The Psychology of Revenge and Political Violence: Understanding and Resisting Trump’s Manipulation

In 2016, I declared: I am your voice…Today, I add: I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed: I am your retribution!

Trump speaking at a CPAC convention in Maryland in March 2023 as reported in ‘I am your retribution’: Trump rules supreme at CPAC as he relaunches bid for White House by The Guardian on 5 March 2023

At that same CPAC meeting, he went on to list everyone and everything that he would target with retribution, and it’s a long list:

With you at my side, we will demolish the deep state. We will expel the war mongers… We will drive out the globalists. We will cast out the communists. We will throw off the political class that hates our country … We will beat the Democrats. We will rout the fake news media. We will expose and appropriately deal with the Rinos [Republicans in name only]. We will evict Joe Biden from the White House. And we will liberate America from these villains and scoundrels once and for all.

In the year since, he and his House Republican allies have accused the Biden administration of “weaponizing” the DoJ and done everything they can to explicitly cast him as being wrongly criminally and civilly prosecuted by enemies of the MAGA way.

By turning the tables on his political opponents and accusing them of what he himself will do if given half a chance, he has pulled off a neat little hat trick:

1. He’s made Biden and anyone associated with any of his plethora of court cases targets for retribution, threats, and revenge.
2. He’s conflated his rightful prosecutions with the imagined and delusional offenses rural conservative white Christians think have been perpetrated against them.
3. And, he’s made himself a martyr by claiming that he’s fighting his court cases so that Biden and the liberals who hate America for our freedoms can’t go after them.

By successfully conflating the grievances of his base and his own criminal prosecutions, he has tapped into the deeply ingrained human instinct for revenge. By casting his criminality and their racial angst as being unwarranted and unjust accusations and trumped up charges to justify their oppression, he is able to use the psychology of revenge to his political advantage and exploit a vulnerable population.

Psychological Implications of Seeking Revenge

As discussed in an earlier blog post, revenge is a powerful social construct, an evolved human response for managing and maintaining our relationships. The threat of revenge can help us all moderate our behavior in all of our social interactions. The act of revenge can help us recover from harm and restore our sense of honor and status. However, when it is relied upon exclusively or frequently to maintain social order, it can become destructive to our social structures by initiating a spiraling escalating cycle of revenge, retribution, and vengeance between individuals or groups.

When wielded by skilled demagogues like Trump, it becomes a dangerous tool for normalizing political violence, voting fraud, voter oppression, explicit racism, and naked sexism. The felonious rapist and other cynical conservative politicians have used it to create feelings of being so threatened by the ideals of liberal democracy – that all people are created equal and due equal rights – that they equate the protection of the rights of others (e.g. marriage equality) as the oppression of white Christians and the destruction of the American (white Christian) way of life. When the stakes are so high and so stark, any and all retaliatory responses then become justified. The best defense becomes the best offense.

In order to protect ourselves from such cynical manipulation, halt the destructive cycle of revenge and retribution, and undermine Trump’s appeal to anything other than his small base of supporters, we need to understand the psychology of revenge.

Understanding the Psychology of Revenge

The Provocation of Revenge

Revenge is provoked. It is a conscious choice to hurt someone or something that hurt you, usually in a specific way. Whatever is being done to achieve revenge is experienced as justified and getting, feels good. It feels good just like reaching any other goal feels good.

Revenge feels good. It activates the reward circuit in the brain, so you’re getting that little spritz of dopamine, which then triggers the liking system, as in Me likey! And, want morey!

When revenge is constructive, the person who got the pay back knows why they were targeted, recognizes something is wrong, and then makes amends. But, really? When does that ever happen? No, man, you need some restorative justice crap to get to that point. Puncturing the sidewalls of your neighbors tires because they park in front of your house usually doesn’t get you there. And, shooting your neighbor because you THINK he’s a Democrat, definitely doesn’t get you the apology and the change in voter registration that you’re seeking. It usually just gets you in jail.

Revenge changes behavior as long as it is proportionate and clearly related. Once your neighbor is dead, there’s no way for your neighbor to know what they did wrong and make a correction, right? That’s a little bit of overkill there, right? Overkill? Over. Kill. OVERKILL. Man, I just crack myself up sometimes.

But when you hit the sweet spot, your spouse does the dishes, takes out the garbage, pays a little more attention, or whatever… at least for a little while.

The Pleasure and Consequences of Retribution

Revenge is a guilty pleasure best served with a single malt scotch, amiright? Whatever pleasure you may get from revenge is usually short lived and is followed by shame, guilt, embarrassment, or some combination. This is one of those weird balancing acts that helps revenge be a constructive thing rather than a destructive thing.

But, wait, Trump doesn’t feel shame, guilt, embarrassment, regret. Without the counter balance, revenge can spiral out of control in a real tit-for-tat race to the stars. And, that’s the problem.

