The historian Jennifer Burns has this wonderful insight when she describes Ayn Rand as ‘the ultimate gateway drug to life on the right’ – justifying a certain picture of the world is learned at a very early age, that leads them down the path to narcissism. Because the current culture gives them just enough to behave in ways that the neoliberals describe as being the ideal entrepreneur of the self, confusing freedom with imaginary lack of constraint, and so on and so forth. No one has to read Foucault. Just remember watching The Apprentice, or spend a little time on Facebook. Philip Mirowski traces the origins of neoliberalism to Friedrich Hayek and a European thought collective called The Mont Pelerin Society, who saw markets as information processors, superior to human reason. When neoliberalism, as a real-world political project, expects ignorance of the masses, then spreading confusion becomes an acceptable mode of operation, and lying is not necessarily a bad thing.
Friedrich Hayek’s writing rejects such notions of political freedom, universal rights, human equality and distribution of wealth – democracy has no absolute value, in fact, liberty depends on preventing the majority from exercising choice over the direction that politics and society might take. Society reconceived as a giant market leads to a public life lost to bickering over mere opinions; until the public turns, finally, in frustration to a strongman as a last resort for solving its otherwise intractable problems. It isn’t only that the free market produces a tiny cadre of winners and an enormous army of losers – and the losers, looking for revenge, have turned to Brexit and Trump. There was, from the beginning, an inevitable relationship between the utopian ideal of the free market and the dystopian present in which we find ourselves; between the market as unique discloser of value and guardian of liberty, and our current descent into post-truth and anarchy.
What any person acquainted with history sees as the necessary bulwarks against tyranny and exploitation – a thriving middle class and civil sphere; free institutions; universal suffrage; freedom of conscience, congregation, religion and press; a basic recognition that the individual is a bearer of dignity – held no special place in Hayek’s thought. Hayek built into neoliberalism the assumption that the market provides all necessary protection against the one real political danger: totalitarianism. To prevent this, the state need only keep the market free. Rising inequality has become the defining challenge of the century; it has profound implications for the health and resilience of democracies everywhere. Inequality – and the fears of social decline and exclusion it generates – feeds social polarization and the shrinking of a vital moderate center. One of today’s issues is the dissatisfaction and anger with a ‘system’ that creates increasing economic inequality for most.
Thus, the most disastrous feature of the neoliberal period has been the huge growth in inequality. How did neoliberalism manage to survive virtually unscathed for so long? There is a neoliberal counter-revolution based on polarization. Trump’s victim politics is a complete fraud, an old trick used by economic elite to keep working-class Americans fighting each other rather than taking on the oligarchs who are ripping them off. Trump and his allies are again stoking racial tensions even as they seek to cut taxes on the rich by shedding affordable health care for everyone else, dismantle protection for workers and consumers, and tear down environmental protections that stop wealthy corporations from poisoning communities. Victim politics is cultivated for a reason – to keep workers distracted from the real causes of economic inequality. Trump informs his followers: I am your retribution. Retribution is the act of taking revenge.1
Feelings of vengefulness are bred in us by neoliberal capitalism, a system that is itself vengeful. Neoliberal society is experienced by most of us as a set of profoundly unfair, inexplicable and disconnected humiliations. It exhorts us to see ourselves as competitive free agents ’empowered’ to skillfully manage debt, risk and opportunity. But for the majority of workers, debt and risk are unmanageable and the promise of opportunity or fairness feels everywhere foreclosed. We blame ourselves for our failures (leading, among other things, to skyrocketing mental illness), but we also blame others. Today’s capitalism produces a kind of spirit of vengeance, which it then parasitically feeds on in the commodification of what one can call revenge culture. Like the commodification of revenge culture, the instrumentalization of revenge politics by the far-right preys upon and offers a false solution to the sense of hopelessness, meaninglessness and betrayal that life under neoliberalism generates.
A narcissist will seek revenge the instant you challenge them, bruise their fragile little ego or don’t play along with their false reality showcasing their greatness, their grandiose delusions of self-importance and self-righteousness. The term ‘vindictive narcissist’ is not a clinical or official diagnosis. Instead, the term is used casually to describe someone with NPD (or someone with narcissistic traits) who tends to be mean, callous, and cruel towards others. Vindictive narcissists tend to hold onto grudges, often feel anger and resentment, and find ways to seek revenge against people who they feel wronged by. Vindictive narcissistic behaviour includes such things as keeping track of people who have wronged them, trying to either one-up or put down a person they view as a threat or competition; projecting blame onto someone else (even if they’re innocent) serves many purposes – in particular they weaponize information.
