"Deprogramming" the Trump cult: Is it too late to "humanize those who worship at the altar of MAGA"?

[marmar]

"Deprogramming" the Trump cult: Is it too late to "humanize those who worship at the altar of MAGA"?
Hillary Clinton says MAGA voters need to be saved from themselves. Experts on exactly what that might take

By CHAUNCEY DEVEGA
Senior Writer
PUBLISHED OCTOBER 12, 2023 5:45AM (EDT)


(Salon) In 2016, then Democratic Party presidential nominee Hillary Clinton said that some of Donald Trump’s followers were a “basket of deplorables”:

You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people, now have 11 million. He tweets and retweets offensive, hateful, mean-spirited rhetoric. Now some of those folks, they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.

Clinton was lambasted from both the left and the right in response to her statement. Trump, with his fake right-wing populism, used Clinton’s comments to rally the MAGA cult as part of his narrative that “real Americans” like them are oppressed and disrespected by “Washington DC elites” in their own country. The mainstream news media also used Clinton’s description of the MAGA movement as an opportunity to continue with their decades of rumor-mongering and general animus towards the Clinton family and to further advance their attempt to normalize (and elevate) then-candidate Trump.

....(snip)....

In an attempt to better understand Hillary Clinton’s warnings about the Trump MAGA cult, her recent suggestions about deprogramming its members, and what potentially comes next, I asked a range of experts for their insights and reactions:

Dr. Marc Goulston is a prominent psychiatrist, former FBI hostage-negotiation trainer and author of the bestsellers "Just Listen" and "Talking to 'Crazy'."

The challenge with "deprogramming" Trump's base is that they have formed psychological adhesions and not just mere attachments to him. You can sometimes break attachments with reason, but to break an adhesion, you have to sever (i.e. deprogram) it. One of the challenges to doing that is that Trump is addicted to excitement - i.e. the adrenaline rush - and has addicted his followers to it. And the only thing more powerful than an adrenaline rush is the fear of an adrenaline crash and once addicted to the rush, people will do anything - which we're seeing Trump's need to stay in the spotlight every day - to avoid the crash.

....(snip)....

Dr. Lance Dodes is a retired assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a training and supervising analyst emeritus at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute.

In her recent comments describing Trump as an authoritarian populist, leading a cult of followers who are blinded to his criminality, Hillary Clinton summarized what many have known for years. Mental health professionals have repeatedly noted that Trump’s rampant paranoia, absence of a normal capacity for empathy, and massive dishonesty are signs of severe mental illness, specifically that regularly seen in populist psychopaths from Hitler to Putin. Yet, in 2023, the fact that he is one of these populist psychopaths is still treated as “news." ..........................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2023/10/12/deprogramming-the-cult-is-it-too-late-to-humanize-those-worship-at-the-altar-of-maga/

[RussBLib]

1. Psychedelic therapy...

....under controlled circumstances might be enough to snap some of them out of their delusion. They have built up a wall against talk therapy.

https://russblib.blogspot.com/

[alittlelark]

4. Yup - I doubt anything else would work.

Psychedelic therapy is miraculous

[RAB910]

2. I think it's worth looking at post WW 2 Germany for the answer

https://www.alliiertenmuseum.de/en/thema/denazification/

[Redleg]

7. An interesting read

It seems impractical here in the U.S. if we are to remain a democratic republic without committing ourselves to a potential civil war.

[Ray Bruns]

3. I was going to post something about Trump supporters and a heaven's gate ending but thought better

of it. Maybe I will just hope that their imaginary sky daddy is real and will rapture their asses sooner rather than later.

[patricia92243]

5. When the cult is based on one person, the cult will not stop until the leader is dead.

Jim Jones, David Korch (Branch Davidions,) the people waiting for a space ship and then killed themselves. There are a lot more. But the leader all had to die.

The Trump cult will not stop while he is still alive. There will always be some hangers on that will still be around after his death but not enough to make a difference.

[republianmushroom]

6. Yup, it has become a religion to some.

[Chainfire]

8. They have so much emotional energy invested that it is impossible to admit that they have been

wrong and the "other side" has been right all along. They will change their positions when they depart this life. It is similar to the slogan, when I was much younger, "Better Dead than Red."

[lees1975]

9. This is already baked in.

Some Christians are replacing Jesus with Trump, are concluding that criticism of Trump is the same as criticizing Jesus, and if you look at a Biblical definition of what that amounts to, it pretty much defined Trump as antichrist. And they are blind to it, so if it's gone that far, it will be difficult to walk it back.

[Aristus]

10. Humanize', I suppose, is the right word.

Trumpsters are barely human, so they have nowhere to go but up.

Someone once said that the thought process is never complete without articulation.

Trumpsters don’t think, and they can barely articulate. So humanizing them is an uphill slog.