The Stockholm Syndrome and Political Life

Autocrats and dictators do not always seize and/or preserve power through violence. Sometimes they manage to easily win people’s sympathy despite their obvious despotic and arbitrary leadership style. Why do people vote for candidates that propose a domineering regime as opposed to electing candidates that propose a free and tolerant society? Arie Kruglanski says it is people’s basic need to live in a predictable world: “People’s politics are driven by their psychological needs. People who are anxious because of the uncertainty that surrounds them are going to be attracted to messages that offer certainty.” If that’s so, it is possible that at least part of the electorate who vote for candidates supporting an autocratic political program, all these people who become arduous fans of despots and agree to turn into victims of an authoritarian rule, manifest symptoms of the Stockholm syndrome, described as a psychological phenomenon where hostages show empathy & benignancy toward their captor.

Opinions are different among my friends and acquaintances, with some people who acknowledge the possibility of such phenomenon and others who deny the applicability of capture bonding in political life.

What do you think?

Well yes, that may be one way of looking at it, if it weren’t for the fact that “capture” hardly applies to people who consciously chose, in an act of voting, for their situation.

Or if people have actually voted for someone believing that was their last best hope of anything better than what they’ve had before, will be reluctant to relinquish that belief.

You could apply the concept to the situation after an authoritarian government has reinforced its position, to the point of becoming near-totalitarian, i.e., all public media and most informal social contacts reflect approved official ideas with no public debate, and little or no inconvenience to one self. Then it becomes quite easy to just accept those external circumstances as “normal”, for the sake of a quiet life.

What about Cubans under Fidel Castro? Did they accept his dictatorship simply because they were afraid? By their reactions at Fidel Castro’s death, I wouldn’t be so sure. I remember an article I read about Cuban people’s confusion in the aftermath of their leader’s demise. The author of the article was talking to a Cuban friend, who seemed to experience some kind of existential pain. The man declared: “Everyone is very sad. Fidel gave us a sense of security. Despite everything, we felt that he was capable.”

I expect such a person would have difficulty voting for a candidate with a libertarian agenda.

How many of them lived their entire lives under Castro’s rule? I would think their view of the world may be different than those who grew up prior to his rule. It might be an interesting test with respect to North Korea. I mean, we have multi-generations that have no concept of freedom. I wonder what will happen once that regime breaks down and the people’s reaction? Perhaps it maybe akin to the test chimpanzees who were released from caged scientific study all of their lives and ventured outside into the Sun and nature.

I for one don’t have to look that far. A lot of people in Crimea opted to join the Russian Federation, where people ‘enjoy’ Putin’s autocratic rule.

I think the Western idea that everyone who lives under a dictator is yearning to breathe free is ahistorical and at odds with human nature, perhaps a product of generations of democracy evangelism. Most people only care that society is stable, that they have a decent job, and they can start a family in peace. Moreover, many dictators don’t rule with a capricious iron fist. Not every dictatorship is North Korea. Westerners sometimes seem surprised that dictators care about opinion polls or cultivating their image as a leader of the people or maintaining a social contract. They need the approval of large swathes of society, else they’ll have a serious problem. This reality was recognized in ancient times.

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.

Democracy needs some evangelism, rituals and indoctrination about freedom and liberty and such, because it can fall apart rather easily otherwise.

You’re not really discussion Stockholm Syndrome so much as a Cult of Personality. Charismatic leaders can position themselves as a surrogate for the follower and therefore be forgiven for any trespassers because they’re viewed as ‘working for the greater good’ or something similar.

As the song says, it’s a popular method of motivating a group of followers. Gandhi, Kennedy, Stalin and Mussolini would all fit the role. So would the last year or two of our new President-elect.

Good observation, indeed. The concept of the cult of personality offers a political and social description of a phenomenon that I have both studied and lived. What strikes me now is people’s willingness to indulge in the position of an evil-doer’s captives, which has made me try and use a psychological approach. And since I’m not a specialist, the first connection I was able to make was that with the Stockholm syndrome.

Of course it is the cult of personality. But it may be the Stockholm syndrome as well, but I’m not really sure. This is the reason I was asking those questions about the oppressed sympathizing with their oppressor. Did these people make the wrong choice? If they did, they were not aware of the oppressor’s dark side and they had no idea they were his captives. The Stockholm syndrome does not apply to them. Did they know what they were doing? If they did, it means they knew they were empowering an oppressor but they had a positive attitude toward him because they sympathized with their ‘captor’. The Stockholm syndrome applies here. Did they actually have a choice? I’m not sure I can analyze the mind of a kidnapper’s victim, but it is possible that such a victim should choose to sympathize with the aggressor as a last resort. The Stockholm syndrome may still apply.

