control.

Thirdly, Reich argues that fascist ideology is deeply irrational, relying on mysticism and myth rather than rational political discourse. He saw this mysticism as essential to fascism’s appeal, writing, “The mysticism of fascism is not merely a political trick but corresponds to an emotional need of the masses.” Much like cult leaders, fascist political leaders cultivate a sense of mystique, often positioning themselves as messianic figures or saviors destined to “redeem” society. This mysticism taps into the subconscious desires and anxieties of the masses, bypassing logical thought and appealing directly to emotions. For Reich, this aspect of fascism is not merely superficial; it reflects a psychological mechanism in which people, deprived of individual freedom and sexual fulfillment, seek transcendence in irrational forms. Reich believed that irrationality in fascist ideology was designed to align with the repressed desires of the masses. In other words, mysticism provides a way for repressed energies to be directed toward the glorification of the state and the leader. This mystical appeal encourages an almost religious devotion to the leader, transforming him into a near-divine figure in the eyes of his followers. Reich saw this dynamic as dangerous, as it discourages critical thinking and reinforces absolute loyalty. By promising a return to purity, moral order, or traditional values, fascist leaders give their followers a sense of meaning and belonging that fills the psychological void created by repression and alienation. It also might motivate them to dress their stupid fucking truck up in a costume.  

The most damning part of Reich’s argument—and maybe the scariest—is that the mass psychology of fascism works as a strange loop. The more authoritarian characters there are, the more authoritarian families there are, and thus the need for irrational myth-making increases. Things like botched assassination attempts, strong and simple symbolic representations of ideological alignment, and even stupid fucking truck flags are examples of this. They feed the cycle and it continues ad nauseum. It is a social disease that infects and grows.

While I intended to show the clear connections between Reich’s conception of fascism and the MAGA/Trump ideological playbook, I wouldn’t be surprised if you found yourself thinking of the Democrats, too. This trend of performative allegiance has to stop. Ask yourself: Would you really support Harris if she wasn’t running against Trump? Have you considered that maybe the Democrats have something to do with the way Trump and his acolytes are received publicly? Is it so unreasonable to think that maybe polls indicating a Trump victory benefit Democrats? Wouldn’t that incentivize the voters to throw more money at them, especially when our donations are being sextupled (like some political SPAM texts I have received this week are telling me)? Is it really that insane to think that this whole thing might just be about money when it’s all said and done? There is no danger in questioning a party line. Despite what some people may want you to think, it does not immediately make you one of the bad guys.

The easy answer is to say that problem is ultimately systemic. Two party system, money in politics, blah blah blah. But, systems are created and perpetuated by people and the time to fix these systems is not in the weeks or months before an election. Or while a genocide is ongoing. It seems there is always a greater fire burning somewhere, so where to begin? I don’t know.

It is my belief that we cannot keep pretending there is a good option when there simply is not. Maybe we just go ahead and do the American thing, accept (and repress) our culpability in funding the massacre of foreign children and vote for what’s in our best personal interest. This might sound like a sarcastic condemnation, but as the father of two young girls and a homeowner in the U.S., I’m not so sure. So, like I said, I don’t know.

And ultimately, that’s on me.