Fascism Is Political Narcissism

Narcissism is a word – and a concept – that gets thrown around a lot, I know. But what lies at the heart of the pathology is of vital importance in understanding how Fascism functions, and how to combat it. It is not by accident that authoritarian leaders fall pretty obviously on the NPD spectrum. In fact, it is a core component of the gestalt, and can help us define what is and isn’t Fascism beyond mere ideological or autocratic systems.

It is first important to understand the basic function of NPD. In the most basic terms, it is the reliance on an externalized, idealized, grandiose construct of self that defends against the internalized shame and confusion that a lack of internal development holds. When children grow up with an incoherent or contradictory emotional environment, the developmental mechanics that lead us towards a healthy sense of self – our basic sense of who we really are so that we can develop that self into true authenticity – can be subverted into a maladaptive survival mechanism of presenting whatever our environment wants to see in order to avoid negative consequence.

This can present as Borderline Personality Disorder, where the connection to self is weak, and a series of external selves rise and fall as utility waxes and wanes, or NPD, where the connection to self is strong, but that self is an external target dummy of idealized, delusional wishcasting. Picture BPD as the chameleon, NPD as the illusionist. These are very, very simplified, of course, and just illustrative of the mechanics we see in the rise of Fascism.

In NPD, that external, idealized sense of self MUST be constantly validated and performed, to keep the illusion going, not only to convince the people around the person of their perfect genius, but themselves. Any time the illusion slips, the underlying shame and confusion roars forward, ready to consume. People with BPD and NPD often describe this feeling in apocalyptic terms – that if they don’t defend their identity at all costs, they’ll die. Literally “it feels like dying”. The reactive compulsions that drive the toxic behaviors associated with personality disorders are part of this maladaptive strategy to avoid that shame and the shattering of the protective delusions at all costs. This really cannot be stressed enough.

Doubling down, lashing out, holding long term grudges, vengeance fantasies, all mix with fawning responses, approval and attention seeking, and relentless performativity of the grandiose, idealized identity to power up the fantasy that protects them from the “death” of this delusional self.

As with most things of this nature, the arc of attachment and validation isn’t linear, it’s more logarithmic, with more and more validation required to power the identity. As relationships slip, and maladaptive behavior increases, the spiral into abuse and blind defense speeds towards cataclysm. In personal relationships, this is often marked by tactics like love bombing, breadcrumbing, defensive criticism, DARVO, outright violence, and eventually the destruction of that relationship. It’s worth noting that people with NPD do not stop abusing in these relationships. You either leave, or it destroys you both. For more specifics on NPD abuse cycles, this is a good resource.

So by now, a pattern has emerged that I’m sure most of you recognize, especially in Donald J. Trump. Mary Trump wrote a book on her uncle’s mental health, and despite ethical concerns from within the discipline, a group of mental health professionals collected a series of articles into a book calling for greater examination of Donald Trump’s mental health. It was later expanded and revised.

But while the obvious armchair diagnosis of various leaders as presenting NPD-like symptoms and behaviors may be relevant, certainly, we’ve had high-functioning narcissists lead major countries all over the place. Nixon, Clinton, Thatcher, Johnson, Bolsonaro, Duterte, it’s a pretty obvious list. Even Trump’s first term, while pretty disastrous, fell within the spectrum of democratic experience.

The real issue is when the NPD identity pathology is translated to political identity. The grandiose delusional idealized political self is used as a bulwark against the imagined shame and confusion of not having any real internal sense of personal OR political self. It becomes the same functional deflection of criticism or imagined challenge, and elicits the same reactionary defense, as a pathological response, not reasoned debate or good faith engagement.

“White Supremacy” is an idealized, external, delusional political identity. “Male supremacy” (Patriarchy) is an external, delusional political identity. “Patriot”, “True American”, “Blue Collar American”,”Freedom Loving Conservative”, “Constitutional Conservative”, etc etc etc, all serve as group and personal identities to deflect from facing the realities of racism, sexism, classism, and defend support for systems of privilege and oppression. The shame of any responsibility for, or participation in, these oppressive structures triggers the same “I feel like I’m dying” response as any challenge to the NPD identity.

And it elicits the same type of response.

It is important to note that Fascism is functionally non-ideological. One of its defining characteristics is that it is malleable and illusory, adopting literally anything that will give that emotional utility to its leader and/or group adherents. It exists independently of the ideology – the ideology is simply a tool with which to build the identity. Stalin and Mao being raging narcissists who built Fascist cults through abuse and violence fits the same mold as Trump or Hitler.

That said, since these identities are by necessity built on hierarchical taxonomies and cultures of aggrievement, they are definitionally Right Wing in construction. Both Stalin and Mao had to create hierarchies and areas of division in order to solidify power, turning the USSR and CCP into functionally Right Wing/Conservative societies. The Fascist regimes and warlords of post-colonial Africa rose from every kind of movement imaginable. It’s just about power and identity.

