I’ve posted before about “virtue signaling”-a way of publicly expressing a moral viewpoint with the intent of communicating one’s connection to people of similar, virtuous sentiments. (When I first purchased a Prius, a colleague asked if the purchase was prompted by a desire to “signal” my concerns for the environment to those who would be sympathetic. I guiltily wondered if he was on to something..)
However, I had never heard of “loyalty signaling” until I read a recent column by Paul Krugman.Krugman was referencing scholarship on the development of cults, and he was particularly impressed by a paper by a New Zealand-based researcher, Xavier Márquez.
“The Mechanisms of Cult Production” compares the behavior of political elites across a wide range of dictatorial regimes, from Caligula’s Rome to the Kim family’s North Korea, and finds striking similarities. Despite vast differences in culture and material circumstances, elites in all such regimes engage in pretty much the same behavior, especially what the paper dubs “loyalty signaling” and “flattery inflation.”
Krugman defines signaling as a concept originally drawn from economics; it describes costly, often pointless behaviors engaged in by people trying to demonstrate that they have attributes that others value.
In the context of dictatorial regimes, signaling typically involves making absurd claims on behalf of the Leader and his agenda, often including “nauseating displays of loyalty.” If the claims are obvious nonsense and destructive in their effects, if making those claims humiliates the person who makes them, these are features, not bugs. I mean, how does the Leader know if you’re truly loyal unless you’re willing to demonstrate your loyalty by inflicting harm both on others and on your own reputation?
And once this kind of signaling becomes the norm, those trying to prove their loyalty have to go to ever greater extremes to differentiate themselves from the pack. Hence “flattery inflation”: The Leader isn’t just brave and wise, he’s a perfect physical specimen, a brilliant health expert, a Nobel-level economic analyst, and more. The fact that he’s obviously none of these things only enhances the effectiveness of the flattery as a demonstration of loyalty.
Does all of this sound familiar? Of course it does, at least to anyone who has been tracking Fox News or the utterances of political figures like Lindsey Graham or Kevin McCarthy.
Krugman repeats his often-communicated belief that the G.O.P. is no longer a normal political party. (As he says, it sure doesn’t look anything like the party of Dwight Eisenhower). But as he and a number of other observers have pointed out, it does bear a distinct and growing resemblance to the ruling parties of autocratic regimes.
In the U.S., of course, the Trump Party doesn’t (yet) exercise complete control– so Republican politicians suspected of insufficient loyalty to Donald Trump aren’t sent to the gulag. “At most, they stand to lose intraparty offices and, possibly, future primaries.” Yet–as Krugman says, these threats are seemingly sufficient to turn them into modern-day versions of Caligula’s courtiers.
Unfortunately, all this loyalty signaling is putting the whole nation at risk. In fact, it will almost surely kill large numbers of Americans in the next few months….
Republican politicians and Republican-oriented influencers have driven much of the opposition to Covid-19 vaccines, in some cases engaging in what amounts to outright sabotage. And there is a stunning negative correlation between Trump’s share of a county’s vote in 2020 and its current vaccination rate.
Krugman says that hostility to vaccines has become a form of loyalty signaling–which, if accurate, answers a question about vaccine refusal that has confounded most sane Americans. As he says, the G.O.P. has become something having no precedent in American history (although there have been many precedents abroad.)
Republicans have created for themselves a political realm in which costly demonstrations of loyalty transcend considerations of good policy or even basic logic. And all of us may pay the price.
When cult members “drink the Kool Aid,” they typically only kill themselves. Unfortunately, the cult that has replaced the once-Grand-Old-Party threatens to kill us all.
This article by Krugman – and so many others that have appeared on this blog – continues to define the consequences of a couple of things that afflict our nation and our society.
1. Willful ignorance exacerbated by declining education and the dismissal of critical thinking so that high-stakes testing can be done. The consequence here creates adults with no sense of high-level decision making. They become the dupes of cultists and cults. I saw them coming when I taught science in Texas. The Republican stranglehold on public education was, in many opinions, criminal. Of course, the village idiot, G.W. Bush was all in as the tool of the teacher union-busters and private schools.
2. Political hackery and quackery emerged as the new “leaders” within this cult. The head cultist, after all, can’t destroy the country and the Constitution all by himself. Mike Pence personified the loyalist that Krugman describes. GOOD GRIEF! How on earth did the good people of Indiana ever consider this jerk for public service? When one looks at all the other court jerkers in Trump’s world, we see a collection of boot lickers like Mark Meadows, perhaps the most despicable creature to ever emerge from North Carolina. Now it’s Kevin McCarthy bending the knee and extending the tongue.
