That’s good to know actually. It almost looks like a secret alliance between the oppressed and the oppressor, doesn’t it?
But probably people often feel there’s so little they can do or change the scope of their choice seems to be nearing zero. Their lack of power makes them feel they’re captives and victims.
Does a captor’s victims have any choices? Not so many.
I’m a bit of an existentialist and, if I remember this well, Albert Camus sometimes invoked situations when people had no choice so that he would support the idea that human existence is absurd. Jean-Paul Sartre, on the other hand, believed people always have a choice. Even if you are drafted in a war in which you don’t want to take part, you can choose not to fight and be sentenced to death by a martial court. You still have a choice. By complying with the orders, you choose to obey. It is your choice.
Many people on this board would say Jean-Paul Sartre’s line of reasoning is a lot of bunk. A captor’s victims hardly have any choices. And because my intention is to apply the Stockholm Syndrome to political life and because the presidential election in the United States is still vivid in people’s minds let’s see why Trump’s captives do not really have a choice.
How can the white working class vote for a plutocrat when its living standard has been affected by the very plutocracy that Trump belongs to? Probably because they do not regard leaving the United States as a real alternative. If they were to go work in the factories that the American plutocracy has relocated abroad, their living standard would be way lower than now. Thus, they prefer to empower a plutocrat and become its victims in the hope that he will take care of them in exchange for their votes.
How can members of ethnic minorities vote for someone who makes people of color feel unwelcome in the United States? Probably because the alternative is as unthinkable as that of the white working class. These minorities belong to ethnic groups whose lives are even worse in their countries of origin. They will vote for the racist candidate to show their allegiance to those in power and prove their utility in the hope that they will be accepted and integrated.
How can women vote for a sexist and aggressive womanizer? Well, because of the two reasons mentioned above (since many of these women belong to either white working class families or to ethnic minorities) plus the hope of prosperity, which Trump explicitly or implicitly promised.
It seems to me that a captor’s victims are more likely to sympathize with their kidnapper if he himself has been a victim before, and Trump has always been mocked by various professionals and derided by the press. Women, workers and people know what it’s like to be bullied like that and they enjoyed Trump’s campaign style that seem to say “Enough is enough” to the current American establishment. Part of Trump’s charisma resided in his apparent unwillingness to put up with his critics’ bullshit and women, workers and people of color sympathized with Trump although they had been abused by him or people like him.
I’m not sure the brief analysis above is right. There are many questions for which I can’t find a definite answer: Did these people make the wrong choice? Did they know what they were doing? Did they actually have a choice? The presidential elections in the United States is just an example of what I think may be a possible relation between the Stockholm Syndrome and the political life. Similar political processes have occurred before or are occurring around the world as we speak. They may have little or nothing to do with the little syndrome I’ve mentioned and may very well be part of a larger phenomenon like anti-globalization or population bomb ramifications. But even so, the Stockholm Syndrome may have always been around since the first dominant male of a group of primates where his victims sympathized with their ‘captor’ to enjoy safety and part of his food and power.