Can You Deprogram Your Trump Cultist Friends & Family?

Can you build bridges to Trump cultists that may, over time and with work and love, help you pry them loose from the authoritarian leader or movement to which they’ve bonded?

We are living in James Madison’s nightmare.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll right after Trump was handed the White House by the electoral college (after losing to Hillary by 3 million votes) found that fully 16 percent of Americans had stopped talking with a family member or friend because of the poison Trump has brought into politics.

When Madison wrote his first contribution to the Federalist Papers, Federalist #10, he described the greatest threat to our new republic as the growth of a powerful “faction” that might eventually seize control of government itself.

They would tear the nation apart, he worried, by fostering phony differences between people and then pitting them against each other.

As dangerous as faction was, though, he believed that the checks-and-balances he and his colleagues had written into our Constitution would prevent any one special interest group from ever rising up and taking over, to the disadvantage of everybody else.

“Among the numerous advantages promised by a well constructed union,” Madison wrote, “none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction.”

And he was very clear about what he meant with that word:

“By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.” (emphasis added)

Unfortunately, wealthy and powerful factions “adverse to the rights of other citizens” have arisen several times in American history.

Each time they have torn our nation apart.

The most famous was the faction of a few thousand fabulously rich plantation owners in the South who had ended democracy in those states and then reached out to end democracy in the entire nation. Stopping that authoritarian faction claimed an estimated 620,000 American lives in a bloody Civil War.

The most recent faction to rise up and try to seize control of our entire nation is a group of rightwing billionaires who bought off enough Supreme Court justices to get a 5-4 ruling in Citizens United that now lets them legally bribe presidents, Supreme Court justices, federal and state legislators, and state and local judges.

As a result, things that most Americans want (cheap healthcare, free education, clean environment, expanded Social Security, fair trade, good union jobs) don’t get done by Congress, but things the rightwing billionaires want (tax cuts, deregulation, keep student debt high and profitable, force Americans to pay twice the price for pharmaceuticals of any other nation in the world), they get.

Tragically, this faction of the morbidly rich in America have chosen an age-old, time-tested method for rallying support around their wholly-owned Republican politicians: fear and the tribal instinct it provokes in many people.

— Billionaire-owned Fox “News” relentlessly promotes fear of an “invasion” of brown-skinned people south of our border, “riots” by Black Lives Matter, and hordes of homeless people or “Antifa!!!” taking over cities.

— Billionaire-funded groups with words like “moms,” “liberty,” and “freedom” in their names scare the hell out of white parents, telling them queer and Black people are trying to “recruit” and “groom” their children or steal their savings through reparations.

— The GOP relentlessly claims that Democrats are stealing elections through nefarious means, thus explaining away Republican losses while justifying laws making it harder for working-class people to vote.

The side-effect of this nonstop Republican campaign of fear that dates back a half-century is the activation of authoritarian tendencies buried deep in our psyches.

Some of us are far more vulnerable to this than others, and those most vulnerable are generally the people who most strongly embrace authoritarian leaders like Donald Trump, Greg Abbott, and Ron DeSantis.

The tendency toward authoritarianism that can be activated in these ways is part biological/genetic and part environmental, rooted both in the DNA we inherited, how we grew up, and in the perception of threat in the current day.

The biological/genetic aspect of human authoritarian nature probably dates back to the Pleistocene, when in many parts of the human-occupied world food was scarce and competition was intense. High levels of group conformity and cooperation helped ensure success in a hunt or even a war with a competing tribe. The greater the threat (hunger/hostile neighbors/predators/winter), the greater the need for social conformity to meet and overcome that threat.  

And the main way humans have built and enforced social conformity over millennia is through something psychologists and political scientists call authoritarianism.

Most estimates suggest about 18-20 percent of us are born super-vulnerable to authoritarian leaders: it’s a dispositional thing, part of the way we’re wired, that we inherited, although it can be moderated or exaggerated by how safe we felt during the years we were growing up.

This is real stuff and isn’t a “bad choice” your friend or family member made. It’s wired in. It’s called being an “Authoritarian Follower.”

Research finds that people inclined to rightwing authoritarianism also react more strongly to stress than most people, are more easily disgusted by things like body odor, and are more likely to be germophobes and frightened by the prospect of illness.

You sometimes see this in people who are fastidiously clean and neat about their homes and appearance. These are inborn tendencies, carried in our genes: studies of identical versus fraternal twins and the inclination toward rightwing authoritarianism highlight these correlations.

People who blindly follow rightwing authoritarian leaders like Trump also feel a strong need to be part of an in-group where they feel safe, and are less likely to engage in critical thinking about information presented to them. They have a higher need for “epistemic certainty” (closure), have poorer reasoning skills, and are more likely to be afflicted with “cognitive inflexibility” (they don’t think things through well). As a result, they’re far more vulnerable to political lies and disinformation.