Finally, this “loyalty signaling” is clearly the sign of the weakest minds among us. What is the allure of taking a job that pays less than $200,000 per year? Oh. That’s not all. The corruption rampant in our governments at EVERY level solves that problem. These creeps are compelled, therefore, to do whatever it takes to stay in front of a camera so they can stay in “power” and keep getting the millions of dollars they want and, presumably, need to satisfy their own pathologies.
Did you know that the egregious Rafael (aka Ted) Cruz bought 10,000 copies of his own book using campaign money? He did it so he could brag that his moronic, self-serving screed would make the best-sellers list. I didn’t make this up. Is it any wonder, therefore, that people like this who lack character, a backbone and a moral compass would be so ready to support a raving psychopath?
Sorry. Rhetorical question.
Since 1980, Reagan said that the government is the problem and the republicans have been determined to prove it.
What Vernon said.
Loyalty signaling is the new way to describe the need to kiss the don’s ring.
Before the signaling came the fear. Fear brought on by the use of force. Coercion comes to mind as a modern use of force. Since 2015 I have often wondered what he had on them, and then it occurred to me that it was his knowledge that they were cowards and would cave if just pushed with a lie… like Ted Cruz did after the attacks on his father.
With an uneducated and gullible base Trump’s lies became weapons of fear.
My “Loyalty Signaling” is the posting of my election yard signs; I am not only posting my “loyalty” to person or party but hope to encourage others to vote. Elections became blatantly moral issues in 2015 when Trump rode down that escalator to announce he was running for president in 2016 dragging his illegal business practices and illicit sexual history behind him. Republicans morals were tossed by the wayside as the GOP jumped on his bandwagon rallying for freedom of racism, bigotry, lies, sexual misconduct and thievery. It remains so today at a frightening level as the “Loyalty Signaling” of such as Jordan, Banks, McConnell and Graham support the “Big Lie” and my fear is that he will be returned to the White House.
As for “Loyalty Signaling” regarding my vehicle; I’m not sure what people make of my 1996 Pontiac Sunfire with one crumpled fender. Actually; only the engine, interior and hail-dented body are 25 years old, under the hood and the underside of my car are actually from one month to 8-10 years old.
I have been fully vaccinated; carry my Covid-19 vax card and posted the orange sticker on my front storm door glass; I wear my mask in all public places. Not as I place my political yard signs at election time believing I will encourage others to do the same, but to avail myself of what health protection is available for myself and those around me.
In regard to Krugman’s reference to economics, I recall J.K. Galbraith’s phrase, “Conspicuous Consumption.”
This appears to make sense of the imbecilic groveling one sees within the GQP ranks!
I ordered a Prius early in its incarnation, not to signal anything, but for it’s presumed environmental “friendliness. they were back ordered, and we waited and waited, until we changed our mind and bought yet another, marvelous, little, Corolla, in ’09. that baby just drove past the 200,000 mile mark, and continues to truck along.
I have a Trumpist neighbor, who has a Prius, and STILL has a Trump sign in the house window. When I fist saw the two juxtaposed I had a bit of a cognitive dissonance experience, having felt “signaled” by the car in the driveway, that the owners were intelligent people. Oh, the things we don’t know we don’t know.
“When cult members “drink the Kool Aid,” they typically only kill themselves.”
Many of Jim Jones’ followers were willing to kill their babies and children for him.
There are no rational people in cults.
I personally like to “loyalty signal” myself to my friends who are busy “loyalty signaling” to Trump by emphasizing my absolute alignment as a proud to be progressive liberal in the true meanings of those words. It drives them nuts.
I thought that they’d eventually notice the reverse reflection of themselves but it apparently only drives them into fits of their own brand of loyalty.
It is interesting to be able to associate a term for our common behavior though.
I had a Biden for President in my yard in 2020, along with two of my neighbors on both sides of my house in NW Marion County. It was a signal.
The Trumpet not only demands the Loyalty Signals but, also a Loyalty Oath. The elected Officials in The GOP must not only signal approval, the Loyalty Oath demands verbal support. It seems even the most extreme and noxious verbalization is not enough to be passed the fringe.
The Trumpet’s hold over the GOP reminds of some things I have read about Stalin and applause, i.e. keep clapping.
In February 2018 after his State of Union address , before a crowd at a manufacturing plant, in Ohio, Donald Trump criticized Democrats who did not applaud during his first State of the Union address.
