Sadopolitics: Why MAGA clings tighter to Trump the more his policies hurt them
Sadopolitics: Why MAGA clings tighter to Trump the more his policies hurt them
Psychology helps to explain why Trump’s followers will not abandon him
By CHAUNCEY DEVEGA
Senior Writer
PUBLISHED MARCH 27, 2025 6:57AM (EDT)
https://www.salon.com/2025/03/27/sadopolitics-why-maga-clings-more-to-the-more-his-policies-hurt-them/
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Donald Trump is an expert at sadopolitics. In a 2018 conversation with historian Timothy Snyder here at Salon, he elaborated on the meaning of sadopolitics (what he terms as “sadopopulism”) and its implications for the Age of Trump and the larger democracy crisis:
"Sadopopulism" is the notion that you're doing half of populism. You promise people things, but then when you get power you have no intention of even trying to implement any policy on behalf of the people. Instead, you deliberately make the suffering worse for your critical constituency. The people who got Trump into office, for example, are traditional Republican voters plus people in counties who are doing badly in terms of health care and other measures, and who need help.
Under Trump, of course, things will just get worse in terms of both the opioid addictions and in terms of wealth inequality. But that's OK, because the logic of sadopopulism is that pain is a resource. Sadopopulist leaders like Trump use that pain to create a story about who's actually at fault. The way politics works in that model is that government doesn't solve your problems, it blames your problems on other people — and it creates the cycle that goes around over and over and over again. I started talking about sadopopulism because I got tired of people talking about populism.
In such a toxic relationship between the leader, the followers and the larger public, the abuse and misery actually bond them all closer together. The most loyal followers see their leader as simultaneously a source of protection and safety, even as he or she hurts them. To that point, the more Trump’s policies hurt his followers, the more likely they are to cling to him. Trump’s followers are also going to misdirect their rage, anger, blame, and other negative emotions and behavior at some “enemy.” In the Age of Trump, that enemy is Black and brown people and other nonwhites, “Woke” and “DEI, “illegal immigrants” and migrant “invaders,” the LGBTQ community and specifically transgender people, social “parasites” and “takers,” government employees, those not deemed sufficiently “patriotic” and therefore disloyal to MAGA and Trump (which here is synonymous with “Real America”), Muslims and other non-“Christians,” the Democrats, “liberals,” the news media (“fake news” and “lugenpresse”) and other targeted groups and individuals.
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