I first heard the term “malignant normality” while reading an article about our nation’s inability to come to grips with the fact that January 6 was an attempted coup on our democracy. As I look back on the 2016 presidential election, and all of the things we endured in the following four years, it is clear that Trump has changed our reality.
My question is: Will we ever emerge from beneath the veil of lies and misinformation that has plagued our nation since 2016?
John Gartner, a psychologist, psychotherapist, and former assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University Medical School, describes “malignant normality” as a form of social control. He stated that this normality is far from normal, occurs “when a malignantly narcissistic leader takes control of society and gradually changes reality for everyone else. So their crazy internal reality becomes enacted in the loved true external reality of that society. This is how a leader can come in and change the mores of their society.”
Although Trump is no longer in office (and say what you will about theories of his imminent return to the White House in August, or an operating a shadow presidency), the seeds have been sown. Republicans such as Mark Meadows, Kevin McCarthy, and Josh Hawley continue to push the malignant lie that January 6 was not a domestic terrorist attack, and continue to play down the events and ramifications of that day. A Reuters/Ipsos poll from late March found that an astounding 55% of Republicans feel that the January 6 riots were led by left-wing protesters trying to make the former President look bad. This survey also showed that 51% of Republicans believe that the protestors were mostly peaceful and law-abiding.
In a 2017 interview with Bill Moyers, Robert Jay Lifton (American psychologist and author of many publications including Losing Reality: On Cults, Cultism, and the Mindset of Political and Religious Zealotry) made the following statement about malignant normality. “What we put forward as self-evident and normal may be deeply dangerous and destructive. I came to that idea in my work on Nazi doctors’ — and I’m not equating anybody with Nazi doctors, but it’s the principle that prevails — and with American psychologists who became architects of CIA torture during the Iraq War era. These are forms of malignant normality. For example, Donald Trump lies repeatedly. We may come to see a president as a liar as normal. He also makes bombastic statements about nuclear weapons, which can then be seen as somehow normal. In other words, his behavior as president, with all those who defend his behavior in the administration, becomes a norm. We have to contest it because it is malignant normality.”
Dr. Lifton is best known for his studies of the psychological causes and effects of wars and political violence, and in his book, The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide, he studied doctors who participated in Nazi atrocities. He analyzed how health professionals, dedicated to helping and healing were convinced that their experiments on concentration camp victims were for the good of the country. They were drawn in by the malignant normality fueled by the myth of the superiority of the German race, the inferiority of Jews, gays, and other opponents of fascism. In a 2017 article, Dr. Lifton wrote, “When normality becomes malignant professionals can be all too ready to serve that version of it as well. Indeed professionals are required for maintaining that malignant normality and bringing others into it.”
Dr. Lifton’s term was no doubt influenced by psychologist Eric Fromm’s term “malignant narcissism.” Fromm had narrowly escaped Germany in the 1930s, and coined the term to explain the psychology of dictators who murder and torture. In the 1960s, psychoanalyst Otto Kernberg defined malignant narcissism as a syndrome characterized by demonstrating a narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), antisocial features, paranoid traits, and aggression. These traits are commonly apparent in dictators, we’ve seen them in Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Kim Jong Un, and even the “Former Guy.” These personalities are often boastful, manipulative, preoccupied with loyalty, hypersensitive to criticism, arrogant, envious, and prone to conspiracy theories.
The danger of malignant normality is that it creates a home for fascism and right-wing philosophies. Jim Crow Republicans continue to escalate their attacks on voting rights, abortion rights, free speech, truth, science, reality, and democracy itself by weaponizing teaching critical race theory and evolution in schools. An example of such efforts includes Josh Hawley’s proposed “Love America Act of 2021.” This act would see to deny federal funding to schools that teach the real history of America; a history that includes the ugly reality of racism and white supremacy that has existed in this country since colonial times.
Mental health professionals often deal with patients who lose their state of health, and one of the first things to diminish is what is called insight, or the ability to recognize that something is wrong. Humans deal with issues in several ways, some of which are counter-intuitive and ultimately harmful. Hawley and other legislators refuse to admit the reality of January 6th, they refuse to recognize the reality of racism in this country. Humans are complex, and when unwell or threatened, we tend to put up all kinds of defenses such as losing insight (“I’m healthy, I won’t get COVID-19), or we exhibit cognitive distortions (“I feel it is true so it must be true”), or the classic gaslighting (“I’m not the problem, you are”).
Ignoring racism, gerrymandering, the attack on voting rights, abortion rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and the fact that domestic terrorists stormed the Capitol will not help our country heal. Malignant normality is not the answer.