How political hatred works
Commenter “phsicsguy” has a request:
,,, [I]n every other aspect of [the lives of the Democrats I know who want Trump dead], they act within the general morality of our culture. They don’t beat puppies and babies, they don’t steal, they’ll lend a helping hand to their neighbors, etc. My BiL is extremely active in the Catholic Church. Yet…..when it comes to Trump, and now through the relentless propaganda, conservatives and republicans in general, the “violent minds” turn on. I keep wishing that someone well-versed in psychology could explain this phenomenon to me, and also provide a solution. I haven’t seen such. If it exists it might even save the country from some terrible consequences.
It does certainly seem like a contagion, but there seems to be no antibiotic to employ.
I have no solution. But I’ll have a go at an explanation. The analogy to contagion is a good one, although obviously there are no microbes involved. People come to believe Trump is a Hitler equivalent, tremendously evil and otherwise unstoppable politically, so it follows that he must be killed. The analogy to Hitler is not an idle one because there were indeed many failed attempts on Hitler’s life and most people consider those who tried to do so to be heroes. The fact that Trump bears no resemblance to Hitler is irrelevant, because most people don’t evaluate things for themselves and their sources – their trusted sources – say Trump is tremendously evil, Hitlerian, and out to destroy our country and must be stopped.
Why those sources are trusted is another story. It’s different for different populations. For older people, it’s the news media amplified by social media. For younger people, the source is other online platforms such as TikTok and Twitch (Hasam Piker is a huge Twitch personality, for example). For many of all ages, they live in communities where pretty much everyone thinks this way, whether it be a blue city or just their own family or their own ethnic group. Often a clergyman or church or synagogue group is part of the echo chamber (in which case Trump-hate is not a religious substitute but is considered consistent with their religion as a sort of “just war”), and of course many Democrat politicians and spokespeople, as well as celebrities, artists, authors, and public intellectuals.
In my case I am often the only Trump supporter friends and family members know. Some have cooled, but some have “grandfathered” me in, as it were, because they’ve known me so long and know I’m not evil.
In addition, some of my Democrat friends simply don’t care. It’s not that they don’t care about politics, but they don’t care in the same very personal way. They never talk politics to me and never mention my curious support of Trump; it simply is not an issue they take into the personal realm. They are my friends (at least so far), they’ve been my friends for years, and that’s that. Nor do they ever mention wanting to kill Trump or wanting him dead, although they’ve made a few remarks indicating they detest him.
What distinguishes these two groups from each other? I think it’s the personalization of politics and the transformation of it into a religious substitute, plus the intensity with which they view it. But why do people belong to one group rather than another? I don’t know. I have found no specific characteristics that I can see that differentiate between the two groups: neither is predominantly male or female, neither is religious, nor do they differ in education or the way they habitually vote. They also do not differ in the intensity of their personalities in other areas of their lives.
Trusted sources. Oh my!
If I ever ran a school for young kids, instilling a healthy skepticism of ALL sources would be job #1.
TommyJay:
Ah, but once people don’t trust official sources in general, they tend to go the wacky conspiracy theory route and are open to all manner of beliefs, including anti Semitism of the Carlson et al variety. I plan to write a post on the “doubt everything” phenomenon.
Propaganda is effective, as Joseph Goebbels appreciated and employed on the Nazis’ behalf. It crescendo’d into Jew hatred, and the German majority did not resist or object.
We have the same thing here today. The anti-Trump media are almost all Democratic, and in their constant and increasingly vicious clamor have persuaded and led many of our fellow Americans into idiot land. I expect this to lead to violence, and possibly separation into two ununited countries. We see this today on the East Coast: New England and south to the Carolinas’ border North/South is Democrat-land, further south is GOP country.
Who came up with “red” and “blue” states? Red is the classic color of violence in the political arena, communists are red, and our Southland is tagged as red by the Democrat MSM.
> Who came up with “red” and “blue” states?
Back in the day, the news media used to swap colors every election: red and blue vs. blue and red. I distinctly remember the Republicans being blue in 1980.
Eventually, they figured out that since red is associated with communism, making the Democrat party red was a little too on the nose, so the Republican party became always red after that. I don’t know when that happened, but it was a news media thing.
Not sure. This stuff crosses their radar screen, so to speak, along with tons of other stuff. And THIS is the which they grab with both hands. THIS they WANT to believe. Why this? Why do they feel so good believing in contrast to facts. Why do they want to hate,,?
Richard Aubrey:
Not sure I get what you’re saying. Of course there are “tons of other stuff ” that people see. But this is a relentless and pervasive message, coming from many trusted sources for a decade. Plus, they see Trump dismantling things they hold dear, and sometimes speaking nastily, and they wouldn’t be inclined to give him the benefit of any doubt.
That’s for your attempt, Neo.
I think we have a “cause- effect” ordering problem. Does the incessant propaganda that Trump is Hitler ramp up the hatred, or does the hatred cause creduality with the propaganda?
Based on my observations, I tend to go with the latter. The people I know hate him with the reptilian part of their brain. It’s so visceral which then seems to make them believe anything about him. I remember back in 2016 my friend said he hated Trump on sight. This just after his candidate announcement. Why?? He had no explanation. I see these people in the last few days saying they dont want political assassination, but they hope he wakes up with the most painful and incurable cancer.
I detest Obama, but I never harbored such thoughts about him. And I don’t think many on the right did/do. Is there something in the liberal brain that brings out such base emotions?
neo has taken a good swing at the topic.
I would add “When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group That Predicted the Destruction of the World” (1956).
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…a classic work of social psychology by Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schachter, published in 1956, detailing a study of a small UFO religion in Chicago called the Seekers that believed in an imminent apocalypse. The authors took a particular interest in the members’ coping mechanisms after the event did not occur, focusing on the cognitive dissonance between the members’ beliefs and actual events, and the psychological consequences of these disconfirmed expectations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Prophecy_Fails
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According to the book after a specific end of the world prophecy failed to occur, the members didn’t walk away, but doubled-down in their beliefs.
Similarly, I would argue that some of the vehemence and violence of the Democrat/Left is a doubling-down since Obama’s “prophecy” of transformation failed after Trump won in 2016.
Instead of rethinking, the Obama left doubled-down on unremitting fury towards Trump and all Trump supporters.
(However, according to wiki, a 2025 article “argued that the main theses of the book are false and were known to be false by the authors.” The problem seems to be that the researchers were not neutral observers, but actively interacting with the believer community and contaminating the data.)
neo on April 28, 2026 at 3:17 pm said:
TommyJay:
Ah, but once people don’t trust official sources in general, they tend to go the wacky conspiracy theory route and are open to all manner of beliefs, including anti Semitism of the Carlson et al variety. I plan to write a post on the “doubt everything” phenomenon.
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I don’t know about that. I’ve never been tempted by that sort of thinking (unless you’re one who think Thomism is “wacky”.) I started doubting at least by 4th grade; that’s when I realized my teachers didn’t always know what they were talking about. But even before that, I was puzzled by the fact that the books they had in class were so much worse than the ones my grandmother had me reading.
Note: this was the 50s and 60s on Long Island.
Eeyore:
I don’t just mean questioning what you’re told. I always did that. I mean thinking virtually everything you’re told is a lie, and then glomming onto some “truth teller” like Tucker Carlson and believing what HE ways. I see this constantly. Conspiracy theories run amuk, because human nature abhors a vacuum.