How the GOP (accidentally) became a doomsday cult: Introduction to the Narrativist Framework.

Greetings gentle reader, my name is Prester Jane and I would like to welcome you to a very fascinating and ongoing discussion about the present political situation in the United States. To explain why this discussion is so interesting I will have to provide some background both on myself (the primary author of the Narrativist Framework) as well as explain the context and conditions under which this discussion evolved.

Over the years I have learned that with a history like mine the only viable approach to explaining it is to be frank and direct. So without further preamble I was raised in a cult that had its own k-12 school, and I either attended this school or was homeschooled under the supervision of this cult until I turned 14. At which point I went out and got a Social Security Number of my own volition (SSN's were a precursor to "the mark of the beast") and enrolled myself in a public school.

In my high-school years and for approximately a decade afterwards I become involved in a series of small cults. Also during this period I slowly developed schizophrenia. The net result of these two factors was that I eventually hit my personal rock bottom and checked myself in to receive professional mental health help. I shortly thereafter received a formal diagnosis (schizoaffective disorder) as well as extensive medication support and therapy.

In the course of my recovery and deprogramming (which as you can imagine involved rather a great deal of therapy) I began to develop my own personal framework for understanding the mindset and behavior of the extremists groups I had spent so much time living in and amongst. In 2015 I began publishing pieces of this framework on a paywalled discussion forum.

The community that I chose to publish on permitted an unusual experiment in collaboration. I approached the community very openly about my schizophrenia as well as my lack of formal education. I was also very open about explaining that the source of these ideas was an artifact of how my mental illness altered the way I think. Under these conditions the community was able to engage with my ideas as a sort of collective experiment in directing the freewheeling nature of a schizophrenics thought process and was very honest but fair in its reactions/disagreements/critiques, and as a result a (rarely seen on the internet these days) spirit of collaboration became the underlying groundrule for the discussion.

In short I approached the conversation well aware that I was both a schizophrenic (as well as lacking in a formal education) and that I would need to be on guard at all times for how my illness can impact my thinking, and the community approached my material by investing enough of their own time/energy to be able to discuss my ideas in my own (often very schizophrenic) terms. In general the discussion proceeded by my introducining a new concept (often with its own associated vocabulary) along with a some supporting examples culled from media and my best attempt at a rough explanation of what it meant and how this concept fit in with others. There would then follow a great deal of back and forth discussion as the thoughtful reactions of many other participants allowed me to hone both my own understanding of the concept as well as how to better explain it to others. Then there would follow a discussion about the refinements themselves and so and so forth.

One of the fruits of over two years of this unusual experiment is what this paper is primarily about: The Narrativist Framework. Before I delve deeply into that discussion just yet though I must further beg the gentle readers patience by first providing a discussion on exactly what I feel this framework describes- and what it does not. (The import of making these distinctions early will become obvious over time as the reader delves into the body of this work.)

The Narrativist Framework is a description of a particular set of behaviors and the social environment that individuals exhibiting these behaviors tend to recreate whenever they reach a sufficient threshold of influence in society. These behaviors (and their underlying causes) are ultimately apolitical in nature: They are explicitly and emphatically not inherently right or left wing in nature. Any individual or organization can potentially exhibit these behaviors regardless of their political leanings.

The Narrativist Framework is also primarily a description of the structure of the beliefs that Narrativists/Narrativist organizations embrace. The nitty-gritty specifics of the beliefs any group discussed here are not nearly as important as how those specifics all conform to an identical structure, a story-like format that I have named the Grand Narrative.

Finally the Narrativist Framework is (and I must emphasize this here) not an attempt to pathologize the right wing, it is an attempt to describe a particular set of behaviors exhibited by individuals whom within the present American zeitgeist tend very frequently to be right wing oriented- this is a result of historic forces with the Republican Party itself (notably the backroom dealings of Barry Goldwater) as well as the logical consequence of utilizing the particular public relations strategy ("dog-whistling") that the GOP has embraced for several decades now. I want to state very clearly that in my view the present insanity we see playing out in the Trump administration could just as easily had a D next to its name if the Democratic Party*** had made the same sorts of decisions.

***In fairness to the Democratic Party, despite this Millenials' personal criticisms of the DNC (and they are varied, nuanced, detailed, and acid edged) the Democrats as a whole have not engaged in the sorts of political strategies that court Narrativism, and as a result left-leaning Narrativists in the US are a rare and mostly toothless breed, although pockets of them do exist. (TERF's, Tankies, "Tumblrina's" various tiny Marxist cults, etc.)

