Diagnosing Right-Wing Populism

I am your voice. Donald Trump, Republican National Convention, July 2016 Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will…

In this article, I discuss in detail how Erich Fromm’s categories can help describe Trump’s character, or “temperament,” a word used to characterize a major flaw in Trump in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. In The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1973), Fromm engages in a detailed analysis of the authoritarian character as sadistic, excessively narcissistic,…

Introduction Although the rise of right-wing populist movements and parties in Europe in the past few decades and the more recent success of the Tea Party in the United States has received ample attention from social scientists, the continuing growth of these parties in Europe and the current success of Donald Trump in securing the…