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The Rise of Identity Fusion and Allegiance to Trump - Excellent Read. theatlantic.com/health/archive…
Fusion isn’t a bunch of individuals contorting their way of thinking-but a bunch of individuals suspending their way of thinking. It makes us more likely to do extreme things that aren’t consistent with our normal identity-It allows you to do things you couldn’t conceive of doing
In fusion, though, a perceived challenge to the group’s ideology is a challenge to the self. Arguments about climate change, for example, might not actually be about climate change, and instead about people protecting their basic sense of order and consistency.
In fusion, people become “engaged followers.” These people will torture because they have adopted the value system that views the torture as justifiable. Engaged followers do so of their own volition, with enthusiasm.
Americans who fused with Trump-as opposed to simply agreeing w/or supporting him-were more willing to engage in various extreme behaviors, such as personally fighting to protect the border from an “immigrant caravan,” persecuting Muslims or violently challenging election results
Even people who typically identify as advocates of small or no government might endorse acts of extreme authoritarianism if they have fused with Trump. In fusion, those inconsistencies simply don’t exist.
Value systems are only contradictory if they’re both activated, and “once you step into the fusion mind-set, there is no contradiction.”
Fusion seems most likely to happen when there is a charismatic leader, particularly of an authoritarian bent. Humans are social, and the individual person has a power over us that abstract thought doesn’t.
The leader is a concrete manifestation of ideas, but allegiance to individuals will trump allegiance to ideas.
In that sense, the idea of fusion might help some people explain how family members or colleagues whom they view as fundamentally good people might seem to suspend their typical sense of morality and do things like downplay Trump’s bragging about groping women;
enriching himself at taxpayer expense; defending white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia; or failing to release his tax returns despite multiple promises to do so.
Trump’s continued emphasis on the relative deprivation of his base—and his promise of the power and resources presumably under his control as an apparently wealthy real-estate developer and reality-TV star—probably helped his election by increasing his followers’ fusion with him.
Even if this personal enrichment didn’t come to fruition for his voters, the researchers found that fusion with Trump only increased after his election. The presidency itself made him more powerful, and hence a more attractive target to fuse with.
A life that consists of living up to negative ideas about yourself does not end well. Nor does a life marked by failing to live up to a positive self-vision. But adopting the values of someone who is doing well is an escape.
If Donald Trump is doing well, you are doing well. Alleged collusion with a foreign power might be bad for democracy, but good for an individual leader, and therefore good for you. “Fusion satisfies a lot of need for people,”
“When you fuse with a powerful leader, you feel more in control. If that person is valued, you feel valued.”
The process of de-fusing, then, might involve offering alternative systems of creating consistency and order. If people who are inclined to fusion have the option to fuse with entities that do not wish to exploit them, and that are generally good or neutral for the world,
they might be less likely to fuse with, say, a demagogue. “But, of course,” Dovidio says, “that’s hard.” <end>
