Thought Reform in Trump’s MAGA: Introduction
What eight themes of Chinese communist brainwashing can tell us about today’s politics
Introduction
On Donald Trump’s first full day as president in 2017, he gave a speech at CIA Headquarters in Langley. Trump stood in front of the agency’s revered Memorial Wall of Agency Heroes, which then featured 117 stars carved in white Alabama marble, each symbolizing an agency employee who had died in service to the agency and the American people. Several minutes into his speech Trump mentioned his “running war with the media,” and although he had made comments critical of the CIA during his campaign, Trump denied in his speech that he had a feud with the Agency, and began talking about the previous day’s inauguration. He criticized the media for reporting that his inauguration had been poorly attended, a skirmish that would continue through his first week in office. Then, absurdly, Trump told 400 gathered CIA employees that God had stopped the rain for his inaugural speech:
"The rain should have scared them away, but God looked down and he said, 'We’re not going to let it rain on your speech.' In fact, I – when I first started I said, ‘Oh no.’ First line, I hit – got hit by a couple of drops. And I said, 'Oh, this is, this is too bad, but we’ll go right through it.' But the truth is that it stopped immediately, it was amazing – and then it became really sunny, then I walked off and it poured right after I left. It poured!"
The official White House archive video of the inauguration shows that it rained throughout Trump’s speech, and following it. Yet Trump said God stopped the rain, a claim which is verifiably untrue.
That day at the CIA, as in many of his days as an American political figure, Donald Trump has engaged in a war on reality. His battles with the media, with intelligence services, and with the legal system are all proxies in his fight to change the minds of people about him.
…is it possible that Lifton’s eight themes provide some insight into this historic, chaotic and often confounding movement?
One author who has written about Trump’s “assault on reality” (Lifton, pp.155-161), Robert Jay Lifton, earlier in his career wrote a definitive book about communist brainwashing called Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism. A chapter in this 1961 book, “Ideological Totalism,” described eight psychological themes of “thought reform” used by the Chinese government on political prisoners and intellectuals. Years before Lifton’s themes were adopted to understand the dynamics of religious cults, Lifton wrote that the more these themes affect people in a group, the more the environment looks like brainwashing:
The more clearly an environment expresses these eight psychological themes, the greater its resemblance to ideological totalism; and the more it utilizes such totalist devices to change people, the greater its resemblance to thought reform (or “brainwashing”) (Lifton, p. 90 - parenthesis is Lifton’s).
After all that has been said and written about Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, is it possible that Lifton’s eight themes provide some insight into this historic, chaotic and often confounding movement? Persisting questions about MAGA still lack satisfying answers. For example, Why are certain MAGA ideas so persistent in the group, despite contrary evidence? Why does Trump use buzzwords (and nicknames) excessively, even for a politician? Why does Trump relentlessly attack the media?
Regarding Trump’s trip to the CIA, we could ask, why would a newly inaugurated US President stand before trained intelligence professionals and make a false claim that can be easily disproved in five minutes using a Web browser? Trump’s CIA speech at the CIA is reminiscent of three of Lifton’s themes: mystical manipulation, milieu control and doctrine over person.
This series of articles will look at Donald Trump's MAGA through the psychological lens of Lifton's eight themes of thought reform, demonstrating how these themes may be present, using examples from the last decade's political news. Links will be provided to support many examples, but not for some examples that are easily verified or commonly understood. Lifton’s themes will be sourced from his most recent book that republishes them, called Losing Reality.
Navigation within this article series:
Thought Reform in Trump’s MAGA - Intro (you are here)
Milieu Control in Trump's MAGA, Part 2
Mystical Manipulation in Trump's MAGA, Part 3
The Demand for Purity in Trump's MAGA, Part 4
The Cult of Confession in Trump’s MAGA, Part 5
Sacred Science in Trump’s MAGA, Part 6
Loading the Language in Trump’s MAGA, Part 7
Doctrine over Person in Trump’s MAGA, Part 8
The Dispensing of Existence in Trump’s MAGA, Part 9
Conclusion: Thought Reform in Trump’s MAGA, Part 10
References
Lifton, Robert Jay (2019). Losing Reality: On Cults, Cultism, and the Mindset of Political and Religious Zealotry, The New Press.