Did Erich Fromm See Trump And His Followers In A Crystal Ball?

 Perhaps the best description of Trump and his followers, the Trumpublicans, comes from Erich Fromm (click here for a bio) as he wrote about the authoritarian personality. That article is the subject of today's review (click here for the article). The trouble with the above claim is that Fromm's article was written in 1957. So how could he  describe Trump and his followers so well? He had experience with others who had similar enough personalities. In particular, he had Hitler and Stalin to observe.

When Fromm talks about authoritarians, he is not talking about rational authority based on the competence of a given authority figure. Rather, he is dealing with irrational authority where the appeal is based on immaturity and the meeting of emotional needs caused by immaturity. And though when dealing with the authoritarian personality Fromm differentiates between the active authoritarian from the passive authoritarian, the emotional needs being met for both of these authoritarian personality types are very similar: people from both types must cling to each other because they lack the maturity to be independent. They lack a certain love that connects them to the world and they lack reason to break through the surface and learn to understand the 'core of things.' That leaves such people lonely and in fear.

Thus, opposite of the authoritarian is the mature person, according to Fromm, who is a 'loving and reasoning' person. Those with an authoritarian personality lack the maturity to love and to reason through things. In contrast to being loving and reasoning, authoritarians use each other to affirm themselves and to overcome their fear and loneliness. The active authoritarian, or the leader finds significance in receiving applause from the crowd and in being able to manipulate their followers to do all sorts of things some of which are harmful to themselves. The passive authoritarian, or the follower, finds their significance in being joined to a great leader despite the costs to their own personhood. Thus, both the active and passive authoritarians are meeting problematic emotional needs in each other in unhealthy ways.

Fromm better describes the authoritarian personality types than I do and so please read the article. It provides a 1957 crystal ball look into what we experienced during Trump's presidential campaigns and his tenure as President. The irrational, or I should say mindless, allegiance to Trump was demonstrated by people who were happy to let Trump serve as their nanny thinker. They easily found significance in their association with him and his cause. On the other hand, Trump often appeared to feel threatened when not praised sufficiently. His focus was always about how he looked to others regardless of the important issues at hand and bragging about how he was the best anyone has ever seen.

For us Christians, there is a concern about whether Fromm is criticizing our relationship with Christ as we praise Him and try to serve Him as God. But if we limit Fromm's article to how we relate to people, then we can greatly benefit from learning Fromm's take on the authoritarian personality types.