A massive study across 91 countries found that the more generally a population perceives a threat — be it internal or external — the more likely there is to be a growing rightwing authoritarian movement.

This is why the billionaires who own our media and the GOP constantly harp on threats to Americans, particularly perceived threats to white working class men: it works. One study found it didn’t even matter if the threat was real or not; people simply had to believe it was possible.

Authoritarianism also increases after a country has been attacked: studies in Spain after the 2004 train bombing and in the US after 9/11 showed a spike in authoritarian rhetoric and successful rightwing recruitment. Even the psychic shock of the pandemic was found to increase authoritarianism in the US and around the world.

I could go on: studies show that authoritarianism predicts sexism, misogyny, and opposition to abortion; increased embrace of corporal punishment, aggression, and the harassment of immigrants and asylum seekers. They find increased tolerance for torture, political violence, and violations of human rights. And an increase in the acceptance of conspiratorial thinking, particularly when it simplistically explains the groups’ difficulties and pins the blame on “others.”

This is all by way of saying that we shouldn’t start out by judging or condemning those close to us who have embraced authoritarianism and its current avatar, Donald Trump. To a certain extent, like so many of Trump’s victims throughout his life, they were simply born vulnerable to his siren’s song of fear, destruction, and hate.

It’s useful to think of them as the victims of a cult; in this case one created, propped up, and financed by a few hundred rightwing billionaires and the fossil fuel industry, whose rotating cast of front-men currently features Donald Trump.

In fact, being born with an authoritarian-follower personality is a good predictor of a person’s vulnerability to being swept up by any sort of cult, be it religious, social, or political.

So, how do we speak to, or even positively influence, our friends and close family members who are authoritarian followers and have embraced Trump’s cult?

People who’ve spent a lifetime deprogramming cult members tell us that by condemning or confronting our friends we simply push them away, often deepening their bond to the cult as a way of assuaging the uncertainty our confrontation provoked.

A better strategy is to focus on areas of commonality, building conversational bridges.

Once you’ve established rapport, ask questions instead of asserting positions. And don’t react to answers that horrify you: instead, ask more questions, trying to get to the core of their angst.

One of the core assumptions of NLP is that all behavior, no matter how weird, destructive, or dysfunctional it may be, is an attempt to achieve a positive outcome. This is always the case, and, if you dig deep enough, you’ll generally find what that positive outcome looks like, sounds like, and/or feels like to your friend or family member.

Therefore, it’s not useful to enter the conversation with the goal of “converting” the other person; instead, be inquisitive and non-judgmental. After all, in their mind they’re working toward the best outcome they can imagine.

“So, you’re afraid of an ‘invasion’ of America by Mexicans. How will that affect you? Have you ever seen that happen to anybody you know? What can we all do to resolve this?”

“Why wouldn’t you want a young person who was born gay to be able to read a book by another person who went through the struggle of growing up gay in this society and came out the better for it?”

“Why does it matter to you that a woman may choose to get an abortion? Do you think people should be most concerned with their own behavior?”

“How can we disagree about policy and still be friends? How can we disagree about policy and still get things done that help everybody?”

It’s also generally not useful to confront a person about their blind obedience to their cult or political leader. George Lakoff and others have long pointed out that Republicans operate along the “strict father” model, while Democrats are more inclined to want their party and nation to be a “nurturing family.”

Thus, when you point out the authoritarian nature of Trump or other Republicans (although many, like Tim Scott demonstrated Tuesday night with his “I love you, Donald,” are authoritarian followers themselves), you’re actually telling them what they like about the leader they’re following.

They want that person to be strong: so strong they can even defy laws and rules and get away with it. They love that Trump can grab who he wants, where he wants, and bully judges and the FBI: the stronger they perceive their cult leader, the safer they feel.

For example, a PRRI poll from last October found that nearly half of all Republicans agreed with this statement:

“We need a leader who is willing to break some rules if that’s what it takes to set things right.”

A better strategy, however (if the cult leader must be discussed) is to refer to him with terms that generally characterize weakness: frightened by immigrants, terrified of going to prison, constantly stealing from people, lying to and cheating on every one of his wives, stealing from kids with cancer, subservient to Putin, bowing to Saudi dictators who gave his family billions, etc.

Finally, consider the impact of “group identity.” One fascinating study found that people who felt a strong bond to a particular political party will change their opinions about individual policy issues on a dime if the party itself does. This is another manifestation of that survival need for tribe and community cohesion I mentioned at the beginning of this article.

Knowing this, emphasize the areas where you and the other person share a common “tribe,” rather than focusing on your political tribal difference.

Are you both the same religion? From the same family? The same region of the country? Fans of the same sports team? Share hobbies or interests? What are the values you hold in common? How are they translated into your individual lives?

By coming back to these time and time again you build those bridges to the other person that may, over time and with work and love, help you pry them loose from the authoritarian leader or movement to which they’ve bonded.