Autocratic personality cults are a continuing theme of Lucid, and I have focused on how they work, how they involve enablers, and what their appeal is for the authoritarian’s followers. Today’s post, about Trump's personality cult, combines new writing with links to some of my favorite Lucid essays on the subject.

As early as 2015 I saw that Trump had the abilities needed to construct a formidable personality cult, and in Jan. 2016 I published this essay which predicted that if Trump won the GOP nomination, he would develop a charismatic leader cult along the lines of those constructed by Vladimir Putin and Silvio Berlusconi. At the time, it seemed far-fetched to many —we were six months out from him even receiving the nomination— but it appeared logical enough to me.

Personality cults require messaging machines and performances that stage the autocrat’s domination of all those around him, up to and including his ritual humiliation of ministers and party elites. Americans have now seen many of these performances first-hand by GOP politicians, and they are all the more pathetic for modeling submission to a man who is not even in power at present.

A June 2023 essay examined why the GOP is “still in thrall to Trump” and the place of corruption in that process. “Accepting the leader’s lies and violence ties them to him, making them partners in his crimes and thus vulnerable to being exposed,” I conclude. Cue the March 27, 2024 decision of the California State Bar that Trump's former lawyer, John Eastman, should be disbarred for his attempts to overturn the 2020 election.