History suggests that millenarian fears of social breakdown are a device which has often been generated and instrumentalized by the establishment in moments of existential threat. Even if such fears reach the extreme stage of collective psychosis, this does not mean there is a real prospect of such breakdown, and in fact the social conditions which have sometimes underpinned descents into authoritarianism in the past are fundamentally different at the present juncture and hardly seem prone to reconstitution. Insofar as such fears bring latent conflicts into the open, whilst they certainly raise concerns and have unpredictable consequences, they also offer an opportunity to unmask these conflicts and to reshape social institutions. Continue reading “Apocalypticism and the next social revolution”
Tag: Trump
Trump versus Clinton – political psychology and patriarchy
If the US Democratic party had chosen Bernie Sanders as their presidential candidate – which of course they didn’t, but that’s another subject – there seems little doubt that he would be on course for a landslide in today’s presidential election. Instead, we might wake up tomorrow and find that it is Donald Trump: despite his displaying an abundance of characteristics any one of which would classically have sunk the chances of any previous presidential contender. The world could very easily, therefore, have been very different from how it will now be even if Clinton wins. And yet surely any voter who would have voted for Sanders would rationally prefer Clinton to Trump. What explains the dynamics of this process?
Continue reading “Trump versus Clinton – political psychology and patriarchy”