Trump’s Utilization of Revenge in Politics

Trump wants to use his revenge — I’ve got to prosecute Biden and all the RINOs — to change the behavior of the DoJ and other prosecutor’s offices today. The only way that has even a snowball’s chance in hell of working is if someone takes a hammer and whacks poor old Paul Pelosi over the head with it, and we all saw how effective that was. Or, Abbott pardons a murder convicted or premeditated cold-blooded murder of a BLM protester.

Those acts of revenge don’t work. They don’t change anyone’s behavior. They only piss people off and tempt them to retaliate, which is really Trump and the GOP’s goal. It isn’t necessarily the goal of the right-wingers who committed the 213 acts of political violence that we’ve experienced since the 6 January Insurrection. These people are out to create a more just world, at least one that follows their hierarchical morally narrow sense of justice. They are still trying to create the same just world that the Puritans were working at when they banished people to the wilderness for not loving Jesus in the right way. It’s like that lot ain’t learned nothing in four hundred years of trying and failing.

The MAGA crowd feels justified in promoting political violence because we started it. They are just seeking revenge for us wrecking their perfect little 1950’s Jim Crow world by promoting the needs and rights of Blacks, Browns, Muslims, Gays, Women, and a marginalized group that they’ll name later when they need another excuse to continue their revenge for another four hundred years.

One such example can be seen in the surge of first-time gun purchases during the #COVID-19 pandemic. A study by the Firearms Policy Coalition found that over 5 million Americans became new gun owners between 2019 and 2020 [link]. This unprecedented spike was driven in large part by feelings of fear, uncertainty and a desire to protect oneself amidst the disruption of the pandemic.

The Rise of Political Violence

The problem is that political violence is increasing. And, the perpetrators are largely right-wing extremists. It’s been documented by several studies even though records on the political motivations of violence aren’t being kept. Just like we didn’t keep records on mass shootings and news organizations and academic types had to count them up based on police records, media reports, and rumor.

Right-Wing Extremism and the Pandemic

During the #COVID-19 pandemic, we saw a surge in gun violence and gun buying. What could go wrong with people spending all day everyday at home with their guns and being scared out of their minds about a deadly mysterious disease and then Trump telling them to take a weird amalgamation of chemicals or that it isn’t serious anyway or that only the elderly and infirm are going to die of it while our hospitals filled to overflowing and our life expectancy fell by a full percentage point.

What could go wrong if you added guns to that mix? Nothing, really. The 30% surge in gun violence? That thar is just the price o’ freedom. Sumpthin’ all y’all liberal types wouldn’t unnerstand cuz all y’all HATE MERICA FER IT’S FREEDUMS!

And the people buying guns, especially the first-time gun buyers, during the #COVID-19 pandemic? #ScienceFact, they differed significantly from non-gun buyers, non-gun owners, and people who bought their guns prior to the pandemic in, you know, scary ways. They were more likely to

• DISTRUST THE GOVERNMENT AND INSTITUTIONS more than everybody else. They were afraid of the deep state and the ability of the government to protect them.
• BELIEVE IN CONSPIRACY THEORIES. Nothing wrong with shooting up Rocket Pizza because theirs a child cannibalism ring residing in its non-existent basement. Nothing wrong with believing that Fauci is personally profiting off of the pandemic. These things are all fine. Nothing wrong with dying of #COVID-19 still disbelieving that it is anything worse than the common cold and isn’t a real thing at all.
• SUPPORT POLITICAL VIOLENCE as long as it promotes the views they’re holding. When it’s the good guys pulling the trigger, you know it’s righteous.
• AND PARTICIPATE IN PROTESTS like BLM, what? Yeah, it turns out Kyle Rittenhouse and the Portland Nazis had an effect. BLM protesters started arming up. But, a larger percentage were protesting #COVID-19 restrictions and stopping the steal.

Paranoia, Racism, and Vigilantism as Catalysts for Violence

Many of the pandemic shootings and surge in right-wing extremists perpetuating violence have been driven by a potent mixture of paranoia, racial animus, and a warped sense of vigilantism – all symptoms of the same underlying psychological wounds that Trump has cynically exploited for his own political gain. They are all centered on seeking revenge or changing behaviors to align more closely with their own illiberal world views.

If we are to successfully resist Trump’s attack on our democracy and preserve any hope of creating a more perfect union, then we really need to understand the benefits and risks of seeking revenge because we are at real risk of being pulled into a very destructive never ending cycle of revenge and retaliation.

Image Attribution

“Spiralling out of control? #IgersRulesTheWaves #IgersLondonNAP_Greenwich #NationalArtPass #ArtFund #queenshousegreenwich #stairs #spiralstaircase #igerslondon #roundandround #blueandwhite” by kilted01 is licensed under CC BY 2.0.