Aaron Drive and the 2nd Amendment People
Aaron Driver’s “martyrdom video” is full of talking points that don’t quite jive with reality. In it, he presents a simplistic, “with us or against us and if you’re against us, you will be punished” message. He also talks about Daesh and Islam as if they are synonymous, a notion which the vast majority of the world’s Muslims would strongly disagree with.
If you look at the facts, it’s quite clear that Daesh is killing more Muslims than any other religious group, and if that isn’t bad enough, Daesh members are raping, killing and torturing women and children, including Muslim women and children. These aren’t “citizens of the Islamic State” — they are prisoners in their own home, held captive largely by foreign forces.
What Daesh fans do and how they justify their inhumane, anti-Islamic actions is extreme, but it’s on the spectrum of any partisan/tribal behaviour.
In politics I have seen smart, empathetic and thoughtful people of all stripes get drunk on partisan koolaid, justifying things they could never justify in other contexts and doing/saying things that, in any other facet of their lives, they would reject as inappropriate.
Politics, especially during elections, serves as a pressure cooker — it cranks up the heat, creates a confined space (physical and temporal) and builds up friction that needs to bubble out. Die-hard politicos will refer to post-election hangovers, which is an apt metaphor.
It’s basic political psychology — people only get engaged when there is tension, and only act when there are limited choices, the alternatives horrifying and the risk of losing not a race, but everything you hold dear clear and present.
The other piece of the psychological puzzle is the sense of belonging, of being part of a tribe — to be a card-carrying member of a party is to be part of a broader community that is somewhat exclusive and therefore, conveys social status to its members. Tribes tend to define themselves against other tribes, especially in competitions; membership in one tribe is a symbol of belonging and status, being a member of another tribe is the same as not belonging and being inferior, possibly threatening.
People, particularly young men who don’t feel like they belong — who in fact feel like they are not part of a tribe and are looked down upon as less-than-human by others — are particularly vulnerable to the calls of aggressive tribes that advertise power and/or purpose. Gangs and cults tend to target these individuals specifically, as they’re easy fodder.
Once indoctrinated, the tribe can provide purpose and value for your existence; it can also absolve your sins and validate your fears. All it asks in return is action.
These actions can be as simple as a financial donation (the other guys are beating us this quarter — if you believe in the cause, donate now!!) or as dramatic as an act of terrorism, depending on the group and the context. The more existential the cause becomes, the greater the pressure gets ratcheted up, the more the other gets dehumanized and severe actions called for.
What exactly Aaron Driver’s specific trigger was to go from passive radical to active terrorist will never be clear, but indications point towards social isolation from his tribe as a contributing factor. From his own words, tough, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s call for terrorist acts in the lands of his enemies was a catalyst for Driver’s overall radicalization and decision to kill fellow Canadians.
al-Baghdadi’s call is clearly more outrageous than seeking a political donation, but it falls on the spectrum of partisanship — convert, create pressure, demand action from loyalists. It doesn’t matter to converts like Driver that al-Baghdadi is being strategic, trying to divert his enemies’ efforts away from stopping him using as few resources as possible — they have drank the koolaid, found their tribe and heard the call.
Which brings us Donald Trump.
Throughout his campaign and even in the lead-up to it, Trump has sought to create the same conditions that surround any cult; he has demonized his chief opponents as less than human (in his context, as unAmerican, Muslim, crooked, dumb, loser, etc) and painted a grim picture of how the world will collapse unless he is in power.
Trump has had an easy time of it, because those conditions have been fomented in the US for ages by a culture of racism, a lack of global context in American education and all the hate-filled, fear-mongering talk radio and the like.
Not everyone that supports (or had supported until recently) Trump identifies themselves as part of HIS tribe — there are many GOPers moving to the sidelines because they identify Trump as feeding off of their tribe to create his own, like a political parasite. The parallel is interest, because what’s happening is that Trump himself is becoming the threat to be defeated with little time to do so, resulting in a switching of tribes as senses of threat and belonging are realigned.
For the die-hard Trump tribalists, however, the more people stand against Trump, the more they feel their tribe is threatened, or presents a threat, which makes them feel powerful.
Which is a bit like carrying a gun; if you’re afraid, a gun makes you feel secure and with a gun, you have power over others, which makes one feel mighty.
Trump hasn’t called for direct attacks against his opponents yet, but he has laid the groundwork for such attacks. His language and tactics keep moving along the partisan playbook spectrum, creeping closer and closer to the language and framing used by folk like al-Baghdadi.
This makes sense, because like most cult leaders, Trump doesn’t really care about policy or the well-being of the people — he just wants power. The more he personally feels threatened, the more he will ratchet up his rhetoric.
That is words and actions are full of contradictions doesn’t matter to loyalists — it never does. Unless he becomes truly unhinged and clearly presents as all the things he accuses his opponents of being (dumb, scared, crooked, angry, whatever), his loyalists will remain loyal because Trump is the alpha of their tribe, and it is ultimately that tribe they are subconsciously defending.
Here’s where it gets disconcerting.
There has been warranted concern raised about how Trump is egging on the potential Aaron Drivers in his base to do bad things. This comes on top of all the other incitements and quiet approvals Trump has given to violent acts by people who identify as part of his tribe.
Donald Trump, the man who sees himself as king, is intentionally creating a security risk and engaging in radicalization of his base to get his crown. It’s a dangerous and unprecedented situation in the United States, but common elsewhere in the world. Remember, Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi and Bashar al-Assad all had/have their supporters/tribalists.
If I was the American security establishment, I would be thinking hard about how to identify and de-radicalize the most extreme of Trump’s supporters before we do see an act of terror in his name.
I’d say that they should do it quickly, because the clock is ticking, but you know.
