Dangerous loser: the supreme narcissism of Donald J. Trump

In the last gasp of his presidency, Donald Trump is giving a display of narcissism, extreme even by his normal narcissistic standards.

Narcissism is the key to his private and public persona, and has been so since childhood. But now, in a moment of widely acknowledged defeat, it becomes particularly dangerous. More dangerous than ever, according to Dr Anthony Fry, one of Britain’s most acclaimed psychiatrists in public and private practice.

“He is very dangerous now because he is so extremely unpredictable and prone to violence,” Fry told me today. Back in the summer we had a long conversation about narcissistic personalities in politics. Fry explained the narcissistic personality emerges early in a child’s development, when he or she moves from dependency on the mother to a balanced relationship with a social group, particularly  peers in adolescence.

“Often they feel inadequate – and they have to be admired above all else. When inadequates fail they become unpredictable and damaging – the epitome of the dangerous loser, and that’s where we are with Trump. These personalities are likely to do anything to hold on to power.”

Professor Frederick Burkle, an emeritus of Princeton and the Woodrow Wilson International Center, Washington, says Donald Trump’s behaviour exhibits the nine characteristics of a Narcissistic Personality Disorder laid out in DSM-5, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – which is the standard reference guide on mental disorder for both the American and British legal professions. DSM-5 summarises those displaying  narcissistic personality disorder as having “a sense of entitlement, are arrogant, consider themselves to be special, self-important, take advantage of others, have a great need for admiration, lack empathy, envy other people, and are obsessed with fantasies of boundless power.”

Burkle says the narcissists are extremely self-centred, and agrees with Fry that they demand personal loyalty and admiration from those round them above all else. Like Fry he observes a sense of inadequacy – Trump admires fellow narcissists like Putin, Erdogan, Orban and Xi, “but he feels they are rather better at it than himself,” says Fry.

As to how dangerous a narcissistic political leader may or may not be, Burkle comes up with an intriguing answer. “The personality disorders I refer to are sociopaths, severe narcissists, and are cognitively arrested when it comes to abstract reasoning.

“My test is whether they can tell a joke, even about themselves but most importantly whether the joke is a play on abstraction which defines the best of jokes … but they are concrete, see everything as relating to them, do not understand the abstraction that makes a joke really good. It’s way beyond them because they are devoid of abstract reasoning.”

By Burkle’s criteria, the thin gruel of Trump’s vocabulary falls into place.

People are ‘good’, ‘bad’ or ‘nasty’ or ‘not nice’ – think of the playpen epithets he has heaped on Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, and Nancy Pelosi. Hence we have the simple dip-switch term of ‘fake news’ – which means the news I don’t like, and doesn’t like me.

The outbreak of Covid-19 was always going to spell trouble. It has for the big narcissists across the board – Putin, Erdogan, and Xi especially. They tried to ignore it or avoid it at first. For Trump it was just another influenza outbreak at first – and then got downgraded by playground insult as “the Chinese virus.” The problem Covid-19 poses for the Narcissus kings is that it is outside their control, purview and scientific comprehension. Putin ducked out by giving the Mayor of Moscow the lead on counter-measures. Xi has consistently impeded serious, open, forensic inquiry into the origins and pathology of the pathogen, and locks up those who gainsay the official narrative. Trump ducked, postured, attacked science and its practitioners, and put up barmy theories and behaviours of his own, such as cure by bleach, and the notion only sissies wear masks on the rostrum.

The ravages of Covid in America have been a powerful element in the toxic political and social brew that has led to the debacle in Washington this week. Another is Trump’s characteristic search for fellow travelers, flatterers and courtiers. Among his supporters entering the rotunda on Capitol Hill were those displaying Nazi and Ku Klux Klan insignia. At rallies he has invoked the racist Proud Boys, and the banners of QAnon have been prominent in many gatherings. QAnon is marked by its international appeal, increasing in Europe, Germany especially, and here in the UK. And it is marked by a staggering lack of originality – the anti-Semitic conspiracist diatribe is a crude rewrite of the old Protocols of Zion, which so enamoured Hitler and his crew, though were as fake or even more fake than his so-called diaries.

But courting the KKK, neo-Nazis, and QAnon, the Trump narrative plugs into a long established underground tradition, powerful in quantity if not in quality. This is the tale of the victims government, the law and the ‘Deep State.’ It was celebrated in the subversive messages of heavy metal and folk bands – in anthems like the Ballad of Ruby Ridge, about the standoff between the Weaver family and federal officers at Ruby Ridge in Idaho in 1991. This is turn informed the Michigan militias and the Mountain Men, and the Branch Davidians – whose camp was burnt and destroyed by federal agents at Waco; and this in turn is said to have motivated Timothy McVeigh, who was executed for bombing the FBI building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 in 1995. These are tales of victimhood and martyrdom at the hands of authority big and small. Curiously it linked to the narrative of the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo cult, responsible for a sarin attack on the Tokyo metro in 1995, killing eleven and injuring more than 5,000. Their leader, Ashoko Asahara, was hailed in US underground lore as martyr and victim of a malign international order. He was executed in 2018.

Gangs posing as militiamen turned up in Georgia and Kansas as the mob was scrambling up the Capitol steps on Wednesday.

The tangled tale of victimhood and martyrdom of the militias and underground is now embedded with the myth of Trump’s own victimhood.

It gives the whole injustice narrative, now taken up by Trump’s family, and lawyers such as Rudi Giuliani, Cleta Mitchell, and Sidney Powell, such durability and potency. It is a legacy that is sure to be a ghost at the feast of most of the Biden presidency.

The parallel world of Trump and his grievances will continue to be endorsed and amplified by social media. Even as his Twitter and Instagram accounts are put under the fire blanket, his followers will ensure that his virtual truths and alternative facts keep churning forth.

There is one awkward respect in which his virtual world and the real world collide. And it is in one very awkward word for him. Trump’s most promiscuous pejorative is the word ‘loser.’

But who is the loser now?