So we've been talking quite a bit over the last four years, but in particular in the
period leading up to the election and then since the election when we've seen not 75
million people, as some in the House of Representatives have been claiming today, but certainly tens
of millions of people fall for the false belief that the 2020 presidential election was somehow
stolen from Donald Trump, even though Donald Trump was the rightful winner.
It's disheartening and concerning and scary that so many people have fallen for that.
And in thinking about how that came to be, the idea of a shared psychosis is important
to think about.
And there's a very interesting article in Scientific American, which we're going to
link to on our YouTube channel, which summarizes some of Dr. Bande XLE views on what moved
Donald Trump's followers to fall collectively for these delusions and to then also become
violent and behave destructively, as we saw on January six during the Trump riot in Washington,
D.C..
And the the answers are widespread and there are many overlaps between what Dr. Lee says,
who's been a guest on this program, by the way, and what we talked about, about magical
thinking several weeks ago.
And when Bandele was asked in this interview in Scientific America, American, what attracts
people to Trump?
Dr. Lee says that there are two major emotional drives.
There's a narcissistic symbiosis.
And then there's the idea of shared psychosis now, narcissistic symbiosis we've sort of
talked about before.
And that is described as the developmental wounds that make the leader follower relationship
attractive to both the leader.
Trump is hungry for people to worship him, essentially because he lacks self-worth.
And we know this to be true.
We know about Trump's relationship with his father and how, you know, the relationship
between Fred Trump and Donald Trump is not that different than the relationship we observe
between Trump and his children, in particular Don Jr., who seems also desperate for his
father's adulation when Trump doesn't really seem to care that much about his children,
at least in the sort of traditional ways, as we've seen publicly, that we understand
that that's that's something that we've identified relatively early.
Shared psychosis is very interesting because what we are essentially talking about is a
national level delusion that is plaguing tens of millions of people.
Again, not 75 million, not all 75 million Trump voters are part of this.
But certainly we would look at the polls and, you know, when 60 percent of Trump voters
believed up until weeks ago that it is Trump who would be inaugurated in a week, not Joe
Biden, it certainly afflicts many of them.
And that is, as again, referred to by Dr Bandele, the infectiousness of symptoms that go beyond
group psychology.
We've talked for a long time about how did those Tea Party people end up supporting in
2010 candidates who were running on policies that weren't good for them, running on low
taxes for the rich, which these people were never going to be rich.
We understand the group psychology aspect pretty well.
Jonathan Haidt, who I've interviewed, has talked about that.
We understand that the when we talk about shared psychosis, as Dr. Bandele refers to
it, the processes you put in an influential position, somebody who is afflicted by this
psychosis.
Now, we don't have to guess, does Trump believe the delusions or does he repeat them even
though he doesn't believe them?
It doesn't matter.
The point is he repeats them and he's in a position of power.
And then you can see it spread through the population, through either an emotional bond
that Trump's followers believe they have with him or the heightening of people already predisposed
to conspiratorial thinking or paranoia or people with a propensity for violence.
And that fully describes the people that ended up violently storming the Capitol last week.
So let's go through, again, all of the different elements that exist here.
You start with a group of followers of Trump that on average is more predisposed to violence.
We know that.
And we know that from looking at the brain differences essentially between reactionary
right wingers and other groups, we know that there's more of a predisposition to violence
there.
There's more paranoia.
There's more fear.
There's more belief that.
Other people are out to get you and on and on and on, so you start with that group.
Now, many of those people, even though they hold those beliefs, they're not going to fall
for the shared psychosis.
They're not going to believe the delusions and they are not actually going to go to the
Capitol and commit violent acts.
But then you take that group, that larger group that just is slightly more predisposed
to violence, more predisposed to conspiratorial and paranoid thinking.
And then you do a two month campaign where the leader, the narcissistic leader, repeats,
repeats, repeats.
These delusions about it was stolen and there were massive dumps of votes.
And this happened in Pennsylvania and in Michigan.
The watchers weren't allowed to see.
And then in Georgia, this.
Right.
You repeat it, repeat it.
You do two months to that group and you're going to take some subset section of those
who are going to be infected for lack of a better term by these ideas that are being
spread by Trump of the theft of the election.
And then you get to January 6th, where you have a group, broadly speaking, more predisposed
to conspiratorial thinking and also more predisposed to violence.
Not all of them willing to do it in real life.
And for two months, you hammer, hammer, hammer on them, and then you start using terms like
we've got a fight and you literally say we're going to go down to Pennsylvania, down Pennsylvania
Avenue, to the Capitol.
And that's how you get what we got last week.
And the the psychology of it is very interesting.
I do think that, you know, there are some who might just write this off and say, well,
OK, yeah.
I mean, you're sort of psychologizing in some way.
What may or may not be inaccurate psychoanalysis, but I think it can't be written off because
if we don't understand it, we're going to have a very difficult time dealing with it.
And by the way, merely understanding it doesn't actually tell us how to deal with it.
But, you know, we talked about this a few months ago or so where, you know, we I explained
that to understand why they are willing to do these things, you have to understand that
a lot of these Trump supporters believe that they are at war, they're at war against the
left and the media and scientists, atheists, communists, Marxists, the Democrats who stole
the election and on and on.
And in a sense, they idealize violence as well.
It's not just that they're predisposed to it.
They idealize violence as being implicit, as implying that they are also courageous.
They're willing to take the risk of going to the Capitol and being violent.
And when you are at war, a normal way of interacting with the world evaporates and you justify
what you're doing.
Much like we see militaries justify what, absent of a theater of war, would be completely
absurd, immoral behavior.
Lying is obviously valid if you're at war.
Lying is no big deal.
And what we saw on January 6th was that even property destruction, violence, storming the
capital, insurrection, et cetera, even that is justified when you have this belief that
you're at war and you share the psychosis with the great leader.
So there's a lot there.
And I encourage you to check out the article.
And what you very quickly realize is that there are self reinforcing aspects of this
that make it very difficult to break people out of it.
Very, very important thing to understand.