And last of all I would like to take a moment to thank the numerous community members of SA that have made significant contributions to this work, and in particular I would like to thank poster Fuschia Tude for taking the time to condense a great deal of material into the present format, as well as taking the time to clean up many of the particular artifacts that my illness had on my earlier writing.




Authors Note: The structure of the ideas and their meaning is mine, but much credit is owed to the SomethingAwful.com Debate and Discussion community for making numerous contributions to the descriptions contained as well as the naming conventions used herein. Further this present work represents a first attempt at uniting the entire framework into a single cohesive whole. As a result I have struck the supporting arguments (which are considerably larger than the definitions themselves) presented for each of these terms, as some of these terms have individually resulted in 10's of thousands of words worth of debate in and of themselves. The following Glossary therefore represents the easiest path to learning the basics of the Narrativist Framework without diving into the (incredibly interesting but nonetheless lengthy and tedious) underlying discussions that spawned many of these terms.





Continue on to "Narrativism/Narrativist".

Full Glossary of Terms.

Authoritarians and the Bypass of Perfect Safety: Why Sessions threats to journalists will resonate with Trumps radicalized base.

Greetings gentle reader- my name is Prester Jane and this article is intended to use a nuanced discussion of Jeff Sessions recent threats to jail journalists as a way of both providing insight into the authoritarian mindset as well as providing a detailed introduction to a couple of basic concepts of a theoretical framework used to describe/understand the behavior of authoritarians- the "Narrativist Framework".

I am the author of the Narrativist Framework* and before I delve into it I need to clear a few things up. The Narrativist framework is based upon my own experiences growing up and around several cults throughout my childhood and young adult years. To cut a great deal of personal testimony down to its relevant bits I eventually escaped and sought proper mental health treatment. (I was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder as well as PTSD and general anxiety disorder and have taken my ongoing recovery very seriously). The Narrativist Framework then is a product of my best-faith efforts to convey the b mindset that I formerly lived in- and to make that mindset comprehensible to those who have no direct experience of it. I mention all this up front because I feel it is important for the reader to bear in mind that my work here is that of (at best) a talented amateur with a unique insight- I readily concede that my theories would be well served with refinement at the hands of formally trained experts.

*More like primary author- an entire community has contributed to the overall framework and I have at times served more as conductor than author.

With all that pre-amble out of the way let us return to the matter at hand- putting Jeff Sessions recent public threats to arrest journalists into context. I will refer the reader to the video below as the rest of the article will be centered around explaining how the Narrativist Framework can provide deep insight into the rhetoric that Sessions is using here as well as why that rhetoric will resound so deeply with Trumps radicalized base (while turning off everyone else.)

Whew, we made it through that. (Scary stuff, huh). Well to my mind the fear of the unknown is the greatest fear of them all and to that end I shall en-devour to enlighten the reader as to the nature of authoritarians (hereafter referred to as Narrativists) with an aim to make the unknown into the known. Whether or not this will reduce the readers fear of authoritarians is a question that is presently stuck in endless clinical trials whose participants are bound by ironclad NDA's. There is much more at work here then generic impending fascism stuff- there is a comprehensible method to the madness of how Jeff Sessions is thinking and why he is making this threat in this very specific way.

You see Jeff Sessions is what I would call a Narrativist**- a specific type of extremist that filters their conscious experience of reality through a story-like filter that I call the "Narrative". Jeff Sessions is here appealing to other Narrativists- a group that presently composes the bulk of Trumps hardcore supporters.  Specifically Sessions is using a particular form of rhetorical manipulation of Narrativists that I call "Bypass" logic. That is to say; Sessions is framing his words in such a manner as to appeal to Narrativists by exploiting a conditioned response- one that is inherent to Narrativists.

** I consider Jeff Sessions to be a Narrativist that falls comfortably within the Racist Cluster.

While there are calculating imitators of Narrativists who understand how to do this only through careful study (e.g. Ted Cruz), Sessions is a Narrativist himself and as such understands how to perform this particular form of rhetorical manipulation on an instinctual level. The inner world of Jeff Sessions is governed by Bypass logic, and as such when he seeks to justify an action in pursuit of his Inner Narrative he does so using Bypass logic by default.

