Outrage, Fatigue, Surrender: The Psychological Warfare Behind Trumpism
How Trump Weaponizes Nihilism: A Playbook for Psychological Warfare
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- Trump's media strategy overwhelms the news cycle, leading to burnout and disengagement from political activism.
- The relentless wave of executive orders fosters learned helplessness, demoralizing opponents and increasing crisis hotline calls.
- Weaponized nihilism convinces opponents that resistance is futile, leading to cynicism and disengagement.
- Individuals must curate their media intake, engage in grassroots activism, and pressure lawmakers to resist unconstitutional actions.
- Nihilism is a long-term right-wing tool, requiring sustained resistance and collective action to protect marginalized communities.
These days news feed headlines ring like Grand Theft Auto car radio commercials. Each one seems more out of pocket than the last. And the MAGA faithful online audience has been emboldened to dominate social media forums to spread a hateful gospel because of it. The echo of chambers like Twitter, Facebook, and most recently Tiktok algorithmically suppress opposing voices while elevating voices that echo their hegemony. Meanwhile the social media fatigue of the suppressed causes them to take cyber breaks. Some feeling a loss of connection to their mission.
Could weaponizing nihilistic doom-scrolling be a deliberate tactic by President Trump? It does seem to be a pattern of his to obfuscate headlines about him that he doesn't like by flooding the news with even more outrageous stories. At some point you just have to put the phone down and touch grass. But Trump wouldn't be the first to weaponize despair to suppress the voice of his opposition. Which is why exploring those topics helps us understand both how to resist his influence, and how nihilism isn't just a personal downer vibe, but a manufactured political tool.
Optimistic Nihilism by Epic Mountain
I.
The President has signed 54 executive orders as of writing this article. Though I wouldn't be surprised if he fits a few more in between the time of my final edit and hitting the publish button. That's more than any president has signed in their first 100 days since President Harry Truman. And in the Information Age we're getting fed this record-breaking frequency of political pressure in real-time.
Psychology describes learned helplessness as a state that occurs after a person has repeatedly experienced a stressful situation. Its demoralizing effects wear down Trump's opponents effectively silencing them. Crisis hotlines have been seeing rapid spikes of inbound call volume since the president was elected. It's exhausting. It's too overwhelming. For many, it puts out the light of hope that keeps them politically engaged. And that's the plan.
II.
He has nothing but time for this kind of stuff. His disruptive ideas are subversive to the Republican principles of personal responsibility and moral values that preceded him. Rather than being guided by some political ideology, the president is highly motivated by self-interest at the expense of U.S. working folks. Bypassing congressional approval, he's jump started his white-supremacist agenda to erase minorities. Federal agencies have been cornered into compliance like NASA which deleted every mention of women from their websites. While other federal agencies with socially supportive functions are dismantled outright. Trump seems less a Republican, and more of an independent actor who's hijacked the Republican party to be the vehicle of a discriminatory agenda.
The form this suppression has taken in a rapid round of separate orders clogs news feeds. The presence of his unAmerican wave of motions makes his agenda seem inevitable. But they're by and large unconstitutional. They won't hold up in court. Meaning all we need is to buy the courts some time to reverse his bigoted actions. Trump knows this. Which is why he's obfuscated the media lens and overwhelmed readers. By positioning himself as though he's already won the game, he's able to demoralize individuals and even grassroots movements from pushing back. Except he hasn't won the game. He's just made a lot of really bad moves that are going to be undone as soon as the courts catch up with him.
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III.
In the meantime, we need to rise above the influence of the GOP's nihilistic propaganda. It starts with a trash fire of headlines drowning your phone in stressful news. Women, people of color, and trans folks are being specifically thrown under the bus with every passing day in this presidency. Trans folks are being discharged from duty and banned from the military. Meanwhile, the Equal Employment Opportunity Act is being revoked legalizing discrimination.
