Political Violence and the Rise of Societal Narcissism
I just watched the attempt on Paul Pelosi’s life
In October, a man broke into the Pelosi home in San Francisco with the intent of taking Nancy Pelosi — then Speaker of the House — hostage and breaking her kneecaps if she “lied” to him. She was not home so instead he took her husband Paul hostage. The footage I watched of the attack is from the bodycam of the responding officers. They ask what is happening and then ask the assailant to drop the hammer. He refuses and immediately starts brutally attacking Pelosi. Pelosi was badly injured but survived. The assailant was taken into custody and has pleaded not guilty.
So, we have a few things to talk about here. To start with, I am unsure of the ethical implications in watching this form of extreme and unprovoked violence without the explicit consent of the victim. Nancy Pelosi has said she has not and will not watch the footage and does not want to comment on it. I really can’t blame her. That’s the moment her husband, the love of her life was nearly killed because someone did not approve of her career. If I had read that she did not watch it before watching it myself I probably wouldn’t have and I now will not be sharing the video.
We have had political assassinations and attempted assassinations including ones in which family members of the politician were in the line of fire. And they’re typically regarded as isolated events. But the reason I’m writing this at 11pm on a Friday night is because you can make your arguments about past assassinations, but this one is not an isolated event. This is part of an ongoing pattern of fascistic and antidemocratic violence that has been on the rise worldwide since probably earlier than any date I can reasonably give you.
For reasons entirely unrelated to politics or this in particular my wonderful autistic brain has decided that my new special interest is cluster b personality disorders. Those include Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Antisocial Personality Disorder or what is colloquially and forensically referred to as sociopathy and psychopathy. I’ve been reading what journal articles I can get my obsessively clean hands on and watching Doctor Ramani’s youtube channel as if my life depended on it. In a video I just recently watched on grounding yourself in the face of narcissistic abuse or gaslighting from really anyone she makes an almost offhand comment that there is a societal rise in narcissistic behaviour.
She is right.
And no, I’m not just saying that Orange Palette Hitler is a narcissist. That part was covered by Mary Trump in her book. I’m saying that the destabilising aspects of these types of cluster b personality disorders have become pandemic. I have long repeated that populism is the larval form of fascism and others have pointed out the very clear similarities between MAGA Republicanism and a cult, but it goes deeper. It’s not just that 45 is an actual narcissist or has Histrionic Personality Disorder, it’s that these toxic behaviours have spread throughout society.
Yes, I can easily point towards election denial or the blame shifting after every one of the MAGA cult’s or QANON’s violent attacks. But it’s more than that. It’s this continued false equivalency driven by our own media. It’s this insistence that despite passing laws that actually help Democrats are somehow just as bad as Republicans. It’s the insistence that any version of “reality” that does not uphold and reinforce your own beliefs is a “lie.”
And that last is why I included the assailant’s threat against Nancy Pelosi. He said he would commit a violent act if she lied. But the only “truth” he would have accepted was a lie that confirmed his own warped perception of reality. You cannot argue with a narcissist. You can privately and personally insist on your own truth and actual reality and you can have recordings and papers and evidence to back that up, but a narcissist will never accept even mountains of evidence. They will insist it’s fabricated or our practice of keeping the receipts is in and of itself insane.
I suspect this is also why the assailant plead not guilty. He absolutely knows he attacked Paul Pelosi. He had a plan to commit an assault and possibly a murder. There is actual footage of him casing the Pelosi home, putting on gloves, breaking and entering, and then more footage of him brutally attacking Pelosi. And yet, like every terrorist from the MAGA cult before him he is insisting it didn’t happen. 45 even had the absolute gall to try to say he was breaking out because 45 is an actual, genuine, real-life monster and no, I will not be modifying that statement.
But again — and I cannot stress this enough — this is not an isolated case. This isn’t one crazy guy going on a rampage. This is yet another person from the MAGA cult whose sense of reality has become utterly twisted and is now willing to engage in violent acts for the express purpose of upending democracy. There are millions of people like him. They do not represent a majority of Americans which is why they do not win elections and they certainly do not represent all Americans, but they are a concerningly large demographic. Some of them engage in violent acts and have been doing so since the rise of the MAGA cult, but most of them are a little more insidious. They’re infiltrating clerical positions at the local level so that they can disrupt future elections. They’re infiltrating law enforcement. They’re even doing little or more subtle things like going online and telling you that the Democratic Party is just as bad as the Republican Party and that’s why they’re totes def Independents now.
I don’t know how many times I am going to have to scream this into the void until the sweet embrace of death enfolds me but democracy is under attack and the only people who can defend it are the individual voters. Please please PLEASE vote. Make sure you are registered. Go to your Local Election Official and make sure. If you’re not sure, register again. You can’t vote twice but there’s no harm in registering excessively. If you are an American living abroad you can go to fvap.gov or votefromabroad.org for election assistance. If you are not American make sure you vote in your own elections. The rise of fascism is in no way isolated to the United States.
Get thee to a polling place.
We elected a Democratic President, more or less kept a Democratic Senate (it’s 48 to 48 but the three independents all caucus with the Democrats), and the House only has a narrow majority of Republicans, but the war is not yet won. We will not stamp out the fascistic violence that resulted in this brutal attack on Paul Pelosi as well as the attack on the Capitol and other actual murders until this societal trend of narcissism is denied its hold. Insist on reality. Be fact driven. And for the sakes of whatever gods you worship or don’t, vote.
