America Suffers From Malignant Group Narcissism.

Isabel Wilkerson’s Pulitzer Prize-Winning Work Explains Why That Is.

In Caste, a searing exploration of race-based stratification in America, Isabel Wilkerson presents the reader with many occasions to pause, put down the work, and simply reflect on the bomb she has just dropped and its many implications. Today I want to explore just one of those, in which Wilkerson expertly dissects the role of narcissism in our society—and where it has led us.

Narcissism in a person is well understood as a condition of self-aggrandizing entitlement and disregard for others, one that usually grows out of a deep seated insecurity. In Greek mythology, Narcissus was a god who fell in love with his own reflection. Not realizing what it was he saw, Narcissus fell into a deep despair and died after his reflection spurned him. “Narcissus could not conceive he was in love with his own reflection,” wrote the psychologist Elsa Ronningstam. “He was caught in an illusion.”

Over the past four years, we have all had to witness, again and again, a kind of malignant narcissism strut itself about in the White House and on the international stage, and we all have a sense of the insecurities and hollowness that bred it. But what happens when an entire group within a society becomes infected with such narcissistic qualities? 

The dominant caste in America, writes Wilkerson, is one “trained to believe in their inherent sovereignty.” Everything in society reflects back and reinforces this belief, from portrayals in film and television, to media stories, to representation in politics and business. The dominant caste sees itself naturally ensconced in places of power and therefore entitled to them, while sub-castes are viewed and portrayed as foreign, unworthy, lazy, violent or criminal. Through this repeating process of self-reflection and confirmation, the dominant caste falls in love with its own image again and again, and it simply will brook no other.

This group narcissism can lead many in the dominant caste quickly to assume all the characteristics of a narcissistic person, including the overestimation of their own position and the outright rejection of other images or narratives. The narcissism of the group fills a psychological gap as well: While individuals may each feel as though they themselves are nothing, if they can identify with a group that considers itself superior, they can become everything.

In short measure, the ideals espoused by the group (i.e. MAGA, white nationalists, white supremacists) become so important to the members that they are willing to sacrifice everything for them, even themselves. This is a kind of extreme identity politics that can lead to easy manipulation, incitement to violence, and even to fascism, as we saw in Nazi Germany and as we are seeing writ possible in modern America and India—three places, it so happens, which are explored in depth by Wilkerson after castes became encoded into the laws and social structures of an entire people.

A group under the spell of narcissistic fervor is eager to have a leader with whom it can identify. The adherents project their own narcissism onto him and merge their identities with his, and their own fortunes seem to rise and fall with his. “The narcissism of the leader,” Wilkerson writes, quoting the social theorist Erich Fromm, “who is convinced of his greatness, and who has no doubts, is precisely what attracts the narcissism of those who submit to him.”

It isn’t hard to see that Donald Trump is a narcissist of an extreme sort. What’s harder to grasp is that MAGA is actually a textbook collective narcissism, adoring of itself and its own reflection, disdainful or hating of others, and utterly dependent upon the perceived greatness of its leader. Like the group narcissism that infected the Nazis and most of Germany leading up to and including World War II, it isn’t hard for lies and distortions about other groups (Jews in Germany, racial minorities in America) to become readily accepted. And a collective lack of objectivity can quickly lead to disastrous consequences, as we have now witnessed with the Big Lie about the election and the insurrection at the Capitol.

As part of its malignant narcissism, which rejects anything but its own reflection, MAGA adherents resist suggestions that they share basic human experiences with those in lower, browner rungs of American society, which might explain their visceral denial of a concept as basic and uncontroversial as “Black Lives Matter.” To accept this would be to confront the very idea that there is deep injustice perpetrated against people just as deserving as they are of compassion and humanity.

So where does this leave us? To get past this troubling and destructive point in our history, we must first correctly diagnose the societal pathology we face. It is not enough to see MAGA as a cult and Trump as its leader. This is more specifically a cult that sees itself as the true defenders of a racial hierarchy, a caste system that forms the very identity of its adherents. Without that superior identity, there is simply too far for many in MAGA to fall, their shortcomings and actual relative lack of position within society laid bare by the dismantling of the racial hierarchy that once placed them high up. This is why many will fight and resist, even to what they believe is the bitter end, because the alternative is simply inconceivable.