“Even on positive news, really positive news, they were like death . . . and un-American, un-American. Somebody said treasonous. Can we call that treason? Why not? They certainly didn’t seem to love our country very much.”
As Joel Connelly wrote concerning this event and the Trumpet’s words: “Chills will travel down your spine, and blood will leave your face. In the world of the despot, the state’s primary goal is protecting the leader. Ideals are lost, along with any independent sense of what constitutes loyalty to country — and disloyalty.”
So no applause for his State of Union Address = Treason. Today loyalty in the GOP must be absolute loyalty to The Trumpet, he will try to send dissenters to his version of the Gulag, i.e., they will be challenged in a primary by the True Believers in The Trumpet.
A perfect example is Trump’s televised cabinet meeting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ARgUIpM6f0
Fair warning: you need some sort of vomit-catching-receptacle nearby as you watch.
The thing that amazes me is that I would be hugely embarrassed to be the object of the cringe-inducing praise that occurs here, but Trump just laps it up as though it happens all the time. I guess it must.
There was a lot of Loyalty Signaling among DNC supporting Democrats against the Sanders “Trash”.
LoyLty signaling in the case of vaccines is a difficult one for conservatives as it is their stance to deny anything a government might stand for. Unfortunately Trump did not counter the claims he was against vaccinations even though he did everything to get a vaccine produced. Instead of fighting those that hated him, he as President needed to in the midst of a pandemic sit down with those hated him to advance the need for vaccines. Was The media interested in the good of all or did they do some loyalty signaling of their own, for example when Gov Cuomo put Covid patients in nursing homes in New York. It took a very long time for them to come to their senses. People play politics instead of try to advance the health of the community and in this case it took almost 8 months for the loyal media to pull its loyal head out of the sand.
Does anyone have a clue to what gain- of- function means? Have we changed the definition over night to rally behind one who may have sent funds to a lab that created and had minimal protections? Obama did order all gain of function funding to stop. Anytime someone questions what we don’t want to hear are we simply going to do what the German population did and turn a deaf ear while we catch ourselves in possible loyalty signaling?
Look at whats going on in Cuba. Isnt the silence we observe the loyalty signaling in allegiance to socialism?
I think that the phenomena of vice signaling is not talked about as much as it should be and a corollary to loyalty signaling. Having recognized that the Left has the moral high ground on social and environmental issues, many on the right take extreme measures to flaunt civic morals. Classic examples of vice signaling include “coal rolling”, refusing to wear masks during a global health crisis, and using insensitive and biggoted language.
It seems that recently some of the media journalists on Fox News have started supporting the vaccine. ( NO, not Tucker Carlson.) Maybe some of them have decided to change their message due to the delta variant’s rapid rise. The governor of Alabama is encouraging people to take it. So are some Republican congressmen and women.
A truly loyal friend will tell me if I am going in the wrong direction. Obviously, DT, has never understood this. Many of DT’s so called loyalists turned on him once they left his administration i.e. John Bolton. And many of those that stayed did their best to try and minimize the damage DT was inflicting on our democracy.
Cults give people a profound sense of belonging, so do militias or white supremacists groups. People who feel left behind are prone to buy into the cult’s propaganda because love and belonging are 2 of the most basic needs in Maslow’s hierarchy. Sadly, this love and belonging can be based in fear of the “other.” The fear and the needs easily undermine critical thinking.
In times like this, I take comfort in what Gandalf said “Oft evil will mars evil will.” Those fighting for DT’s attention will step on one another to get it because that’s what sort of culture he creates, a divided one. A divided house cannot stand.
It seems that recently some of the media journalists on Fox News have started supporting the vaccine. ( NO, not Tucker Carlson.) Maybe some of them have decided to change their message due to the delta variant’s rapid rise. The governor of Alabama is encouraging people to take it. So are some Republican congressmen and women.
A truly loyal friend will tell me if I am going in the wrong direction. Obviously, DT, has never understood this.
Cults give people a profound sense of belonging, so do militias or white supremacists groups. People who feel left behind are prone to buy into the cult’s propaganda because love and belonging are 2 of the most basic needs in Maslow’s hierarchy. Sadly, this love and belonging can be based in fear of the “other.” The fear and the needs easily undermine critical thinking.
In times like this, I take comfort in what Gandalf said “Oft evil will mars evil will.” Those fighting for DT’s attention will step on one another to get it because that’s what sort of culture he creates, a divided one. A divided house cannot stand.