Each of these headlines hitting our phones at the speed of the Information Age compound outrage throughout our communities. Social media has no short supply of negative reactions to the President's overreach. But you can only be outraged for so long before it turns into fatigue, and you're making a post to your friends about how they can reach you by your phone number if they need you.
Steeping in that fatigue reinforces cynicism that there may actually be nothing you can do. Maybe all those posts, protests, and petitions were for nothing. Maybe Trump is just going to get away with it. That burnout turns into disengagement thinning the resistance. Resistance feels as productive as mopping the ocean shore.
The result is a nihilistic malaise that sends Trump's opposition to log off, touch grass, and maybe pick up some new hobbies since their calendar just opened up after cancelling their political goals for the next four years. My efforts mean nothing because they do nothing, so I should give up. Weaponized nihilism weakens opponents by deplatforming their voice by their own volition. When their political news feeds are reduced to doom-scrolling a new hope to reclaim democracy can seem invisible. But that's not the case, and there's plenty we can do from the bottom up to resist nihilistic propaganda to maintain our productive efforts to pushback against the rising oligarchal fascism.
IV.
Then what can we do? Well there's steps we can take to protect the individual, empower the local community, as well as pushback against the federal level. First we need to disillusion the individual with the unproductive hamster wheel of nihilism. Curate your social media feeds by blocking accounts and groups that lure you into senseless debates with folks that are trolling more than engaging authentically. It's your phone in your pocket. You should be programming it more than it's programming you.
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Reinforce your feed with more accounts that are actively pursuing justice. Independent journalists, grassroots movements, and artists are all much better daily programming than the trolls and bots trying to kill your vibe. Through online community and solidarity we can affirm one another on next steps in the push against corruption and injustice.
Beat down local bills and policies trying to comply with the president. Local school districts immediately announced that they won't be complying with ICE operatives that aren't complying with their own policies to protect students. You can show up to your town hall to demand similar actions be taken in your local community. Just because executive orders are being signed doesn't mean they have to be immediately complied with. We just have to buy the courts some time to reverse POTUS' unconstitutional actions.
Speaking of which, our senators have plenty of options to stall Trump long enough for courts to react. Through blanket opposition, weaponizing quorum calls, and blocking unanimous consent--Democrat senators have all the tools they need to have a role in the resistance. But it's not something they're going to volunteer for because their options are tedious and time-consuming. Not just for their opponents, but for them as well. Which is why you need to call your senators, as a voter, and demand these actions be taken. Sure, it's not fun spending all that time on the congressional floor, but that's their job. And it's time to show Senators we don't believe in them if they aren't actively opposing threats against equality for minorities. For details on these senator actions, I found this beautifully written explanation that you can read here.
When nihilism is an active ingredient in the recipe for white-supremacist propaganda, hope isn't just a personal feeling. It's a political strategy. We can't afford to merely be reacting to the GOP's morally bankrupt advances. We need to proactively pursue solutions.
V.
Weaponized nihilism isn't just limited to the scope of Trumpism methodology. He's merely a symptom, but not the source of the disease. Nihilistic discouragement is a broader tool of the right-wing. They want the reigns to normalization so they can steer social acceptance. By erasing minorities from federal documents, ejecting them from the military, and legalizing their discrimination from the workplace the GOP is excluding minorities from social participation denormalizing their presence in society.
When nihilistic propaganda becomes a primary means of defanging the left, disillusionment must be repurposed from weapon to liberation. We have just as many tools to make our message just as viral as the unripened Twitter incels. We can raise awareness and share intelligence on political resistance using the same techniques. We have the technology.
This won't be the last time nihilism is weaponized on the U.S., especially while Trump is president. But any future authoritarian state in the Information Age is probably going to use similar psychological tactics through media platforms. Especially after the president has made a spectacle of a precedent. Vigilant long-term political engagement is a necessary marathon. It's the duty of every sensible person to bring these lessons with them into the future so history doesn't repeat itself.