MAGA is made up of Christians who hate the teachings of Christ, Constitutional Conservatives that hate the Constitution, Free Market adherent who hate labor mobility, Law N Order types who invaded the Capital, etc. There’s no ideological coherence, because it’s irrelevant. It’s all about the identity and in-group signifiers.

Just as people with NPD have to perform and validate their identities in order to get that emotional utility to stave off shameful reality, so too do “Patriots” and “MAGA” need to perform their identity relentlessly to do the same. There is a sweet spot mixture of imagined persecution and delusional superiority that is the deep fried ice cream of the ego that they aim for. Think high school cafeteria, walking through thinking “you’re all just jealous that I’m so awesome, you’re just haters, oh yeah, I’m so much better than all of you, and you know you just hate me cuz you ain’t me, you can’t sit with us” but grown ass adults vomiting thought terminating cliche memes into the Nazi hellscape of Twitter.

It’s not enough to participate in a safe space circle-jerk. They need conflict in order to do the “winning” that feeds the identity. This is why, although they have created myriad bastions where they can be as goatfuckingly insane at each other as they want – Parler, Rumble, Gab, VOAT, 4Chan/8CHan, Stormfront, Daily Paul, and a bajillion cordoned off Right Wing media spaces, they always come back to the shared spaces to “pwn the Libs”. Again, because performing power, cruelty, and delusional superiority is the entire function of the pathology.

The idealized group identity modeled on the idealized individual identity of the person with NPD is what creates this loop, from Charlie Manson and Jim Jones to Nazi Germany or Pol Pot’s Cambodia. There are militant Buddhists ethnically cleansing Myanmar as we speak. Militant. Buddhists. Doing a bunch of murder. What the absolute fuck.

This all sounds simple, but it is possibly the most powerful tool in the human arsenal. Identity is so core to our experience that even post-vaccine development, anti-vaxxers died screaming “no ragerts!” into their respirators as their families shook their heads and said “should have eaten more horse paste”. We ask why the Heaven’s Gate or Jonestown believers followed even unto death. Identity.

Because NOT doing so felt more like death than death did. You have to understand this.

What we get wrong about Fascism and identity cults is that we treat them like there’s a core of rational or coherent thought that can be argued with. But as we’ve pointed out in earlier articles, you can’t argue with a belief or an identity. The media treating Trump like a legitimate figure – even if they were trying to make fun of him – just feeds the delicious persecution and aggrievement part of the identity. Hillary’s strategy of mocking the dumbest fucking guy to have run for President in my lifetime might have seemed like a winning strategy, but all she did was feed the identity. They owned “deplorables” immediately as a proud group marker. These are the people who made “real men wear diapers” t shirts. There’s no arguing or debating these lunatics.

The true horror of Fascism is reflected in the cycle of narcissistic abuse. With this unbreakable identity in place, the ONLY need from there on out is to perform the cruelty, violence, oppression, and destruction that feeds that identity its feelings of power, of revenge, of punitive cruelty. Dr. Fauci did his best to advise on best practices on a virus no one had experience with, and they want him DEAD. In public. They froth at the crotch about it. They call for the imprisonment if not outright public execution of everyone from the usual bugbears to whatever flavor of the week is impeding Trump’s wildest and most toxic whims.

The impulse towards violent, punitive cruelty is a core part of the pathology.

Just as the person with NPD seeks endless feelings of power through retribution, the Fascist identity seeks new enemies to defeat and punish. It’s also not enough that each member of the group participate in that cycle of validation, they are also compelled to be MORE, to be the best at the group identity. This is part of what drives the spiral: fighting to be the most MAGA MAGA that ever MAGA-ed is something we see drive each weird corner of the identity, from QAnon to Militia terrorists to the Mean Girls Club to the White Supremacists and whatever you call the Andrew Tate/Peterson/Rogan wing of dipshittery.

It is a never-ending one-upsmanship circus to come up with the next most outrageous troll or meme or conspiracy theory to be, again, the coolest kid in the cafeteria. They always need something new, something next, to jump on, to keep that emotional utility flowing. Conflict, delusional “winning” with single-brain-cell memes and though terminating cliches, trolling, and lashing pout violently at anyone who challenges them, all mirrors the NPD pathology.

Eventually, the most “efficient” thing to do is industrial death camps. The Final Solution. And they are already calling for them.

And just like Narcissist abuse, Fascist oppression has no end point, no endgame, no point where it is enough. It will never run its course, or hit a red line that no one will go beyond. It will accelerate faster and faster, until it destroys everything, just as people with NPD do to their lives. They do not care about anything but feeding the identity, and they will die screaming “no ragerts” to do so.

They cannot stop. They must be stopped.

This is but the tip of the iceberg on this topic. But I hope it shows the reality of what we’re up against, and why “all hands on deck” to quarantine this contagion of Narcissism is vitally important, not just in the US, but globally. As more dipshits using this NPD playbook arise worldwide, a fundamental understanding of this entire pathology is paramount.