What Happens to Trump's Cult Followers After He Goes to Prison?
Lone wolf actions would be more likely than mass violence. But watch for Trump's conviction and possible imprisonment deflating his cult.
Jack Smith scores another victory. This time a hugely historic one: Trump is convicted and goes to prison. What then becomes of his cult followers? Do they go on a violent nation-wide rampage? Or, fade away in a cloud of fatalism? Or, remain loyal, keeping alive the MAGA flame until their messiah is freed from the shackles of the Deep State?
The country has never had as president a cult-leader, a president who was able to brainwash and manipulate millions into separating themselves from reality, “plain folks of the land,” in H. L. Mencken’s words, whose gullibility is matched by their utter contempt for democracy and American values.
Therefore, all we can go on as far as historic examples are concerned, are foreign political and some domestic faith cult leaders.
The greatest of them all in modern times, of course, is Adolf Hitler. It took over 80 million mobilized Allied troops to bring down the Fuhrer, yet his charisma lives on. “Neo-Nazis” have increasingly captured the headlines in recent years from Charlottesville to Moscow. These people revere the Third Reich and its demented yet hypnotic leader. The swastika for them is as soul-capturing as the crucifix is for ardent Christians.
Nazism didn’t die at Wilhelmstrasse 77 on April 30, 1945. It lives on in the troubled souls of thousands who revere its founder — not to mention the 45th president of the United States.
In the U.S. context, religious cult leaders who stand out include Jim Jones, David Koresh, Ron Hubbard and Sun Myung Moon.
Jim “Drink the Kool-Aid” Jones, of course, convinced 909 of his slavish acolytes (304 of them children), members of the so-called People’s Temple, to commit suicide in the jungles of Guyana in November 1978. This constituted the greatest single loss of American civilians in a planned violent act until the ISIS terrorist attack on the Twin Towers in New York on 9/11. Adherents of the People’s Temple remained active into the 1980s and then petered out. The People’s Temple cult did not live beyond its leader.
David Koresh, born Vernon Wayne Howell, was the psychologically damaged leader of the Branch Davidian sect. “Waco,” equates to the “Alamo” in the far-right lexicon, one of the expanding battlegrounds between the extreme right and their perceived “Deep State” nemesis. As with the People’s Temple, the Branch Davidians dwindled in numbers in the years after the feds’ bungled 51-day 1993 assault on the group, resulting in the deaths of four federal agents and 82 Davidians, 28 of them children.
L. Ron Hubbard founded the Church of Scientology in 1950. It has a cult following estimated at 25,000 in the U.S. The eccentric Hubbard continues to be worshipped by Scientology members 37 years following his death. Each of the sect’s churches, for example, must maintain an office reserved for Hubbard — who is referred to as “the Source” — including a desk, chair and writing materials, ready for his use. A religious historian describes Scientology as “a movement focused on the figure of Hubbard. The fact that [Hubbard's] life is mythologized is as obvious as in the cases of Jesus, Muhammad or Siddartha Gotama.”
So, Hubbard’s charisma and influence endure, albeit among a small cohort of fervent believers, among them such luminaries as Tom Cruise, John Travolta and Isaac Hayes.
I spent half a year investigating the Unification Church when I was a grad student. Church leaders went out of their way to open their doors to me, fête me and spend hours debating with me over the church’s tenets and its self-styled messiah, Sun Myung Moon (hence, “Moonies”). I found that the cult’s membership broadly fell into two categories: 1) mass members, many of whom were damaged individuals, folks who were escaping abusive circumstances or were suffering from emotional disorders; others appeared to be seeking simple answers in troubled times; and 2) the church executive class, highly educated persons, many successful in finance, business and other fields. These were articulate, sophisticated and mannered. But they were 100 percent in servitude to their leader. Try as I might, I couldn’t figure them out. To this day, I remain puzzled as to how such educated, worldly people essentially forked over their brains to a cult, albeit a non-violent, not terribly coercive one.
Reverence for Moon and his self-created theology survive him (he died in 2012) among the church’s estimated 3 million members worldwide.
Political essayist Chauncey Devega describes Trumpism as
right-wing political extremism transformed into a cult. This is not just a metaphor. Trump’s lies, his assault on reality, his threats of violence, his cruelty, his demand of absolute loyalty, his manipulation of willing subjects who choose to escape empirical reality, and his shared state of collective narcissism with his followers all fit the definition of a cult.
Cult expert Steven Hassan states that “the Republican party is almost like a religious cult surrounding an organized crime family.” In his book, The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control, he writes,
People like to think they are rational and in control, but the lessons of history and social psychology demonstrate, time and again, that simply isn’t so. We go about our days, and our lives, using unconscious mental models. When cult leaders manipulate those models, in subtle and overt ways, we can be persuaded to believe and do things we might never have considered without such systematic psychological influence.
Donald Trump has proven himself to be almost preternaturally skilled at manipulating people’s minds and persuading them that only he has all the answers. As proof of his hold on the GOP cult, just look at his approval ratings since being indicted on criminal charges: nearly 70 percent of Republican voters stand behind Trump despite the indictments, according to a recent NBC News poll. Furthermore, an estimated 12 million adults — 4.4 percent of Americans — believe violence is justified in restoring Trump to power, according to a recent survey by the University of Chicago’s Project on Security & Threats (CPOST).
Steven Hassan is not optimistic about the Trump cult in the event its messiah leaves the scene, in handcuffs or by other means:
Unfortunately, my experience is that people often stay on automatic pilot for years after being in a cult. Trump’s supporters are an easy target for another country, whether it's Russia or Iran or China or some other hostile country that wants to sow division in the United States. Unfortunately, I think that Trump’s supporters are going to be a great danger to the rest of us in this country for some time.
I think there is some room for optimism. The rule of law has a profound way of not only putting criminal demagogues in their place, but also their loyal minions. The late Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s personality cult collapsed once he was convicted for tax fraud in 2012.
Other political cult leaders’ careers mostly ended either by coup d'état or death in office. These include Juan Perón, Fidel Castro, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Josip Broz Tito, Sukarno and Hugo Chávez.
Another optimistic sign that Trumpists won’t turn to mass violence is their meager turnout at Trump’s court proceedings in New York last April and this month in Miami despite his thinly veiled calls for followers to take to the streets. This, no doubt, is a consequence of the criminal indictments of some 1,000 MAGA January 6 rioters. “That might give some people pause before they answer Trump’s call to protest this time. You could end up losing your job, your freedom, your family,” GOP pollster Whit Ayres told the Christian Science Monitor.
My sense is that the threat of violence will be centered in “lone wolf” actors, crazed fanatics with guns who may carry out individual attacks such as recent damage done to electricity infrastructure and an Ohio man’s kamikaze-like assault on the FBI’s Cincinnati office last year.
The principal danger will come at the ballot box next year. Should the “plain folks of the land” again adorn the White House with “a downright fool and complete narcissistic moron,” i.e., Donald Trump, it won’t matter if he’s in jail or not. And the Founding Fathers will be collectively turning in their graves as their experiment in democracy comes to an end.
On the other hand, should Joe Biden win a second term, expect Trumpism to fester until the roots of angry right-wing populism are addressed and an updated fairness doctrine is resurrected to contain the worst excesses of the news media.