Human beings live in social groups, which are based on hierarchical structures formed through competition. In politics, this competition can turn quite aggressive and a political leader, just like a religious prophet, cannot exist without a strong nucleus of ‘captive’ followers. I don’t think all of these fans are naive fish trapped in the net of a sweet talking shark. At least some of them should be aware of this Messiah’s shenanigans, and in this case the Stockholm syndrome could work an as a possible explanation of their unexpected support for their ‘captor’.

George Orwell wrote of the “tremendous urge to conformity in gregarious animals,” with reference, of course, to humans.

This urge varies in individuals. As the OP has mentioned, there are evolutionary reasons for the urge to conform and to be eager to please those in power–around the primal campfire, those who pleased the triumphant hunters were more likely to be tossed another hunk of mammoth flesh, and thus live to breed.

But not all who lived to breed had the ‘suck up to authority’ urge in equal measure. Thus some humans stand back and marvel at those who see no danger in enabling a dictator. The observers wonder: how can they be so foolish?

I’d suspect that the ‘let’s give the dictator a chance!’ crowd can be divided into the opportunists (after all, every dictator needs his supportive oligarchs), and the less-intellectually-talented. The latter are a pitiable crew, ever-hopeful that their identification with the autocrat will somehow translate into solid gold toilets for them, too. When they finally realize that their lot is unending labor, hunger, and misery until their early deaths, they will not repent their choice. They will retain their belief in the dictator–He Loves Us!–until their last ragged breaths in their stinking cardboard shacks.
Orwell quote: from “Politics vs. Literature: An Examination of Gulliver’s Travels,” Polemic, 1946

It seems to me though that there is more to it than gregariousness, conformity, opportunism and mere stupidity. I mean, I remember watching in disbelief these political events unfold and thinking that human nature cannot be that rotten. Some of the people who vote for the abuser, I thought, must be aware of the guy being an aggressor and still genuinely sympathize with him. And that’s when it occurred to me it could be a case of the Stockholm syndrome applicable to the political life.

Let’s start from the syndrome manifestations and see whether there are correlations to what happened to the white working class, women and people of color that voted for Donald Trump.

The Stockholm syndrome can occur when (1) the crisis situation lasts for a long period of time, (2) the captor maintains close contact with the victims, and (3) the captor refrains from harming the victims and/or promises everything will be all right. I think the general characteristics of the political campaign during which Trump won the sympathy of the white working class, women and people of color correspond to the circumstances when the syndrome can arise.

The Stockholm syndrome is characterized by certain emotions that the actors going through such an experience can develop. They can be summarized as follows:
(1) The victims have negative feelings about the authorities – just as Trump’s followers resented the establishment;
(2) The victims have positive feelings toward their captor –

(3) The captor shows positive feelings toward the hostages – Trump was magnanimous to everyone who supported him and the more unlikely they were to support him the more magnanimous he became.

A psychological mechanism underlying the Stockholm syndrome is the identification with the aggressor, which is an unconscious process that causes a person to adopt the perspective or behavior patters of a captor or abuser. I think one can easily use this mechanism to show how women can become misogynistic or how people of color can become biased against their own ethnic group and sympathize with Trump.

Vulnerable people are more susceptible to develop the syndrome, which is their way to cope with this crisis.

Being related to vulnerable people’s patterns of response to stress and to one’s unconscious identification with the aggressor, the Stockholm syndrome manifest in victims who neither perform a premeditated choreography nor sense they have a choice. They side with their captor, suffer when he suffers and feel at loss when the captor succumbs.

Yes but under Putin, GDP in Russia has come back to soviet levels.

To be fair, this happened in most ex-USSR states. Their economies have grown rapidly since around the year 2000. So that growth may have been seen under any other leader.

But rapid economic growth combined with taking on the mafia and oligarchs, plus making Russia a global power again. I can see why some people in Russia like Putin.

Does that sound like an apologist thing to say? I don’t know.

Supposedly Putin has a net worth of 200 billion due to theft. So it isn’t like he stamped out corruption, he just replaced it with his own. I saw a documentary on netflix that implied Putin made half a billion dollars on just one corrupt deal.

I bet Donald watched that one. All agog.

And UY Scuti—I generally agree with your analysis. You might meet with some resistance over the “Stockholm Syndrome” comparison given that Trump voters weren’t captives in any metaphorical sense (let alone the literal sense). But in general, yes: humans have the drive to identify with those at the top of the hierarchy. There is a good evolutionary basis for this–but it does work against us all too often.

Stockholm syndrome occurs when a person is captured and therefore has to rely totally on the captor. It is totally out of place in this context, there is no one who could be said to be captured by Trump and no one who he has total authority over.