The Hideous Monster Plaguing Donald Trump

As a mental health practitioner who moved via anthropology into journalism, I’m fascinated and appalled by the approaches being taken by Donald Trump and Boris Johnson. It’s so shameless that it’s ridiculous— but, as with all cults, there are many who eat up the lies.

The narratives they are peddling, to try to save their skin and save face, link to psychiatry (especially narcissism, which is a common feature of psychopathy) and the anthropology and psychology of conspiracy theories and cults*.

There is also more than a splattering of horror film / fairy tale themes in the fictions being peddled by them and their cronies. In some horror stories, the ghoul can only be seen (or called) via a mirror. In a very familiar fairy tale, the mirror is the only thing that tells the narcissistic despot the truth. In the case of Trump and Johnson, they are ignoring the fact that the monsters out to get them are them — even though the sabotaging ghouls stare at each of them from the mirror.

A despicable claim that each is peddling is that there is some powerful and ill-defined malignant force (which the extreme right in the UK refers to as ‘the blob’) trying to destroy them and their legacy. But they have taken this further by claiming that those who criticise them (whether judges, scientific experts, politicians, journalists, civil…