The Trump presidency demonstrated the appeal of populist authoritarianism to many Americans. The non-complex and familiar language that Trump uses is the true language of populism. The Republican party has taken a sharp populist turn in the Trump era. The protection of political freedoms and minority rights is an essential test of democracy. Populist leaders not only attack the institutions of global capital, they also disregard the checks and balances of institutional democracy. This creates a dichotomy between “the people” and the (largely unspecified) “ruling elites”, despite the reality that populist leaders themselves are clearly part of the latter. No matter. Their ability to channel anger and frustration at the status quo, and to promise easy solutions, seemingly grants them immunity from being attacked for their own exploitation of the system. We need to understand how politicians, propped up by the rich, use our anger to manipulate us.
Economist Joseph Stiglitz observes, “Trump is what neoliberalism produces. Trump’s agenda boils down to tax cuts for businesses and the rich, while his own voters lose out.” There was, from the beginning, an inevitable relationship between the utopian ideal of the free market and the dystopian present in which we find ourselves; between the market as unique discloser of value and guardian of liberty, and our current descent into post-truth and illiberalism. There is a bigger problem. Donald Trump’s talk of punishing his critics and seeking to “weaponize” the US justice department against his political opponents has experts and former DoJ officials warning this is evidence that if they achieved power again Trump and his MAGA allies plan to tighten his control at key agencies and install trusted loyalists in top posts at the DoJ and the FBI, permitting Trump more leeway to exact revenge on foes, and shrinking agencies Trump sees as harboring “deep state” critics.
Francis Bacon observed: “A man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well.” This quote implies that, in order for us to move forward in life, we much put the past behind us and just proceed. Donald Trump – figured out how to harness voters disillusionment and growing anger – is superior to the others in exploiting the narcissism of small differences to recruit the Republican base. Scholars and ex-justice officials increasing see Trump’s angry mindset was revealed on Veterans Day when he denigrated foes as “vermin” who needed to be “rooted out”, echoing fascist rhetoric from Italy and Germany in the 1930s. Trump’s revenge game-plan has been palpable for months. At a kickoff campaign rally in Texas in March, Trump warned: “Either the deep state destroys America or we destroy the deep state,” and vowed that “for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.”
Neoliberalism has shaped and encouraged narcissism – creating a cultural shift towards narcissism in the last 40 years – as not merely something to aspire to, but to exalt. But what is it actually doing is destroying us. Narcissism reduces everyone to an object to be maneuvered for the narcissist’s pleasure. Rand’s objectivism supports narcissism by demonizing altruism. Neoliberal political economy reanimates attitudes and values that legitimate the consolidation of power over others, evidenced for example in the creation of an indebted population who must play by the dominant rules of the game in order to survive. Moreover, the narcissist is typically at a state of constant antagonistic warfare with others in order to assert dominance. Collective narcissism is associated with hypersensitivity to provocation and the belief that only hostile revenge is a desirable and rewarding response. It arises when the traditional group-based hierarchies are challenged and empowers extremists as well as populist politicians.
Collective narcissists (narcissism exhibited by an individual on behalf of any social group or by a group as a whole) may be particularly inclined to believe that revenge gives good feeling, and especially attracted to experiences that may temporarily improve their mood, such as aggression. Holding such a belief may be a way of coping with tension and a way of justifying aggression against out-groups. Trump’s talk of seeking “retribution” against foes, including some he has branded “vermin”, has coincided with plans that MAGA loyalists at right-wing think-tanks are assembling to expand the president’s power and curb the DoJ, the FBI and other federal agencies. Ian McFee links vengeful tendencies primarily with two social attitudes: right-wing authoritarianism, and social dominance, and the motivational values that underlie those attitudes. Basically, he found “People who are more vengeful tend to be those who are motivated by power, by authority and by the desire for status. They don’t want to lose face.”
Trump’s base has transformed Trump’s embarrassments into an insult against their own personal identities and belief systems, egged on by their media bubble. Many of Trump’s voters can’t accept what’s happened over the past several years, and they blame other Americans, and want revenge. Unlike in previous elections, the motivation of these Trump loyalists isn’t really about policy, and it’s not really about “the border” or trans kids. It’s about a sense of revenge that Trump has cynically, deliberately cultivated in them – so they can finally come out on top.2 To craft a more powerful presidency, MAGA loyalists at a number of well-financed conservative think tanks led by the Heritage Foundation and the Center for Renewing America have produced an almost 1,000-page handbook, dubbed “Project 2025”, to help guide a second Trump term. Ongoing lies and feelings of vengefulness continues to fuel overheated rhetoric that is consuming the country, and threatening to trigger increased violence.
1 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/nov/22/trump-revenge-game-plan-alarm