The Securitarian Personality

July 6, 2020
Political scientist Hibbing (coauthor, Predisposed) analyzes the “inner workings” of President Trump’s most fervent supporters in this evenhanded psychological study. Drawing on focus groups, observations of Trump rallies, and an April 2019 national survey, Hibbing contends that “the central feature of Trump’s base is their belief that the noblest and most essential task of a human being is to protect person, family, culture, and country from the tangible threats they believe are posed by outsiders.” He sketches studies of authoritarianism by German philosopher Theodor Adorno and American psychologist Bob Altemeyer, arguing that Trump’s “securitarian” followers are less submissive and conventional than the prototypical authoritarian. Because securitarians “will never stop attending to outsider threats and strategizing how to mitigate those threats,” Hibbing writes, liberals are wrong to believe that data on immigrant crime rates, for instance, can change the minds of Trump loyalists (“the only thing that will change... is their perception of who is and is not an outsider”). Hibbing marshals a wealth of evidence to support his claims, though progressives will be frustrated by his light treatment of racist beliefs espoused by Trump’s stalwart supporters. Still, this is an insightful psychological profile of the voters Trump is counting on in 2020.

July 1, 2020
A sociological investigation of Donald Trump's true believers, who are somewhat different from the usual shorthand descriptions. "Like the great majority of Americans, I am not a Trump supporter, avid or otherwise," writes University of Nebraska political scientist Hibbing. "However, unlike the great majority of Americans, I am an empirical social scientist, and this means my job is...to collect and interpret evidence on the nature of the social world." Where the standard narrative is to depict Trump voters as fearful, hateful, and thick-headed, Hibbing finds such descriptors less useful and less accurate than to describe the base as being "securitarian" versus "unitarian." Those who have remained in Trump's camp throughout his term hold a strong commitment to the idea that insiders (read: white American native-born citizens) are to be privileged over and protected from outsiders (everyone else). In this in-group devotion, Hibbing finds Trump believers to be "eerily similar" to supporters of Putin, Orban, Bolsonaro, Farage, Duterte, and other world leaders who have been described as nationalists, authoritarians, and fascists. Trump's ideology, writes the author, is fundamentally not us vs. them but "us vs. not-us." The border wall, the immigration crackdown, the denial of DREAM Act supporters, and other Trump hallmarks are manifestations of this securitarian, insider-against-outsider stance. In a narrative that is heavy on social science and statistics, Hibbing chases down the demographics of those true believers: They are white, foremost, and secondarily whites without a college degree. (This same core demographic voted for George W. Bush, John McCain, and Mitt Romney, Hibbing observes.) Securitarians are committed to walling off "the other" but do not attribute this to racism or xenophobia and are puzzled when others do. Neither do they hate democracy, adds Hibbing, though "a strong majority of Trump venerators would sacrifice democratic values in a heartbeat if doing so led to greater security." An illuminating look at the drivers of illiberal nativism--and of support for its chief modern exponent.

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