MAGAReport for 8/12/20224 - size matters

A crowd size conspiracy theory provides a window into some MAGA psychology

Both Tump and MAGAland are not ok right now.

Harris and Walz are doing numbers at their rallies and this is profoundly upsetting to Trump and his followers. When things like this happen, they frequently turn to conspiracy theory. I’m working on a book about the psychology of the far right, and this habit is a critical element of how they think, so we’re going to take a bit of a deep dive on one piece of it today.

For those of you who aren’t extremely online, there is a false conspiracy theory going around that the rally Vice President Harris held in Michigan this week with over 10,000 people in attendance was “fake” and that the photos and videos are all AI-generated. Here are two pages of photos from the AP of the event, and there are countless videos of the event. It definitely happened and the crowd was huge.

But the Trump camp is denying it and Trump himself posted this rant on his Truth Social account on Sunday, August 11:

“Has anyone noticed that Kamala CHEATED at the airport? There was nobody at the plane, and she “A.I.’d” it, and showed a massive “crowd” of so-called followers, BUT THEY DIDN’T EXIST! She was turned in by a maintenance worker at the airport when he noticed the fake crowd picture, but there was nobody there, later confirmed by the reflection of the mirror like finish on the Vice Presidential Plane. She’s a CHEATER. She had NOBODY waiting, and the “crowd” looked like 10,000 people! Same thing is happening with her fake “crowds” at her speeches. This is the way the Democrats win Elections, by CHEATING - And they’re even worse at the Ballot Box. She should be disqualified because the creation of a fake image is ELECTION INTERFERENCE. Anyone who does that will cheat at ANYTHING!”

Why do they say things like this when there are terabytes of evidence from countless sources to prove them wrong? Why create a conspiracy theory?

Lots of reasons! In fact I taught a full-semester graduate seminar about this last Spring! The reason that is most relevant to this crowd size issue is a psychological concept called Collective Narcissism. You probably know about individual narcissism, where a person thinks that they are better than everyone, that they deserve special treatment, sometimes that they don’t get the attention and recognition that they deserve, and that they should be celebrated for achievements that aren’t actually that impressive. Collective Narcissism is the same idea, but applied to the group a person identifies with rather than to themselves as individuals.

This manifests in all kinds of identities - religions and cults, demographic identities like race or gender, national identity, professions. (ETA: most people in a group do NOT have high collective narcissism, even if they believe their group is special). When someone has high Collective Narcissism for their group (what we call an “in-group”), they think their group should be in charge, that their group does or would do a better job in power than anyone else, and that the out-group (anyone who is not the in-group, and especially groups that oppose the in-group) should be punished.

Trump supporters score high in Collective Narcissism, as do most nationalistic far-right movements.

High Collective Narcissism leads to a lot of behaviors. One is increased belief in conspiracy theories. The basic reason for this is cognitive dissonance. If your group is the best, and your policies are failing or another group is doing better than you, then you have two choices: reject the idea of your in-group superiority (which means losing a core part of your identity) or reject the evidence that your group is inferior. How do you reject the evidence that your group is inferior? Say that “evidence” is actually part of a conspiracy against your group.

This happens constantly on the far-right forums. Rally numbers have been a decade-long obsession, all the way back to Trump’s poorly attended inauguration. Their events simply must be the biggest and most popular, and evidence to the contrary must be rejected. But this tendency manifests in much more substantial issues, too. If your guy is President and Covid happens, and the US is among the worst nations at managing the pandemic, you say that the numbers are a lie and that Covid isn’t really that bad and that doing anything to manage it is illegal and if you disagree with Trump’s handling of it, you’re crazy. Academic researchers find that collective narcissism also predicts belief that climate change is a hoax, in QAnon, in the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen.

As a scholar, I find this intellectually interesting, but understanding the role of Collective Narcissism in conspiracy theory belief also leads to some insight into how to respond to it. Providing evidence to counter the conspiracy theory in public can be useful to convince people who don’t have a lot of information that the conspiracy theory is wrong. However, if you’re trying to convince a person who believes the conspiracy theory because they have a strong in-group identification with, say, the MAGA movement, you have a really difficult task. The work there is not to simply provide factual evidence that counters their narrative. You are asking them to give up an important belief about themselves, to reject a part of their identity. A thousand videos from an event showing the crowd may be compelling evidence to most people, but when someone is trying to hold on to a core belief, it is often cognitively easier for them to wave off the evidence. Getting them out of a conspiratorial mindset requires breaking that connection to the in-group. Looking back at 2020 and how many QAnon followers gave up connections to their families, lost their jobs, and sometimes went to jail should show just how strong this force is and what people will sacrifice for it.

In brighter news, there continue to be no organized plans for protest or demonstration.