Berserk!: Anger and the Charismatic Populism of Donald Trump

Abstract

This paper explores the role anger plays in charismatic movements. Although scholars have long recognized the importance of emotions to the etiology of charisma, they tend to focus on mutual affection among leaders and followers, paying less attention to how anger—and particularly its subspecies, ressentiment—patterns charismatic power. Drawing on literature from political science, populism research, and the cultural sociology of charisma, we argue that ressentiment, which is associated with self-disvalue and an invidious need to blame outsiders, is key to theorizing the emotional energy that charisma delivers to revolutionary upheaval. The Weberian source for the intervention is his lesser known concept of ‘berserk-charisma’. Reorienting the focus of charisma research to account for its aggressive, ‘outward’ dimension has the benefit of drawing us closer to the vision Weber had for its social-historical relevance. We demonstrate our insights using the case of charismatic/populist support for Trump.

(Re)shaping online narratives: when bots promote the message of President Trump during his first impeachment

“…This use of nicknames also echoes Trump’s strategy in employing derogatory language when depicting other groups, such as the frequent use of terms such as ‘animal’ or ‘killer’ when referring to immigrants ( Bilewicz & Soral, 2022 ). Such strategies are part of a broader trend of incivility by American politicians on Twitter, with uncivil tweets serving as powerful means of political mobilization and fundraising ( Ballard et al, 2022 ) by drawing on emotions such as anger ( Joosse & Zelinsky, 2022 ; Bernecker, Wenzler & Sassenberg, 2019 ); the ensuing attention may even lead politicians to engage into greater incivility ( Frimer et al, 2022 ). In the case of Trump, the violence-inducing rhetoric resulted in permanent suspension of his Twitter account, days before being charged by the House of Representatives for “incitement of insurrection” ( Wheeler & Muwanguzi, 2022 ).…”

Charismatic Mimicry: Innovation and Imitation in the Case of Volodymyr Zelensky

“…Work within the Weberian inspiration draws heavily on this tendency to view charisma agonistically—as a “revolutionary force” that, within his tripartite model of social power, opposes traditional and bureaucratic structures (Weber [1922] 1978:1116). As one recent study put it, charismatic leaders capitalize on existing grievances against the prevailing order, “disbursing energy toward attacks on structures and institutions outside the charismatic group” (Joosse and Zelinsky 2022:1074). This conflictual orientation, Weber ([1922] 1978:244) tells us, often plays out as “an actual physical battle of the leaders.” Many of the figures that populate Weber’s ([1922] 1978) descriptions, from Nordic berserks to Oliver Cromwell, Robespierre, or Kurt Eisner, embody a type of “brawny” agency that “places .…”

“…Smith (2005:21), for example, analyzed the cultural dramas promulgated by charismatic discourse, finding a “narrative inflation” that enlarges the moral-cultural dimensions of existing conflict, stressing “there is an evil to be overcome” (Smith 2000:109). Representatives of such evil are subject to a “hateful cathexis” on the part of movement participants (Joosse and Zelinsky 2022:1080)—they are “bedeviled” (Joosse 2018b) and personified as “anti-charismatics” (Whisker 2012) who are endowed with “the negative charisma of evil” (Smith 2005:128). Thus, a binary coding between good and evil is key for allowing charismatic leaders to harness negative emotions and launch them against existing structures in a bid to overthrow them.…”

Asymmetric conflation: QAnon and the political cooptation of religion

“…There has been little academic work on this synthesis as it relates to QAnon, however, with some important exceptions (Beverley 2020;Armaly et al, 2022;Enders et al, 2022;Joosse and Zelinsky, 2022;Young and Boucher, 2022;Bromley and Richardson, 2023;Richardson, 2023). Cultural analyses of the topic have largely been relegated to the journalistic realm, many of which conform to patterns of denigration that will be familiar to anyone who follows popular coverage of emergent religious and political phenomena.…”