The activist as a narcissist?
Progressive identity politics is remarkably suited to a culture of narcissism
The words ‘narcissism’ and ‘narcissist’ get bandied around a lot these days: not always accurately and to good effect. However I think there’s no doubt that this concept has a particular – and particularly interesting – resonance in our time.
Recently I completed a chapter for The Progress Factory entitled, ‘Playing Jesus: the activist as narcissist’.
My approach in the chapter is partly based on Christopher Lasch’s book The Culture of Narcissism, written way back in 1979 but resonating strongly today in relation to many of our public figures, from Donald Trump to Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex. Last week, British legal Twitter was shaking with a row about the apparent narcissism of the lawyer and Twitter activist Charlotte Proudman – an affair that I won’t go into here, but that you can get a taste of it from the exchange below.
Narcissism – as concept and culture
The psychological concept of the ‘narcissist’ is based on the Greek legend of Narcissus who fell in love with his own reflection. As the Encyclopaedia Britannica describes it,
Narcissism is characterized by an inflated self-image and addiction to fantasy, by an unusual coolness and composure shaken only when the narcissistic confidence is threatened, and by the tendency to take others for granted or to exploit them.
In psychological and also everyday discourse, we tend to apply the concept to an isolated individual who is variously diagnosed or judged pejoratively in this way. However Lasch identifies narcissism as a general trait of Western, especially American, consumerist culture – hence the title of his book. From this perspective, you could say that narcissism is not just a property of the individual but something that exists almost in the air we breathe. Indeed Lasch refers to “the emergence of the narcissistic personality as the dominant type of personality structure in contemporary society.”
In his book, Lasch associates narcissism with “a denial of the past”, which, “superficially progressive and optimistic, proves on closer analysis to embody the despair of a society that cannot face the future.”
I struggled to get this point for a while. However more detailed study and reflection showed how it was related to the tendency to not look beyond satisfying immediate needs and wants. This tendency is indulged by the consumer society, which is always working to manufacture new needs and wants that its products (and services) can promise to satisfy.
And this mass production of desires has gone way beyond things to satisfy the taste buds for example.
Lasch pointed out how consumer capitalism sought to manufacture the consumer: the individual who was sufficiently educated to see consumption as the root to social recognition, including virtue and moral status. The new lawnmower and new car to impress the neighbours have evolved into multi-billion industries whose purpose is to manufacture status. This in a post-Christian culture that often points towards the Jesus model of virtue (albeit for the most part without the Christian doctrine, which now appears as backward and unprofitable).
Hence nowadays how it is not enough to be against racism. Rather you need to be a public anti-racist, to constantly demonstrate it and insist the organisation you work for does the same. You need to see it as a need, with the need being that of yourself and your organisation to be part of the group of the good, rather than the need of non-white people to have such protectors on their side.
Status is a relative thing. For you to be raised up, you need others to be pushed down. Moral status always requires enemies, opponents, those of low class against whom to compare yourself and your virtue – which often seems strangely, indirectly associated with your wealth.
I think we might all agree that this is not a healthy set-up for a culture; indeed that it constitutes something like a narcissistic culture: one that is unconcerned with the antagonism it constantly generates; that is not bothering to look beyond the present moment and satisfaction of its immediate desires; that is not prepared to face the future.
And here’s someone who strangely comes to mind in that context.
The saviour complex
Gary Lineker is an exemplar of the many wealthy celebrities in our culture who have turned themselves into heroes and icons for their political activism: basically by attacking the British Conservative Government, Brexit, Donald Trump, Nigel Farage and all the ‘deplorables’ who have been fooled into voting for one or more of them.
This activism invariably revolves around identity politics: supporting favoured, protected groups seen to be victims like the ‘refugees’ arriving on small boats from France; young, female lawyers being oppressed by older, male ones; black actors not being nominated for awards.
And this activism follows the same patterns again and again: of manufacturing virtue and, with it, the Other of the wrong, ignorant, immoral masses who need to be suppressed. They are fulfilling a need for themselves and many others, for virtue, often in this strangely Christian style, which is even more strangely imitated by the bishops and archbishops in order to keep themselves relevant.
There is a sort of saviour complex to these behaviour patterns: placing remarkable qualities of healing and resolution in the self-as-saviour, with a concomitant anonymity, passivity and vulnerability in the people they are saving. Both characters appear to us as archetypes in a moral fable which we are accustomed to perhaps above all others, while having forgotten its original source.
These two archetypes, of the healer and healed, are both identities which work to boost the ego: placing all negativity outside themselves, leaving only good inside. It is perhaps notable that many of the most self-righteous activists in our world seek to combine both elements. Gary Lineker himself recently even pointed to his own darker skin and how it meant he was bullied at school
And here we find some (not all) of the narcissists of our times: full of themselves and their virtues, loving the attention they receive but absolutely intolerant of contradiction, assigning it to bullying, injustice and, wait for it, 1930s Germany.
Without doubt, this character is one of the dominant personalities of our time, if not the most dominant one.
For a good example of messianic narcissism read the intro to Al Gore’s ‘Inconvenient Truth’. Then watch his recent Davos outpouring.