Verblendung in America: How MAGA Became a Case Study in Self-Destructive Faith

There’s a German word I’ve always found unnervingly precise: Verblendung.

It literally means blinding — not of the eyes, but of the mind.

 

Philosophers of the Frankfurt School used it to describe a state where people embrace the very forces working against them, convinced they’re choosing liberation when they are, in fact, choosing their own undoing.

And if there’s ever been a modern American example, it’s the MaGA movement.

The Psychology of Choosing Ruin as Salvation

Another German term applies here: Selbsttäuschung — self-deception.
The internal trick in which a destructive path is reframed as the only path, and a harmful leader becomes the source of all hope.

Combine these, and you get a political psychology that looks like this:

• Believe the chaos is strength.

• Believe the pain you feel was caused by everyone except the person inflicting it.

• Believe the dismantling of institutions is patriotism.

• Believe that the person who breaks things is the only one who can fix them.

This isn’t new in history. But the speed with which it spread — and the fervor with which it is defended — feels new.

False Heroes, False Salvation

Marx and Engels called it Falsches Bewusstsein:
the belief that your oppressor is your protector, that your harm is your healing.

It’s the mindset in which:

• A billionaire who exploited labor becomes the champion of the working class.

• A man who undermines democracy becomes the defender of “freedom.”

• A leader who repeatedly abandons his followers becomes the one they’d “take a bullet for.”

This inversion of reality is exactly what philosophers meant by Verblendung.
The blindness is ideological — and emotional.

The Death Drive of a Movement

Freud’s Todestrieb, the death drive, describes the unconscious pull toward self-destruction.
Not because we consciously want collapse, but because collapse has been reframed as a kind of deliverance.

In this sense, MAGA is not just political.
It’s psychological.

It’s mythological.

It’s religious.

And it’s dangerous precisely because its adherents genuinely believe they are choosing the good, the righteous, the patriotic — even as the consequences fracture the nation around them.

What Happens When Verblendung Becomes National Identity?

When a movement convinces its followers that only one man can save them — and that every institution, expert, ally, court, journalist, and official who contradicts him is corrupt — you get a perfect storm of:

• Isolation

• Dependency

• Martyrdom fantasies

• Distrust of reality itself

This is Verblendung writ large:
a self-sustaining blindness, defended as truth.

The Final Paradox

The tragedy is that the people most hurt by MAGA’s policies are often the ones most loyal to the project.

They are, in the philosophical sense, worshipping the idol that devours them.

Nietzsche warned about this:

“Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster.”

America’s modern political paradox is different but related:

Beware worshipping a savior who thrives on the chaos that destroys you.

So we likely have a choice. Dump Trump. Or we all go down with him. 

I'll just wait here while we decide...

---

 Cheers! Sláinte! Na zdravie!7

Compiled with aid of ChatGPT