Now we can (finally) get into some serious meat here- the above video allows me to provide a real-world demonstration of all three primary forms of Bypass logic:

• Bypass of Perfect Safety: Sessions directly implies that leaks are killing our troops and putting us all at risk- this we must be made perfectly safe from this threat by stopping all leakers. How do we stop all leakers? Narrativists know only one solution to every problem, and that is the Bypass of Maximum Force.
• Bypass of Maximum Force: "Use as much force as you can as quickly as you can in every situation" is more or less the Narrativist credo. Sessions is threatening to imprison journalists because that is the maximum amount of force he can bring against them right now. That is literally the entirety of the depth of the reasoning at play here. Thing (journalists reporting on leaks) bad so me hurt thing bad. Why is thing bad? Because journalists reporting on leaks is both a strong source of Narrative dysphoria (described in detail below) as well as the simple existence of leakers running contrary to the Bypass of Purity
• Bypass of Purity: Everything is black and white in the Narrativist world- Good guys are all good and bad guys are bad. The world is a series of conflicts between clearly identified foes and allies. You can always trust your allies and you must always destroy your enemies. When your allies turn out to be untrustworthy (when Trumps subordinates expose his insanity) this simplistic teamsport-based conceptualization of reality is damaged, and a Narrativist will instinctively reject information that violates the Bypass of purity because the Narrativist subconsciously presumes that the natural state of the world is in full adherence with the Bypass of Purity. (Therefor if something violates the Bypass of purity, it must be discarded because it must be wrong.)

Now lets get into some really neat stuff. Remember that term above that I promised to go into detail about ("Narrative dysphoria), well now it is time to discuss what that is and how it is the fuel that drives the complicated process of radicalization among Narrativists. All Narrativists have some form of Inner narrative- a set of beliefs that always pits them as a participant in a (desperate and ongoing) grand battle between good and evil- with the stakes always as high as they can possibly be and rising ever higher. (Broadly speaking the more radicalized a Narrativist is the more they emotionally invested themselves in their Inner narrative.) The belief in this Inner narrative generates certain expectations about how situations the Narrativist feels invested in will play out, (Narrativists think they are living in a story (Grand narrative), and they expect the story to unfold according to their Inner narrative). When this does not happen (which is often) the Narrativist experiences this conflict between reality and what they expected from reality as a particular form of cognitive dissonance, and it is this cognitive dissonance that I have labeled "Narrative dysphoria".

There is a common belief shared among a lot of non-narrativists, when they observe how narrativists behave, that narrativists are incapable of feeling cognitive dissonance, or as I previously coined it, "Narrative Dysphoria". This belief is so prevalent that it has become one of those unstated assumptions about extremists that everyone takes as read. Based on my experiences both growing up with and having been a Narrativist, I strongly disagree with this idea. In a Narrativist group wherein a sufficient portion of the members are experiencing Narrative dysphoria at the same time the (eventual) result will be a building of tensions that finally gets released via a "Compaction cycle"- the ritualized scapegoating and casting out of members of the group. (If you read one concept I link to you then I urge you to make Compaction cycle that one thing- it is such an important concept that I even linked it twice.)

A Compaction cycle is when a Narrativist group such as Trump, his inner circle and his base - although Trump himself is just a parasite with a particular mental illness that allows him to easily exploit Narrativists - forcefully expels someone from their midst. This is often done after placing the blame for the Narrative dysphoria on them. Compaction cycles are often conducted in the most publicly humiliating and vicious way possible. Reince Priebus is an excellent demonstration of these concepts: Reince was scapegoated as the source of Narrative dysphoria (the leaks to the press from the Trump White House) and was ritually forced out of the inner circle in the most vicious and publicly humiliating way possible. 

In the wake of a Compaction cycle there is also another distinct step in the process of radicalization of a Narrativist group- the process of "Inner narrative evolution". In the wake of a Compaction cycle any negative emotions a Narrativist might experience (they are still in fact human beings who just attacked a comrade for no reason, that still hurts deep down) will drive them to develop a more elaborate version of their Inner narrative- one that makes their actions into a heroic act against a wicked enemy rather than a sudden betrayal of an associate. Developing this Inner narrative will cause the Narrativist to incorporate Bypass logic on an even deeper level- impacting even more of their thinking. This process often takes a few days/weeks to play out- but we can see some of the early impacts of the Compaction cycle against Reince Priebus (Scaramucci was a Compaction cycle as well but for contextually complicated reasons beyond the scope of the present discussion) resulting in Sessions public attack on journalists.

Following along this theme we can see a pattern emerging within the Trump Presidency, one that allows us to have some fairly detailed expectations for how events are likely to continue to play out in the Trump administration - absent the intervention of some external force, that is. Sources of Narrative dysphoria (the leaks, though important, being far from the only one) will cause more Compaction cycles to play out within Trumps White House.

And then more Narrative dysphoria will set the whole process in motion again.